Free fiction: Universe, #1 (June 1953)

Someone posted scans of this issue as pdf via a torrent.

Includes a then controversial story of Theodore Sturgeon, & one of the minor stories of Murray Leinster (assuming I'm recollecting the right story of Leinster!) Other notable authors include Mack Reynolds & Mark Clifton.

Related: Old pulps; fiction from 1950s.

Mack Reynolds' "Computer War" (novel, war): Fighting a full scale war with guerrilla tactics

While mostly a good read, it kept putting me off because of totally illogical references: a far future world away from earth, when thousands of worlds have been colonized by man. And the only examples characters talking to each other can come up with are those someone living in US or Europe during mid-1900s might be familiar with!

Story is about an unusual war. This unnamed world has many countries, among them two big powers - Alphaland & Betastan. Former is a dictatorship with better military hardware, & it is now starting a war to conquer Betastan. Betastan refuses to fight by the rules...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, June/July 1967.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Mack Reynolds.

Fredric Brown & Mack Reynolds' "The Switcheroo" (short story, body snatching, humor, free)

Title refers to a gadget. Inventor's "pet name for it, of course. Actually it is a psychoreversamentatron." It helps you snatch bodies. You point it at yourself, think hard of someone, & flick a switch. And your consciousness moves into the body of the person you were thinking of, & his consciousness moves into the body you have. Other person need not be close to you at the time of using the gadget.

Inventor of the gadget & a press reporter privy to its secret both want to get rid of someone - inventor of his nagging wife, reporter of his unbearable boss. And then there are the desirable bodies of the state governor & of the President (both of US). Some fun the duo will have switching bodies.

Fact sheet.

First published: Other Worlds, March 1951.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Fredric Brown, Mack Reynolds.

Mack Reynolds' "Expediter" (novelette, free): You see, the main problem of society is ... the politicians

It begins as a very dark story, but most of it is a funny read. And when do we get an Expediter for India? We badly need one.

There was an interview of Ratan Tata, published sometime back by Indian Express, following Niira Radia tapes & 2G scam expose. He said something to the effect: behind every illogical thing & apparent idiocy in government policy is someone making money; the idiocy is rarely unintentional. In this story, we have just plain unexplainable governmental idiocy & callousness, but I've a feeling the reality is a mix of just plain idiocy & Mr Tata's version.

Story summary.

Rename USSR as UBSR, the United Balkan Soviet Republics. With pretty much the cold war setup of People's Dictatorship, though it's supposed to be set a 100 years or so in future. That's where the story is set.

Top Two men in the country have decided to create a position of the Expediter - a Mr fix-it who'll debottleneck all sorts of impediments (& more often, just plain idiocy) in society. They'll get more than they bargained for...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, May 1963.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Mack Reynolds.

"Worlds Beyond", Vol 1 No 1 (December 1950) (ed Damon Knight) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

Scans of this magazine in CBR format are online as part of a larger package, or as a standalone copy.

At least some of the stories are reprints.

Table of contents. 

Links on author or year fetch more matching fiction.

1. [novelette] [reprint] William F Temple's "The Smile of the Sphinx": "What do cats do with their spare time? ... Rule the world, perhaps?"
2. [ss] Mack Reynolds & Fredric Brown's "Six-legged Svengali": "All the explorer had to do was prove that he was smarter than a mud turtle--but on Venus that's not so easy!"
3. [ss] Philip Wylie's "An Epistle to the Thessalonions": "He was incredible; ominous; indubitable; a giant one thousand miles high!"
4. [ss] Larry Shaw's "Simworthy's Circus": "It was the genuine article--the real, 100-proof, universal elixir of love. Just the same, applied to the ugliest human in the universe, it produced some pretty dubious results..."
5. [ss] [reprint] Graham Greene's "The End of the Party"; The London Mercury, January 1932: "The adult world is a tissue of lies, as any child knows. But what adult knows the dark truths of a child's world?"
6. [ss] John D MacDonald's "The Big Contest": "Now, forty years after the contest, we can figure out a few things about the little guy who won it. He had a terrible task here on this Earth; he must have been very lonely..."
7. [ss] [reprint] Franz Kafka's "The Hunter Gracchus": '"Even if all the people were commanded to help me, every door would remain shut, everybody would take to bed & draw the bedclothes over his head, the whole earth would become an inn for the night."'
8. [ss] C M Kornbluth's "The Mindworm": "You might think of him as an ascetic, for he lived on nothing more substantial than human emotion. Or you might call him a sadist, for the deaths of other men were his life. The coal-town Slavs he despised had another, simpler name for him; & a very simple, very ancient remedy for the terror he brought."
9. [ss] Battell Loomis' "Invasion Squad": "They were three casual travelers from Somewhere, en route to Somewhere Else. We're lucky to have this brief record of their stop-over, for it's doubtful that they'll ever return..."
10. [ss] [reprint] William Seabrook's "Wow": '"Abolish language," said the vizier, "& man will return to primal simplicity & happiness." ...'
11. [ss] Jack Vance's "The Loom of Darkness": "An old, an ageless tale: the story of a golden woman & a golden tapestry, & of the slender threads of darkness that bound them eternally together..."
    
    There is an editor's note on the back cover, along with an ad for author's well known novel "The Dying Earth", that says this story is "one episode" from "The Dying Earth".

See also.

1. Fiction from Worlds Beyond.
2. Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.
3. Fiction from 1950s.

"Startling Stories", Vol 24 No 2 (November 1951) (ed Samuel Mines) (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.

1. [novel] Eric Frank Russell's "The Star Watchers" (B): "Posted on every life-bearing planet are these oddly selfless guardians--amiable, but vengeful & merciless in striking down any who menace man's long agonizing climb to the stars".
2. [novelet] Mack Reynolds & Fredric Brown's "The Gamblers": "Bob Thayer was no card sharp, but he managed to get into a poker game on the Moon--with the fate of the Earth at stake".
3. [ss] Sam Merwin, Jr's "Grease in the Pan": "This was their purpose--to discover new planets to populate".
4. [ss] William Morrison's "The Cupids of Venus": "Couples for colonizing Cygnus were selected scientifically!"

See also.

1. Fiction from Startling Stories.
2. Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.
3. Fiction from 1950s.

"Imagination: Stories of Science Fiction and Fantasy", Vol 2 No 2 (April 1951) (ed William L Hamling) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

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

Bradbury's excellent story is probably logically a part of "The Martian Chronicles", though it doesn't appear to be in the official version.

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. [novella] Robert W Krepps' "Beyond the Fearful Forest" (as by Geoff St Reynard): "No hunter dared to venture past the Fearful Forest into the land of--The Nameless..."
2. [ss] Ray Bradbury's '"In This Sign..."' aka "The Fire Balloons" (A): "The Fathers had come to convert the Martians. The question was: did they really exist?"
3. [ss] Hal Annas' "The Longsnozzle Event": "What will the future private detective be like? Meet Len Zitts, Galactic Shamus!"
4. [ss] Richard Matheson's '"Drink My Red Blood..."': "Jules was a strange little boy with a peculier ambition: he wanted to be a vampire..."
5. [ss] Eric Frank Russell's "Afternoon of a Fahn" aka "Rainbow's End" (A): "Here was the planet of a spaceman's dreams--it made every one of them come true..."
6. [novelette] Robert Bloch's "The Hungry House": "Were they afraid of the house, or the thing that lived there--waiting for tenants..."
7. [ss] Mack Reynolds' "Not in the Rules": "Earth's Warrior faced death in the Martian Arena with an untested weapon--strategy!"
8. [ss] Allen K Lang's "An Eel By the Tail": "A physics class was no place for this strip teaser--nor was the Earth for that matter!"

See also.

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

New at Project Gutenberg (16 May 2010)

Links on author, publisher, or year yield more matching fiction.

1. Mack Reynolds' "Black Man's Burden"; download; Analog, December 1961 & January 1962: "The turmoil in Africa is only beginning--and it must grow worse before it's better. Not until the people of Africa know they are Africans--not warring tribesmen--will there be peace..."

Related: Fiction from old "pulps", 1960s.

Mack Reynolds' "Subversive" (short story, economy, free): A case against white collar jobs!

Later parts are basically Cold War propaganda on US' behalf, but I found the rest of it a good read.

Story summary.

Freer Enterprises is a recently setup direct sales company that threatens to bring down prices of consumer goods to a fraction of those currently prevailing - by cutting out all sorts of intermediaries & fancy packaging.

This has a shady group alarmed...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, December 1962.
Rating: A.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, or Feedbooks.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: Stories of Mack Reynolds.

Mack Reynolds' "Summit" (short story, Cold War, free)

While it's neither as enlightening nor humorous as promised by great opening, it made a light reading & is rather short.

Story summary.

Meat of the story is the conversation between two military bosses - of US & USSR. Neither side is explicitly named, but the sides involved are obvious. The two meet during a summit get together of the two sides.

It's mostly about how the vested interests on both sides guarantee an environment of war, & won't let peace happen.

Science fictional element is provided by an unnecessary extension at end that says Mars & venus are each occupied by US/USSR, & that earth was destroyed in bombings sometime past. Story could very well have stood without this extension & science fictionalization.

Quotes.

Story offers some interesting quotes:

1. "Almost anything, if it goes on long enough, can be reduced to, first a Routine, and then, to a Tradition. And at the point it is, obviously, Necessary."
2. "I was raised in a family that believed in God. Just as, I suppose, you were raised in one that didn't. Neither of us seems to be particularly brilliant in establishing a position of our own."
3. "Have you ever noticed how it is that the nonconformists in any society are usually crackpots?"
4. "Defense materials. I wonder if ever in the history of the human race anyone ever admitted to producing offense materials."

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Science Fiction, February 1960.
Author's real name: Dallas McCord Reynolds.
Rating: B
Download full text from Project Gutenberg.
Listed among the stories from Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: All stories about US/USSR Cold War.