Poul Anderson's "Genius" (novelette, superman): Who is observing whom, in this lab experiment?

This is said to be the "first stand alone piece of short fiction" by Anderson.

I personally found it a somewhat boring read. Content of the story is mostly in the form of infodump - a character lecturing another one, plus description of author's idea of a utopia.

Story summary.

In far future, human empire extends to tens of thousands of planets in galaxy, has some interactions with alien empires, & it is a fairly static society with thought conditioning of populace to ensure they don't think inconvenient thoughts.

And the "psychotechnological" ruling elite conduct laboratory experiments on humans, as one would on rats: dump a couple of thousand men, matching some profile, with their memories wiped out, into some experimental environment, & observe their behavior!

One such experiment has been going on for 1500 years on "Station Seventeen": a virgin earth-like world, complete with a moon, seeded with a few thousand geniuses. And the experiment didn't turn out the way the experimenters expected...

Collected in.

1. Everett F Bleiler & T E Dikty (eds)' "The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, December 1948.
Download MP3 of an old time radio drama based on this story titled "Planet of Geniuses". [via SFFaudio]
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Poul Anderson.

Poul Anderson's "The Helping Hand" (novelette, diplomacy, free)

This one might be read differently in rich vs poor countries. It's about the real nature of the so called "aid" given by rich countries to poor ones. While the term has practically vanished from India during the last 2 decades, local readers should find a lot here that strikes a cord.

This story is about a rich & powerful country wanting, altruistically, it would seem, to give "aid" for reconstruction to two poor countries that have just been through a war & are both in bad shape. One country accepts it; other doesn't. Story looks at the evolution of these two countries - which one comes out better off 50 years down the line, one that accepts the aid or the one that refuses it.

Countries involved are actually star faring empires. Earth is the rich one. Two warring parties are the alien worlds of Cundaloa & Skontar.

See also.

1. L Sprague de Camp's "Finished" (download as part of a larger package): Another story that deals with a rich vs poor country issue that used to be an emotional one in India till 1980s, even a bit in 1990s, but is rarely heard of now - technology sanctions as a diplomatic policy tool.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, May 1950.
Read online at BookReader, or download full text as part of the scans of Astounding (British ed), June 1951.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Award in 2001.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Poul Anderson.

"Astounding Science Fiction" (British Edition), June 1951 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Links on author fetch more matching 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. Where I'm aware of alternate availability of a story on the web, I include those links too.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [novelette] Poul Anderson's "The Helping Hand" (A); read online: International "aid" considered harmful...
2. [ss] Jack Vance's "The Potters of Firsk" (A); download radio adaptation: Hero peacefully frees a tribe from oppression by its ferocious neighbors.
3. [ss] Miles M Acheson's "The Apprentice" (B): Adventure on Venus...

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "VII, No 10 (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.

"Astounding Science Fiction" (British Edition), December 1955 (ed John Campbell) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Links on author fetch more fiction by author. 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.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [ss] Eric Frank Russell's "The Waitabits" (A): Different people run their lives at different pace. What happens when faster ones try to bring up the slower ones to their pace? 
2. [ss] Frank Herbert's "Rat Race" (A): Rats are to men as men are to...
3. [ss] Algis Budrys' "In Clouds of Glory": "Combat of Champions is an old method of settling disputes--but when hiring champions, there is a certain danger they aren't fighting for quite the goals you think..."
4. [serial - conclusion] Poul Anderson's "The Long Way Home": "Sooner or later, every adult human being makes a discovery--or lives dissatisfied, unhappy. That there never was, & never will be, a way to go home ... but there is always a way to make home."

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol XI No 12.
Download scans as a CBR file. [via Bob@pulpscans]
Note: Download link points to a RAR file that contains the target CBR as its sole contents, probably to work around some file naming constraint of hosting service.

See also.

1. Fiction from Analog/Astounding (only issues edited by Harry Bates, John Campbell; whole issues only).
2. Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.
3. Fiction from 1950s.

Poul Anderson's "The Live Coward" (short story, intrigue, free): Cop catches a fugitive

One of the minor stories with a colorful background that is generally quite readable.

Story summary.

A policeman needs to flush out a fugitive who's hidden himself among the rulers of a tribe. But he must do this without any collateral damage to those around the fugitive.

Set in a galaxy spanning human empire. The tribe hiding the fugitive is part of a backwaters planet with medieval Europe type ruling clique with constant clashes between nominal rulers & powerful priests.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, June 1956.
Download full text as part of scans of Astounding (British Edition), November 1956.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Poul Anderson.

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

I'd read "Next of Kin", the novelization of "Plus X" (another longer variant of the story is "The Space Willis"), when I went through a Russell phase some years ago, & just loved it. Now, reading the original novelette in this issue, I had a milder reaction, but it still made me laugh at many places. It's a funny jailbreak story - a human smart alec vs his dimwitted alien captors.

Table of contents.

1. [novelette] Eric Frank Russell's "Plus X" (A); humor: Didn't you know that humans can only exist in pairs?
2. [novelette]  Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett's "The Chosen People" (as by Robert Randall) (A): Teaching the scientific method to deeply tradition bound.
3. [ss] Poul Anderson's "The Live Coward" (B): Cop catches a fugitive in colorful circumstances.
4. [ss] Algis Budrys's "The Peasant Girl" (as by Paul Janvier) (B): Humans are supermen to supermen!
5. [ss] Thomas N Scortia's "Sea Change": 'Of course, everybody knows what "being human" means--it's just that they can't define it, but of course they know what it means..."

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol XII, No 11.
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.

Poul Anderson's "Man Who Counts" aka "War of the Wing-Men" (novel, war, free)

According to Wikipedia, one of the editions of it in book form is a heavily edited one. This post is based on the version that was originally serialized in Astounding.

Story has very colorful setting & environment.

Story summary.

What if, during the creation of Israel during the 1940s, US had sided with Arabs instead of Israel? Neither of these parties is mentioned, of course; it's about a war between two alien nations on their world Diomedes with a party of 3 humans siding with the underdog & giving them major military advantage.

One of the warring side, Drak'ho, is a sea-based nation that has moved into the lands occupied by Lannachska, driving the original inhabitants into interior. Because the fish Drak'ho depends on for survival has inexplicably moved into waters of these shores.

Story has its warts, like brief infodumps in the middle of something interesting or at the beginning of a chapter. And the humor of Van Rijn, one of the 3 humans, didn't always work for me. But it's a fast moving action adventure that I often found difficult to put down.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, February/March/April 1958 as a 3-part serial.
Download full text as part of the scans of 3 issues of Astounding (British edition) where it was serialized in 3 parts: May/June/July 1958.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Poul Anderson.

"Astounding Science Fiction" (British Edition), July 1958 (ed John Campbell) (magazine, free) : Annotated table of contents

Links on author fetch more fiction by author. Where I've read the story, my rating appears in brackets. If I have a separate post on a story, link on its title goes there. Where I'm aware of an alternate download location of a story, I include that too.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [novelette] Christopher Anvil's "Revolt!" (A); download; humor, adventure: Bureaucratic turf war & monster machines run amok...
2. [novel - part 1, 2, 3 (this) 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.
3. [ss] Jon Stopa's "A Pair of Glasses" (as by John Stopa) (B): Materialism is better than spiritualism.
4. [novelette] Eric Frank Russell's "Basic Right": "It's a basic right to try anything you want--a right the Universe itself grants. But it's necessary to distinguish between the right to try--which is real--& the right to succeed at it--which doesn't exist!"

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol XIV No 7.
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.

"Astounding Science Fiction" (British Edition), June 1958 (ed John Campbell) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

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

Table of contents (best first).

1. [novelette] Dean McLaughlin's "The Man on the Bottom" (A): Surviving a sure death...
2. [novel - part 1, 2 (this), 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.
3. [novelette] Charles V DeVet & Katherine MacLean's "Second Game" (B) : When a much smaller & powerful country invades & totally crushes your country, you're still a winner because, over a few generations, you will absorb the enemy in your gene pool!
4. [ss] Randall Garrett's "Penal Servitude" (B): Ultimate punishment for a tyrant...
5. [ss] Fritz Leiber's "Try and Change the Past" (B); read online or download (need to scroll down the page); time travel: You cannot really influence the present & future by traveling to past & changing it, because of the natural law of "Conservation of Reality"...

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol XIV No 6 (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.

"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.

Recommended works of Poul Anderson

Folks at rasfw are doing the recommending.

Related: "best of" lists; stories of Poul Anderson.

Poul Anderson's "Sentiment, Inc" (novelette, mad scientist, free)

This is mostly a very light read.

Story summary.

If you are well-connected & rich, Dr Robert Kennedy of Sentiment, Inc will convince the girl of your desire to fall in love with you. By conning her to an experiment where he rewires her brain!

But Colin Fraser is not someone to sit quite, when the girl he was about to marry was converted by Kennedy to marry someone else. He's determined get his girlfriend back. And ends up unearthing a conspiracy of world domination!

Fact sheet.

First published: Science Fiction Stories, #1 (1953).
Download full text from Project Gutenberg. [via Free Speculative Fiction Online]
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Poul Anderson.

Poul Anderson's "To Outlive Eternity" (novella, space opera, free): When a journey in space turned to one beyond the end of time!

This is the original story that was later expanded into author's well known novel, "Tau Zero". "Tau", also appearing in the story, is a parameter from relativity that in some way captures time dilation.

Note many reviewers describe this story as "hard sf". I don't know enough physics to conclude that; some of its physics is obviously cooked up. To me it sounded like space opera, but without guns & aliens.

Story is not always an easy read. Particularly early parts include infodumps that were just meaningless babble for me. But I'm no physicist.

Story summary.

Leonora Christine, a human colonizing ship with 50 men & women aboard, encounters a "small" nebula on its way & cannot avoid unplanned collision with the gaseous body. All is fine after the collision, except the ship has lost ability to decelerate - hence to arrive at its destination!

Damaged portions can be repaired, but they're outside the hull, & for complicated reasons, cannot be repaired except in intergalactic empty space. Thus begins a grand adventure with an unusual happy ending.

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, June & August 1967 as a 2-part serial.
Download full text from Webscription.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Poul Anderson.

"Startling Stories", Winter 1955 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

Scans of the magazine are online as a CBR file.

Note: This issue includes a table detailing Poul Anderson's Future History - pattern to which some of his stories fit.

Table of contents.

1. [novel] Poul Anderson's "The Snows of Ganymede": "They came to the hostile, frozen moon of Jupiter to solve an engineering problem - & ran into a political puzzle".
2. [novelet] Robert F Young's "More Stately Mansions": "The poor girl & the rich man's son both faced an age-old situation - & each with a different idea of happiness!"
3. [ss] Winston Marks' "Only with Tine Eyes": "George was certainly able to kill a bottle with a glance".
4. [ss] Philip K Dick's "Human Is": "Her husband changed, but she had married for better or worse".
5. [ss] Robert Zacks' "Have Your Past Read, Mister?": Why read the future when you don't really know your past?"
6. [ss] Thomas Kersh's "Audrey's Moon": "She loved him - until the day she began to read his mind!"

See also.

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

"Worlds Beyond", Vol 1 No 3 (February 1951) (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. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. My rating for read stories is in brackets.

1. [novelette] Jack Vance's "Brain of the Galaxy" aka "The New Prime" (A): "It was the most brutal examination system ever devised--a system in which one wrong answer meant insanity, & another might mean death!"
2. [novelette] [reprint] Halliday Sutherland's "Valley of Doom"; 1939 (where?): "The calculations of the Total State included everything--even a measured dose of beauty."
3. [ss] Lester del Rey's "The Deadliest Female" (B): "Angered or thwarted, the normal female of the species can be deadly enough, Lord knows ... & Lee was no ordinary female--in fact, she belonged to no ordinary species!"
4. [ss] H B Hickey's "Like a Bird, Like a Fish": "Against the incredible complexity of the alien ship from yesterday, Earth had only the faith of Father Vincent--& the devious simplicity of Pablo..."
5. [ss] [reprint] Lord Dunsany's "The Old Brown Coat"; 1919 (where?): "The thing was immensely valuable; but why--& how?"
6. [ss] Poul Anderson's "The Acolytes": "Beyond the green, smiling face that Nerthus showed to men was the dark other--the alien face that is death to see!"
7. [ss] [reprint] C M Kornbluth's "Forgotten Tongue" (as by Walter C Davies); 1941 (where?): "A brief, apparently meaningless message--but once you'd read it, your mind wasn't your own!"
8. [ss] Richard Matheson's "Clothes Make the Man": "Which is really the stronger--yourself, or the carefully composed image you present to the world?"
9. [ss] [reprint] C M Kornbluth's "The Rocket of 1955"; 1939 (where?).
10. [ss] Harry Harrison's "Rock Diver": "If an undersea diver's equipment failed, he still had a slim chance to live. But between Pete & the surface was the crushing weight of a half-mile of stone..."

See also.

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

Credits: Some of the information here comes from ISFDB.

"Astounding Science Fiction", October 1955 (British Edition) (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.
Caution: Cover advertises a story - Charles F Hockett's "How to Learn Martian" - but it's not listed in ToC! It is, however, included in the internal pages.

"Allamagoosa" is among the best of science fiction. I'm sure I've seen "Risk" somewhere, but cannot quite place it.

Table of contents. 

Links on author fetch more fiction by author. Where I'm aware of other online copies of a story, I include them too.

1. [novelette] Everett B Cole's "Millennium": "There are devices a high-level culture could produce that simply don't belong in the hands of incompetents of lower cultural evolution. The finest, & most civilized of tools can be made a menace..."
2. [novelette] Isaac Asimov's "Risk": It was guaranteed not to kill anybody--wouldn't harm a hair of your head. Of course, it did tend to turn you into a mindless idiot--but it wouldn't hurt you a bit."
3. [ss] Eric Frank Russell's "Allamagoosa" (A); download: 'Just what it was, they weren't quite sure, but they knew it had to be there; the Bureau's Inventory said so. And the consequences of its "accidental" destruction were astonishing...'
4. [serial - 2/4] Poul Anderson's "The Long Way Home": "They weren't exactly welcome on Earth 5,000 years beyond their time--but they were hotly contended for. Nobody liked them, but everybody wanted them--particularly the one who wasn't there!"
5. Charles F Hockett's "How to Learn Martian": "Once upon a time, people thought that a vocabulary & the grammar rules were the whole story on learning a language. But modern linguistics finds it's both more complicated, & also somewhat simpler than that..."

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 1950s.

Poul Anderson's "Sargasso of Lost Starships" (novella, space opera, free): Humans humble god-like aliens

This is one of the impossible adventures in the style of early sf: humans travels hundreds of light-years, only to fight with swords & spears, against aliens so powerful the humans ought not to have any chance! About half way through, I'd to shut off the mind & just kept reading without being critical.

"Sargasso" of the title apparently comes from Sargasso Sea, a region of Atlantic Ocean bounded by sea streams. In the story, there is the Black Nebula - a huge cloud in the skies - that acts a kind of Bermuda Triangle: ships entering it simply vanish, & are never heard of again. I don't know if the real Sargasso Sea is part of Bermuda Triangle.

This is the story of human adventurers entering this forbidden region of galaxy, & surviving - with heavy losses. There they will meet & overcome psychopathic ancients of enormous magical powers.

Fact sheet.

First published: Planet Stories, January 1952.
Download full text in multiple formats from Internet Archive.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Poul Anderson.

Poul Anderson's "The Sensitive Man" (novella, free): A superman rescues a hostage

A fast moving action story, with some ruminations on politics & society. In a world where man has began building cities on the surface of, & at the bottom of, seas, & has also began farming on the ocean's surface.

I've collected some quotes from this story here.

Story summary.

Psychotechnic Institute is developing a variation of Asimov's Psychohistory: the "science" of manipulating society to force-move it in a desired direction! Men with political ambitions desire it. One of them have kidnapped a veteran researcher from the institute, Dr Michael Tighe.

Simon Dalgetty, the young protegee of Tighe & a trained superman, will go out & effect a rescue. With help from Elena Casimir, an FBI mole in the gang. Of course, by the end of the story, they'll be romantically entangled too.

Title comes from superman abilities of Simon: ability to make his physical senses supersentitive, far beyond what is merely human.

Notes.

1. Story makes a direct reference to Voltaire's alien visitation story, "Micromegas" (download).
2. According to Wikipedia, this story is part of a series - a future history called "The Psychotechnic League", & this story happens in the year 2009.

Fact sheet.

First published: Fantastic Universe, January 1954.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Poul Anderson, from 1950s.

Quotes from Poul Anderson's "The Sensitive Man"

Main post.

Quotes.

1. "All too often in our history the vote has been simply a matter of choosing between two well-oiled machines. A sufficiently clever and determined group can take over a party, keep the name and the slogans and in a few years do a complete behind-the-scenes volte-face."
2. "In the twentieth century that social rigidity--in manners, morals, habits of thought--broke down... But at the same time legal control began tightening up again. Government took over more and more functions, taxes got steeper, the individual's life got more and more bound by regulations saying 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not.'"
3. "you miss the universal father-image.
   
   You want an almighty Church or an almighty State or an almighty anything, a huge misty symbol which demands everything you've got and gives in return only a feeling of belonging. You can't face the truth that man is a lonely creature and that his purpose must come from within himself."
4. "He [a politician] wants to restore what he calls 'ancestral virtues'...
   
   These virtues consist of obedience, physical and mental, to 'constituted authority'--of 'dynamism,' which operationally speaking means people ought to jump when he gives an order".
5. "Facts just are. There's no use passing moral judgments on reality, the only thing you can do is try to change it."
6. "libertarian government. In the past it's always broken down sooner or later and the main reason has been that there aren't enough people with the intelligence, alertness and toughness to resist the inevitable encroachments of power on liberty."
7. "freedom is not a 'natural' condition of man. It's a metastable state at best, all too likely to collapse into tyranny. The tyranny can be imposed from outside by the better-organized armies of a conqueror, or it can come from within--through the will of the people themselves, surrendering their rights to the father-image, the almighty leader, the absolute state."

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".