Norman Spinrad's "Outward Bound" (novelette, free)

This is a classic "technology as an enabler of freedom" story: government is hell bent to bury a newly developing technology because it cuts into some of its power - think decade old debates & controls on encryption, e.g.

In the story, it's the "Overdrive" - an FTL drive. Earth has a kingdom spanning a few stars, maintained with slower than light ships. These outworlds are always behind earth in technology because ships bringing them earth's information take decades or centuries. (Why don't the outworlds develop their own tech?)

Now someone is onto a theory that can lead to FTL, ending earth's hegemony. So earth has sent a military to nip the technology in the bud...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, March 1964.
Download full text from Baen Books.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Norman Spinrad.

James H Schmitz's "Undercurrents" (novella, property dispute, free): Foiling a murder plot

Close family & friends own a firm, with rules of incorporation such that holding will remain within the group, even in the event of death of one of them. One of them a greedy evil member. Over the years, she gets various other members killed, grabbing their share on the cheap.

Now she's after the last significant share holder other than her. To kill her in a way that won't be traceable to culprit. Telzey Amberdon, with help & a lot of telepathic handwave, will help foil the plan.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, May/June 1964 (as a 2-part serial).
Download full text from Baen Books.
Rating: B. 
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campebell.
Related: Stories of James H Schmitz.

Murray Leinster's "The Greks Bring Gifts" (novel, alien invasion): "Helpful" aliens with a nasty secret agenda

Earth has recently received an alien ship with two kinds of very helpful aliens - Greks & Aldarians, Greks the senior of the two. They're offering great new technology, & are willing to train human scientists in Grek science. They don't claim to have any expectations from humanity, apart from giving the gifts.

But Jim Hackett is noticing some anomalies in their behavior. While Aldarians are genuinely helpful, Greks' gifting feels like contempt, Grek ship is far too big compared to their declared numbers, his suspicion during his training in Grek science that they're being taught nonsense, ... His investigations, with the help of a small band of helpers, will unravel the aliens' nasty designs as well as a weapon to beat them at their own game.

See also.

1. Damon Knight's "To Serve Man" (download text scans as part of a larger package): Similar concept at short story length.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1964.
Rating: B.
Included in "grubthrower"'s "Top 10 obscure but superb science fiction novels".
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Randall Garrett's "The Eyes Have It" (novelette, detective, free): Detective finds the killer

I found it mostly an easy fast-moving read, though I felt sort of cheated by ending. There is something in the story that might be considered a very brief clue to ending, but probably author just wanted us to have a shock. Most of the clues in the story are misleading.

Caution: Readers with non-European, non-Christian background might find the story too inaccessible. But that vanished for me after first couple of chapters that set the preamble; rest of the story should be reasonably accessible to all.

I'm a bit puzzled by its inclusion in Analog, that too when Campbell was the editor. It fits the pattern in that it's an intelligent reasonable story, but I haven't seen a lot of magic-wielding stories in these issues. Could this be of the type that alienated a lot of loyal Analog readers during the 1960s?

Story summary.

Sir Pierre Morlaix, secretary to Count Edouard D'Evreux, found the Count murdered of a gunshot wound in his bed a certain morning. Investigator, Lord Darcy, with the help of Dr Pateley, physician, & Master Sean O Lochlainn, (licensed) Sorcerer! - will find the culprit. Sorcerer is the main forensics man!

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, January 1964.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks, Webscription. [via Bill Garthright @ ClassicScienceFiction]
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Randall Garrett.

Leigh Richmond & Walt Richmond's "Poppa Needs Shorts" (short story, humor, free)

4 year old Oley learns the intricacies of "shorts" of "electrics", in his own way...

See also.

1. Henry Kuttner's "Call Him Demon" (download): Another story about how the thought processes of children & adults differ.

Collected in.

1. Judith Merril (ed)'s "The 9th Annual of the Year's Best SF" (1964).

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, January 1964.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks.
Download audio read by Patti Cunningham from LibriVox "Coffee Break Collection Vol 1".
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.

Norman Spinrad's "Subjectivity" (short story, free): Nonsensical but funny parody of some genre tropes

Several old genre tropes here, but this story did make me laugh at a few places:

1. A government does something, anything, so a bored & restless population won't destroy the society. Howard L Myers' "econo-war"(?) series of dozen odd stories is primarily about this, but a lot of other authors have used it too.
2. Mind drugs & hallucinations: My favorite story of the class is Rog Phillips' "The Yellow Pill" (download), may be the only one primarily on this subject that I've actually liked. This story features the super-drug "Omnidrene".
3. How extreme loneliness affects individuals. See, e.g., Tom Godwin's "The Nothing Equation" (download), & Eric Frank Russell's "Tieline".
4. A stubborn & crazy government.
5. Monsters.

Story summary.

Solar Government has decided that man will go to stars. So a ship capable of traveling at half the light speed is built, capable of carrying 10 individuals to Alpha Centauri in a 16 year round-trip journey.

Only problem is: the ship gets lost & never returns; its crew going mad out of boredom. Next ship is built. And next... Every time, a new kind of crew is tried. Until the novel & crazy experiment with 13th ship which "succeeds" beyond everyone's imaginations...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, January 1964.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg.
Rating: B.
Among the stories edited by John Campbell for Astounding/Analog.
Related: Stories of Norman Spinrad.

Arthur Clarke's "Sunjammer" aka "The Wind from the Sun" (novelette, racing): Solar sail power interstellar vehicle!

About a month ago, there was a news item in The New York Times [via Brenda Clough] about a series of forthcoming experiments in solar sail powered vehicles. This story is one of the best pieces of hard sf from Clarke, & among the most exotic racing stories by anyone.

Note: Idea of a solar sail is to use the "pressure" of sunlight - not like solar energy but like particles of light that aren't quite particles though they have momentum - as the motive power. No other energy source is necessary, except for steering.

Story summary.

Seven solar sail powered vehicles of different designs from "four inhabited worlds" will compete in the race from earth to moon. Eventually, of course, it will be fight between US & Russian vehicles!

Beginning point is "twenty-two thousand miles above the [earth's] equator" where the vehicles are anchored to normal ships in a certain formation. At T0, the anchor lines are cut, & the race is on.

At moon, other vehicles will pick up the crew capsules. "the winner will be the one that first drifted past the Moon."

Story is mostly told from the point of view of US participant - John Merton, "Chief Designer of Cosmodyne Corporation", riding the sail ship Diana. He's the only one flying solo; everyone else has a crew of two. He thinks the reduced mass will work in his favor.

They will make two rounds around earth, picking speed during the "powered half of the orbit", before reaching escape velocity. We go through the maneuvers needed when vehicles

1. pass through earth's shadow ("The shroud lines were slackening, & must be wound in lest they become entangled.")
2. when moving the unpowered half of orbit (towards Sun) (need to sail "edge-on" to sun, or you're thrown back).
3. when transitioning to powered part of orbit from unpowered.

We also see a competitive practice where one vehicle tries to cast shadow on another to cut its supply of sunlight, & how the victim escapes.

Participants keep falling off the race till only US & Russia are left: two to collision when passing through earth's shadow, another who could not turn the sail edge-on during unpowered half, another who could not transition from unpowered to powered half, & another where the lines rigging crew capsule to sail gave way.

Neck-to-neck half way to moon a day after reaching escape velocity, the last two participants will also have to abandon their vehicles because of a solar flare (their tiny capsules are unshielded). But Merton had rigged his machine to sail unaided too - so when he jumps, the vehicle is on its way to moon & beyond - eventually attaining solar escape velocity.

Quotes.

1. Diana: "fifty million square feet of sail, linked to his capsule by almost a hundred miles of rigging... Yet it was little more substantial than a soap bubble; that two square miles of aluminised plastic was only a few millionths of an inch thick."
2. How much is the pressure of sunlight on Earth? "Hold your hands out to the sun... Over the area of your hands, it comes to only about a millionth of an ounce.
   
   But out in space, even a pressure as small as that can be important, for it's acting all the time, hour after hour, day after day. Unlike rocket fuel, it's free & unlimited."
3. Solar sail: "A square mile weighs only a ton, & can collect five pounds of radiation pressure. So it will start moving - & we can let it tow us along, if we attach rigging to it.
   
   Of course, it's acceleration would be tiny - about a thousandth of a g. That doesn't seem much, but let's see what it means.
   
   It means that in the first second, we'll move about a fifth of an inch. I suppose a healthy snail could do better. But after a minute, we've covered sixty feet, & will be doing just over a mile an hour. That's not bad, for something driven by pure sunlight! After an hour, we're forty miles from our starting point, & will be moving at eighty miles an hour... You'll be surprised when I tell you what our one-thousandth-of-a-g sailboat will be doing at the end of a day's run: almost two thousand miles an hour! If it starts from orbit - as it has to, of course - it can reach escape velocity in a couple of days. And all without burning a single drop of fuel!"
4. On inertia: "another rule that was hard to learn: the very moment you had started something happening in space, it was already time to think about stopping it."
5. Food "crumbs were a greater danger to space vehicles than meteorites; they could drift into the most unlikely places, causing short circuits, blocking vital jets, & getting into instruments that were supposed to be hermetically sealed."
6. "Those two square miles [of sail] produce a maximum pull of just ten pounds. I can exert more force by my little finger."
7. "It was hard to keep a good watch on that 60 million square feet of dim plastic out there in the darkness, illuminated only by his narrow spotlight & the rays of the still distant Moon."
8. By the time of second lap around earth, while "the two square miles of plastic sheet must have been riddled by hundreds of micrometeorites, the pinhead-sized punctures had produced no falling off of thrust."
9. Diana, after jettisoning: "Two days from now, she would flash past the Moon; but the Moon, like the Earth, could never catch her. Without his mass to slow her down, she would gain two thousand miles an hour in every day of sailing. In a month, she would be traveling faster than any ship that man had ever built.
   
   As the Sun's rays weakened with distance, so her acceleration would fall. But even at the orbit of Mars, should would be gaining a thousand miles an hour in a day. Long before than, she would be moving too swiftly for the Sun itself to hold her. Faster than a comet had ever streaked in from the stars, she would be heading out into the abyss."

Collected in.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke".
2. Arthur Clarke's "The Wind from the Sun" (coll).
3. Arthur Clarke's "The Sentinel" (coll).
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Boy's Life, March 1964 as "Sunjammer".
From author's note, introducing this story in Collected Stories: "The story's original title was 'Sunjammer' but as Poul Anderson had the same idea almost simultaneously, I was obliged to make a quick change of name."
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Arthur Clarke (only his short fiction/novels).

Free Fiction: Christopher Anvil

These are 2 or 3 months old links that were lost in my bookmarks.

Via Free SF Reader: 4 stories from Christopher Anvil's collection "The Trouble with Humans" (ed Eric Flint) at Webscription:

1. "We From Arcturus"; download; Worlds of Tomorrow, August 1964.
   
2. "The Underhandler"; download; Analog, November 1990.
   
3. "Duel to the Death"; download; Analog, June 1965.
   
4. "Shotgun Wedding"; download; Astounding, March 1960.

Free fiction: Isaac Asimov, Cordwainer Smith, Geoffrey Landis

These are 2 or 3 months old links that were lost in my bookmarks.

Via Free Speculative Fiction Online: 2 stories from Gregory Benford (Ed)'s "The New Hugo Winners-Volume IV" at Webscription:

1. Geoffrey A Landis' "A Walk In The Sun"; download.
2. Isaac Asimov's "Gold"; download; Analog, September 1991

Two stories from Cordwainer Smith's collection "We the Underpeople" (ed Hank Davis) at Webscription:

1. "The Dead Lady of Clown Town"; download; Galaxy, August 1964
2. "Under Old Earth"; download; Galaxy, February 1966.

Murray Leinster's "The Duplicators" aka "Lord of the Uffts" (short novel, humor, free): Social implications of material replication technology

This is an adventure story with many funny situations. Adventures of Link Denham on a world called Sord Three.

Sord Three society comprises of human colonists & intelligent pig-like natives called "uffts". Humans have fallen to primitive feudal society that has lost all its technology & knowledge except "dupliers", their fabulous material replication machines. Feed a potato into one "hopper" of machine, some "greenstuff" (grass, etc) into another, press a button - & you get a handful of potatoes in a third "hopper", corresponding chemical elements now missing from "greenstuff"! This is how they make everything - cloths, knives, ... Copied material is said to have been "duplied"; originals are "unduplied".

Since a lot of complicated electronics requires rare materials in small quantities - raw material they can no longer get, the society has been falling.

Human society is essentially feudal villages ("Households") with a headman ("Householder"). Uffts are servant class, doing menial tasks (& paid for in beer!).

Soon after Link finds himself on this world against his wishes, he & his cranky employer Thistlethwaite keep getting into one spot after another - including death sentence a couple of times. Here, Link will find Thana, his lady love & sister of local headman Harl. And, of course, all ends well.

Near end of the story is a revolt of uffts against the human overlords. Link will help quench the revolt, using a technique many office workers will find familiar: if you are a management faced with restless employees, create a bunch of committees & causes to keep the crowd busy & feeling important!

Collected in.

1. Murray Leinster's collection "A Logic Named Joe" (ed Eric Flint).

Fact sheet.

First published: 'in a shorter version in Worlds of Tomorrow in February 1964, under the title "Lord of the Uffts." The expanded version contained in this volume was reissued the same year by Ace Books as a double novel under the current title (coupled with Philip E. High's No Truce With Terra).'
Rating: A
Download full text from Webscription.
All stories of Murray Leinster.

** Gordon R Dickson's "Dolphin's Way" (short story, science fiction)

Main theme is - communications with aliens are likely to be far tougher than assumed, because we live in different environments, & environments affect the kind of signals we exchange. In a less important thread, a human is disappointed after first contact with aliens, because aliens have chosen dolphins over humans as the species they want to communicate with.

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF".
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, June 1964.
Rating: B

Note: Why is this post so short?

Arthur C. Clarke's "Dial F For Frankenstein": A monster of an AI is accidentally born!

Key premise of this very entertaining story is obviously flawed: current internet more than fulfills the conditions, & we don't yet have the monster.

I am not an expert in neural networks or biology of cognition, but consciousness apparently requires something more than just an enormous number of interconnected switches. May be the right initial state - & a few million or billion years to accidentally reach that state, if at all? I don't know. But I enjoyed the story.

Story summary.

Story is set in London in 1975. "At 0150 GMT on December 1, 1975, every telephone in the world started to ring"! Next day will see chaos all over - radio stations shutting down, stock markets & banks shutting down, traffic signaling systems down, electricity grid behaving erratically, military weapons launched without human authorization, planes almost crashing, ...

But it all began with phones ringing. You pick up the receiver, & some funny non-human sounds appear for a few seconds before it hangs up. Rest of the chaos will take a while over the following day to manifest.

Much of the story is the discussion in a restaurant among some phone people of what could have caused the anomalous ringing event. With reports of other chaos slowly reaching - strengthening the initially insane theory put forward by Dr John Williams, Mathematics Division.

"human brain is a system of switches - neurons - interconnected in a very elaborate fashion by nerves. An automatic telephone exchange is also a system of switches - selectors & so forth - connected with wires..."

But there "are about fifteen billion neurons in the brain? That's a lot more than the number of switches in an autoexchange...

Fifteen billion sounds a large number, but it isn't. Round about the 1960s, there were about that number of individual switches in the world's autoexchanges. Today, there are approximately five times as many...

And as from yesterday, they've all become capable of full interconnection, now that the satellite links have gone into service."

You see, an AI was born automatically in this network. Phone event, a couple of hours after the satellite hookup, was its birth pangs. Now the baby is trying things out - and will likely break some as part of its normal growth!

Amid more reports of chaos, they conclude the newly operational satellites will have to be put out of action. Only, the baby has thought of it before the humans. Satellites no longer respond to commands from humans at ground control!

See also.

1. In this Part 4 of the 7 part interview about HAL, the AI in "2001 A Space Odyssey", Clarke talks about this story in one paragraph. Nothing new, but kind of puts this story in a larger context.
   

Collected in.

1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
2. "More Than One Universe"
3. "The Wind from the Sun"

Fact sheet.

"Dial F For Frankenstein", short story, review
First published: Playboy, January 1964.
Rating: A

Arthur C. Clarke's "The Food of the Gods": A corporate FUD campaign

This somewhat humorous narrative is in the form of a businessman's testimony to a US Congressional Committee.

Story summary.
Food production via agriculture as well as meat produced by butchering animals is now in past history. All food is synthetically produced by corporations - synthesized "from the basic raw materials of water, air, and rock".

Because of long established tastes, most popular foods still tend to be what they always were. Means animal meat is still popular - only it is not produced by butchering animals; it is synthesized. And social guilt dictates calling it something else. In fact, most people now feel repulsed by mere mention of meat.

Triplanetery Food Corporation has invented a new "Ambrosia Plus" line of dishes that has become popular enough to worry competitors.

Manager of one of these competitors is giving testimony. He is freely admitting that his company tried all it could to duplicate "Ambrosia Plus" - without luck. Now he wants to appeal to morals of lawmakers & public to put "Ambrosia Plus" out of market. So he points out the animal whose meat the "Ambrosia Plus" simulates ...

A note on story time line.
I am not clear on the time the story is set in. At one place, I got the impression it is set a century or two from now (500th anniversary of US constitution, if I recall correctly - I am not familiar with US history dates). At another place, there is a mention that the term "carnivores ... comes from a language that has been obsolete for two thousand years". At another place, it says "until a few centuries ago" to refer to current time.

Fact sheet.
The Food of the Gods, short story, review
First published: Playboy, May 1964
Rating: B

This story is included in the following collections.

1. "More Than One Universe"
2. "The Wind From The Sun"
3. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"

Larry Niven's "The Coldest Place": Niven's first published story

Technical aspects of the story are dated, but it's a generally readable tale.

I did not know that it was once thought that a place on Mercury was the coldest in solar system; in fact, "it doesn't get colder than this even between the stars"! Story is based on the knowledge that Mercury always shows the same face to Sun, & there are places on the dark side that are this cold.

Story summary.
Narrator has gone to Mercury with Eric to look for native life forms, based on pictures from a previous mission. They ultimately catch one - a huge amoeba shaped blob made primarily of "Helium II". But aren't quite clear till end if it is alive:

"It's only helium!"
"Helium II. That's all our monsters are."
"Check them for contaminants."
"For what?"
"Contaminants. My body is hydrogen oxide with contaminants. If the contaminants in the helium are complex enough, it might be alive."
"There are plenty of other substances".

Trivia.

1. This story employs a device that is now rather popular in modern fiction - nervous system of a human integrated into the space ship: "In all directions from his spinal cord and brain, connected at the walls of the intricately shaped glass and soft plastic vessel which housed him, Eric's nerves reached out to master the ship." See, e.g., Peter Watts' "Blindsight" for a simpler version.

Fact sheet.
The Coldest Place, short story, review
First published: If, December 1964
Rating: B
Series: "The Coldest Place", "Becalmed in Hell" (B).