Harry Bates' "A Matter of Size" (novella, adventure): Splitting a man into multiple himselves & reassembling him back!

This appears to be from the time before the discovery of DNA. A device that can take a man of 60kg, & split him up into 10 smaller "same" men each of 6 kg! Say one of these 10 now dies; you can still reassemble the remaining 9 into the "original" man, though only of 54 kg; he'll need to gain weight via normal eating.

What happens to the individual experiences of the 9 tiny men at the time of reassembly? We aren't told about it; though we're told selective experiences, including those of the man-that-was before splitting, can be wiped out.

I don't know if this is the original, but it probably would be among the early stories, where someone is reduced to tiny size & has to undergo adventures in a world that to him would be a giants' world.

Story summary.

Dr Arthur Allison, an "ethnologist", gets a visit & an offer by an alien: for 4 months, be alien's guest without being told why; or be forced to do it anyway! He "volunteers".

This is a crazy adventure on alien's world, his escape back to earth in a stolen spacecraft, chase after arriving & eventually getting caught - & being enlightened.

Collected in.

1. Raymond J Healy & J Francis McComas (Eds)' "Adventures in Time & Space".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, April 1934.
Rating: B.
Related: Works of Harry Bates.

Free fiction: Astounding Stories, August 1931

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks in multiple formats.

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

Related.

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

Free fiction: Astounding Stories, June 1931

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks in multiple formats.

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

Related.

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

Free fiction: Astounding, July 1931

At Project Gutenberg in multiple formats.

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

Related.

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

Free fiction: Astounding, December 1930

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks. [via SF Signal]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Free fiction: Astounding Stories, February 1931

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.

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

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

Free fiction: Astounding, October 1930

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.

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

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

Free fiction: Astounding, June 1930

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.

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

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

Free fiction: Astounding, May 1930

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks. [via QuasarDragon]

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

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

Free fiction: Astounding, August 1930

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks. [via QuasarDragon]

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

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

Free fiction: Astounding, March 1930

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks. [via QuasarDragon]

ToC here.

This is an issue edited by Harry Bates. Scans of all issues edited by Harry Bates are online.

Related: Stories from Analog/Astounding.

Free fiction: Astounding, April 1930

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks [via QuasarDragon]

This is an issue edited by Harry Bates. Scans of all issues edited by Harry Bates are online.

Related: Stories from Analog/Astounding.

Free fiction: Astounding, September 1930

At Project Gutenberg & Manybooks. [via QuasarDragon]

This is an issue edited by Harry Bates.

Related: Astounding/Analog fiction; Only issues edited by Harry Bates.

Free fiction: Astounding, February 1930

This is second issue of Astounding (now Analog). Scans for all Astounding issues under Harry Bates have been online a while now, but this is the first issue from those scans to make into Project Gutenberg as normal computer text.

[via Greg Weeks at rasfw]

Free fiction: Poul Anderson, James H Schmitz, Harry Bates

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

Poul Anderson's "To Outlive Eternity" at Webscription; download; Galaxy, June 1967 & August 1967.

Two stories from James H Schmitz's "Agent of Vega and Other Stories" at Webscription:

1. "Agent of Vega"; download.
2. "The Illusionists"; download.

Via QuasarDragon: Comic book adaptation of Harry Bates' widely read story "Farewell to the Master" at Diversions of the Groovy Kind. Original text version of this story is already known to be online.

Harry Bates' "Farewell to the Master" (novelette, first contact, free): What we see depends on what we are

Author is the first editor of Astounding (now Analog). But this story is from Campbell era.

Effect of the story is a stronger version of Ross Rocklynne's "Quietus". And ending reminded me of some scenes from Pierre Boulle's "Planet of the Apes".

Story features a technique of creating animals, given just the recorded sounds produced by them!! To me, it sounded substantially more mystical than Arthur Clarke's "Playback".

Story summary.

When an alien ship suddenly materialized on the grounds of Smithsonian Institution (in Washington DC, US), it caused much commotion. Two days later, a man who introduced himself as Klaatu emerged with a powerful hominid robot introduced as Gnut. But before the introductions were over, a jittery assassin shot Klaatu dead. Klaatu's death froze Gnut in his then physical position & posture.

A regretful humanity has now made ship & robot exhibits of Smithsonian's museum; Klaatu was buried with state honors. No one has yet been able to figure out even the place in ship's hull where the port is located, let alone any secrets about the aliens worth knowing.

A curious journalist, Cliff Sutherland, wants a story out of it - three months after the aliens' arrival, & a week after their exhibit was opened. He will contrive to stay overnight in the hall containing the exhibits - a place normally left empty at night. And we get a fast moving adventure...

But the real clincher is the ending - when Cliff learns something about his own very human biases...

Collected in.

1. Raymond J Healy & J Francis McComas (Eds)' "Adventures in Time and Space".
   

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Science Fiction, October 1940.
Rating: A
"filmed in 1951 as The Day the Earth Stood Still" & "its 2008 remake."
Download full text from Real Pulp Weekly.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: All stories from Analog/Astounding; Harry Bates' Astounding.

Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 (magazine, ed Harry Bates): Annotated table of contents, & download links

See Astounding 1930-1933 scans index page for basic information.
Update 5 August 2009: Text version of this issue is now available at Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.

Scans of all 1930 issues are on this page, one file per page of magazine, March issue pages named like "asf193003PPP.png": PPP - page number. Page number a story begins at is listed in ToC below. ToC below is produced from this scan page. Click cover image on the right for full-sized original scan image.

Page numbers seem to accumulate for a quarter, at which point they are reset. Don't be surprised to find the first story beginning at page two hundred & something.

Each scan page of this issue is about 1.5 MB.

Caution: While the main text of stories seem to be easily readable in these scans (based on the few pages I've seen), ToC appears blurred - at least at my display resolution.

Table of contents.

1. [p 295] Captain S P Meek's "Cold Light": "How could a human body be found actually splintered - broken into sharp fragments like a shattered glass! Once again Dr Bird probes deep into an amazing mystery."
2. [p 306] [serial novel, part 1 of 4] Ray Cummings' "Bridgands of the Moon: The Book Gregg Haljan": "Black mutiny & brigandage stalk the space-ship Pl???tara as she speeds to the moon to pick up a fabulously rich cache of radium-ore."
3. [p 350] Will Smith & R J Robbins' "The Soul Master": "Desperately O'Hare plunged into Prof Kell's mysterious mansion. His friend kip was the victim of the eccentric scientist's de-materializing experiment, & faced a fate more hideous than death."
4. [p 376] Sewell Peaslee Wright's "From the Ocean's Depths": "Man came from the sea. Mercer, by his thought-telepgraph, learns from the weirdly beautiful ocean-maiden of a branch that returned there."
5. [p 390] A T Locke's "Vandals of the Stars": "The livid flame flares across space - & over Manhattan hovers T??xical, vessel of Malfere, Lord of the Universe, who comes with ten thousand warriors to ravage & subjugate one more planet for his master."

Related.

1. Annotated list of stories from John Campbell's Astounding.
   
2. All Analog/Astounding posts.
3. Feed that catches only posts about Analog/Astounding. Caution: Weeks or months might sometimes lapse between these posts.

Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February 1930 (magazine, ed Harry Bates): Annotated table of contents, & download links

Update 28 April 2009: This issue is now available as normal computer text at Project Gutenberg.

See Astounding 1930-1933 scans index page for basic information.

Scans of all 1930 issues are on this page, one file per page of magazine, February issue pages named like "asf193002PPP.png": PPP - page number. Page number a story begins at is listed in ToC below. ToC below is produced from this scan page. Click cover image on the right for full-sized original scan image.

Page numbers seem to accumulate for a quarter, at which point they are reset. Don't be surprised to find the first story beginning at page one hundred & something.

Each scan page of this February 1930 issue is about half MB.

Table of contents.

1. [p 153] Harl Vincent's "Old Crompton's Secret": "Tom's extraordinary machine glowed - & the years were banished from old Crompton's body. But there still remained, deep-seated in his century-old mind, the memory of his crime."
2. [p 166] [novelet - does it mean "novelette"?] Charles Willard Diffin's "Spawn of the Stars": "The earth lay powerless beneath those loathsome, yellowish monsters that, sheathed in comet-like globes, sprang from the skies to annihilate man & reduce his cities to ashes."
3. [p 187] Hugh B Cave's "The Corpse on the Grating": "In the gloomy depths of the old warehouse Dale saw a thing that drew a scream of horror to his dry lips. It was a corpse - a mold of decay on its long-dead features- and yet it was alive!"
4. [p 196] Sophie Wenzel Ellis' "Creatures of the Light": "He had striven to perfect the faultless man of the future, & had succeeded - too well. For in the pitilessly cold eyes of the Adam, his super-human creation, Dr Mundson saw only contempt - & annihilation - for the human race."
5. [p 221] Sterner St Paul's "Into Space": "What was extraordinary connection between Dr Livermore's sudden disappearance, & the coming of a new satellite to the earth?"
6. [novel] [serial - 2 of 2; #1 in January issue] [p 229] Victor Rousseau's "The Beetle Horde": See January 1930 ToC for description.
7. [p 248] Anthony Pelcher's "Mad Music": "The sixty stories of the perfectly constructed colossus building had mysteriously crashed! What was the connection between this catastrophe & the weird strains of the Mad Musician's violin?"
8. [p 259] Captain S P Meek's "The Thief of Time": "The teller turned to stacked pile of bills. They were gone! And no one had been near!"

Related.

1. Annotated list of stories from John Campbell's Astounding.
   
2. All Analog/Astounding posts.
3. Feed that catches only posts about Analog/Astounding. Caution: Weeks or months might sometimes lapse between these posts.

Astounding Stories of Super-Science, January 1930 (magazine, ed Harry Bates): Annotated table of contents, & download links

This is the first issue ever of Analog/Astounding. That alone should mark it as something of historic importance.

See Astounding 1930-1933 scans index page for basic information.

Scans of all 1930 issues are on this page, one file per page of magazine, January issue pages named like "asf193001PPP.png": YYYY - year, MM - month, PPP - page number. Page number a story begins at is listed in ToC below. ToC below is produced from this scan page. Click cover image on the right for full-sized original scan image.

Each scan page of this January 1930 issue is about half MB.

Table of contents.

1. [novel] [serial - 1 of 2] [p 8] Victor Rousseau's "The Beetle Horde": "Only two young explorers stand in the way of the Mad Bram's horrible revenge - the releasing of his trillions of man-sized beetles upon the utterly defenseless world."
2. [p 32] Captain S P Meek's "The Cave of Horror": "Screaming, the guardsman was jerked through the air. An unearthly screech rang through the cavern. The unseen horror of mammoth cave had struck."
3. [novel] [p 46] Ray Cummings' "Phantoms of Reality": "Red Sensua's knife came up dripping, & the two adventurers knew that chaos & bloody revolution had been unleashed in that shadowy kingdom of the fourth dimension."
4. [p 75] M L Staley's "The Stolen Mind": "What would you do, if, like Quest, you were tricked, & your very mind & will stolen from your body."
5. [p 92] C V Tench's "Compensation": "Professor Wroxton had disappeared - but in the bottom of the mysterious crystal cage lay the diamond from his ring!"
6. [p 100] Murray Leinster's "Tanks": Two miles of American front had gone dead. And on two lone infantrymen, lost in the menace of the fog-gas & the tanks, depended the outcome of the war of 1932."
   
   While this description sounds a bit like Leinster's "Morale", it is a different story, because "Morale" appears later - in December 1931 issue.
7. [p 118] Anthony Pelcher's "Invisible Death": "On Lees' quick & clever action depended the life of "Old Perk" Ferguson, the millionaire manufacturer threatened by the uncanny, invisible killer."

Related.

1. Annotated list of stories from John Campbell's Astounding.
   
2. All Analog/Astounding posts.
3. Feed that catches only posts about Analog/Astounding. Caution: Weeks or months might sometimes lapse between these posts.
   

ToC series: Astounding scans, 1930-1933 issues (while Harry Bates was editor & William Clayton was owner)

This post begins a series of about 3 dozen posts, listing the table of contents of Astounding Stories (of Super-Science) (the original avatar of what is now Analog). Idea is to make the scans of these issues a bit more accessible. I'll add my own annotations where I've read the stories; in other cases, I quote the original description from ToC page.

These scans (all 1930/1931/1932 issues, plus January/March 1933 issues) were recently posted to Internet Archives by Greg Weeks of Project Gutenberg. Many of these stories will eventually be available at Project Gutenberg as text files, but that is a bit in the future.

According to Wikipedia: This period covered is that of William Clayton, the businessman who started the magazine, & who had to eventually sell it during the Depression. Harry Bates was editor during this period, emphasizing "straightforward action-adventure stories, with scientific elements only present to provide minimal plausibility." "In February 1931, the original name Astounding Stories of Super-Science was shortened to Astounding Stories." Clayton "switched Astounding to a bimonthly schedule with the June 1932 issue." "The first issue appeared in January 1930"; "the last Clayton Astounding was dated March 1933."

On downloading scans.

Except when bandwidth is metered, downloading an entire year's scans is probably simpler than an individual story or issue's pages. A bulk download tool can work off a whole year's URL; I ran wget overnight for several nights.

Individual pages vary in size from about half MB to 3 MB, depending on specific issue. Quality also varies, at least at my default resolution. I've a feeling setting screen resolution to a higher value will fix bad quality pages, but I've not tried this.

My ToCs list page number where individual stories begin. Scan file containing that page is named "asfYYYYMMPPP.png": YYYY - year, MM - month, PPP - page number.

In a few cases, text versions of specific stories already exist on the web. When I'm aware of it, I include these links.

Tables of contents.

I'll link to specific issues' ToCs as I post them. In most cases, I skip stuff other than stories from individual ToC pages.

1. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, January 1930.
2. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February 1930.
3. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
4. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, April 1930. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
5. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May 1930. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
6. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June 1930. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.
7. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, July 1930. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
8. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
9. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, September 1930. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
10. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October 1930. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
11. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November 1930
12. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks.
13. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, January 1931
14. Astounding Stories, February 1931. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.
15. Astounding Stories, March 1931. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.
16. Astounding Stories, April 1931. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.
17. Astounding Stories, May 1931. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.
18. Astounding Stories, June 1931. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.
19. Astounding Stories, July 1931. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg.
20. Astounding Stories, August 1931. Download text version of the issue in multiple formats from Project Gutenberg & Manybooks.
21. Astounding Stories, September 1931
22. Astounding Stories, October 1931
23. Astounding Stories, November 1931
24. Astounding Stories, December 1931
25. Astounding Stories, January 1932
26. Astounding Stories, February 1932
27. Astounding Stories, March 1932
28. Astounding Stories, April 1932
29. Astounding Stories, May 1932
30. Astounding Stories, June 1932
31. Astounding Stories, September 1932
32. Astounding Stories, November 1932
33. January 1933
34. March 1933

Related.

1. Annotated list of stories from John Campbell's Astounding.
   
2. All stories from Analog/Astounding.
3. Feed that catches only posts about Analog/Astounding. Caution: Weeks or months might sometimes lapse between these posts.