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.

Christopher Anvil's "Revolt!" (novelette, humor, machine monster, free)

First half is a hilarious turf war between two government departments. Later half is a fast paced drama to overcome massive machine monsters running amok; less interesting than first half but readable.

Story is set in Cygnus system in orbit around a high gravity world. Humans want to mine it for some ore, but cannot normally get down because of high g. They must "wear" state of the art "delGrange suits" to go down. But the catch is, these suits are too perfect...

Note.

There is a bit of Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe" (download an audio, or a comic book adaptation) & Clifford Simak's "Desertion" (download as part of a larger package) here (a variant was filmed in "Avatar"). A man can get down to an environment normally impossible to man only in a different body. Only he starts liking his new body better than the original one...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, April 1958.
Download full text from Baen Books, or as part of the scans of Astounding (British Edition), July 1958 where it was reprinted.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Christopher Anvil.

"Astounding Science Fiction" (British Edition), July 1958 (ed John Campbell) (magazine, free) : 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. Where I'm aware of an alternate download location of a story, I include that too.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [novelette] Christopher Anvil's "Revolt!" (A); download; humor, adventure: Bureaucratic turf war & monster machines run amok...
2. [novel - part 1, 2, 3 (this) of 3] Poul Anderson's "The Man Who Counts" (A): What if, during the creation of Israel during the 1940s, US had sided with Arabs instead of Israel? A very colorful fantasized variant of it.
3. [ss] Jon Stopa's "A Pair of Glasses" (as by John Stopa) (B): Materialism is better than spiritualism.
4. [novelette] Eric Frank Russell's "Basic Right": "It's a basic right to try anything you want--a right the Universe itself grants. But it's necessary to distinguish between the right to try--which is real--& the right to succeed at it--which doesn't exist!"

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol XIV No 7.
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.

3 minor stories

All online via scans of Astounding (British Edition), May 1958. All short story length.

1. Jon Stopa's "Hot Water" (B): This government doesn't know how to handle civil unrest; both sides are throwing atom bombs at each other!
   
   It deals with a subject that is often in news in India now-a-days - the "project affected people". And has an interesting quote:
   
   "Democracy occurs when a majority respects the rights of a minority--unfortunately the majority rarely does so except when the minority can make it listen."
2. Christopher Anvil's "Achilles' Heel" (B); download: Starfaring humanity's military commander finally gets insight on how to defeat "Wij-Wij", aliens that look like "giant inchworms" & with whom earth is at war.
3. Robert Silverberg's "No Way Out" (B): Chief executive of an overpopulated earth still breeding uncontrollably finally has enlightenment: to take measures to cut the breeding rate!

Related: The stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.

"Astounding Science Fiction" (British Edition), May 1958 (ed John Campbell) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

Where I have a separate post on a story, link on its title goes there. Where I'm aware of another text version of a story, I include that link too. Links on author fetch more of their works. My rating for read stories appears in brackets.

Table of contents (best first).

1. [ss] Eric Frank Russell's "Brute Farce" (A); humor: Introducing a lateral thinker... 
2. [novelette] L Sprague de Camp's "Aristotle and the Gun" (A): Teaching the scientific method to Aristotle... 
3. [novel - 1 (this), 2, 3 of 3] Poul Anderson's "The Man Who Counts" (A): What if, during the creation of Israel during the 1940s, US had sided with Arabs instead of Israel? A very colorful fantasized variant of it.
4. [article] Mark Clifton's "The Dread Tomato Addiction" (A); download; satire: How to reach wrong conclusions from the right data! 
5. [ss] Jon Stopa's "Hot Water" (B): This government doesn't know how to handle civil unrest; both sides are throwing atom bombs at each other!
6. [ss] Christopher Anvil's "Achilles' Heel" (B); download: Starfaring humanity's military commander finally gets insight on how to defeat "Wij-Wij", aliens that look like "giant inchworms" & with whom earth is at war. 
7. [ss] Robert Silverberg's "No Way Out" (B): Chief executive of an overpopulated earth still breeding uncontrollably finally has enlightenment: to take measures to cut the breeding rate!

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol XIV, No 5 (British Edition)".
Download scans as a CBR file. [via Bob@pulpscans]
Note: Link fetches a RAR that contains target CBR, probably to work around the file naming conventions of hosting service.

Related.

1. Stories from Astounding/Analog (whole issues only).
2. Fiction from 1950s, old "pulps".
3. Stories from the Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.

Christopher Anvil's "The Troublemaker" (short story, free): How a bad mole corrodes a team's morale

There are really two things here:

1. A portrait of a team, or rather, how it is poisoned by a corrosive new member. Think Ellsworth Monkton Toohey from Ayn Rand's Fountainhead.
2. Empathy implants - implants mandated for entire ruling elite of a world that force the rulers to empathize with the population & its troubles.

In the story, the later holds the solution to the problem of the former.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1960.
Download full text from Baen CD.
Rating: B. 
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campebell.
Related: Stories of Christopher Anvil.

3 stories

None top notch. Neither crappy. Average fare.

1. Christopher Anvil's "Leverage" (B); download; Astounding, July 1959: Human pioneers on a new world are harrased by local versions of gnats, crows, & dinosaur birds. Until someone has an idea...
2. Christopher Anvil's "The Sieve" (B); download; Astounding, April 1959: Pioneer (human) agricultural communities on this tough planet need to get rid of the useless & lazy among themselves to survive.
3. [ff] Kathryn Cramer's "You, In Emulation" (B); download; Nature, 20 October 2011: What if you could check out my brain dump from your local library & interact with it during rental period & make friends with it?

Christopher Anvil's "The Operator" (novelette, free): A colony short on women contrives to get them

A small community on a rough frontier world. There are some women, but far fewer than men. Then someone spots some off-world picnickers not far from their camp - many girls. One thing leads to another, until the girls eventually join the local community...

Later parts are somewhat humorous.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, March 1971.
Download full text from Baen CD. [via Bill Garthright @ ClassicScienceFiction]
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Christopher Anvil.

Christopher Anvil's "Uplift the Savage" (short story, free)

There is a behavior sometimes seen among small children: If you want the child to do something, you have to tell him not to do it; rebellion to authority shows up rather early.

This story takes this idea to absurd level. Star-faring human colonists want to uplift the savage natives of an alien world so in time they'll produce something worth trading! So natives get treated as children: they're effectively told they won't be given certain things, to motivate them to make the efforts to acquire them!

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, March 1968.
Download full text from Baen CD. [via Bill Garthright @ ClassicScienceFiction]
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Christopher Anvil.

Christopher Anvil's "Pandora's Planet" (novelette, humor, free): Earth's alien invaders are harassed

Gets more & more unrealistic near end, but most of it is a very funny description of troubles with humanity of humanoid alien colonists of earth who want the mankind integrated into some sort of stellar community of intelligent beings.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, September 1956.
Download full text from Webscription. [via Bill Garthright @ ClassicScienceFiction]
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Christopher Anvil, alien invasion.

Free fiction: 6 stories of Christopher Anvil

At Webscription.

Related: Stories of Christopher Anvil.

"Astounding Science Fiction", October 1959 (ed John W Campbell, Jr) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

Scans of this magazine in CBR format are online as part of a larger package.

Table of contents. 

Links on author fetch more fiction by author. Where I'm aware of other online copies of a story, I include them too. If I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there.

1. [novelette] Christopher Anvil's "The Lawbreakers": "Their mission was sabotage--the destruction of critical installations. Their victims? Hah! Their victims were most eagerly awaiting their hoped-for coming..."
   
   I've a feeling I've seen text version of this story online somewhere, but cannot locate the URL now.
2. [novelette] Jack Vance's "Dodkin's Job": 'The really essential question was, "Who's runnin' this shebang, anyhow?" The rough part of that question is, of course, that one man may think he is--while a quite different man does. So who do you ask?'
3. [ss] Murray F Yaco's "Unspecialist" (A); download: "A machine can be built to do any accurately described job better than any man. The superiority of a man is that he can do an unexpected, undescribed & emergency job ... provided he hasn't been especially trained to be a machine."
4. [serial - part 2/2] Randall Garrett & Laurence M Janifer's "That Sweet Little Old Lady" aka "Brain Twister" (as by Mark Phillips); download text/audio: "It was tough enough for the FBI men to have to hunt out a telepathic spy...but when the only known telepath-locator was a more than somewhat peculiar little old lady who had to be humored..."
   
   ISFDB notes that "Brain Twister" is the title of its 1962 book version.

See also.

1. Fiction from Analog/Astounding (only issues edited by Harry Bates, John Campbell).
2. Stories written by John Campbell.
3. Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.
4. Fiction from 1950s.

Christopher Anvil's "Top Rung" (short story, leadership, free): Even the man at the top needs something to look UP to

James L Kevv, newly appointed terran ambassador to the country called Gurt on a world called Knackruth, has a tough job ahead: put up with its impossible to get along with dictator, & ensure earth keeps getting supplies of "quadrite" - a material needed for space drives that's rare on earth & abundant on Gurt.

In the process, Kevv will learn something that ails some men at the top & what the fix is.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1958.
Download full text from Webscription, or as part of the scans of Astounding issue where it originally appeared.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Christopher Anvil; fiction from 1950s.

RIP: Christopher Anvil (1925-2009)

His death on 30th November 2009 seems to be just getting reported in genre world.

Related: Stories of Christopher Anvil.

Free fiction: A lot of Christpher Anvil & Tom Godwin stories at Webscription

The lot includes 36 stories I've seen online for the first time.

1. From Christopher Anvil's "Interstellar Patrol II: The Federation of Humanity" collection: Last I checked, only one of its 4 sections were online; now whole book is online. 17 newly made available stories.
2. From Christopher Anvil's "The Trouble With Aliens" collection: Last I checked, only 5 stories were online; now whole collection is. 13 stories newly made available online.
3. From Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" (coll): Last I checked, only one story was online; now all are. 8 new stories on this page, of which I've seen 2 elsewhere - so 6 new.

[via Free SF Reader]

Christopher Anvil's "Gadget vs Trend" (short story, humor, free): Small Brother get a weapon to fight the Big Brother

Interesting illustration of the classic formula for a good science fiction short story - take a simple idea, & keep beating it to get the last drop of juice you can get out of it.

Story summary.

An apparently innocuous invention - a soundproofing device - seems to have such wide ranging applications that it's causing major social upheaval...

Device in question is an electrically powered gadget called "QuietWall": attach it to a surface like a wall or door, & it will act as an impenetrable barrier to sound. Except that it's an impenetrable barrier to other things too...

See also.

1. Arthur Clarke's "Silence Please": Another piece of humor set around a sound proofing device, but with a very different plot.
2. Arthur Clarke's "What Goes Up": Another story with a device that has erected a practically impenetrable barrier to some volume of space. But this "barrier" has interesting properties, among them - it behaves differently on the two sides.
   

Collected in.

1. Isaac Asimov & Martin H Greenberg (Eds)' "Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 24 (1962)".
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, October 1962.
Rating: A.
Download full text from Webscription.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: Stories of Christopher Anvil.

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: Christopher Anvil, Vernor Vinge, Lloyd Biggle

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

Via Free SF Reader: 6 stories from Christopher Anvil's collection "Rx for Chaos" aka "Prescription for Chaos" at Webscription:

1. "Cinderella, Inc"; download; Imagination, December 1952.
2. "Roll Out The Rolov!"; download; Imagination, November 1953.
3. "The New Boccaccio"; download; Analog, January 1965.
4. "A Handheld Primer"; download; Amazing, January 1978.
5. "Rx For Chaos"; download; Analog, February 1964.
6. "Is Everybody Happy?"; download; Analog, April 1968.

Via Free SF Reader: 5 stories from Christopher Anvil's collection "The Trouble With Aliens" at Webscription:

1. "The Prisoner"; download; Astounding, February 1956.
2. "Seller's Market"; download; Astounding, December 1958.
3. "Top Rung"; download; Astounding, July 1958.
4. "Symbols"; download; Analog, September 1966.
5. "Foghead"; download; Astounding, September 1958.

Three stories from Martin H Greenberg & Mark Tier (Ed)'s anthology "Freedom!" at Webscription:

1. Lloyd Biggle, Jr's "Monument"; download; Astounding, June 1961.
2. Christopher Anvil's "Gadget vs Trend"; download; Analog, October 1962.
3. Vernor Vinge's "The Ungoverned"; download; Far Frontiers, Vol 3 (1985).

Free fiction: Eando Binder, Gordon Dickson, Christopher Anvil, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Pierre Boulle, James P Hogan, John Campbell, C M Kornbluth

Via QuasarDragon: Comic book version of Eando Binder's excellent story "I, Robot" at Grantbridge Street & other misadventures. Apart from being a great story, this was the story that bootstrapped Isaac Asimov's robot stories. Based on reading of the first page, this illustrated version appears to be a faithful & close adaptation of the original story text.

Original story is from Amazing Stories, January 1939. Why does Grantbridge attribute it to Weird Fantasy, #11?

Via Free SF Reader: 3 stories from Gordon R Dickson's collection "The Human Edge" at Webscription:

1. "Danger—Human"; download; Astounding, December 1957.
2. "Sleight of Wit"; download; Analog, December 1961.
3. "In the Bone"; download; If,, October 1966.

Via Free SF Reader: 8 stories at Webscription from Christopher Anvil's collection "War Games":

1. "Truce By Boomerang"; download; Astounding, December 1957.
2. "A Rose By Any Other Name ..."; download; Astounding, January 1960.
3. "The New Member"; download; Galaxy, April 1967.
4. "Babel II"; download; Analog, August 1967.
5. "The Trojan Bombardment"; download; Galaxy, February 1967.
6. "Problem of Command"; download; Analog, November 1963.
7. "Uncalculated Risk"; download; Analog, March 1962.
8. "Torch"; download; Astounding, April 1957.

Via Free SF Reader: 5 stories at Webscription from Christopher Anvil's collection "The Trouble With Aliens" (Ed Eric Flint):

1. "The Prisoner"; download; Astounding, February 1956
2. "Seller's Market"; download; Astounding, December 1958
3. "Top Rung"; download; Astounding, July 1958
4. "Symbols"; download; Analog, September 1966
5. "Foghead"; download; Astounding, September 1958

Via Free SF Reader: MP3 audio versions of 5 stories of Ray Bradbury from The Zombie Astronaut Digest:

1. "The Whole Town's Sleeping"; download MP3.
2. "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl"; download MP3.
3. "The Flying Machine"; download MP3.
4. "Hail & Farewell"; download MP3.
5. "The Golden Apples of the Sun"; download MP3.

Via Free SF Reader: 2 stories of Stephen King from z0mbieastronaut:

1. "Jerusalem's Lot"; download.
2. "Children of the Corn"; download.

Via Dark Worlds: An audio version of the "Planet of the Apes" from BrokenSea. "an audio dramatization of the 1968 film". "Based on the novel by Pierre Boulle and original screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling, this new audio series features additional scenes, original sound design". "Written, directed and produced by Bill Hollweg."

Via Free SF Reader: 2 stories of James P Hogan at Webscription:

1. "The Tree of Dreams"; download.
2. "Jailhouse Rock"; download.

Via QuasarDragon: "SF Signal is streaming The Thing (1982) from Hulu... Watch it HERE. (It is also available directly at Hulu Here, but you have to register to watch it there.)"

This movie is an adaptation of John W Campbell's excellent first contact story "Who Goes There?" Text of original story was already online.

Caution: The movie is DRMed - accessible only within US. Very likely connections anonymized with Tor will also have trouble accessing.

This QD link is actually a month old. I wanted to watch it before linking, but I'm not motivated enough to watch it via a US based proxy.

Via QuasarDragon: Downloadable video in multiple formats at Internet Archive of C M Kornbluth's story "The Little Black Bag".

I haven't seen the video, but this is among the better stories of Kornbluth - similar in spirit to several Henry Kuttner/C L Moore stories about mysterious gadgets.

Note: Relevant entries have been added to the list of stories from John Campbell's Astounding.

Free fiction: Some stories by well known authors from "Imperial Stars" anthology series edited by Jerry Pournelle

Free SF Reader links Imperial Stars 3: The Crash of Empire at Webscripton. 3 stories are free:

1. Gregory Benford's "Pebble Among The Stars"; download.
   
2. Christopher Anvil's "The Claw And The Clock"; download.
   
3. Cyril Kornbluth's "The Only Thing We Learn"; download: This has already been online as part of David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down" anthology: Frontiersmen always return as raiders of their ancient homes...

The series at Webscription has some more free fiction from "Imperial Stars 2: Republic & Empire":

1. Norman Spinrad's "Outward Bound"; download.
   
2. Wayne Wightman's "In The Realm Of The Heart, In The World Of The Knife"; download.
   
3. Hayford Pierce's "Doing Well While Doing Good"; download.