John W Campbell's "Dead Knowledge" (as by Don A Stuart) (novelette, alien invasion): "Molecular", microscopic, space traveling, light-eating alien invaders want to control us as tools!

Three human star travelers have arrived at a new world 27 light years from earth, only to find that it once harbored intelligent, highly developed, humanoid civilization that is now dead. And, curiously, it's long dead residents have their bodies well preserved & they all apparently committed suicide!!

It drags on for a while, until the visitors themselves start committing suicide - first one, then other. It's the final one who will enlighten us on the nature of infection before himself committing suicide.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, January 1938.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Works of John Campbell (as by Don A Stuart).

Clifford D Simak's "Rule 18" (novelette, humor): How earth won it's first football match against Martians in decades

Martians have been beating earth in annual football match for a long time. And the diagnosis is: earth-men have become soft because of too much automation here; they never get a chance to exercise their muscles. But things are about to change as a cool newly invented gadget, the earth team's coach sick of losing too long, & a betting syndicate come together...

Title comes from one of the rules of the game that requires a player of the team to not only be natives of his world, but his 9 preceding generations should have been native of this world too. Coach will twist this rule in a curious way to win.

Update 21 July 2014:  Marooned has a note on an Isaac Asimov connection to this story.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1938.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Clifford D Simak.

H L Gold's "A Matter of Form" (novella, brain dump): When a man lived in a dog's body

A surgeon has discovered that the pineal gland at the brain's base is the source of an
animal's identity; surgically extract & transplant it in another animal's brain, & you've put the original in a new body. And he has a rich, old & seriously ill financier who wants a young man's body!

In one of the experiments, the surgeon exchanged the identity of a kidnapped man with a dog. Only the resulting man-in-dog's-body turned out to be more determined & resourceful than either the surgeon or his financier expected...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, December 1938.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novella category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of H L Gold.

Lester Del Rey's "The Faithful" (short story, doomsday, free)

Uplifted dogs are taking over the civilization, as the last of the Man is dying following a war & then a plague...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, April 1938.
Download full text from Chomikuj.pl (badly formatted HTML; I'd to edit it in a text editor on PC discarding entire HTML header & footer, & saving it as TXT file, before it would read correctly in Moon+ Reader on my tablet).
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in short story category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Lester del Rey.

John R Pierce's "Period Piece" (as by J J Coupling) (short story)

A modern man finds himself in 31st century, with no recollection of how he got there. He's being treated very well & kindly, but he's smelling something fishy - why's is no one curious about the period he's come from, not even an eminent historian?

Very curious & unexpected ending.

Collected in.

1. Everett F Bleiler & T E Dikty (eds)' "The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, November 1948.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of John R Pierce.

Isaac Asimov's "No Connection" (short story, puzzle, free)

Millions of years into future, man is long extinct. The world has two dominant intelligent races:

1. Americas dominated with "Gurrows", intelligent descendents of bears;
2. Rest of the world dominated by "Eekahs", intelligent descendents of chimpanzees.

Eekahs are far more technologically advanced, are aware that Americas are sparsely populated, & are planning raids to claim that land.

This is the story from the point of view of a Gurrow archeologist who knows a bit about the long extinct man (the "Primate Primeval"). And of his seriously incomplete piecing together of the history of the continent & what lays ahead as they come into more frequent contact with Eekahs...

Collected in.

1. Everett F Bleiler & T E Dikty (eds)' "The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, June 1948.
Download full text from AlfaLib.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Isaac Asimov.

Alec Nevala-Lee's "The Whale God" (novelette): Subaudible sound as a military weapon

Main idea has been used in fiction for decades: sounds with frequency below the human hearing threshold, while inaudible, still make people uncomfortable.

Here, US military is testing it during Vietnam War as a possible weapon. Only problem is: they're using it off a ship, & targeting the sound at coast. Not only are a lot of non-combatants affected, it's also affecting the whales in the ocean.

In fact, much of the story is about attempts to refloat whales that wash ashore as a result of their senses getting confused because of these subvocal sounds.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, September 2013.
Rating: B. 
Related: Stories of Alec Nevala-Lee.

Kenneth Schneyer's "Life of the Author Plus Seventy" (short story, humor): Legal implications of human hibernation

Three major themes here, often told in a hilarious way:

1. Customer service dysfunction.
2. A parody of US copyright law, particularly w.r.t. Disney case.
3. Legal implications of human hibernation.

Story summary.

A not very successful author has a novel published but it's not selling much. He bugs local library enough to make them buy a copy, but no one is borrowing it. So he himself borrows it, but forgets to return it.

He'll later get a job with a company in a creative role, & is made to sign a curiously twisted copyright clause in the employment contract that gives the company the copyright over his creations for hundreds of years rather than "just" 120 years: when he's about to die, the company will have a right to hibernate him for up to 500 years, so copyright rule of author's life + 70 years applies!

A decade after borrowing the book, library has handed over the overdue & fines collection to a debt collection agency, & he receives his first overdue & fines bill - a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Hilarity ensues as he gets into negotiations with the debt collector, & later tries evading it...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, September 2013.
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2013" list.

"Analog Science Fiction and Fact", September 2013 (ed Trevor Quachri) (magazine): Annotated table of contents & review

Links on author fetch more fiction of author. My rating is in brackets.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [ss] Kenneth Schneyer's "Life of the Author Plus Seventy" (A); humor: Legal implications of human hibernation... 
2. [novelette] Alec Nevala-Lee's "The Whale God" (B): Using subaudible sounds as a military weapon.
3. [ss] Joe Pitkin's "Full Fathom Five" (B): A woman astronaut alone in a submarine with a local creature at the bottom of the ice covered ocean of Europa. A creature that is very alien & has very peculiar way of communicating.
   
   This might have been a ok story but author unnecessarily kills off rest of the crew to create some forced sentimentality.
   
   Some reviewers see symbolism here: alien looks like a giant penis that has emissions at nights, emissions that follow dreams of the woman!
4. [ff] Arlan Andrews, Sr's "Wreck Support" (B); humor: An English translation of an ancient Greek scroll, signed by "Alexandros of Macedonia", complaining about a recently discovered but ancient mechanical geared computer he had brought. Alexander had apparently brought it to aid in his invasions, & but it kept throwing up things like "File not found" & "Insufficient memory"!
5. [ss] Liz J Andersen's "Creatures from a Blue Lagoon" (B); humor: Adventures of a human veterinary student, in a multi-species space federation, treating an alien "cow".
   
   Easy read but mostly nonsense.
6. [novella] Martin L Shoemaker's "Murder on the Aldrin Express": Not read.
7. [novelette] Lavie Tithar's "The Oracle": Not read.

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol CXXXIII No 9".
Related: Stories from Analog (whole issues only); fiction from 2010s.

Robert A Heinlein's "Double Star" (novel, politics): When an imposter became the ruler

This is a fast paced action story with a lot of election politics. I didn't like it as much as I wanted to because at some places the world view is too provincially Western; the thing that irritated me most was a small passage on the classification of world's languages - confidently told & totally bogus.

Story summary.

Here is a solar Empire spanning many worlds, dominated by humans though there are aliens on other worlds. It's a monarchy similar to British one - emperor is supreme but is a rubberstamp, & sits in a city on the moon. The parliament has the power & is elected; aliens can vote but must choose a human representative. Head of government is the "Supreme Minister", probably majority leader in Parliament.

Current ruling party has arranged the kidnapping of the leader of opposition at a time where he's absolutely required to be present at a Martian ceremony. So his underlings will recruit an actor, Lawrence Smith aka Lorenzo Smythe, to act as an imposter at the function. One thing will lead to another & new situations will keep coming up & the imposter will end up becoming the politician he's impersonating.

The story is, first & foremost, the character study of this actor, & evolution of his personality.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, Feb/Mar/Apr 1956.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Winner of Hugo Award 1957 in novel category.
Related: Stories of Robert Heinlein.

Half a dozen new entries in

Astounding, July 1942 post. Nearly all of them forgettable ones.

Going by experience of several issues now, flash fiction in Astounding, as a rule, appears to be very weak.

David V Reed's "Penance Cruise" (novella, adventure, humor, free)

Two young soldiers, off duty & drunk in an alien land, misbehave with local high officials. Resulting court martial hands them a sentence to go on a mission under a witless local official - a mission to catch a dangerous brigand. This is the funny story of their adventure to catch the brigand.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Analog/Astounding issues edited by John Campbell.

"Astounding Science Fiction", July 1955 (ed John W Campbell, Jr) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Most, but not all, stories here are the same as those in Astounding (British ed), December 1955. Even the cover is the same.

Where I've a separate post on a story, link on its title goes there. For read stories, my rating appears in brackets. Links on authors fetch more works of author.

Table of contents.

1. [novelette] Algis Budrys' "In Clouds of Glory": "Combat of Champions is an old method of settling disputes--but when hiring champions, there is a certain danger they aren't fighting for the goals you think..."
2. [novelette] Eric Frank Russell's "The Waitabits" (A): Different people run their lives at different pace. What happens when faster ones try to bring up the slower ones to their pace? 
3. [novelette] Frank Herbert's "Rat Race" (A): Rats are to men as men are to...
4. [ss] Robert Sheckley's "Earth, Air, Fire and Water": "The best way to use anything is the way it will do you the most good in the situation you happen to be in. Sometimes that's not all the way it was intended to be used..."
5. [ss] Eric Frank Russell's "Tieline" (as by Duncan H Munro) (B): "When you've got to put a lone man on a beacon-operator job, ten dozen solar syatems away from any other human--he needs an emotional tieline to Earth. But finding one isn't always easy."
6. [serial - part 4/4] Poul Anderson's "The Long Way Home": "Sooner or later, every adult human being makes a discovery--or lives dissatisfied, unhappy. That there never was, & never will be, a way to go home ... but there is always a way to make home."

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol LV No 5".
Download scans as a cbr file. [via Alexander@pbscans]
Note: Download link points to a rar file that needs to be renamed cbr.
Related: Stories from Analog/Astounding (whole issues only) (only issues edited by John Campbell); old "pulps"; 1950s.

Clifford D Simak's "Tools" (novelette, free): Introducing very weird radioactive gaseous aliens

Key parts of this story involve Radon-222 gas, a natural radioactive decay product of radium, & the biggest cause of lung cancer among non smokers on earth. It also is the heaviest gas on earth, though its own decay products aren't gaseous. It's highly toxic.

Story summary.

Humans have been mining radium on Venus, where it's available in vast quantities. It's a key source of energy, & this mining business is a monopoly of Radium, Inc.

Someone discovered strange life-like properties in radon gas found there. In a lab, they've succeed, via special electrical sensors, to communicate with a bottled concentration of it. They've robotic mining devices whose brains are small confined concentrations of gas.

When the bottled gas intelligence in lab that has learned a lot about the human civilization leaks, gas all across Venus learns the things we know. So we have an adventure fighting an elusive omnipresent alien with completely unfamiliar thought processes.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Analog/Astounding issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Clifford D Simak.

A E van Vogt's "Secret Unattainable" (novella, teleporting gadget, free)

This is van Vogt at his best. Far off concept, but very entertaining story.

Story summary.

Early in the beginning of WWII, a great German scientist is working on a cool gadget: you "focus" it anywhere in the universe, &, through an "orifice" that is part of the gadget, you can directly reach that location.

1. Want crude? Focus it inside an oil well anywhere, & help yourself!
2. Want to attack London? Focus it on someplace in the city you want your tanks in, & just drive through the "orifice"!
3. Want to put an enemy ship out of action at sea? Just drain its fuel tank!
4. ...

Scientist comes to the notice of establishment. Establishment wants his gadget, but the man cannot be trusted - his brother was executed by Nazis for political reasons sometime back. So they get him working on the gadget under careful watch, & arrest him as soon as the gadget is finished. Only the gadget is not going to do them any good, because the scientist indeed was using it as a tool for revenge...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Analog/Astounding issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of A E van Vogt.

Jack Williamson's "Collision Orbit" (as by Will Stewart) (novella, antimatter, free)

This story is supposed to have invented the term "terraforming".

While there is a lot of action, I found it generally boring because of length & too much contrived jargon.

Story summary.

Eons ago, asteroid belt was created by the impact of an "contraterrene" celestial body with the now lost planet at that orbit. Asteroid belt now includes contraterrene debris ("seetee"), in addition to ordinary matter. This makes it extremely dangerous because impact means complete annihilation.

The mad scientist hero of the story will tame this contraterrene matter for human use, in spite of major opposition from all quarters.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Analog/Astounding issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Jack Williamson.

Ray Bradbury's "Eat, Drink and Be Wary" (flash fiction, humor, free)

A "Venusian banquet lasts a week or ten days, sometimes more, with eight meals a day & twenty courses to a meal." That's normal for Venusians with their ultra-fast metabolism.

But when a human diplomat is invited to one of these banquets, saying no is not an option & going there is death sentence. So our diplomat will seek some scientific help...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Analog/Astounding issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Ray Bradbury.

"Astounding Science-Fiction", July 1942 (ed John Campbell) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Link on an author fetches more fiction of the author. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. For read stories, my rating appears in brackets.

Note: The flash fiction pieces don't have their own entry in ToC; they are all clubbed under the heading "Probability Zero". And nearly all of them are rather forgettable.

Table of contents (best first).

1. [novella] A E van Vogt's "Secret Unattainable" (A): Revenge of a scientist against Nazi establishment. 
2. [novelette] Malcolm Jameson's "Brimstone Bill" (A): Crooks are useful too! 
3. [novelette] Clifford D Simak's "Tools" (B): Introducing very weird radioactive gaseous aliens... 
4. [novella] David V Reed's "Penance Cruise" (B); space opera: A ragtag group goes out to catch a dangerous brigand...
5. [novella] Jack Williamson's "Collision Orbit" (as by Will Stewart) (B): Mad scientist tames antimatter.
   
   This story is supposed to have invented the term "terraforming", which really makes it a classic.
6. [ff] Ray Bradbury's "Eat, Drink, and Be Wary" (B); humor: How to eat librally without upsetting your stomach! 
7. [ff] Frank Holby's '"The Strange Case of the Missing Hero"' (B); grandfather paradox: A man traveling to past discovers he is his own father!
8. [ff] Wilson Tucker's "The Mysterious Bomb Raid" (as by Bob Tucker) (B); time travel: To remove Japan from equation in WWII, a couple of Americans have dropped a drum full of incendiary oil on Tokyo around the year 1900 using their time machine; but a delay in drop has put it in a later year - so now, in 1942, they're expecting Tokyo to go up in flames any time for reasons the world will see a mysterious.
9. [ff] Selden G Thomas' "The Floater"  (B): A group is discussing modern fighter aircraft vs vintage ones. One of them tells a tall tale of how he fought with a far superior vintage one & how it kept floating in ocean till he was rescued many days after crash, in spite of being riddled with bullet holes because of fighting, because "It was made of pure potassian, which is lighter than water."
10. [ff] R Creighton Buck's "The Querty of Hrothgar"(C): An extremely implausible hunting story. Querty, a huge beast with 4 foot thick armor, on its native world of Hrothgar, is chasing a man. Man survives & eventually kills the beast using a totally crazy device.
11. [ss] L Sprague de Camp's "The Contraband Cow" (C): One of the most forgettable stories of de Camp.
    
    In an international Federation, there is a ban on cow slaughter. I'm not sure where the story is set - in US or in Mexico?
    
    Some confrontation between artificial in-lab steak makers, smugglers, cops & politicians. Hero will eventually get the ban lifted by threatening with a politician with something totally silly.
12. [ss] L Ron Hubbard's "Space Can" (C); space opera: Description of a space battle where a lone US warship beats two better armed "saturnian" warships. Much of the text of the story went over my head.
13. [ff] Randall Hale's "De Gustibus" (C): A man on Mercury without food for 50 days, has survived on water & potassium cyanide!
14. [ff] John Pierce's "About Quarrels, About the Past" (C); time travel: "Quarrels" of title is the name of a person. He's gone time traveling to a past Egypt, & is currently is in some, but not ours, past Egypt.

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol XXIX No 5".
Download the scans as a CBR file. [via David T @pulpscans]
Caution: This is a very large file - nearly 195 MB & without resume. I had the connection broken twice near 90% & could download it only on the third attempt.
ISFDB notes: 'Cover illustration, untitled, by William Timmins, not Rogers as credited in the table of contents. Correction "In Times to Come," September 1942.'
Same ISFDB page also corrects some of the novelette/ss classifications on the ToC page; I've preferred ISFDB label above, whenever it contracts ToC.
Related: Stories from Analog/Astounding (whole issues only) (only issues edited by John Campbell); old "pulps".

Robert F Young's "The Servant Problem" (novelette, first contact, free): When servants thought they were masters!

Village idiot is also the village inventor. When he mysteriously received plans for a knot-tying machine on an April Fool's Day, he had to build that machine. And what kind of knots did it tie!

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, November 1962.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg.
Download audio from LibriVox.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Robert F Young.

Sean McMullen's "The Firewall and the Door" (novelette, star travel)

This is a story with a lot of classic tropes but with a simple message: "Give people wonders, & they'll sit back, open a beer, & watch. If you want them to get up & do something, you must give them mysteries."

Story summary.

An unmanned human starship was sent out to flyby Alpha Centauri system, change direction using gravity of one of its stars, & then go on to Gliese 581. This in a world that considers anything without obvious payoff as waste, so the project had major opposition.

Now, many decades later, the ship has reached the Alpha system, but things don't seem to be going as planned. There seems to be actual sabotage to the project...

Notes.

"Firewall" of title is the name of the "shield" of the starship. "The door" is a metaphor: the man who's not capable enough to do great deeds himself, but performs a great service by opening & keeping open the door for others who're capable.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, March 2013.
Rating: B.Related: Stories of Sean McMullen.

Marissa Lingen's "The Radioactive Etiquette Book" (novelette, diplomacy, humor)

A human diplomat posted at some alien site has to deal with incomprehensible motives of different species of aliens. Specific situations in the story include kidnap of some human kids & stealing of the diplomatic rule book ("The Radioactive Etiquette Book"), neither of which the aliens consider bad.

The story makes a lot of effort to be funny, but it just didn't work for me.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, March 2013.
Rating: B.

"Analog Science Fiction and Fact", March 2013 (ed Stanley Schmidt) (magazine): Annotated table of contents & review

This is the last Analog issue edited by Stanley Schmidt - the longest serving editor of the magazine whose 34 year stint is longer than even John Campbell's, according to his editorial. Effective next month, the current Managing Editor, Trevor Quachri, becomes the editor.

Links on author fetch more works of author. For read stories, my rating appears in brackets. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there.

Table of contents (best first).

1. [ss] Harry Turtledove's "It's the End of the World As We Know It, And we Feel Fine" (A): Dog is to man as man is to...
2. [ss] Bud Sparhawk's "The Snack" (A); humor: App assisted healthy living...
3. [ss] Don D'Ammassa's "Pre-Pirates" (A); satire: Who's the loser & who's the winner if a preview of a work of fiction becomes available at a website ("prepubs.com") before the author has written it? Who owns rights to it?
   
   Old well hashed idea of simple casualty violation dating back to at least Asimov, but still quite a readable piece.
4. [novelette] Sean McMullen's "The Firewall & the Door" (B): Making a reluctant humanity go star exploring...
5. [novelette] Bond Elam's "Instinctive Response" (B): Two human superhero space scouts find a world with local aliens dying of an incurable disease. They'll help find a cure, & in the process learn something about human origins...
   
   Very classic style story with a lot of technobabble about DNA & cell dynamics. Cannot say I liked the story, but it was a fast easy read.
6. [ss] Andrew Barton's "The Paragaon of the Animals" (B): On  an alien world, a human women is working towards saving local low-tech sentients from human slavery.
7. [novelette] Marissa Lingen's "The Radioactive Etiquette Book" (B): A diplomat needs to deal with aliens with vary different value systems...
8. [ss] Barry Malzberg & Bill Pronzini's "High Concept" (B): "Harmless" & helpful aliens have arrived on earth, & after a few initial protests, people have become used to having them all over. That's when an author has idea for a novel where the plot has savage war involving these aliens. And will pay a heavy price for having thought such a demeaning idea...

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "No CXXXIII No 3".
Related: Stories from Analog/Astounding (whole issues only).

Bud Sparhawk's "The Snack" (short story, humor): App assisted healthy living

I found it easy to relate to because I'm in a similar quandary: years of attempts at shedding weight got me nowhere. An app based approach - food & exercise tracking using Simple Calorie Count on Android phone - seems to be working now, but is far from satisfactory - healthy meals aren't as satisfying when body is used to junk food & it seems to be working rather slowly - I've lost just 3 kg in may be 4 months.

Story summary.

A man, to impress his girlfriend, is pretending to be a health freak & has all sorts of apps watching him all the time in a world where network connected sensors are everywhere - bathroom tiles measure your weight, your underwear measures your waist, ...

I found the story sometimes quite funny.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, March 2013.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Bud Sparhawk.

"Astounding Science-Fiction", June 1943 (ed John W Campbell, Jr) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

For stories where I have a separate post, link on story title goes there. Links on authors fetch more fiction by author. For read stories, my rating appears in brackets.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [novelette] Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "The World is Mine" (as by Lewis Padgett) (B): "Galleger, the mad--or at least cockeyed--scientist, really got himself in a jam that time. A plague of corpses, all murdered, descended upon him--"
2. [novelette] George O Smith's "Calling the Empress": 'Physics says that a thing which cannot be detected by any means does not exist. So their problem was to make a "nonexistent" spaceship somewhere between Mars & Venus change it course--'
3. [ss] Anthony Boucher's "Pelagic Spark": "One man, to prove a point, cooked up a phony prophecy. And other men, believing it implicitly, made it come true!"
4. [ss] E M Hull's "Competition": "Artur Blord backed down like a scared cur when faced with real danger. But it so happened he was backing rapidly in a direction he'd never have been able to go face forward!"
5. [ss] Lester del Rey's "Whom the Gods Love": "The Japs murdered his personality; their terrible error was that they didn't murder him. They gave him something that was a magnificent antithesis of Death--for him. For them it was Death."
6. [ss] Anthony Boucher's "Sanctury" (as by H H Holmes): "The commondoman knew the Nazis were close on his heels; his one though was to get to some other place in a hurry. The professor had another idea--& the Villa had a ghost that haunted parties!"
7. [serial - 2/2] Fritz Leiber, Jr's "Gather, Darkness!": "The Hierarchy was a phony religion based on super-scientific "miracles" & rigid tyranny. And the revolution was a magnificent buffoonery of super-scientific witchcraft based on military tactics!"

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol XXXI No 4"
Download scans as a cbr file. [via David T @pubscans]
Alternate, supposedly better version, of scan. [via ka280al@pbscans]
Note: I have personally seen only the first (original) version.
Related: Fiction from Astounding/Analog, whole issues only, only issues edited by John Campbell; 1940s; old pulps.

Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "The World is Mine" (as by Lewis Padgett) (novelette, humor, free)

This is part of authors' well known series featuring Gallagher, the mad scientist. I used to love these stories when I first encountered them; I'm no longer as much a fan, but this is still a light fun read.

Story summary.

Gallaghar wakes up from his yet another drinking bout to find a series of curiosities - 3 rabbit-like Martians ("Lybblas") from 500 years into future who want to conquer earth, a time machine focused on his backyard that cannot be turned off & that he apparently invented when his genius unconscious was in control, & a series of corpses of himself from future each with a ray gun hole through his chest.

The story is about putting the puzzle together, inventing a couple of other gadgets along the way.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, June 1943.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner, C L Moore (as by Lewis Padgett).

Andrew Barton's "The Paragaon of Animals" (short story, slavery)

Old idea, but readable.

Story summary.

A recently colonized-by-humans world of Esperanza, terraformed by mysterious Precursors millions of years ago & seeded with earth life (this part completely unnecessary to story!), now has huge bird-like local animals called "strewth" that humans have began using as draft animals on farms. Cassandra Warkworth runs a nursery to raise these animals for sale to formers. As she learns more about the animals, she'll begin having doubts as to weather they're animals & not low-tech sentients...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, March 2013.
Rating: B.

Harry Turtledove's "It's the end of the World as We Know It, And We Feel Fine" (short story): Dog is to Man as Man is to...

According to the story, differences between wild dogs & domesticated ones are mostly confined to a gene called "WBSCR17", a gene also found in humans. Can humans be turned into cute pets?

Update 25 September 2013:  Don Sakers' fiction review article, "The Reference Library", in the same Analog issue that contains this story, has a review of one of Iain M Banks' novel "The Hydrogen Sonata". He discusses, among other things, some key characteristics of the Culture universe of the author where this novel is set. Some of these characteristics of the Culture universe sound a lot like things in this Turtledove story. But I've not personally read any Culture book.

Story summary.

Last big human fracas not only killed off most people, the few left around were relatively docile. And there was something around that intended to presumably make the world a better place...

Here we get a glimpse of this docile future world. Beautiful.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, March 2013.
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2013" list.
Related: Stories of Harry Turtledove.

Christopher Anvil's "Positive Feedback" (short story, humor, free): How inflation works, & a remedy

This is hilarious stuff. And while the story is about car repair rather than programming, if you are a programmer who grew up writing C code in vi & handcrafting makefiles, & lived through the transition to Visual Studio, you'll likely find bits of it very familiar.

Story summary.

A company called Superdee Equipment has invented a new "Automated Car Service Handling Machine" but is unable to sell it to garages. So the managers figure out a way to push the machines through...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, August 1965.
Download full text from an archived copy of what used to be Baen Free Library. [via Stephen Harker @rasfw]
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Christopher Anvil.

Cleve Cartmill's "Some Day We'll Find You" (novelette, free)

Spacetrades, Ltd originally invented space propulsion, & has deep contacts among the politicians, hence continues to be a monopoly controlling space travel among human colonies in Sol.

Now a broke engineer with no capital has invented an alternate & cheaper method of spaceship propulsion, & colonies see a way of ending the monopoly of Spacetrades. As does an enemy of Spacetrades on earth, hoping to replace Spacetrades monopoly with his own.

So three parties want the engineer & want to fund his venture - colonies to break the monopoly, Spacetrades to preserve the monopoly, & Spacetrades' enemy to establish another monopoly. Engineer wants to go with colonies, but a bunch of toughs are out to grab him...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, December 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Cleve Cartmill.

A E van Vogt & E Mayne Hull's "The Flight That Failed" aka "Rebirth: Earth" (as by E M Hull) (short story, weird, free): Making a future happen where Germany loses in WWII

This is a crazy story & I didn't really want to write this post, but have you ever heard of a "moon ray time reflector machine"?

Story summary.

Pilot of secret flight of a US military plane carrying some extremely valuable, but unspecified, cargo & some military, technical & diplomatic personnel, to London during WWII discovers a stowaway, presumed a German spy.

All attempts to arrest & confine him fail in a bizarre way. He claims to be an illusion, projected there by a "moon ray time reflector machine" from an alternate future in which Germany is defeated in this war. And nobody believes him when he tells them the success of this flight is crucial to the future where US wins, & this flight is doomed unless they let the stranger man one of the machine guns of the plane in a German attack to come in a few minutes...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, December 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: C.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of A E van Vogt.

Ross Rocklynne's "Interlude" (short story, time travel, free): When a caveman freed an advanced civilization of a dictator

In the 25th century, there is a dictator ruling the earth for a decade. A former scientist who invented a machine to enslave others by making them wear a collar & a "bell shirt", but good enough to give them 3 hours a day to be free & be themselves.

Two of the ruled plot his overthrow. If only they could bring a 20th century uncollared (hence unslaved) man (why of 20th century?) who will overthrow the dictator. Their experimental time machine instead will bring back a caveman from 100,000 years ago. A man who craves to be a tribal chief.

Some unlikely adventures follow & the world is freed of the dictator.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, December 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Ross Rocklynne.

"Astounding Science Fiction", December 1942 (ed John W Campbell, Jr) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

"The Weapon Shop" is among the best known stories of the genre. "Piggy Bank" is among the more pulpish stories of Kuttner/Moore, but features a very curious robot.

Where I have a separate post on a story, link on its title goes there. Link on author's name fetches more fiction of author.

Note: Flash fiction pieces in this issue don't have their individual entries in table of contents, but are bunched together in a single entry called "Probability Zero".

Table of contents.

1. [novelette] A E van Vogt's "The Weapon Shop": "The shop was small--a little place that materialized out of nowhere. Yet, though the old man didn't realize--all the power of a world empire could not break it!"
2. [novelette] Cleve Cartmill's "Some Day We'll Find You" (B): Three groups of capitalists want to fund the commercialization of a certain invention by a broke engineer...
3. [novelette] Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "Piggy Bank" (as by Lewis Padgett) (B): "The robot was a rabbit--or had that psychology. He had a diamond-studded body, & was trained to be untouchable. Even his owner could not touch him--without giving information that was suicide!"
4. [ss] A E van Vogt & E Mayne Hull's "The Flight That Failed" (as by E M Hull) (C): Making a future happen where Germany loses the WWII!
5. [ss] Ross Rocklynne's "Interlude" (B): When a caveman freed an advanced civilization of a dictator...
6. [ss] Frank Belknap Long's "To Follow Knowledge": "A strange tale of pluralities of worlds, of a theory based on the hypothesis that, in infinity, everything must happen not once, but many times."
7. [ss] Robert Moore Williams' "Johny Had a Gun": "Johny was a gangster, a small-time punk. But Johny showed up with a gun one night, in an alley fight, that was not small-time stuff--"
8. [ff] William M Danner's "True Fidelity".
9. [ff] Stanley Woolston's "The Human Bomb".
10. [ff] Jack Bivins' "Valadusia".
11. [ff] T D Whitenack, Jr's "O'Ryan, the Invincible".
12. [ff] Frank J Smythe's "My Word!".
13. [ff] L M Jensen's "Take-Off".

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol XXX No 4.
Download scans as a CBR file. [via David T @pulpscans]
Related: Fiction from Astounding/Analog (only from issues edited by John Campbell) (whole issues only); old pulps; 1940s.

"Analog Science Fiction and Fact", June 2013 (ed Trevor Quachri) (magazine): Annotated table of contents & review

I don't have all parts of the serial; so skipped that.

If I have a separate post on a story, link on its title goes there. Links on author name fetch more fiction of author. My rating is in brackets.

Table of contents (fiction only, best first, unread last).

1. [novelette] Mark Niemann-Ross's "A Cup of Dirt" (A): Turning dirt into soil...
   
   Added to my "best of 2013" list.
2. [ss] Linda Nagata's "Out in the Dark" (B): When presumed dead for 30 years returns...
3. [ss] David D Levine's "Wavefronts of History and Memory" (B): Archeology via earth's leaked radio emissions...
4. [ss] Maggie Clarke's "Hydroponics 101" (C): A new technique to "rehabilitate" hardened criminals - solitary confinement in a glass sphere with a "MudderTree". "MudderTree" is a machine comprising of a lot of "nanites" that can read your mind & depending on your thoughts, either "withers away" or becomes a life giving "tree".
5. [ss] K S Patterson's "In the Green" (C): If there is a point to the story, I didn't get it.
   
   It's an outdoors adventure of a girl & her less-than-smart (autistic?) brother on a human colonized world with many dangers. For me, it was not only uninteresting but bizarre & illogical too during the main danger near end.
6. [serial - 3/4] Edward M Lerner's "Dark Secret": Not read.

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol CXXXIII No 6".
Related: Stories from Analog/Astounding (whole issues only).

Mark Niemann-Ross' "A Cup of Dirt" (novelette): Turning dirt into soil

This is easily the best I've seen so far of 2013 fiction. And, at least in my book, among the better all-time stories of the genre. Modern sensibilities & technology, in a classic fun story of a tinkerer who thinks he can make living a little more interesting...

Story summary.

In the sterile atmosphere aboard an under construction earth-orbiting space station, hydroponic food is not really well loved. So hero sets down on growing tomatoes "in soil". Only problem is: there is no soil here, there is heavy emphasis on keeping the environment clean, & management will likely shut the project down on contamination fears should it learn about it. So the secret project to manufacture tomato-friendly soil from local dirt like human skin-sheddings collected by air filters begins...

Update 29 May 2013:  I've seen at least one online post questioning the technical facts of composting in the story. I personally am not qualified to judge this.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, June 2013.
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2013" list.
Related: Stories of Mark Niemann-Ross.

David D Levine's "Wavefronts of History and Memory" (short story)

There is an idea here that I've not seen before in this form: radioarcheology. Humanity's radio emissions leaking into space form an useful archeological resource in the hands of someone with the right technology.
PS: I'm not clear how telegraph transmissions leaked in this way, however. I thought they were mostly sent over physical wires.

Apart from this idea, however, it's a very ordinary read.

Story summary.

Thousands of years in future, earth is no longer habitable & only archeology possible is via remote controlled robots. But a radioarcheologist has discovered the WWII era Japan in vivid detail from the leaked emissions of that long gone era...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, June 2013.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of David D Levine. 

Linda Nagata's "Out in the Dark" (short story, reincarnation): When presumed dead for 30 years returns...

In a world where brain dump is normal & human body can be easily manufactured in lab, travel to other planets of Sol is by leaving your body in cold storage here, sending your brain dump electronically there, & setting it up in a custom made body "husk" at destination.

But law requires that only one body of an individual can be animated at a time; if two are found, the one animated later must be destroyed.

This is the story of complications: Someone is presumed dead in accident, though body is never recovered. She's legally reanimated in a new body with an earlier brain dump at her parents request, & has been living a normal life. Now, 30 years later, the presumed dead has returned...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, June 2013.
Rating: B.

Stanley Mullen's "Fool Killer" (short story, justice, free): Do you _really_ want impartial & logical justice?

While it has a mundane start, it changes gears in a completely unexpected way part way through. Much of the story is about the implications of this twist, but almost anything I say about it will spoil the most interesting moment in the story.

Notes.

Author clarifies the title near end: "The Fool Killer never has to kill; it is enough if the fools know he is present, ready to strike, to keep them on their toes, make good citizens of bad, or at least careful citizens of those inclined to heedless cruelty or stupidity."

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, May 1958.
Download full text as part of the scans of Astounding (British ed), August 1958.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.

Frank Herbert's "You Take the High Road" (short story, detective, free)

Here is a peaceful place, its peacefulness asserted by its natives. Natives that were told beforehand that they'll get a significant prize if they're peaceful! And there are no obvious signs that suggest they're not peaceful.

But a detective's got a hunch they're putting up a false show...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, May 1958.
Download full text as part of the scans of Astounding (British ed), August 1958.
This is the first of the four stories that went into the making of author's fixup novel "The Godmakers".
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Frank Herbert.

"Astounding Science Fiction" (British edition), August 1958 (magazine, free) (ed John W Campbell): Annotated table of contents

Links on author fetch more fiction by author. Where I've read the story, my rating appears in brackets. If I have a separate post on a story, link on its title goes there.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [novel - 1/3] Hal Clement's "Close to Critical" (A): "Meet Tenebra, the planet where raindrops are fifty feet through ... & hard quartz rocks dissolve away like salt. Under three gravities, & a monstrously deep atmosphere, with oily seas of sulphuric acid, two children touch off a political situation that is ... close to critical".
2. [ss] Frank Herbert's "You Take the High Road" (A); detective: Is this village really of peaceful people?
3. [ss] Stanley Mullen's "Fool Killer" (A): What if law allowed you one murder!
4. [ss] John Rackham's "One-Eye" (B): A man has an unusual gift - he "sees" bad things happen just before they do happen. And figuring out the nature of this "gift" gets him in trouble.
   
   Title is from the story about a one-eyed man among the blind ones. As is the man with the gift among the ordinary humans.
5. [novelette] Charles V de Vet's "Special Feature": "What constitutes public entertainment changes with the mores of a society. The Romans liked the circuses ... but the feline devil loose in their city might have been a bit too stimulating for them..."
6. [ss] Gordon R Dickson's "The Question": "It wasn't too surprising that aliens couldn't answer the Question. After all, we've been trying for millenia ourselves!"

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol XIV No 8.
Download scans as a CBR file. [via Bob@pulpscans]
Note: Link points to a RAR file that contains target CBR, probably to work around some hosting service file naming constraints.
Related: Stories from the Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell, old "pulps", 1950s.

"Astounding Science-Fiction" (British Edition), August 1939 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Three rather well-known stories here - "The Blue Giraffe", "Heavy Planet", & "Life-Line".

Where I've read a story, my rating appears in brackets. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. Link on an author's name fetches more fiction by author.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [ss] Robert Heinlein's "Life-Line" (A): Soothsaying considered harmful...
   
   This is the first published story of Heinlein.
2. [novelette] L Sprague de Camp's "The Blue Giraffe" (B); humor: When a man was honored with the opportunity to marry an uplifted baboon!
3. [ss] Lee Gregor's "Heavy Planet" (B): "A dead spaceship drifted down to the heavy planet--& whichever side would learn her secrets, ruled the planet!"
4. [ss] Nelson S Bond's "Stowaway" (B): A Venusian electricity-eating "ampie", a pet of a Venusian stowaway aboard a Venus to Earth ship, has got loose & wrecking havoc to ship's systems. Until they figure out it need not be a pest but can be an essential part of the ship...
5. [serial - 1/2] Frederick Engelhardt's "General Swamp, C.I.C.": "The General that ruled that war was--Swamp--swamp that made half Venus!"
6. [novelette] Lester del Rey's "The Luck of Ignatz": "Meet Ignatz--who sleeps in boiling water or on superheated steam pipes!"

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol XXXIII No 6.
No mention of editor's name on Toc page (but it's probably John Campbell).
Download scans as a CBR file. [via Bob@pulpscans]
Note: Link fetches a RAR file that contains target CBR, probably to work around file the naming constraints of hosting service.
Related: Fiction from Astounding/Analog (whole issues only); old pulps; 1930s.

Robert Silverberg's "To Be Continued" (short story, immortality, free): Slow life is frustrating!

Immortality here is of a curious kind - your growth slows down. Like you'll develop physically & psychologically by a year when actual time lapsed in say 100 years! Author didn't elaborate how the hero survived infancy since parents aren't normally immortals & the immortals exist without society knowing about them; that's a weak point of the story.

The only immortals we meet in the story also have a curious super ability - they can morph into a different individual, in all observable ways. So, e.g., you can simultaneously romance two girls using your different personas, & no trouble even if one of them spots you with another.

This is the story of a 2000 year old man, Gaius Titus Menenius, who's now finally reached puberty! Story is mostly his search for a mate, with a funny ending.

See also.

1. Mohsen H Darabi's "Loyalty beyond seasons" (download): Another kind of biological impediment to romance...
2. Eric Frank Russell's "The Waitabits" (download as part of a larger package): When a fast life encounters a much slower one...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, May 1956.
Download full text as part of the scans of Astounding (British ed), April 1957.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Robert Silverberg.