Couple of minor stories from two magazines

Link on magazine issue goes to main post & a brief summary.

1. [ss] Liesl Schillinger's "Getting My Baby Tanked" (B); download; Playboy, June 2013; non-genre: Readable but generally pointless love story of a married woman who is going to divorce her husband with someone. 
2. [ss] L Sprague de Camp's "The Contraband Cow" (C); Astounding, July 1942: "Hero" will get a politician to lift a cow slaughter ban (in US or Mexico, I'm not sure).

Some online fiction by well known authors

Most are courtesy of Free Speculative Fiction Online. Where I have a post on a story, link on title goes there. Link labeled "download" fetches the actual story. Link on author fetches more fiction by author.

Among the ones I've read, my favorite is "Two Yards of Dragon".

1. Arthur Clarke's "A Walk in the Dark"; download text/audio; horror: Our primeval fears...
2. L Sprague de Camp's "Nothing in the Rules; download; humor: What if mermaids were allowed in women's swimming competitions?
3. L Sprage de Camp's "Two Yards of Dragon" (A); download: Adventures dragon hunting...
4. Fritz Leiber's "The Bleak Shore"; download.
5. Murray Leinster's "Nightmare Planet"; download: I don't recollect this title but it appears to be yet another variant of "The Mad Planet".
6. Frederik Pohl's "The Kindly Isle"; download.
7. Manly Wade Wellman's "O Ugly Bird!"; download.
8. Alice Sheldon's "The Man Who Walked Home" (as by James Tiptree, Jr); download.
9. John Varley's "Air Raid"; download.

"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.

"Astounding Science-Fiction", May 1941 (ed John Campbell) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

I've read stories of Heinlein, Asimov & Russell elsewhere; am posting this only for the two unread shorts - "Fish Story" & "Subcruiser".

Links on author fetch more stories of author. Where I've a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. My rating for stories I've read & still remember appears in brackets.

Table of contents.

1. [novelette] Robert Heinlein's "Universe"; MP3 of radio adaptation: "an unique & fascinating civilization in a spaceship that missed its goal!"
   
   Collected in "The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two A" (ed Ben Bova).
   
   See also: its sequel, "Common Sense", in Astounding, October 1941.
2. [novelette] Robert Heinlein's "Solution Unsatisfactory" (as by Anson MacDonald): "a story of the very near & grimly probably future. Man's apt to have that irresistible weapon soon--& no method of control!"
3. [ss] Isaac Asimov's "Lier!": "Herbie was a robot; he was also a mistake. Somewhere in the assembly, an accident made him telepathic, with inevitable & disturbing consequences!"
4. [ss] Eric Frank Russell's "Jay Score" (A): A passenger ship on earth to Venus voyage is hit by a meteor, & is now headed for Sun! 
5. [ss] Vic Phillips & Scott Roberts' "Fish Story" (B): A "fishing" adventure on Venus.
6. [ss] Harry Walton's "Subcruiser" (B): Foiling a warship hijack.
7. [serial - 2/2] L Sprague de Camp's "The Stolen Dormouse": "In a slightly delirious world of the future where noble Sir Businessman feuds, & the times are more than a little out of joint."

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol XXVII No 3".
Download scans as a CBR file. [via Bob@pulpscans]
Related: Stories from the Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell, old "pulps", 1940s.

L Sprague de Camp's "Aristotle and the Gun" (novelette, butterfly effect, free): Teaching the scientific method to Aristotle

This is among the more entertaining time travel stories I've seen. It also happens to be a widely anthologized one.

Story summary.

Won't our world be far more advanced if Aristotle practiced & preached the scientific method (since he was so influential)?

So a US physicist takes his time machine for a 9 week vacation in Macedon, to a time where Aristotle is teaching Alexander. Since this ancient world doesn't know about US, he poses as a philosopher from India: Chandra of Pataliputra, distorted as Zandras in Hellenic, & will further be distorted to Sandos of Palibothra in history books.

Story is of his adventures in Macedon, & later, in his own time, to the transformed world he has created - only, it's transformed along a very unexpected direction...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, February 1958.
Download full text as part of the scans of Astounding (British edition), May 1958.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

"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.

"The Best of L Sprague de Camp" is finished

Main post.

L Sprague de Camp's "Emperor's Fan" (short story, magic, humor): Emperor's ultimate defense against potential assassins!

Emperor, always fearful of assassination, has finally got the ultimate weapon against the potential assassins: an old magical fan. You open it, & fan it on someone; the one fanned at vanishes! Where do they vanish? "One theory ... is that they are translated to a higher dimension, coexistent with this one. Another holds that they are dispersed into constituent atoms, which, however, retain such mutual affinities that they can be reassembled when the signal for recall" is given.

This recall signal is in the form of a code. You fold the fan, & tap your left wrist, right wrist, & forehead in a certain sequence & a certain number of times. One code recalls the vanished kings, another vanished prime ministers, another vanished dragons, another vanished beggars, ... A little code book documents "all the categories of organic beings subject to the fan's power."

So we have fun as the king & sundry power usurpers use the fan, & adventures of one of them trying to reconstruct the lost code book experimentally.

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Harry Harrison (ed)'s "Astounding: John W Campbell Memorial Anthology" (1973)
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

L Sprague de Camp's "Judgement Day" (novelette, doomsday): A man's ultimate revenge against school bullies

Among the rare dark stories of de Camp. A lot of text describes scenes where the protagonist is being bullied by his schoolmates.

A physicist bullied throughout his school years grows up convinced everyone is a bully, or will be given half a chance. Now he's got something to take his revenge on an unkind world, a discovery that allows nuclear destruction of iron - so easy end of the world since it's so abundant in earth's crust.

Should he publish his results, so some crank somewhere will execute his revenge?

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, August 1955.
Rating: B.
Among the stories in Astounding/Analog issues edited John Campbell.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

L Sprague de Camp's "Two Yards of Dragon" (novelette, fantasy, humor): Adventures dragon hunting

Among the best of de Camp, & one of the more entertaining stories by anyone.

Note: Dialogues are in funny English: E.g., "an ye were Emmerhard's son-in-law, he'd use his influence to get you your spurs. Here ye be, a strapping youth of three-and-twenty, not yet knighted. 'Tis a disgrace to our lineage."
I didn't follow every word, but there was no difficulty following the intent.

Story summary.

Enchanter Baldonius has promised the hand of his daughter Lusina to Eudoric Dambertson, esquire, provided the young man can bring him two square yards of dragon hide! Story is mostly adventures of Eudoric on this dragon hunt.

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Lin Carter (ed)'s "Flashing Swords! #3: Warriors and Wizards" (1976).
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

L Sprague de Camp's "The Guided Man" (novelette, humor): Call center to help the socially awkward

I seem to be picking up stories with risque elements lately. This one has nudism & a contest to select the bustiest woman. Another one I recently read - Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters" - requires everyone in the US to be nude when in public, by a Presidential decree!

This also is probably the oldest story I've seen so far with chip implants. It also has wireless 2-way communications at city-size distances & short range wireless communications akin to bluetooth.
PS: Puppet Masters too has aliens whose memory works in ways similar to modern electronic devices! But more on Puppet Masters some other time.

Story summary.

Say you are one of those people uncomfortable in certain social situations. Like during job interviews, or when talking to a girl you find attractive. Now here is a call center service just for you.

They'll plant a chip in your head. And they'll give you a little device with a button that goes in your pant pocket. When you press the button, the chip in your head allows a call center agent to take over your head: you're aware of everything, but your body language, speech, body movements, etc are controlled by the agent. To regain control, press the switch again. Before the event, brief your agent about it & give him the time, so he'll be prepared.

This is a funny story of a man who hires the call center services to get a job, & to get help impressing the girl he's mooning. Only the call center agent assigned himself gets interested in the girl...

See also.

1. Mary Shelley's "Transformation" (download): Hero (in good faith!) exchanges his body with an evil magician, only the magician now gets interested in hero's girlfriend.

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Startling Stories, October 1952.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

L Sprague de Camp's "The Inspector's Teeth" (short story, humor)

There are two things here that were very alien for me, & will likely make story more accessible to those better acquainted:

1. English language: A lot of dialogs are in a twisted form of it. Someone natively English will likely have less hard time comprehending.
2. Idea of "fraternities" in US universities.

I could follow the story, but it wasn't as much fun as it might have been.

Story summary.

A baby-dinosaur like alien, from a world called Osiris, was welcomed & accepted by many at the university he attended on earth during his younger years. Now, as ambassador of Osiris, he's returning earth a favor by signing a treaty that he knows is loaded in earth's favor.

Most of the main text is actually devoted to his funny life at the university.

Notes.

1. "Inspector's Teeth" refers to false teeth stolen by the first human explorer on Osiris that later found way to a museum on earth. Teeth belonging to a major hero of aliens. Teeth the alien protagonist of the story will steal from the museum during his student days & return them back home to their rightful place.

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, April 1939.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

3 stories

None particularly strong. I liked "The Beautiful People" best among this lot.

1. Robert Bloch's "The Beautiful People" (B); download; Best-Seller Mystery Magazine, July 1960; non-genre: An "ugly" but rich woman with serious inferiority complex contrives to get a handsome playboy & childhood love in marriage. But the man cannot stop looking at other women, eventually bringing in the wife's wrath...
   
   A lot of story text is devoted to the beauty of a human face, & social advantage or disadvantage it brings.
   
   Among the stories in the classics section of Ellen Datlow's Sci Fiction.
2. [ss] L Sprague de Camp's "The Reluctant Shaman" (B); Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1947; humor: Some "stone throwing" sprites normally found near some native American tribes are "helping" a businessman & his neighbors. Chaos reins.
   
   Collected in: "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".
3. [novelette] Seth Dickinson's "The Immaculate Conception of Private Ritter" (B); download; Asimov's web site (2012?): A human army unit, on a genocide mission to other human inhabited worlds, comprises of confused zombies. This is the story of one of the zombies, Private Keshaun Ritter, learning some of her personal history.

L Sprague de Camp's "Nothing in the Rules" (novelette, humor): What if mermaids were allowed in women's swimming competitions?

While a light story, I got a feeling it's dragging a bit near end.

Story summary.

Item: Merfolk exist. Particularly near Cyprus.

Item: Since they live in the ocean, their hairs get wet. So they need to sit on rocks for a while to dry them! Won't it be wonderful if they had human bathing caps, so their hair remains dry?

That's how, Miss Delfoiros, the mermaid charged with procuring 10,000 bathing caps for merfolk, ended up in the New York City. In exchange for helping her get the caps, Herbert Laird, a swimming coach, will secure her participation in a forthcoming women's swimming competition; he wants to put Louis Connaught, his arch rival competitor coach, down in his place.

Fun ensues. Later, a (female) sea lion will also get added to the melee!

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Unknown, July 1939.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

L Sprague De Camp's "The Hardwood Pile" (novelette, humor): Never pick a fight with a "Norway maple" sprite!

Someone in the US imported a "Norway maple" sapling, & planted it there. It grew into a tree. It was home to Aceria, a maple spite, but she was happy so long as her tree was safe.

Now, years later, while Aceria was in hibernation, someone cut her tree & its boards are now in Dan Pringle's sawmill, ready for shipment. Aceria is now awake & requests Pringle to please not separate her trees components till she can find another "Norway maple" tree to haunt, but Pringle of course refuses; he has money tied up there. So sprite will need to show her magic to make Pringle fall in line...

Very funny story.

See also.

1. H L Gold's "Trouble with Water": Never pick a fight with a water gnome!

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Unknown, September 1940.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

L Sprague de Camp's "Employment" (as by Lyman R Lyon) (short story, free): Making prehistorical animals from their fossils!

This is only the second story I've seen from before Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" that deals with animating prehistoric animals to life today (other is "Amber Insect"). But the method here is very weird.

This, however, is not a monster story; it's more a light fun read. We see the reification of

1. "a huge wolf, about the size of a Great Dane, but twice as muscular and ten times as mean-looking."
2. "a specimen of Arctotherium, the immense bear from the California Pleistocene."
3. A couple of elephants.

And plans are afoot to revive a T-rex.

Story summary.

A machine that does a sort of biochemical equivalent of electrolysis. Put a certain solution in a tank. Add as much fossil of a single animal as you have. Also add a lot of rock from area immediately surrounding the location where fossil was found; apparently, in the process of fossilization, many of the molecules of animal's body would have drifted to surrounding rock!

Put on the power, & over the next few days, stray molecules of animal that had diffused through surrounding rock are pulled back to their correct places, & you have ... the original animal back, skin, hair & all! Only its heart needs to be revived with a separate electrical process, & you get a fully grown animal.

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, May 1939.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

L Sprague de Camp's "The Merman" (short story, humor): A man becomes fish!

Vernon Brock, an aquarium researcher, has invented a gas: inhaled by an air-breather, it makes the lungs behave as gills! He's planning to try it on an alligator, but accidentally inhales it himself. Unable to breath air anymore, driven by a certain compulsion, he gets in an aquarium tank with "harmless" sharks - happily breathing water.

It's a somewhat funny story of the man's predicament...

Notes.

1. "Merman" is the male version of "mermaid", the way man in tank is jokingly referred to once or twice in the story.

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, December 1938.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

"The Best of L Sprague de Camp" (collection): Annotated table of contents & review

Book collects short stories, poems, & some non-fiction of de Camp. This post is only about short stories; I've dropped poems & non-fiction from ToC below.

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

Link on title goes to my post on the story, if there is one. Where I'm aware of an online copy, I provide a separate download link. Links on publisher, editor or year fetch more matching fiction. My rating for individual stories is in brackets.

While there are not many really exceptional stories here, most are quite decent. Only a couple of stories near the end of this list didn't work for me as well.

Most stories are light hearted fun read, often with a cool idea. There are only two dark stories - "The Gnarly Man" & "Judgement Day".

1. [novelette] "Two Yards of Dragon" (A); Lin Carter (ed)'s "Flashing Swords! #3:Warriors & Wizards" (1976): Adventures dragon hunting.
2. [novelette] "A Gun for Dinosaur" (A); download; Galaxy, March 1956: Description of flora & fauna of Cretaceous period.
3.  [ss] "Hyperpilocity" (A); Astounding, April 1938; humor: What if humans started growing hairy pelts?
4. [novelette] "Employment" (B); Astounding, May 1939: Recreating prehistoric animals from their fossils... 
5. [ss] "The Command" (B); Astounding, October 1938: An aspiring world dictator is infecting the world with his free will killing mold spores. It's now up to the intelligent laboratory bear to locate the antidote & give it to someone in his lab so the world can be saved... 
6. [ss] "The Merman" (B); Astounding, December 1938; humor When a man became a fish... 
7. [novelette] "The Hardwood Pile" (B); Unknown, September 1940: Never pick a fight with a "Norway maple" sprite!
8. [novelette] "Nothing in the Rules" (B); Unknown, July 1939: What if mermaids were allowed in women's swimming competitions? 
9. [novelette] "The Guided Man" (B); Startling Stories, October 1952; humor: Call center to help the socially awkward. 
10. [ss] "The Inspector's Teeth" (B); Astounding, April 1950; humor: Life of a baby-dinosaur like alien as a student at a US university.
11. [novelette] "The Emperor's Fan" (B); Harry Harrison (ed)'s "Astounding: John W Campbell Memorial Anthology" (1973); humor: Emperor's ultimate defense against potential assassins!
12. [ss] "The Reluctant Shaman" (B); Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1947; humor: Some "stone throwing" sprites normally found near some native American tribes are "helping" a businessman & his neighbors. Chaos reins.
13. [novelette] "The Gnarly Man" (B); Unknown, June 1939: A very long lived pre-human (Neanderthal?) has survived to our times & is living among us!
14. [ss] "Judgement Day" (B); Astounding, August 1955: A man's ultimate revenge against school bullies.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1978.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

L Sprague de Camp's "The Command" (short story): A bear saves mankind from a would-be dictator!

Bemis, a botanist, has found that spores of a certain fungi affect human nervous system in a curious way: they kill free will, but otherwise leave the man intact. Infected will then obey any command given.

With the aid of some henchmen, he's began infecting the world: sending up balloons to release these spores. He intends to be world dictator.

Johnny Black, an intelligent bear being trained by Prof Methuen, will discover the conspiracy, but only after all humans in the lab he's at have been infected. It's now up to him to revive some humans...

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, October 1938.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

L Sprague de Camp's "Hyperpilosity" (short story, humor): What if humans started growing hairy pelts

The idea is somewhat similar to Arthur Clarke's "Reunion" (1971). In Clarke's version, humans were once all black; attack of a disease turned skins of some of them white. Here, humans were once all hairy apes. A viral epidemic turned them into naked apes. Now a new mutation of the disease has cured them of the disease, & has turned them back into hairy apes. Hyperpilosity is the name of this new curing-variant of disease.

Story is mostly a very funny exploration of society's response to the prospects of a hairy future.

Collected in.

1. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, April 1938.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

"Astounding Science-Fiction", March 1940 (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.

1. [novelette] Nat Schachner's "Cold": Two worlds dependent utterly on one mine--& the mine gives out! The warmth of two worlds' friendship freezes in the cold of a tiny world--"
2. [novelette] L Sprague de Camp's "The Emancipated": "Johnny Black & Company--& what company! Johnny learns to talk, but when McGinty the ape starts--"
3. [ss] P Schuyler Miller's "In the Good Old Summertime": "He liked heat--was sure he'd like even the hear of a Venus summer, while he set up his kingdom. But a drying mud-puddle meant--"
4. [ss] A M Phillips' "Chapter from the Beginning": "Half a jawbone & the end of a tooth are clues to a new pre-man. But how many species have we missed--how many unknown half-men--"
5. [ss] Willard E Hawkins' "The Dwindling Sphere": "The inventor figured it was a failure. It was an overwhelming success--a success that overwhelmed the Earth--"
6. [serial - part 2/2] Robert Heinlein's "If This Goes On--": "Astounding's second Nova story--one of the most powerful novels of dictatorship science-fiction has produced."

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 1940s.

L Sprague de Camp's "Finished" (short story, free): Knowledge finds a way around "sanctions"

Readers in India might identify with it rather strongly; country has often been in this situation.

Going by a lot of events in India in the last 2 decades, I've come to believe that technological blockade ("sanctions") is actually good for the "victim" country - but only after it stops sulking & looks coolly at the opportunity.

Story summary.

A star faring humanity. Krishna is a backward planet. Earth-controlled worlds are technologically advanced. There is a technological blockade in place - against Earth's knowledge transfer to Krishna.

This is the story of Prince Ferrian bad-Arjanaq, ruler of Sotaspe - one of the countries on Krishna. His unsuccessful attempt to smuggle technical books from Earth, which provides much of the drama in the story. And his eventual realization that his people are quite capable of building knowledge & gadgets on their own, if only the right incentives & attitudes are supplied...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, November 1949.
Download full text as part of the scans of the Astounding issue it originally appeared in.
Among the stories of Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

L Sprague de Camp's "Alanias" (novelette, war, free): A device to turn people into "pathological liars"!

I would normally expect a hilarious story if de Camp is wielding a liar-making machine. This one is not funny. Probably the sobering effect of looming World War II when this story came.

Story Summary.

In a world war in early 1970s where the British Empire is still intact & the warring world is divided into Alliance & Confederacy, with US & Russia in later camp, & Japan in former.

Apart from weapons of destruction, we see widespread use of propaganda. That's when Dr Hoyle, a US psychologist, gets the idea for the ultimate propaganda machine that will win Confederacy the war: a little instrument to be sneaked into all sorts of communications equipment used by the enemy.

The instrument repeatedly urges the speaker to lie, but in volume so low the speaker doesn't really hear it! Since the message to lie is constant every time someone uses these appliances, "the minute neurotic impulses caused by these sounds would in time wear the necessary paths in his brain" & turn the subject into "pathological liars". So the enemy leaders & generals begin lying to their own staff, ultimately resulting in total loss of credibility.

Quotes.

1. "Truth, like a gem, has many faces; you do not know it until you have looked at them all."
2. On interviews with prominent people: "extracting the facts of tomorrow from the vital minds of today."
3. "you [a country] can't be too fussy about your friends or you won't have any."
4. "national honor, which as nearly as I can make out is the kind of prestige you get by inflicting insult & injury on another & getting away with it."
5. "you can get people fighting over these imaginary abstractions such as honor, if anything more easily than over real objectives".
6. "Repeat a thing often enough, & it leaves an indelible impression on a man's mind, whether he wants to believe it or not."

See also.

1. Henry Kuttner's "Nothing But Gingerbread Left" (download) & Ray Bradbury's "The Irritated People". Both are very funny, sometimes hilarious, stories about propaganda. Former during actual war, & with an idea similar to this story. Bradbury's is a war of nerves whose central idea & objectives are different, but tactics are somewhat similar.

Fact sheet.

First published: Dynamic Science Stories, April/May 1939.
Download full text as part of the scans of the original magazine where it first appeared.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp; fiction from 1930s.

L Sprague de Camp's "A Gun for Dinosaur" (novelette, time travel, free): Description of flora & fauna of Cretaceous period

When introducing this story, David Drake tells us that "Men-against-dinosaur stories are as old as magazine SF... de Camp turned what had been occasional subjects for stories into defined subgenres." Well, there is an earlier Arthur Clarke's "Time's Arrow", but it's still an interesting story.

Story summary.

It's a frame story - main dinosaur hunting story described in the small outer frame. Mr Rivers, a hunter who's partner in the time travel safari outfit named "Rivers and Aiyar", is giving an anecdote to Mr Seligman, a prospective client Rivers is refusing to take because he weighs too little. Rest of this post is about the main story.

Main story is of a hunt. Human time travelers go to "April twenty-fourth, eight-five million B.C." in Cretaceous period. To hunt dinosaurs for fun! They will spend several days there. There is also a short thread of an accident after their return - but I won't get into that.

Critique.

The most interesting thing for me was meticulous attention to detail when describing local environment during a certain part of Cretaceous: local terrain; animals, insects & flying creatures; weak points of different kinds of dinosaurs from a hunter's perspective; best strategy to escape when a dinosaur is after you; ... I've no idea if these descriptions are based on known facts, or solely the author's imagination; but they put life into the story.

The story has it flaws, some of them due to my personal biases:

1. I grew up in a family where consciously killing any kind of life is taboo. Hunting stories are not really the kind I go for.
2. There is colonial era here - "sahibs", interactions among the characters, their biases & value systems, ... It's not very often that I can like stories set in that period.
3. It's not always a logical story. You take an expensive trip to cretaceous & won't do your own work; you carry with you a staff like cook & helpers!
4. Some rather obnoxious characters. Courtney James, one of the clients on safari, will kill anything that moves for the shear thrill of using his gun! August Holtzinger, the other client, is out hunting so he can hang the stuffed head of the killed animal in his drawing room!
   
   Note: Holtzinger is killed by a tyrannosaur during safari when trying to save life of a cornered James. James dies by the end of the story because, well, because bad boys die in good stories!

But for me, the details of local environment made up for all its flaws. Beautiful story.

See also.

I've posted on at least 3 other stories on similar themes:

1. Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" is a far less rigorous version of the same plot.
2. Arthur Clarke's "Time's Arrow" is an interesting variant.
3. Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park", of course, puts things upside down - by bringing dinosaurs to our time rather than humans going to their time.

Collected in.

1. David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".
2. "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1956.
Rating: A
Download full text or MP3. This post is based on text version; I've not heard the audio.