Edmond Hamilton's "The Man Who Evolved" (short story, evolution, free): What will your far-future descendants look like?

A very pulpish, but quite readable, adventure involving a mad scientist. He's build a device that can transform an individual man into something humanity will be millions of years into future - so you can see humanity's future today. Of course, things go horribly wrong, even though the machine works perfectly.

See also.

1. Henry Kuttner's "The Creature from Beyond Infinity" (download): Here some men get transformed into future humans that evolution will eventually produce via a sort of highly contagious infection. Only, they're far too immature (emotionally), in spite of their far better intellectual capacity.

Fact sheet.

First published: Wonder Stories, April 1931.
Download full text from The Nostalgia League or Manybooks. [via James W Harris @ ClassicScienceFiction Yahoo group]
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Edmond Hamilton; evolution in fiction.

Robert H Wilson's "Out Around Rigel" (novelette, free): An adventure with relativity implications

It's not a bad read, but pick it up only on a day when you aren't in a mood to use your head.

Story summary.

There are actually multiple stories here, but woven into a single one:

1. When man becomes capable of flying to another world, where does he go out first? You might think moon would be a logical choice. But Lunarians don't think like us! Here two Lunarian friends, one of them a super-inventor, have their maiden space fight's target as the Rigel system some 500 lightyears away!
2. A love triangle - two men & a woman. Both men love the woman; she loves only one of them. One of the men thinks the issue should be settled with a duel. Where would the two go out to duel? A somewhat open place nearby? Wrong. Geniuses don't think like normal people!!
3. Third main thread is about the implications of traveling at relativistic speeds - implications from people's point of view.

See also.

1. Hal Clement's "Uncommon Sense": A variant of "duel" in a somewhat similar environment, but a much better thought out story.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Stories, December 1931.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg. [via Butch Malahide @rasfw]
Rating: B.

New at Project Gutenberg (7 August 2010)

Actually, these might have been posted anytime during the last fortnight; I've not been regularly checking the feeds recently.

Links on author, publisher, or year fetches more matching fiction.

1. Algernon Blackwood's "Three John Silence Stories"; download: Looks like horror. Contents are: "A psychical invasion", "Ancient sorceries", & "The nemesis of fire".
2. [novel] E E "doc" Smith's "Spacehounds of IPC"; download; Amazing Stories, July-September 1931.

Related: Fiction from old "pulps".

Free fiction: Astounding Stories, August 1931

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks in multiple formats.

This is an issue edited by Harry Bates. Scans of all issues edited by Bates, plus text versions of several issues, are online.

Related.

1. Fiction from Astounding/Analog (only stories edited by John W Campbell, Jr).
2. "Pulp" magazines.
3. Fiction from 1930s.

New at Project Gutenberg (17 May 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year yield more matching fiction.

1. [novel] Charles Willard Diffin's "Brood of the Dark Moon"; download; Astounding Stories, August/November 1931: "Once more Chet, Walt and Diane are united in a wild ride to the Dark Moon--but this time they go as prisoners of their deadly enemy Schwartzmann."
2. Berkeley Livingston's "Oogie Finds Love"; download; Amazing Stories, November 1948: "It took a fierce battle with the prehistoric Cro-Magnons, and a modern wrestling match with the Russian Bear, before Oogie, the Caveman, finally won beautiful Sala for his woman".
3. Lester del Rey's "No Strings Attached"; download; If, June 1954: "Poor Henry was an unhappy husband whose wife had a habit of using bad clichès. Alféar was a genii who was, quite like most humans, a creature of habit. Their murder compact was absolutely perfect, with--"
4. Raymond F Jones' "Human Error"; download; If, April 1956: "The government was spending a billion dollars to convince the human race that men ought to be ashamed to be men--instead of errorless, cybernetics machines. But they forgot that an errorless man is a dead man..."

Related: Fiction from old "pulps".

Free fiction: Astounding Stories, June 1931

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks in multiple formats.

This is an issue edited by Harry Bates. Scans of all issues edited by Bates, plus text versions of several issues, are online.

Related.

1. Fiction from Astounding/Analog (only stories edited by John W Campbell, Jr).
2. "Pulp" magazines.
3. Fiction from 1930s.

Paul Ernst's "The World Behind the Moon" (short story, adventure, free): Did you know earth has a second, invisible, moon too?

Yes - it's called Zeud. It's about the size of moon, & moves behind moon, always staying invisible from earth! And its teeming with life - monsters, sentient tribals, jungle, ...

Super-inventor Professor Dorn Wichter & a young man named Joyce go on adventure here, traveling in professor's "water-motor" driven rocket, after they notice Zeud during their initial adventure on the far side of the moon.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, April 1931.
Download full text as part of the magazine it originally appeared in from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by Harry Bates.
Related: Fiction from 1930s.

Free fiction: Astounding, July 1931

At Project Gutenberg in multiple formats.

This is an issue edited by Harry Bates. Scans of all issues edited by Bates, plus text versions of several issues, are online.

Related.

1. Fiction from Astounding/Analog (only stories edited by John W Campbell, Jr).
2. "Pulp" magazines.
3. Fiction from 1930s.
   

Free fiction: 2 issues of "Dynamic Science Stories" - February 1931, & April-May 1939

Scans in CBR & CBZ formats in 2 RAR files at Crosseyed Cyclops:

1. "rar 1": April/May 1939.
   
2. "rar 2": February 1939 (inaugural issue of the magazine).
   
   Has at least one very good story - Nelson Bond's (under pseudonym Hubert Mavity) "The Message from the Void".

Related.

1. Old "pulp" magazines.
2. Fiction from 1930s.

Free fiction: 2 issues of "Argosy" - 8 August 1931, & 17 March 1888

Scans in CBR/CBZ formats at Crosseyed Cyclops in two RAR files.

Note that while Argosy has published some good science fiction, it was really a multi-genre magazine.

Different titles of the two included issues could be because of magazine's name change over its long life; I'm not sure.

1. "Argosy #1 1931 rar": Contains "Argosy, 8 August 1931" issue.
2. "Golden Argosy 1888 rar": Contains "Golden Argosy, 17 March 1888" issue.

Related.

1. Fiction from Argosy.
2. Old "pulp" magazines.
3. Fiction from 1930s, 19th century.

Free fiction: Astounding Stories, March/April/May 1931

March 1931: At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.
April 1931: At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.
May 1931: At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.

These are issued edited by Harry Bates. Scans of all issues edited by Bates, plus text versions of several issues, are also online.

Related: Fiction from Astounding/Analog (only stories edited by John W Campbell, Jr).

Free fiction: Astounding Stories, February 1931

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.

This is an issue edited by Harry Bates. Scans of all issues edited by Bates, plus text versions of several issues, are online.

Related: Fiction from Astounding/Analog (only stories edited by John W Campbell, Jr).

Online: Astounding Stories of Super Science - some more early issues

Greg Weeks, the Project Gutenberg man who had put up scans of Astounding Stories of Super-Science - 1930 issues a few weeks back, reports at rasfw that the scans of all 1931 issues as well as January & March issues of 1933 are now also up at the Internet Archive.

Related posts:

1. Astounding, 1930 scans.
2. Astounding, 1932 scans.
   
3. Annotated table of contents of these scanned issues.
   

Murray Leinster's "Morale: A Story of the War of 1941-43" (novelette, superweapon, free): There are multiple ways of defining terrorism

In spite of title, this story is unrelated to World War II; it was written in 1931.

There are two major themes here:

1. A version of state terrorism: During war, at least one side uses outright terrorizing of civilian population of the opponent as a matter of war strategy. That's how the story gets its title - enemy's all out effort to break the morale of local civilian population. Because this is a pre nuclear weapons story, form of terror is cruder than Hiroshima.
   
2. In an otherwise equal battle, one side introduces a superweapon to completely change the war situation - in the tradition of H G Wells' "The Land Ironclads", & Robert Heinlein's "Solution Unsatisfactory".

Action packed, fast moving story.

Story summary.

US is fighting a war against an unnamed enemy, primarily along the Pacific coast. There is very minor military deployment along east coast, & primarily to tell civilian population that east is also being defended.

That's when a very tiny enemy contingent lands "in New Jersey Aug. 16, 1942" with their superweapon: a single massive supertank called "Wabbly" - "two hundred feet long" with "eight-foot-wide steel treads". It is equipped with induction weapons in a "dinkus on top" & poison gas weapons. It is supported by an unspecified number (but apparently very few) high flying supersonic aircraft capable of precision bombing. Any US aircraft attacking invading aircraft are destroyed by tank's induction weapon; any attack on Wabbly is neutralized by invading aircraft which can remotely sense "sparks from a motor", & use this information for precision bombing. Normal infantry attack on Wabbly is hopeless.

Wabbly will unleash a rein of absolute terror in many cities, completely leveling whole cities & villages killing every human in the path. Nothing the defenders have can touch Wabbly. Until the two heroes - Sergeant Walpole & Flight Cadet Ryerson - figure out a deception that will make the invading aircraft attack their own Wabbly!

See also.

1. Two other stories that make use of induction weapons: Larry Niven's "The Warriors", & Murray Leinster's "Proxima Centauri".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Stories, December 1931.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg.
Download audio from Maria Lectrix, in two parts: 01 & 02. Or direct MP3 at Internet Archive - 01 & 02.
Rating: A
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.