"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.

"Venture Science Fiction", #9 (Vol 2 No 3) (May 1958) (ed Robert P Mills) (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 authors fetch more fiction by author. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there.

1. Edmond Hamilton's "The Dark Backward": "In winter, on an island off New England coast, you get used to wind-lashed surf, to hardship & struggle, to the cold, lonely life. May be you get so used to it that you don't want to hear when the bright future calls..."
2. [non fiction] Isaac Asimov's "The Big Bang": "Neutronium, as everybody knows, is heavier than anything...& doesn't exist. Dr Asimov here gives details of what it would be--& what it might actually have been!"
3. Arthur C Clarke's "Cosmic Casanova" (A): "I was two months out on solo galaxy scouting trip, & I was ... restless. And then I contacted an unknown planet that might be one of Earth's lost colonies... Could be a date was closer than I thought."
4. [novelet] Rog Phillips' "Ground Leave Incident": "To a young country couple on an isolated, hardship planet, a spaceship visit is a special event. There is the trip to town, new clothes, the smell of fresh food & spices... There are also the hot, demanding eyes of women-hungry crew."
5. [non fiction] Theodore Sturgeon's "On Hand...Offhand".
6. Gordon R Dickson's "Fleegl of Fleegl": "Fleegl was a rabbity-looking sort, with four arms, a force field, & a conviction that people were demented. He also had an extraordinary space tube a missionary's zeal, & a regrettable resistance to fission bombs & reason..."
7. Algis Budrys' "A World Named Mary" (as by Robert Marner): "Bill & Mary found the planet, & it was beautiful. Which pleased Mary, but didn't surprise her--she was accustomed to getting what she wanted. Then Bill named the planet after her--& everything changed..."
8. Isaac Asimov's "Buy Jupiter!": "The aliens were strong enough simply to take Jupiter, but for some reason they wanted it all legal. And the price they offered was fine. Thing was--why did they want the gassy old thing...?"
9. [novelette] Theodore Sturgeon's "The Comedian's Children": "Everybody--almost everybody--loved unsmiling Heri Gonza, the world's funniest man. Look how he took over when that frightening children's disease was brought back from Iapetus. He gave wholly of himself, gave his money, his love, his talent... The one thing he didn't give was a cure. That seemed to be locked in the mind of Gonza's most dedicated enemy--& on the frozen surface of Saturn's eighth satellite..."
10. [non fiction] Robert P Mills & Judith Merril's "Venturings".

See also.

1. Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.
2. Fiction from 1950s.

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.

** 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?