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.

Murray Leinster's "Planet of Dread" (novelette, free): Adventure on a world of giant insects & fungi

How many variants of the excellent "The Mad Planet" (download) did Leinster pen? I know of at least two novelette or novella length sequels, plus a fix-up novel, besides the current one.

May be I've read too much of the series. It's readable & fast moving - among my faster finishes of a story of this length. But it's very pulpy & with sensibilities of a different era.

Story summary.

With mankind spanning the galaxy, a group of revolutionaries escape their world, & intend to lie low elsewhere for a while. During a port, their ship is hijacked by a local fugitive - the hero of the story who's eventually overpowered. For complicated reasons, they land of an uninhabited world to maroon the hijacker - only this world turns out to be a forgotten & unfinished terraforming job of mankind, & a nightmare world now.

They'll have adventure there, & strike treasure left by a shipwreck 150 years old, & finally all will end well.

Fact sheet.

First published: Fantastic Stories of Imagination, May 1962.

Download full text from Project Gutenberg.

Download audio read by Phil Chenevert from LibriVox. [via QuasarDragon]
Rating: B.

Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Free fiction: Murray Leinster's "Creatures of the Abyss" (novel, 1961)

@Internet Archive. [via Greg Weeks @pbscans]

Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

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.

"Astounding Science Fiction" (British Edition), August 1956 (ed John Campbell) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

I've read "Exploration Team" & "Minor Ingradient" elsewhere before, but don't recall much of them now.

Links on author fetch more fiction by author. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. For read stories, my rating appears in brackets.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [ss] Herbert L Cooper's "A Nice Little Niche" (B): When vitamin K craving alien bacteria invaded human guts...
2. [ss] Algis Budrys' "Man in the Sky" (B): Cold engineering vs public opinion.
   
   It's a story about early spaceflight, before there was space flight.
3. [novelette] Murray Leinster's "Exploration Team": "The perfect machine for exploring a new plant would, of course, be self-repairing, self-maintaining, able to construct its own repair parts from local materials, & even able to replace itself with a new unit..."
4. [ss] Eric Frank Russell's "Minor Ingradient": "A critically necessary lesson any true officer must learn is the crushing burden it is to be Master of a slave..."
5. [serial - 2/3] Robert Heinlein's "Double Star": "Lorenzo, the conceited pipsqueak, was stretched & inflated to fill a mold. But Lorenzo, while conceited beyond question--was not a fool!"

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol XII No 8 (British Edition)".
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.

Murray Leinster's "The Extra Intelligence" (short story, body snatching, free): Something evil is looking for a brain it can take control of

A mad scientist has discovered a way to revive the dead, & is about to try his experiment on a dog, with the help of a friend & a woman assistant. A friend who has built a machine to measure, quantitatively, how conscious a thing is - where the thing could be any animal or plant!

They not only are successful in reviving the dog, for a short while, but the revived dog is behaving as if it's very smart - smarter than a man, in fact. But the woman assistant has observed something the men didn't - dog's intelligence is probably not dog's own...

Mad scientist will later try the procedure on himself, in the hope that he will become an intellectual superman - kill himself & set up the circumstances so friend is forced to try reviving him. Only the woman's theory is right...

Fact sheet.

First published: Argosy Weekly, 30 November 1935.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in, or read online at UNZ (UNZ site seems to have some way to download pdf too but I could not get it to work).
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

"Argosy Weekly", 30 November 1935 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

While Argosy did publish some science fiction, it wasn't exclusively a science fiction magazine. It published all sorts of action stories.

Link on author fetches more fiction by author. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. For stories I've read, my rating appears in brackets.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [ss] Murray Leinster's "The Extra Intelligence" (B): Something evil is looking for a human brain it can take control of ...
2. [serial - 1/6] George Bruce'd "Flying Circus": "The first of the aerial daredevils".
3. [serial - 2/3] Judson P Philips' "Off-Side!": "Dirty politics & clean football don't mix".
4. [serial - 3/6] J D Newsom's "Fool's Mate": "The Foreign Legion--a feud within the ranks".
5. [serial - 4/6] Arthur Hawthorne Carhart's "Rodeo": "Drama in the West's greatest show".
6. [novelette] Anthony M Rud's "Byng of Ballarat": "One man's fight in the Australian goldfields".
7. [ss] R V Gery's "Goliath": "Fighting sea wolves of the Medeterranean".
8. [ss] Odgers T Gurnee's "Taos Men Were Mountain Men": "With the army of the West in the days of Fremont".

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol 260, No 3.
Download scans as a CBZ file. [via Mark Pruett @pulpscans]
Related: Fiction from Argosy; old "pulps"; 1930s.

Murray Leinster's "Space Platform" (novel, space station, free): US putting up a nuclear missiles facility in orbit

I won't put it anywhere among the better stories of Leinster, but it's action packed - if occasionally a bit draggy. And if you are interested in machine tools, particularly in balancing things rotating fast around an axis, parts of it may be hard sf.

Story summary.

US is putting a space station ("Space Platform") in orbit around earth. It will be primarily a military facility capable of throwing nuclear weapons anywhere on earth. Reason given is a rather pious one: US wants to force a warring world to stop fighting!

Much of the world, of course, doesn't buy this peace argument; so there are major attempts to sabotage the building of the space station.

Hero, of course, will repeatedly frustrate these sabotage attempts. And of course, US will successfully launch it, in spite of all the sabotage attempts.

Notes.

1. Story also gives 2 secondary reasons for building the space platform: as a launching pad to go to stars, & as a launching pad for laboratories to do experiments too dangerous to do on earth.

See also.

1. Eric Frank Russell's "Wasp" (download): Another novel primarily about sabotage that I found far more interesting. And often hilarious.
2. Alfred Bester's "Adam & No Eve" (download comic book adaptation) & Larry Niven's "The Hole Man": Two popular examples of experiments that can threaten the home world. Experiments that Leinster proposes to conduct far away from earth, in labs launched from space platform, so earth won't be threatened.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1953.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks., Feedbooks.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Murray Leinster's "Historical Note" (short story, satire, free): What if personal flyers became a reality?

I have a feeling I've read this before, though I didn't remember the details.

It's both a lampooning of communist Soviet Union & a science fictional "what if" on small personal flyers. Indian readers should find some of the idiocy of the lampooning parts familiar.

Collected in.

1. John W Campbell, Jr (ed)'s "The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology".

See also.

1. Clifford D Simak's "City" (novelette, 1944): Leinster's version also deals with the central idea (how suburbs will be remade if personal fliers became widely owned) of this widely loved story, but only in a passing way.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, February 1951.
Read online at Docin.
Among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Murray Leinster's "Operation Terror" (novel, alien invasion, free)

Good paced action adventure, but with a farcical & utterly unbelievable ending.

It features a softer version of a death ray, & a ray to explode gunpowder at a distance.

Story summary.

An alien ship has landed in a lake at the heart of a what is being developed as a national park in the US. Creatures come out of it, explore around. They have a "terror beam" weapon: a searchlight like thing. Whenever the beam touches anyone, it excites all sorts of nerve endings in a way so confusing the person eventually paralyzes - temporarily, till the beam is shut off. Immediate vicinity of landing is evacuated; military cordons off the region.

But among the trapped are a man named Lockley rescuing a stranded girl Jill. Story unfolds from Lockley's perspective, as the couple try getting out of region & make guesses about the nature of aliens & their weapons.

See also.

1. Arthur Clarke & Michael Kube-McDowell's "The Trigger": What would the society be like if we had a weapon that could remotely trigger gunpowder explosion?
2. Murray Leinster's "Invasion" (download): Another similar "Martian" invasion of US.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1962.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Feedbooks.
Download audiobook from LibriVox.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Murray Leinster's "The Greks Bring Gifts" (novel, alien invasion): "Helpful" aliens with a nasty secret agenda

Earth has recently received an alien ship with two kinds of very helpful aliens - Greks & Aldarians, Greks the senior of the two. They're offering great new technology, & are willing to train human scientists in Grek science. They don't claim to have any expectations from humanity, apart from giving the gifts.

But Jim Hackett is noticing some anomalies in their behavior. While Aldarians are genuinely helpful, Greks' gifting feels like contempt, Grek ship is far too big compared to their declared numbers, his suspicion during his training in Grek science that they're being taught nonsense, ... His investigations, with the help of a small band of helpers, will unravel the aliens' nasty designs as well as a weapon to beat them at their own game.

See also.

1. Damon Knight's "To Serve Man" (download text scans as part of a larger package): Similar concept at short story length.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1964.
Rating: B.
Included in "grubthrower"'s "Top 10 obscure but superb science fiction novels".
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Murray Leinster's "Checkpoint Lambda" aka "Stopover in Space" (novel): Young hero foils a major robbery attempt

This is one of the more mundane stories of the author. Fast moving action, yes, but irritating repetitions, & at least one major event is resolved by convenient last-minute arrangement of circumstances.

Title is the name of a space station in orbit around a star called Canis Lambda. The station is located at the intersection of major space lanes of a star-faring humanity, & serves both as a lighthouse & a way station. This is where most of action happens.

Story summary.

The Golconda Ship, with its fabulous but unspecified treasures, is expected to dock with Checkpoint Lambda. So a gang of robbers have taken control of the Checkpoint ahead of arrival - killing all crew & transit passengers at station.

That's when Scott, a newly minted Space Patrol officer, arrives to take charge of the station. Of course, 2 dozen robbers already in control of station don't stand a chance against a Space Patrol officer.

A substantial part of the story is devoted to surviving a disaster - cores of 4 comets will soon impact the station, & few available maneuver options are frustrated by robbers' chief who doesn't believe there is a danger here.

Fact sheet.

First published: Amazing Stories, June & August 1966.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Murray Leinster's "Operation: Outer Space" (novel, space opera, free): Party explores 3 earth-like worlds

It's not a bad read. But not among the better stories of author, either. Leave logic somewhere, & enjoy the roller-coaster with a mad scientist who can put together the first-ever FTL ship in a few weeks, a super-businessman, & some others in exploring 3 earth-like worlds in far-away star systems: a glacial world, a world with large cattle herds ready to be hunted, & a world that has never known life.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1954.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Download audio from LibriVox.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Murray Leinster's "The Black Galaxy" (novel, space opera, free): Accidental human hero takes on murderous aliens

This is a very pulpish story; easy quick read, though.

Story summary.

The first human interstellar ship, Stellaris, still half finished, accidentally takes off due to a short circuit - with the hero & ship's designer, Rod Cantrell, on board with his girlfriend Kit. Plus some workers who didn't go out during lunch time.

They'll have major adventures hunting an alien race of murderous barbarians. Barbarians that wait for civilizations to mature, then come kill the whole world with a death ray & do the lootings!

Fact sheet.

First published: 1949.
Download full text from Internet Archive.
Note: The 1954 novel version I've linked is either an expanded form of a novella of the same title that first appeared in Startling Stories, March 1949, or the same novella published as a novel. I'm not sure.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster; Space opera fiction.

Murray Leinster's "The Trans-Human" (short story, war): Loneliness does strange things to a teenager

There are a lot of stories where a baby is raised by another species & grows up thinking it's of its adoptive species rather than its real one - Mogli raised by wolves, eagle baby raised among the chicken, ... This story is of this kind.

Story summary.

Human colonization of galaxy has brought them in conflict with Khasr, spider-like aliens. Khasr had destroyed a lot of human colony worlds before humans suspected aliens' existence. Then the war began.

The story is of Johnny, a 2 year old baby boy kidnapped by Khasr before they destroyed his world. He's fed carefully chosen propaganda & grows up thinking he's a mutilated Khasr, mutilated by violent human action. Aliens will deploy him on a suicide mission to destroy earth when he's 14.

Only, he's naive at subterfuge & is quickly caught near earth. And then come his hormonal reactions on his first ever landing on earth, physical contact with a girl, living with a family, ...

Meanwhile, humans will use Khasr weapon on aliens themselves.

Fact sheet.

First published: Science-Fiction Plus, December 1953.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster (an annotated selection of his "good" works).

Online copies of yesterday & today's stories

While I found both yesterday's story, Russell's "Bitter End", & today's, "The Trans-Human" by Murray Leinster, online, I haven't included download links with relevant stories for a reason: I found them both as a part of a small hoard of ancient pulp magazines, but at a place that appears to include a lot of clearly illegitimate stuff.

Magazine hoard is all html rather than cbr, & the magazine issue containing both these stories - Science-Fiction Plus, December 1953 - is in file "Science Fiction Plus 1953.12 v1.0.htm". Try the file name or some of its keywords with Google, & you might get lucky (I haven't tried).

Some good fiction of Murray Leinster

Rather than burying this inside a comment thread, I thought I'd put it in a separate post.

I've posted on about half the Leinster stories I've read so far; here is a selection of some good ones from among those posted.

He's generally a reliable author. I've read dozens of his stories, including some novels, & I don't think many were disappointing. Some of his stories, however, are more thoughtful than others which are more of adventures.

1. "First Contact" (download text scans as part of Astounding issue it originally appeared in, or as MP3 of a radio adaptation): Probably his most famous story - the one that coined the term "first contact" in modern sense. This is a story about establishing trust among strangers, where the cost of a breach of trust are unacceptably high. His solution is not really applicable to the problem of trust among the strangers on internet, but I liked the story.
2. "The Aliens" (download text, or two part audio): Similar situation as "First Contact", but a less famous story. Circumstances ensure that the murderous first contact between humans & aliens has a peaceful outcome.
3. Medship series of stories (download) are consistently good - a young medic/diplomat solves a major problem in a society in each story. My personal favorites are "The Grandfathers' War" (download) & "The Mutant Weapon" (download), but most others are good too. Former is an intensely emotional story about a tragedy that actually happens in a lot of families, later is one of the better thrillers on colonizing by spreading a plague to which colonizers are immune.
4. "Dear Charles" (download) is one of the coolest & hilarious reads on grandfather paradox.
5. "The Swamp Was Upside Down" (download) is very interesting read on landslides, one of his few hard sf stories.
6. "A Logic Names Joe" (download text/radio adaptation) is a very funny classic that gets a lot right about social implications of modern computers & internet - something very rare for a 60 year old story, written when even the modern terms about computers were yet to be invented.
7. "The Mad Planet" (download) is one of his most famous stories - a post-apocalypse story that's actually about a fun adventure on a curious world.
8. "Solar Constant" (download) is one of the more interesting terraforming stories by anyone.
9. "Sidewise in Time": One of his most famous stories - the story that invented parallel universe & alternate history subgenres. I personally didn't like it much though, & have a feeling US readers might like it more than others.
10. "The Ethical Equations" is not only a good read, but is probably important in that it led to Arthur Clarke's very famous novel "Rendezvous with Rama" via Clarke's own "Jupiter Five". "Jupiter Five" is practically a rehash of "The Ethical Equations". Story is of a ... sort of, but not quite ... first contact with alien visitors to Sol. It's online somewhere, but I don't have the URL handy.
11. "The Lonely Planet" is a very curious story of a sentient world, treated by humans as they would treat a draft animal! Adventure follows the human discovery that the animal is far smarter than them.
12. "Proxima Centauri" is one of the best bug-eyed monster stories, though I found the ending less interesting than rest of it. Human visitors to Proxima Centauri are treated by local intelligent plant beings the way we treat vegetation! It's online, but I don't have the URL handy.
13. "The Strange Case of John Kingman" is one of the rare low-key stories of Leinster. No great adventure - just the observations about a very curious inmate of ... was it a lunatic asylum? I don't quite recollect the place. I think this is online, but I don't have the URL.
14. "Sam, This is You" (download text/audio): While this is not quite in the class of stories above, I note it because 2010 Hindi movie "Karthik Calling Karthik" (@IMDB) had exactly this idea.
15. "The Runaway Skyscraper" (download) is his first science fiction story (I think). Nowhere in the class of stories above, but may be of particular interest to residents of New York city. Adventure of people inside a building in modern New York in the world that existed at their geographical location some centuries back, when a variant of an earthquake "sank" their building in time rather than space!

Related: Stories of Murray Leinster; "best of" lists.

New at Project Gutenberg (28 May 2010)

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

1. John Murray Reynolds' "The Golden Amazons of Venus"; download; Planet Stories, Winter 1939: "Dakta death, horrible beyond the weirdest fever-dreams of Earth-men, faced Space Ship Commander Gerry Norton. The laconic interplanetary explorer knew too much. He stood in the dynamic path of Lansa, Lord of the Scaly Ones, the crafty monster bent on conquering the fair City of Larr and all the rich, shadowless lands of the glorious Amazons of Venus."
2. Robert Moore Williams' "The Lost Warship"; download; Amazing Stories, January 1943: "Jap bombs rained down, there was a tremendous blast--and a weird thing happened to the Idaho".
3. Howard Carleton Browne's "Twelve Times Zero"; download; If, March 1952: "It was a love-triangle murder that made today's headlines but the answer lay hundreds of thousands of light years away!"
4. Ralph Sholto's '"And That's How It Was, Officer"'; download; If, July 1952: "When Uncle Peter decided to clean out the underworld, it was a fine thing for the town, but it was tough on the folks in Tibet."
5. Murray Leinster's "The Ambulance Made Two Trips"; download; Astounding, April 1960: "If you should set a thief to catch a thief, what does it take to stop a racketeer...?"
   
   Note: This appears to be a repost or update. I'd read it long back. An adventure involving a gadget that acts as a lucky charm, or something.

Related: Fiction from onld "pulp" magazines.

Murray Leinster's "The Invaders" (novella, first contact, free): What could aliens technologically only a few centuries ahead of us want from us?

Coburn accidentally discovered aliens masquerading as humans in remote Greece. He'll convince officialdom of their existance. Whole NATO military gets out after them. But the aliens are behaving in a very peculiar, friendly, manner...

Notes.

1. This is a cold war story, from US side. A lot of descriptions are clearly very biased.

Fact sheet.

First published: Amazing Stories, April-May 1953.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster, from 1950s.

Murray Leinster's "Sam, This is You" (short story, humor, free): Girlfriend trouble due to cross-time talking!

Sam Yoder, a telephone lineman, has been building a hacking gadget: to make private calls over a "party-line". While his gadget won't let him do this, it lets him do something else instead: it lets him talk to himself 10 days in future! Or in past!

That's useful ability, e.g., to make money from betting. That can also land him in trouble with girlfriend!

See also.

1.  C L Moore's "Greater Than Gods" also features a cross-time communicator. A man's two potential descendants from far future are each canvassing to make him marry a particular woman, one that will enable the respective descendant's existence! One of them is even prepared to kill this remote ancestor over the com link if he doesn't choose the right woman! (Hugo Gernsback's "The Killing Flash" (download) involves use of ordinary landline phone network as a murder weapon.)

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, May 1955.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks.
Download old XMinus radio adaptation from Internet Archive.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster, from 1950s.

Free fiction: Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, February 1960

At Internet Archive in multiple formats.

Editor: Cele Goldsmith.
Among the authors: Frank Herbert, Murray Leinster, Fritz Leiber.

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

New at Project Gutenberg (11 May 2010)

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

1. Edmond Hamilton's "The World with a Thousand Moons"; download; Amazing Stories, December 1942.
2. Poul Anderson's "The Escape"; download; Space Science Fiction, September 1953.
3. Michael Shaara's "The Book"; download; Galaxy, November 1953.
4. William E Bentley's "The Honored Prophet"; download; If, November 1954.
5. Murray Leinster's "Sam, This is You"; download; Galaxy, May 1955.
   
   Free SF Reader links MP3 of an old radio adaptation too.

Related: Fiction from old "pulps".

Free fiction: 2 novels selected by the editors of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine

Both at Internet Archive in multiple formats:

1. Galaxy Science Fiction Novel #17: Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "Well of the Worlds" (as by Lewis Padgett); download.
2. Galaxy Science Fiction Novel #20: Murray Leinster's "The Black Galaxy"; download.

Related: Fiction from Galaxy magazine.

Free fiction: Arthur Clarke's "Superiority", plus Eric Frank Russell, Murray Leinster, & Keith Laumer

4 old stories at Webscription, 3 of them among the most famous of science fiction: Keith Laumer's "Field Test" (download), Eric Frank Russell's "Allamagoosa" (download), Murray Leinster's "Exploration Team" (download), & Arthur Clarke's "Superiority" (download).

Two of these are among the very best of science fiction: "Superiority" & "Allamagoosa". Former is very hard to find online, & has so far been available only to US readers via Google Books. Later has been online a long time at scifi.com, but has been going on/off since they switched domain to syfy.com.

"Exploration Team" is the other very well known story.

[via Free Speculative Fiction Online]

Free fiction: Audio: "Old Time Radio Downloads"

[Link]. [via Crosseyed Cyclops]

Many have been online elsewhere a while. I haven't personally played any from this lot yet.

Among the lot are Heinlein's "Universe" (MP3), "The Green Hills of Earth" (MP3), & "Requiem" (MP3); Asimov's "A Pebble in the Sky" (MP3) & "Nightfall" (MP3); William Tenn's "Child's Play" (MP3); Bradbury's "Marionettes Inc" (MP3), "... And the Moon Be Still as Bright" (MP3), & "Mars is Heaven!" (MP3); Murray Leinster's "First Contact" (MP3) (this is the story that coined the term "first contact").

Murray Leinster's "The Machine That Saved The World" (novelette, free): Human descendants from future want to help us!

Year 2180 wants to discuss (via a temporal broadcast) a doom about to visit 1972: a widespread & currently harmless germ is about to mutate into something fatal. They have a plan to contain the disaster, but need two way communications to thrash out details. Hence they send out design of transmitter Now should build to talk to Future.

But one man is smelling something fishy. With the help of electronic geniuses, he will transform the received designs into functionally equivalent but visually unrecognizable alternates. And convince the Future to build this first.

Results turn out to be very interesting.

Fact sheet.

First published: Amazing Stories, December 1957.
Rating: B.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, or Feedbooks.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Murray Leinster's "Sidewise in Time" (novella, parallel universe): What if our universe is "closed" & subject to influenced from "outside"?

Said to be the first parallel universe story. And among the early alternate history stories.

"Sidewise Awards" are named after this story.

I didn't come back as impressed as the reputation of the story suggests. But that could be because

1. I've read it three quarters of a century after publication!
2. And alternate history parts - like most alternate history fiction - will likely have only local appeal, in these case only for US readers. Mostly adventures in parts of US where alternate universe versions have replaced normal land - like where Chinese colonized US, ...

Caution: It's been a while since I read this story. Descriptions are accurate to the extent I recall, but I'm not inclined to read it again for this post.

Story summary.

Professor Minott, "instructor in mathematics on the faculty of Robinson College in Fredericksburg, Va", is one of the few who has an idea of strange upheaval happening everywhere - like familiar sight across the road getting replaced with strange scenery. Cross the boundary, & you are in a parallel universe. With the turmoil still on, you might never be able to return to your original universe. Signs have been around a while, in the form of much stranger physical phenomena.

Professor knows exactly what he wants: take his secret lady love "Maida Hayns, daughter of the professor of Romance languages" & cross as many of these parallel universe boundaries as needed - till he is in a timeline where he can call the shots & live happily ever after.

He will also take some other students - 3 other couples - along on horses & with guns. Not only the students not take kindly to his one-sided affections for the girl, but the group have many adventures among the people populating alternate versions of US (mostly cliched versions of alternate cultures, obviously inferior to that of adventurers!)

By the end of the story, all students including Maida, will return to our universe. All but one. One of the girls, Lucy Blair, will go with Prof on his parallel universe adventures.

Collected in.

1. J J Pierce (Ed)'s "The Best of Murray Leinster".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Stories, June 1934.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Murray Leinster's "Invasion" (novelette, war, free): When a "Martian" spaceship landed in Colorado, US!

This is the third Leinster story I've seen about pre cold war US/Russia stand-off. In each of them, Russia builds some sort of superweapon & attacks US; then a lone US hero creates a happy ending for US.

Two of these stories - this one & "The Machine That Saved The World" - involve a hoax; so it takes a while for US to realize that it has been attacked! In "Morale", Russia is not explicitly named.

In this story, there is hero's girlfriend too - to make Russian lust after & for hero to save!

Story summary.

Two warring sides are renamed here: "United Nations" is a country that includes US; "Com-Pub" is the "Union of Communist Republics" that includes Russia.

An apparently Martian spaceship has landed in US; hero, a US military man named Thorn Hard & his girlfriend Sylva West, happen to be nearby.

Immediately on landing, "Martian" ship has erected an impenetrable & invisible 6 mile hemispherical barrier made up of some sort of magical force field around it. So the ship, hero, & his girlfriend are inside the dome; nothing can enter the dome nor exit it.

In the following days, while US military has been examining the strange dome & trying to communicate with the "Martians", it's also collecting much of its air force near dome. And our friendly "Martian" springs the trap - erecting another bigger impenetrable dome around original - so most US air forces are trapped between the two domes. That's when the main Com-Pub fleet attacks.

So it's up to the hero to now save the US. Which he will, of course.

Curios.

In 2037

1. "Televisors were still monochromatic."
2. "Newspapers were printing flat pictures in three colors only".
3. There is something interesting about the speed of fast planes too; I cannot locate the quote.

See also.

An invisible impenetrable spherical barrier appears in several stories, but this is the oldest I've seen with this structure. Some other stories that feature it:

1. David Brin's "The Crystal Spheres" where they bar access to a solar system unless those inside open it.
2. Arthur Clarke's "The Sentinel" where it protects the alien listening device on moon.
3. Arthur Clarke's "What Goes Up" where a nuclear accident in Australia creates it as an unexplainable phenomenon around the site.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Stories, March 1933.
Rating: B.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg or Manybooks. [via QuasarDragon]
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Murray Leinster's "The Grandfathers' War" (novella, family dispute, free): When kids won't talk to parents...

Consider this scenario in the context of a family:

1. Family is going through an economically bad patch; so a child goes to work at an early age.
2. Parents begin to expect more & more from the working child.
3. At some stage, years later, child realizes the missed fun & begins to resent.
4. A significant event, & the child drifts away from family.

I've seen it played out more than once. This story is a drastic variation of it, & on a much larger scale.

Story summary.

Phaedra II is a human colony world, & its sun is showing signs of going nova - only it's difficult to say in how many years.

Its folks locate an alternate uninhabited world Canis III, & begin shipping the population there. Since there is not enough transport to move everyone together, & the new world needs to be prepared, they begin with shipment of young people of working age - both male & female. Then younger children - who obviously need to be cared for by original load; then even younger; then babies; ...

Original shipload have now had enough, & have decided their parents are simply exploiting them & that they don't want to deal with their parents anymore. So attempt to ship older women is blocked - kids refusing to allow them on their world so they won't have additional mouths to feed, parents getting desperate as the old sun shows of going nova any time. There is a stalemate.

An external agency, in the form of a supremely capable man named Calhoun, will finally force the beginning of a patch up process..

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, October 1957.
Rating: A.
Download full text from Webscription.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Murray Leinster's "The Mutant Weapon" (novella, biological warfare, free): Catching thieves out to steal a world

Among the better stories of Leinster, but apparently not as widely read as some of his other works.

Alice Sheldon ("James Tiptree, Jr")'s excellent Hugo winner, "The Screwfly Solution", is essentially this story, with barely enough changes to avoid the charge of plagiarism.

Idea of unusual prison in James P Hogan's "Jailhouse Rock" also appears in this much older story. I'm not aware if the idea is even older.

Story summary.

Crooks have practically taken over a newly terraformed world, Maris III, from people who did the hard work & own the place - by infecting the atmosphere with an unusual & deadly organism, but for which they themselves have an antidote.

Hero, the med ship man Calhoun, will help foil their plans & restore the world to its rightful owners.

Quotes.

1. "Paradoxes don't turn up in nature. Things that happen naturally never contradict each other. You only get such things when men try to do things that don't fit together."
2. "no human action is without consequences to the man who acts... A violent action, for example, has a strong probability of violent consequences".
3. "Children and barbarians have clear ideas of justice due to them, but no idea at all of justice due from them."
4. "it is singularly stupid—but amazingly common—for an individual to assume human society to be passive and unreactive. He may assume that he can do what he pleases, but inevitably there is a reaction as energetic as his action, and as well-directed."

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, August 1957.
Rating: A.
Download full text from Webscription.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.

Free fiction: Audio: Huffduffer

Link. [via Free SF Reader]

Many desperate things, but a few interesting ones too. Audio links below are probably all radio adaptations.

1. Arthur Clarke's "Rendezvous With Rama"; download MP3 - part 01, 02: I'm not sure the two parts cover the whole novel, but if they do, it's a big catch.
   
   One of the most important novels of the genre, but only for readers with a taste for hard sf (that would be very small percentage of sf readers, though).
   
   There is also a very good 3 minute movie online, showing the approach & landing of human spacecraft on Rama, & entry of human explorers through airlock into the ship. Or was, when I last played it over a year ago.
2. Philip K Dick's "Beyond Lies The Wub"; download MP3: Not read. I think its text version is already online, probably at Project Gutenberg.
3. Murray Leinster's "A Logic Named Joe"; download text/MP3: Fun early story about interconnected computers. I've linked both versions in the past.
4. Orson Welles' famous radio show inspired by H G Wells' "War of the Worlds" that caused panic in the US when first broadcast in 1938.
   
   Arthur Clarke's humorous apocalypse story, "Publicity Campaign", is apparently a reaction to the panic this broadcast caused.

Murray Leinster's "The Mad Planet" (novelette, adventure, free): Beginning of the Man's return to sentience after a major environmental disaster

Among the best known stories of Leinster, & the first in a series of 3. The fix up novel, The Forgotten Planet, combines the 3 stories, moves the location away from earth, & has a silly ending. But this post is about the original & the best known story of the lot.

Story summary.

For unknown reasons, earth's interior began spewing carbon dioxide. By the time things settled down, earth had returned to carboniferous era - low oxygen, lot of carbon dioxide in atmosphere.

30,000 years later, most humans, animals & plants are dead. This is a world dominated by giant fungi & insects - insects far more dangerous than the worst mammals we know. Some tiny isolated tribes of what were once human survive; but they're physically transformed beyond recognition, have lost not only all technology including fire making but most language & indeed sentience. This is the story of man's beginning of the return to sentience & hopefully greater things.

20 year old Burl, the hero of this story & the series, is out to hunt something special to impress Saya, the girl of his tribe he has a soft spot for. The hunt will turn into a major adventure, & by the time he returns several days later, he will be a different man.

Quotes.

1. "He was ignorant of fire, metals, or the uses of stone and wood. A single garment covered him. His language was a meager group of a few hundred labial sounds, conveying no abstractions and few concrete things."
2. "Only a man attempting to advance in the scale of civilization tries to explain everything. A savage or child is content to observe without comment, unless he repeats legends from wise folk possessed by the itch of knowledge."
3. "Even in the high civilization of ages before, few men had really used their brains. The great majority had depended on machines and leaders to think for them."
4. "There is something strangely daunting in the actions of an insect. It moves so directly, with uncanny precision, utterly indifferent to anything but the end in view. Cannibalism is almost universal. The paralysis of prey, so it remains alive and fresh--though in agony--for weeks on end, is commonplace. The eating piecemeal of still-living victims is a matter of course.
   
   Absolute mercilessness, utter callousness, incredible inhumanity beyond anything in the animal world is the way of insects. And these vast cruelties are performed by armored, machinelike creatures with an abstraction and a routine air that suggests a horrible Nature behind them all."
5. "30,000 years of savagery had not lessened Saya's femininity. She became aware that Burl was her slave, that these wonderful things he wore and had done meant nothing if she did not approve."

Fact sheet.

First published: The Argosy, 12 June 1920.
Rating: A.
Download full text from The Wondersmith.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Real science: A gadget from Murray Leinster's "The Skit-Tree Planet"

Well, not exactly, but ... someway to there.

How about building a house by setting up a projector that knows the 3D shape you want, & pointing it where you want the building erected? That's Leinster's story, where you can later switch off the projector to destroy the building.

The real-life version Bruce Sterling links is a 3D printer that can build - not quite the house, but parts of it at a time - in place. No force field projection, but real physical sand-like thing with the strength of reinforced concrete.

Best women genre authors

A panel presentation at SF Signal.
Note: At the moment, link doesn't seem to work. Hopefully, should be back live sometime.

My own favorites: C L Moore, Mary Shelley, & J K Rowling. I don't recall Shelley even mentioned in above panel; her classics (at least the ones I've read), including Frankenstein, actually make a light reading in spite of being very influential.
PS: Did you know Moore's "Black God's Kiss" is sometimes regarded as the defining story of sword-&-sorcery subgenre? Few others of the subgenre I've read appear to be poor rehashes. And her "The Bright Illusion" is among the first stories where aliens appear as truly alien; I'm not sure if this came before Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" or not - but both are remembered for this feature, & I've an impression both came around the same time. While her superlative works came later in life, with Henry Kuttner, she has several good solo works too from her early career (apart from, sadly, several crappy ones too). She's often very original - a dream author for those who regard sf as a genre of ideas.

On my to-read list: Ursula K Le Guin & Andre Norton. I've heard good things about both, but have read only one story from each, neither of them particularly noteworthy. SF Signal link above has some suggested readings of Le Guin.

Lois McMaster Bujold is a name I've heard often but never read. Would like to check something out, particularly any short fiction.

Two well regarded names that don't really figure in my list: Anne McCaffrey & Alice Sheldon (better known by her pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr). I've only read "Weyr Search" of McCaffery, the original story of the massive Pern series; not bad, but didn't really make me seek more. I've read 3 or 4 stories of Sheldon, & liked only one of them - Hugo & Nebula winner "The Screwfly Solution" which actually has the same identical plot as one of the Murray Leinster's Med Ship stories I cannot recollect the name of.

Murray Leinster's "Med Ship Man" (novelette, land sharks, free)

When the hero, Med Ship man Calhoun, approached the world Maya for ordinary "planetary health inspection", he was befuddled by the fact that no one answered from local spaceport. Forced landing, & he's even more surprised - the whole city seem to have been abandoned 3 days ago - both in a hurry, & in a planned manner!

His investigations will reveal a gang of land sharks playing dirty games to reduce the local real estate prices...

Notes.

1. The story tells us carnivorous plants have muscular tissues somewhat like in animals. I didn't know that.
2. Story features ground cars that run on air cushion (like hovercraft), & wirelessly broadcast power (kind of Tesla machine). If they appear in other Med Ship stories, I'd not noticed so far.

See also.

1. This story features force-field based cattle fencing driving machinery that appeared in Arthur Clarke's novel "The Deep Range" (1957) a decade earlier.
2. This story features a "projector" of force field. Even more magical projector appears in Leinster's "The Skit-Tree Planet" - a material projector! Focus it somewhere & give it the design of a building (including material properties), & you immediately have a building erected - solid as anything!!

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, October 1963.
Rating: A.
Download full text from Webscription - 5 pages beginning here.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Murray Leinster's "Tallien Three" aka "The Hate Disease" (novelette, epidemic, free): Even mundane may be essential to life

When Calhoun, the Med Service man, reached the world Tallien III for a routine public health inspection, he found the world in a state of civil war. With society bitterly divided between "normals" & "paras".

Paras are afflicted by a highly contagious disease - an extreme urge to eat certain squirming animals! I couldn't quite see the logic of this "disease" & extreme horror associated with it that is threatening the world, but it's a story from an earlier era; & this is the only flaw.

Of course, the brave hero will get drawn in the local issues, will end up rubbing the powerful in the wrong places, become hunted, & generally have an adventure. And, of course, he will find a cure - a humble ingredient of the environment on earth since forever has been missing from the the local environment, & there is a simple way to introduce it...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, August 1963.
Rating: A.
Download full text in 4 parts from Webscription: 01, 02, 03, & 04.
Listed among the stories from John Campbell's Astounding/Analog.
Related: Stories from Analog/Astounding; Stories of Murray Leinster.