"Fantastic Stories of Imagination", February 1965 (ed Cele G Lalli) (magazine): Annotated table of contents

Another one whose download link I seem to have lost.

While I haven't read any of the stories yet, descriptions suggest these are mostly fantasy.

Table of contents.

1. [novelet] Randall Garrett's "A Fortnight of Miracles": "It is hard on a man to have not one ... nor two ... but three vexish spells upon him. Such a man has need of a worthy mage & a goodly goblin ... & an author like this one who can get him out of black magic trouble without leaving any loose ends about."
2. [ss] Roger Zelazny's "Passage to Dilfar": "A day & a night had Dilvish ridden to warn of the coming slaughter, for all hope now rested with Dilfar--& with the horse that carried him there."
3. [ss] Ron Goulart's "Winterness": "When dealing with the spirit world, you can do things three ways: rarely, well-done, or medium. When a vanished judge & a buxom columnist are involved, it is perhaps better to settle for the medium."
4. [ss] Thomas M Disch's "The Vamp": "Once you marry a Transylvanian count, things are never what they used to be. Not even a good steak."
5. [serial - 2/2] John Brunner's "The Repairman of Cyclops".

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol 14 No 2.
Related: Fiction from old pulps; 1960s.

"Imaginative Tales", July 1957 (ed William M Hamling) (magazine): Annotated table of contents

Oops. I downloaded its CBR a while back but the link seems to have gone dead now. Will post the link separately if I can find it elsewhere.

I haven't read any story yet.

Table of contents.

1. [novella] Edmond Hamilton's "World of Never-Men": "Barker set out on a trail of vengeance that would lead him to retribution--or death. It would also, inevitably, bind him to Mars' dark secret..."
2. [ss] Robert Moore Williams' "The Red Rash Deaths": "There wasn't a cure for the sickness that struck humans down in horrible agony. And Keeton lacked any clues to follow in his race to stop..."
3. [ss] Randall Garrett's "Devil's World": "Every secret agent sent to Mercury turned up dead; now Courtney volunteered for the task of trapping Thurston, the man who ruled this--".
4. [ss] Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett's "Hot Trip for Venus" (as by Ralph Burke): (ToC lists Ralph Burke as author; story lists Randall Garrett as author!). Alex Mayne knew somebody wanted to keep him out of the spacelanes. And that could only mean someone was afreaid he'd learn about the--"
5. [ss] Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett's "Pirates of the Void" (as by Ivar Jorgensen): "Brant's job was to check the robot relays on tiny stations scattered through space. It was not his job to risk death after an attack from--"
6. [ss] Robert Silverberg's "The Assassin": "Bigelow had a grand idea; he would travel more than a hundred years through time to Ford's Theatre, see the President, & warn him about--"

Fact sheet.

Related: Old pulps.; fiction from 1950s.

"Astounding Science Fiction" (British edition), April 1957 (ed John Campbell) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

I think I've read "2066: Election Day" in one of the "Issac Asimov Presents Great SF Stories" books. An unusual "election" for a US President, an election where people don't vote at all, & one that was actually rigged by a small coterie. I don't think I came back happy with it, & the ending invoked in me an angry reaction - "how could the author propose this to be a good outcome?" type of reaction.

Links 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 is in brackets.

Table of contents.

1. [novelette] Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett's "False Prophet" (as by Robert Randall): "There are times when it is exceedingly unwise to tell the truth--& the Nidorian was dedicated to truth. The Earthmen were wiser; they lied about him."
2. [ss] Michael Shaara's "2066: Election Day": "There is a limit to any process you can name ... & sooner or later that limit will be reached. Then ... somehow you have to fumble togeather a new thing..."
3. [ss] Algis Budrys' "Look on My Works" (B): Tourist guides milking a tourist from Centaurus with fakes, in a far future New York city...
4. [ss] Robert Silverberg's "To Be Continued" (A): Slow life is frustrating!
5. [serial - 3/3] Isaac Asimov's "The Naked Sun": "Lije Baley had a triple-decker problem to solve--& solved it only because a robot tried to give him a hand. And thereby taught him to define his terms with a new exactness!"

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol XIII No 4 (British Edition)".
Download scans as a CBR file [via Bob@pulpscans]
Note: The link fetches a RAR file that contains the target CBR, probably to work around hosting service's file naming constraints.
Related: Stories from the Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell, old "pulps", 1950s.

Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett's "The Chosen People" (as by Robert Randall) (novelette, communications, free): Teaching the scientific method to deeply tradition bound

This rarely reprinted story would be among my all time favorite science fiction. It's a study in how to win friends & influence people!

Story summary.

There is a deeply religious & tradition-bound alien society on a world called Nidor. Humans came a few decades back, & seem to be wise & religious beyond question; so they're respected & have been allowed to run a local school that teaches the familiar to youngsters, sometimes in new ways. And what a revolution it is brewing!

Story is told via a massive local disaster that can only be averted with the new ways of thinking: "Hugl", small insect-sized pests, travel in vast swarms & destroy everything in their path. Only "Edris powder", the traditional insecticide, is not working this year...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, June 1956.
According to ISFDB, it's first of the 3 stories that make up the fix-up novel "The Shrouded Planet".
Download full text as part of scans of Astounding (British Edition), November 1956.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Robert Silverberg, Randall Garrett.

Randall Garrett's "Penal Servitude" (short story, adventure, free): Ultimate punishment for a tyrant

Humans are spread all over galaxy & earth is the superpower quietly mating out
punishment to rulers who overstep.

Decades ago, there was a tyrant named Gianovin t'Lhast on one of these far off worlds who did a lot of genocide & was eventually deposed by earth & sent to an undisclosed location to serve a life sentence.

But earth could never capture General Thugagar Thorgan, Gianovin's right hand man. Now Thorgan is making an attempt at power again. A mole with earth's help will help foil the coup, & we also will discover the terrible punishment earth mates out to bad boys...it gives them a conscience & a life time to live out a guilt they cannot rid of or undo.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, March 1958.
Download full text as part of the scans of Astounding (British Edition), June 1958 where it was reprinted.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Randall Garrett.

"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.

"Imagination Science Fiction", April 1957 (ed William M Hamling) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

Table of contents.

1. [novel] Dwight V Swain's "Bring Back My Brain!": "A man can fight as long as he has the strength--or a mind to command his body!"
2. [novelette] Robert Moore Williams' "Secret of the Painting": "It wasn't the painting itself men killed for, but the knowledge hidden there..."
3. [ss] Robert Silverberg's "Harwood's Vortex": "Ever wondered what would happen if the sky fell on you? Harwood found out!"
4. [ss] Randall Garrett's "Guardians of the Tower": "Legend demanded he guard the strange tower. Was it something worth dying for?"
5. [ss] Robert Silverberg's "The Old Man" (as by S M Tenneshaw): "The space pilot was a man to be envied. Until the inevitable day of retirement..."
6. [ss] Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett's "Slaughter on Dornel IV" (as by Ivar Jorgensen): "Before the fight with the alien champ, Filmore decided to test his own skill..."

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol 8 No 2.
Download scans as a CBR file. [via Sea@pulpscans]
Related: Fiction from Imagination; old pulps; fiction from 1950s.

Randall Garrett's "The Eyes Have It" (novelette, detective, free): Detective finds the killer

I found it mostly an easy fast-moving read, though I felt sort of cheated by ending. There is something in the story that might be considered a very brief clue to ending, but probably author just wanted us to have a shock. Most of the clues in the story are misleading.

Caution: Readers with non-European, non-Christian background might find the story too inaccessible. But that vanished for me after first couple of chapters that set the preamble; rest of the story should be reasonably accessible to all.

I'm a bit puzzled by its inclusion in Analog, that too when Campbell was the editor. It fits the pattern in that it's an intelligent reasonable story, but I haven't seen a lot of magic-wielding stories in these issues. Could this be of the type that alienated a lot of loyal Analog readers during the 1960s?

Story summary.

Sir Pierre Morlaix, secretary to Count Edouard D'Evreux, found the Count murdered of a gunshot wound in his bed a certain morning. Investigator, Lord Darcy, with the help of Dr Pateley, physician, & Master Sean O Lochlainn, (licensed) Sorcerer! - will find the culprit. Sorcerer is the main forensics man!

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, January 1964.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks, Webscription. [via Bill Garthright @ ClassicScienceFiction]
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Randall Garrett.

Gordon Randall Garrett's "Thin Edge" (novelette, murder mystery, free)

Two interdependent political entities that are also constantly in minor conflict:

1. Earth, a welfare state, &
2. "Belt Cities", peopled by hardy human pioneers in asteroid belt.

Belt Cities have a manufacturing process to make very tough cables - cables that can be used to tug good sized asteroids over some distances! A corporation on earth, in collusion with local government, wants the secret. So when a commercial representative from Belt Cities visits earth, he's tortured & killed when trying to extract the secret of cable.

This story is of unraveling the murder mystery by a Belt Cities investigator, who'll make sure the culprits pay for the crime.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, December 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 Randall Garrett.

"Astounding Science Fiction", October 1959 (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. Where I'm aware of other online copies of a story, I include them too. If I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there.

1. [novelette] Christopher Anvil's "The Lawbreakers": "Their mission was sabotage--the destruction of critical installations. Their victims? Hah! Their victims were most eagerly awaiting their hoped-for coming..."
   
   I've a feeling I've seen text version of this story online somewhere, but cannot locate the URL now.
2. [novelette] Jack Vance's "Dodkin's Job": 'The really essential question was, "Who's runnin' this shebang, anyhow?" The rough part of that question is, of course, that one man may think he is--while a quite different man does. So who do you ask?'
3. [ss] Murray F Yaco's "Unspecialist" (A); download: "A machine can be built to do any accurately described job better than any man. The superiority of a man is that he can do an unexpected, undescribed & emergency job ... provided he hasn't been especially trained to be a machine."
4. [serial - part 2/2] Randall Garrett & Laurence M Janifer's "That Sweet Little Old Lady" aka "Brain Twister" (as by Mark Phillips); download text/audio: "It was tough enough for the FBI men to have to hunt out a telepathic spy...but when the only known telepath-locator was a more than somewhat peculiar little old lady who had to be humored..."
   
   ISFDB notes that "Brain Twister" is the title of its 1962 book version.

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.

New at Project Gutenberg (24 June 2010)

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

1. Randall Garrett & Stephen Marlowe's "Quest of the Golden Ape"; download; Amazing Stories, January-March 1957: "How could this man awaken with no past--no childhood--no recollection except of a vague world of terror from which his mother cried out for vengeance and the slaughter of his own people stood as a monument of infamy?"

Related: Fiction from old "pulp" magazines.

New at Project Gutenberg (12 May 2010)

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

Note: This will be the only post tonight. I was running late, & foolishly took up a novel for today's main post - Jack Vance's "The Languages of Pao" - rather than a short story, & am now out of time. But its writeup is partly done, so may be will have it sometime over next few days.

1. Gerald Allan Sohl's "The Seventh Order"; download; Galaxy, March 1952: "History is filled with invincible conquerors. This one from space was genuinely omnipotent, but that never keeps humanity from resisting!"
2. Lewis Parker's "The Animated Pinup"; download; Imagination, July 1953: "You're not expected to believe this story since it's the kind of thing that science calls impossible. But anyway, she happened. Who? Why--"
3. Robert Sheckley's "Keep Your Shape"; download; Galaxy, November 1953: "Only a race as incredibly elastic as the Grom could have a single rule of war:"
4. Stephen Marlowe's "Voyage To Eternity"; download; Imagination, July 1953: "Temple faced leaving Earth--and the girl he loved--if his country drafted him. But the hard part was in knowing he'd never return!..."
5. Randall Garrett's "Time Fuze"; download; If, March 1954: "The ultradrive had just one slight drawback: it set up a shock wave that made suns explode. Which made the problem of getting back home a delicate one indeed..."
6. Roger D Aycock's "Pet Farm"; download; Galaxy, February 1954: "The next worst thing to hell is being shanghaied into the Paradise of an alien planet!"

Related: Fiction from old "pulps".

Real science: iPhone software acts somewhat like device in Randall Garrett's "Or Your Money Back..."

Link.

Minus magic, though.

Story: Gordan Randall Garrett's "[Or Your Money Back...]".

Gordon Randall Garrett's "... Or Your Money Back" (novelette, humor, free): Goodluck charms aren't illegal at roulette table!

Lot of smiles & giggles, after a modest start - particularly during the courtroom drama in later half.

Drawbacks of the story are completely irrelevant last para that extends the story to Mars exploration, & utterly lame explanations of the curious gadget that is at the heart of the story. The gadget & your thoughts together can, wirelessly, "cause minute, but significant, changes in the velocities of small, moving objects" - e.g., the outcome of certain gambling machines, including roulette wheel the story uses. It would have been far more fun if the gadget, functioning in ways beyond human comprehension, had arrived from a magical source - the way it often happens in Kuttner/Moore stories.

Story summary.

Jason Howley, an inventor, has arrived somewhere in Neveda from New York City - both in US. Gambling is legal in former, illegal in later. He has come here to gamble - as a way of attracting world's attention to the "psionic" "science".

The plan is to use his curious gadget at a prominent local gambling joint to effect big wins. Idea is to attract attention, get caught by cops, get even more attention during the court trial, & come out scot free because no one can even begin to figure out how the gadget can influence the wheel. In this endeavor, he will enlist support of a competent unnamed narrator & local lawyer who will manage the legal end of drama.

He uses the gadget openly at the roulette wheel in Golden Casino. Quickly converts his $50 into $3,00,000! Attracts attention of the establishment's goons & cops. Gets arrested. And we are treated to good fun during defense. Of course, he gets away scot free - how can the court declare a gadget that works like a good luck charm illegal?

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding Science Fiction, September 1959.
Rating: A
Added to the list of stories from Campbell's Astounding.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg; cellphone versions from Manybooks.