Robert Moore Williams' "The Sound of Bugles" (short story)

Adventure involving a well intentioned human researcher & a greedy human villain - both trying to figure out how Martians are able to literally create material things out of thin air. Villain will die trying; scientist will learn that their technique cannot be replicated by humans because it involves biological capability we lack, & that he's dealing with super-beings.

Collected in.

1. Donald A Wollheim (ed)'s "Adventures on Other Planets".

Fact sheet.

First published: Startling Stories, September 1949.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Robert Moore Williams.

Roger Dee's "The Obligation" (novelette, free, first contact): An alien's adventures at a human camp on Venus

A shape-shifting surveyor ("Cseth Abrii of Pselpha from the binary suns Kornephoros") from an alien elder race saves a human fisherman on Venus in a storm. Alien's later friendly gestures at the human camp drive another man mad with fear - so we have a madman hunting the alien & other humans of the habitat trying to save the alien. Eventually, the madman will die & so will the saved man's wife, but does the man need to know his wife is dead? Alien thinks he has an obligation towards the friendly man who lost his wife trying to save him...

Collected in.

1. Donald A Wollheim (ed)'s "Adventures on Other Planets".

Fact sheet.

First published: Startling Stories, September 1952.
Read online at UNZ.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Roger Dee.

Donald A Wollheim (ed)'s "Adventures on Other Planets" (anthology)

Table of contents.

1. [novelette] Roger Dee's "The Obligation" (B); read online; Startling Stories, September 1952: An alien visitor's adventures at a human fishing camp on Venus.
2. [ss] Robert Moore Williams' "The Sound of Bugles" (B): Couple of humans' adventures among Martians.
3. Clifford D Simak's "Ogre".
4. Murray Leinster's "Assignment on Pasik".
5. [novelette] A E van Vogt's "The Rull"; Astounding, May 1948.

First published: 1955.

Related: Anthologies & collections; works of  Donald A Wollheim.

C H Robinson's "Longhead: The story of the first fire" (novella, free): Down of human civilization

Longhead, a man from a time before there were homo sapiens, accidentally discovers fire & helps kickstart the ideas that would start the humans on their journey to civilized life...

Fact sheet.

First published: 1913.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg.
Rating: B.

Henry Kuttner's "The Time Trap" (novella, adventure, free)

This is readable enough, but in a mindless sort of way.

Story summary.

A disparate group of apparently good samaritans come together from several eras - hero from 1930s, heroine & hero's sidekick from 5000 years ago from what is now Arabia, & a friend from sometime in future. They're chasing two villains - both from future - through time. In the process, they'll have lot of adventures in exotic locales & among exotic species at different times in earth's history.

Two curious things stood out for me. One is a factual error - in the story, the moon has come much closer to earth in far future; I thought it is going away a few centimeters every year. Other is something you see a lot on pulp magazine covers but not in actual stories - here, heroine is nude at least a half dozen times - sometimes an object of lust, other times as part of torture, yet another time as part of worship! I haven't read many stories from Marvel, but I wonder if the magazine specialized in titillation?

Title refers a metallic device that looks like a pair of obelisks, planted in some remote corner of Arabia by the main villain. The device will live to the end of earth, & is a trap: whenever someone is within range of device &, simultaneously, lightening strikes the device, the person is sent to about 3000 BC!

Fact sheet.

First published: Marvel Science Stories, November 1938.
Download full text from AlfaLib.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novella category.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner.

C L Moore's "Werewoman" (novelette, free)

Among the most boring of author's Northwest Smith series; I completed it only because it is C L Moore.

Northwest Smith, unarmed, hurt, & being chased by unnamed adversaries, walks into the cursed ruins of a long dead city, & will free it from its curse.

Fact sheet.

First published: Leaves #2, Winter 1938.
Download full text from AlfaLib.
Rating: C.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of C L Moore.

John W Campbell's "Dead Knowledge" (as by Don A Stuart) (novelette, alien invasion): "Molecular", microscopic, space traveling, light-eating alien invaders want to control us as tools!

Three human star travelers have arrived at a new world 27 light years from earth, only to find that it once harbored intelligent, highly developed, humanoid civilization that is now dead. And, curiously, it's long dead residents have their bodies well preserved & they all apparently committed suicide!!

It drags on for a while, until the visitors themselves start committing suicide - first one, then other. It's the final one who will enlighten us on the nature of infection before himself committing suicide.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, January 1938.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Works of John Campbell (as by Don A Stuart).

Clifford D Simak's "Rule 18" (novelette, humor): How earth won it's first football match against Martians in decades

Martians have been beating earth in annual football match for a long time. And the diagnosis is: earth-men have become soft because of too much automation here; they never get a chance to exercise their muscles. But things are about to change as a cool newly invented gadget, the earth team's coach sick of losing too long, & a betting syndicate come together...

Title comes from one of the rules of the game that requires a player of the team to not only be natives of his world, but his 9 preceding generations should have been native of this world too. Coach will twist this rule in a curious way to win.

Update 21 July 2014:  Marooned has a note on an Isaac Asimov connection to this story.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1938.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Clifford D Simak.

H L Gold's "A Matter of Form" (novella, brain dump): When a man lived in a dog's body

A surgeon has discovered that the pineal gland at the brain's base is the source of an
animal's identity; surgically extract & transplant it in another animal's brain, & you've put the original in a new body. And he has a rich, old & seriously ill financier who wants a young man's body!

In one of the experiments, the surgeon exchanged the identity of a kidnapped man with a dog. Only the resulting man-in-dog's-body turned out to be more determined & resourceful than either the surgeon or his financier expected...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, December 1938.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novella category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of H L Gold.

Robert E Howard's "Pigeons From Hell" (novelette, haunted house, free)

While I'm not a fan of haunted house tales, & the first of its 3 parts did bore me a bit, the later parts were generally quite readable.

Story summary.

An abandoned house in the US South is haunted by a "zuvembie", a "zuvembie" created by black voodoo in revenge for serious maltreatment of a "mulatto" maid by a former slave owner. Now the zuvembie targets whatever hapless human happens by the place, killing the victim. A lucky escaped victim & a policeman will join hands to kill the zuvembie.

Fact sheet.

First published: Weird Tales, May 1938.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg of Australia.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novelette category.
Related: Stories of Robert E Howard.

Lester Del Rey's "The Faithful" (short story, doomsday, free)

Uplifted dogs are taking over the civilization, as the last of the Man is dying following a war & then a plague...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, April 1938.
Download full text from Chomikuj.pl (badly formatted HTML; I'd to edit it in a text editor on PC discarding entire HTML header & footer, & saving it as TXT file, before it would read correctly in Moon+ Reader on my tablet).
Rating: B.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in short story category.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Lester del Rey.

Pierre Barbet's "A Problem in Bionics" (short story, detective)

A group of scientists are working on a bunch of green technologies inspired by the workings of animals & insects. To get noticed by a wider audience, they move to live on an island using only the green tech - no petroleum, no CO2, ... The idea is to demonstrate that living in an environmentally sane way is possible.

But a thief among them has been selling the technology to unscrupulous elements outside, who intend to patent them; hence hinder their widespread adoption.

So a detective is hired to catch the thief...

Notes.

I'm not convinced of the ending. I've never seen a microfilm, but can you attach one to a wing of a butterfly & have the poor thing still fly?

Collected in.

1. Donald A Wollheim (ed)'s "The Best from the Rest of the World: European Science Fiction".

Fact sheet.

First published: Horizons du Fantastique (French), sometime in 1974. This post is based on an English translation by Stanley Hochman included in Wollheim's anthology.
Rating: B.

John R Pierce's "Period Piece" (as by J J Coupling) (short story)

A modern man finds himself in 31st century, with no recollection of how he got there. He's being treated very well & kindly, but he's smelling something fishy - why's is no one curious about the period he's come from, not even an eminent historian?

Very curious & unexpected ending.

Collected in.

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

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, November 1948.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of John R Pierce.

Martin Gardner's "Thang" (flash fiction, free): Big fish eats smaller one; & is food to bigger one

This is a very minor story, though apparently a well known one.

A giant, cosmic scale creature called Thang eats up earth for breakfast! And then gets eaten up by something even bigger.

Collected in.

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

Fact sheet.

First published: 1948. ("for his college literary magazine").
Download full text.
Rating: C.

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" (short story, horror, free)

This is not science fiction. It's creepy horror. A mad man is telling us how he murdered an old man because the victim had blue eyes of a vulture!

Fact sheet.

First published: 1843.
Download full text.
Download MP3 from Internet Archive.
See a movie adaptation at YouTube.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Edgar Allan Poe; from 19th century.

Isaac Asimov's "No Connection" (short story, puzzle, free)

Millions of years into future, man is long extinct. The world has two dominant intelligent races:

1. Americas dominated with "Gurrows", intelligent descendents of bears;
2. Rest of the world dominated by "Eekahs", intelligent descendents of chimpanzees.

Eekahs are far more technologically advanced, are aware that Americas are sparsely populated, & are planning raids to claim that land.

This is the story from the point of view of a Gurrow archeologist who knows a bit about the long extinct man (the "Primate Primeval"). And of his seriously incomplete piecing together of the history of the continent & what lays ahead as they come into more frequent contact with Eekahs...

Collected in.

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

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, June 1948.
Download full text from AlfaLib.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Isaac Asimov.

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.

Everett F Bleiler & T E Dikty (eds)' "The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949" (anthology): Annotatated table of contents & review

According to Wikipedia, "It was the first published anthology to present the best science fiction stories for a given year. The stories had originally appeared in 1948 in the magazines".

Several well known classics here. I seem to have read several of these years back; currently reading just the half dozen unread ones.

Table of contents.

1. [ss] Ray Bradbury's "Mars is Heaven!" (A); download radio adaptation; Planet Stories, Fall 1948.
2. [novelette] Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "Ex Machina" (as by Lewis Padgett); Astounding, April 1948: One of the funny Galleghar stories. I read it long back; don't recollect much now.
3. [ss] Murray Leinster's "The Strange Case of John Kingman" (A); Astounding, May 1948: First contact, but no space ships, no space travel, not even any obvious aliens...
4. [ss] Erik Fennel's "Doughnut Jockey"; Blue Book, May 1948: Don't recollect anything now.
5. [ss] Martin Gardner's "Thang" (C); download: Big fish eats smaller one; & is food to even bigger one...
6. [ss] John R Pierce's "Period Piece" (as by J J Coupling) (A); Astounding, November 1948: A modern man in 31st century makes a curious discovery.
7. [ss] Fredric Brown's "Knock" (A); download text/radio adaptation; Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1948: A smart man reclaims earth from invincible aliens.
8. [novelette] Poul Anderson's "Genius" (B); download radio adaptation; Astounding, December 1948: When lab "animals" were observing their experimenters...
9. [novelette] Ray Bradbury's "And the Moon be Still as Bright" (A); download radio adaptation; Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1948: Some Mars colonists are feeling guilty...
10. [ss] Isaac Asimov's "No Connection"; download; Astounding, June 1948: Planning a second taking of Americas, from across the pond...
11. [novelette] Wilmar H Shiras' "In Hiding" (A); Astounding, November 1948: A young boy who's "different" is forced to conform...
12. [novelette] Henry Kuttner's "Happy Ending" (A); Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1948; humor: When a man got what he "desired"!

Fact sheet.

First published: 1949.
Related: Works of Everett F Bleiler; anothologies & collections; fiction from 1940s.

Fredric Brown's "Knock" (short story, alien invasion, free)

Going by the comments online, it appears to be among the better known stories of Brown. Not a very believable conclusion, but light fun read.

Story summary.

Aliens called "Zan" have raided earth. They took a few hundred animal specimen alive - among them a man & a woman, & killed off all other life on earth. These specimen, including the humans, have now been put as exhibits in a zoo on earth, & this advanced raiding party of aliens is preparing to claim earth as permanent residence.

The man will pull off a coup of sorts, scaring aliens enough with his
ingenuity to make them leave earth...

Collected in.

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

Fact sheet.

First published: Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1948.
Download full text.
Download audio of X Minus One radio adaptation of this story from Internet Archive. (alt MP3 link)
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Fredric Brown.

Donald B Day's "Jaephus" (short story, humor, free)

Adventures of a man with a "lobbly" named Jaephus - a naughty invisible, presumably intelligent, creature with wings, tentacles & other unusual anatomical features.

Fact sheet.

First published: Fanscient, Fall 1948.
Download full text as part of the magazine it originally appeared in, or read online as HTML.
Rating: B.

Henry Kuttner's "Extrapolation" (short story, satire, free): Science fiction vs fantasy wars in fandom

Author tells us why there won't be any science fiction or fantasy magazines after 1958, a decade after this story was published.

He's using some sort of prescience to find this, but no details are given. And there is suggestion it's not humans doing the editing in 1958, just before the end of the genre.

Fact sheet.

First published: Fanscient, Fall 1948.
Download full text as part of the magazine it originally appeared in, or read online as HTML.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner.

"Fanscient", Fall 1948 (ed Donald B Day) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

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

Table of contents (best first).

1. [ss] Henry Kuttner's "Extrapolation" (B); satire: Science fiction vs fantasy wars in fandom.
2. [ss] Donald B Day's "Jaephus" (B); humor.
3. [ss] Miles Eaton's "The Watcher in the Snow" (C); fantasy: Snowclad approach to a beautiful & mysterious city is infested with ferocious & strange "beasts", with upper part human female & lower part a giant centipede.

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol 2 No 3 (Whole No 5)".
Download scans as a cbz file or pdf. (I haven't tried pdf) [via judgemagney@pbscans]
Or read online as HTML.
Related: Fiction from 1940s; old pulps.

Kurt Vonnegut's "While Mortals Sleep" (short story, Christmas, non-genre)

This is light hearted christmas story of a newspaper editor obsessed with his work & uninterested in fun things like christmas celebrations.

Circumstances put him on a committee that will judge the town's Annual Christmas Outdoor Lighting Contest. So we'll see him turning the job into a news making exercise...

Title comes from a Christmas song in the story (I don't know if the song is real or imaginary):
  For Christ is born of Mary,
  And gathered all above,
  While mortals sleep, the angels keep
  Their watch of wondering love.

Fact sheet.

First published: Kurt Vonnegut's "While Mortals Sleep: Unpublished Short Fiction" (2011).
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Kurt Vonnegut.

Alec Nevala-Lee's "The Whale God" (novelette): Subaudible sound as a military weapon

Main idea has been used in fiction for decades: sounds with frequency below the human hearing threshold, while inaudible, still make people uncomfortable.

Here, US military is testing it during Vietnam War as a possible weapon. Only problem is: they're using it off a ship, & targeting the sound at coast. Not only are a lot of non-combatants affected, it's also affecting the whales in the ocean.

In fact, much of the story is about attempts to refloat whales that wash ashore as a result of their senses getting confused because of these subvocal sounds.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, September 2013.
Rating: B. 
Related: Stories of Alec Nevala-Lee.

Kenneth Schneyer's "Life of the Author Plus Seventy" (short story, humor): Legal implications of human hibernation

Three major themes here, often told in a hilarious way:

1. Customer service dysfunction.
2. A parody of US copyright law, particularly w.r.t. Disney case.
3. Legal implications of human hibernation.

Story summary.

A not very successful author has a novel published but it's not selling much. He bugs local library enough to make them buy a copy, but no one is borrowing it. So he himself borrows it, but forgets to return it.

He'll later get a job with a company in a creative role, & is made to sign a curiously twisted copyright clause in the employment contract that gives the company the copyright over his creations for hundreds of years rather than "just" 120 years: when he's about to die, the company will have a right to hibernate him for up to 500 years, so copyright rule of author's life + 70 years applies!

A decade after borrowing the book, library has handed over the overdue & fines collection to a debt collection agency, & he receives his first overdue & fines bill - a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Hilarity ensues as he gets into negotiations with the debt collector, & later tries evading it...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, September 2013.
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2013" list.

"Analog Science Fiction and Fact", September 2013 (ed Trevor Quachri) (magazine): Annotated table of contents & review

Links on author fetch more fiction of author. My rating is in brackets.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [ss] Kenneth Schneyer's "Life of the Author Plus Seventy" (A); humor: Legal implications of human hibernation... 
2. [novelette] Alec Nevala-Lee's "The Whale God" (B): Using subaudible sounds as a military weapon.
3. [ss] Joe Pitkin's "Full Fathom Five" (B): A woman astronaut alone in a submarine with a local creature at the bottom of the ice covered ocean of Europa. A creature that is very alien & has very peculiar way of communicating.
   
   This might have been a ok story but author unnecessarily kills off rest of the crew to create some forced sentimentality.
   
   Some reviewers see symbolism here: alien looks like a giant penis that has emissions at nights, emissions that follow dreams of the woman!
4. [ff] Arlan Andrews, Sr's "Wreck Support" (B); humor: An English translation of an ancient Greek scroll, signed by "Alexandros of Macedonia", complaining about a recently discovered but ancient mechanical geared computer he had brought. Alexander had apparently brought it to aid in his invasions, & but it kept throwing up things like "File not found" & "Insufficient memory"!
5. [ss] Liz J Andersen's "Creatures from a Blue Lagoon" (B); humor: Adventures of a human veterinary student, in a multi-species space federation, treating an alien "cow".
   
   Easy read but mostly nonsense.
6. [novella] Martin L Shoemaker's "Murder on the Aldrin Express": Not read.
7. [novelette] Lavie Tithar's "The Oracle": Not read.

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol CXXXIII No 9".
Related: Stories from Analog (whole issues only); fiction from 2010s.

Alice Sheldon's "The Man Who Walked Home" (as by James Tiptree, Jr) (short story, post apocalypse, free)

Apocalypse here results as a side effect of a time travel experiment. While I found the time travel part positively incomprehensible & boring, the rest of it is very readable - a dead world in the process of rebuilding itself.

Story summary.

At the site of the time travel experiment, there was an explosion, a crater, & the side effects that killed much life of earth. But there is also a curious physical phenomenon that is a side effect of original experiment: once a day, every year, at the same time, at a place in the original crater, a "monster" appears for a few seconds - a monster that appears to be moving but is not, it leaves bad smell after it's gone, & any attempt to touch it tends to cost you your limbs.

Story is mostly a view of this curious phenomenon, & eventually an explanation, from the point of view of sundry people who'll watch it over the centuries as the dead place keeps slowly getting inhabited.

Fact sheet.

First published: Amazing Science Fiction, November 1972.
Download full text from Baen eBooks.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Alice Sheldon (as by James Tiptree, Jr).

Fritz Leiber's "The Bleak Shore" (short story, fantasy, free)

My first story from author's famous "Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser" series. And I'll say a disappointing introduction to the series.

Story summary.

In a world not yet well explored, two adventurer friends - Fafhrd & Mouser - have a reputation of defying death in difficult situations. And suddenly a curse is placed on them - to sail to a far off "Bleak Shore", where we'll witness a scene that will be filmed decades later in "Godzilla": the two are in the midst of hatching reptilian monster eggs...

Of course, there will be happy ending for our heroes.

Fact sheet.

First published: Unknown, November 1940.
Download full text from Baen eBooks.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Fritz Leiber.

Frederik Pohl's "The Kindly Isle" (short story, biological weapons, free)

A government agency in cold war era US is building biological weapons for possible use against Russians. One of its researchers has developed a virus that affects a part of the brain that's supposed to drive the infected person nuts, only the effect is a bit different - it makes the infected person irritable & nasty. On the day of his triumph, the scientist vanishes with all the data - so the government no longer has the weapon.

Years later, a colleague sights the scientist on an idle isle, & suspects he has been testing the virus for selling to highest bidder. But subsequent investigation with throw up a completely different direction of his research...

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, November 1984.
Download full text from Baen eBooks.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Frederik Pohl.

Jack Vance's "Worlds of Origin" aka "Coup de Grace" (short story, murder mystery)

This is classic Vance - the kind of stories he's best remembered for. Very colorful.

Story summary.

In a private space station somewhere far away where men & aliens of many worlds pass through, a man has been murdered.

Ace detective Magnus Ridolph will help the station owner solve the crime. In the process, we meet many suspects of very colorful background each of which could have had a story dedicated to its own culture & customs.

Fact sheet.

First published: Super-Science Fiction, February 1958.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Jack Vance.

"Astounding Science Fiction", November 1943 (ed John W Campbell, Jr) (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. For read stories, my rating appears in brackets.

Table of contents.

1. [novelette] George O Smith's "Recoil": "The near impossibility of hitting a spaceship with a shell has been discussed. But even an electron gun would, curiously, tend to defeat itself! The weapon protects the target!"
2. [novelette] A E van Vogt's "The Beast": "Given time, even a fumblewitted Neanderthal could learn to be sly & deadly opponent. And The Beast had time--& was master over a long forgotten power--"
3. [novelette] Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "Gallegher Plus" (as by Lewis Padgett) (A); humor: "Galleger, as usual, was in  a jam. It wasn't his fault; It was due to Galleger-Plus, the highly successful, if sufficiently high!--other self."
4. [ss] Isaac Asimov's "Death Sentence": "Our psychologists of today have set up colonies of monkeys & other animals as experiments. On a larger scale, with larger means, a greater experiment could be undertaken--"
5. [ss] Murray Leinster's "--If You Can Get It": "The formula was was wonderful, & worked every time--unless someone said it couldn't! And working in that world was nice work--"

Fact sheet.

Labeled: "Vol XXXII No 3".
Download scans as a cbr file. [via David T @pulpscans]
Related: Stories from Astounding/Analog (only issues edited by John Campbell) (whole issues only); old "pulps"; 1940s.

Benjamin Rosenbaum's "Feature Development for Social Networking" (short story, free): A look at trending on social networks

This looks at trending on a social network when a new hot topic presents itself - from the point of view of both the users of it & of the software developers maintaining it. Hot topic in question is a new fast spreading contagious disease.

Fact sheet.

First published: Tor.com, 13 November 2013.
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Benjamin Rosenbaum.

Paul Di Filippo's "Wavehitcher" (flash fiction, free): Swimming solo safely in open ocean for several weeks

When I was in low teens & just started taking bicycle some distance from home, a favorite sport among the peers used to be to catch the chain at the back of one of the passing trucks with one hand, & hitch a ride without paddling. Sounds dangerous today, but at that age it was fun.

This story is a more science fictional & hi-tech hitching a ride of a similar nature.

Story summary.

A US coast guard vessel has discovered a suspicious "wavehitcher", a man hitching a free ride on an unmanned marine research robot vessel. When they catch him & get his reason for being where no one should be, it gave me a smile.

Fact sheet.

First published: Nature, 10 October 2013.
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Paul Di Filippo.

Ronald D Ferguson's "The meaning of life" (flash fiction, free)

It begins very well - with interesting illustrations of the idea that the ultimate purpose of life is ... to move stuff from here to there. But later parts become a bit too far fetched.

Fact sheet.

First published: Nature, 17 October 2013.
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: B.

Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "Dream's End" (short story, recursive dreaming, free)

It has at least one episode of recursive dreaming - dream within a dream. I'm not sure of the other episodes - they're either independent hallucinations, or even deeper dream in a dream in a dream...

I'll put it among the less interesting stories of authors.

Story summary.

A doctor in a sanatorium has found what he thinks is a cure for most forms of insanity - what he call "empathy surrogate therapy". It involves a device whose electrodes are put on the head of the sane doctor & of insane patient. And something happens involving empathy. Only the first experiment seems to have gone seriously wrong - for the doctor, at least...

See also.

1. Henry Kuttner's "All is Illusion" (read online): A much better story about dreaming.

Fact sheet.

First published: Startling Stories, March 1947.
Read online at UNZ.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner, C L Moore.

Brian Clegg's "Quis custodiet?" (flash fiction, humor, free)

Is human mind ever satisfied? Here we see some unusual & funny political discontent against the "perfect dictatorship"...

See also.

1. Robert Heinlein's "Coventry": While the details are different, political discontent of protagonist is similar.

Fact sheet.

First published: Nature, 3 October 2013.
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2013" list.

Alice Munro's "The Stone in the Field" (novelette, non-genre)

This is a sequel to author's "Connection". In "Connection", we meet the girl's several single aunts on the maternal side; here we meet her several single aunts on father's site. While the maternal aunts are outgoing, paternal ones live too much in their own world. In fact, the central theme in this story seems to the extreme to which some people go to protect themselves in a constantly changing, & hence threatening, world.

Collected in.

1. Alice Munro's "The Moons of Jupiter".

Fact sheet.

First published: Saturday Night, sometime in 1979.
Rating: A. 
Related: Stories of Alice Munro.

Alice Munro's "Connection" (novelette, non-genre)

This is mostly colorful character portraits - her mother & mother's several single cousin sisters, seen from the eyes of a girl.

One theme keeps recurring through the story - how we go about protecting our sense of pride. Some very common situations, but we all seem to engage in this behavior.

Collected in.

1. Alice Munro's "The Moons of Jupiter".

Fact sheet.

First published: Chatelaine, sometime in 1979.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Alice Munro.

Alice Munro's "The Moons of Jupiter" (collection): Annotated table of contents & review

I think it's a non-genre collection, in spite of the title. Mostly excellent stuff, going by what little I've read.

Two stories - "Connection" & "The Stone in the Field" - are part of a series called "Chaddeleys & Flemings". While independent, they're best read in that order.

Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there.

Table of contents.

1. [novelette] "Connection" (A); Chatelaine, sometime in 1979: On how we protect our pride...
2. [novelette] "The Stone in the Field" (A); Saturday Night, sometime in 1979: Protecting yourself from a hostile world, by hiding in a shell...
3. "Dulse": Not read.
4. "The Turkey Season": Not read.
5. "Accident": Not read.
6. "Bardon Bus": Not read.
7. "Prue": Not read.
8. "Labor Day Dinner": Not read.
9. "Mrs Cross & Mrs Kidd": Not read.
10. "Hard-Luck Stories": Not read.
11. "Visitors": Not read.
12. [ss] "The Moons of Jupiter" (A); The New Yorker, 22 May 1978: A woman's relationship with her dad who's about to undergo heart surgery, & with her two grown up daughters.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1982.
Related: Stories of Alice Munro.

Half a dozen new entries in

Astounding, July 1942 post. Nearly all of them forgettable ones.

Going by experience of several issues now, flash fiction in Astounding, as a rule, appears to be very weak.

David V Reed's "Penance Cruise" (novella, adventure, humor, free)

Two young soldiers, off duty & drunk in an alien land, misbehave with local high officials. Resulting court martial hands them a sentence to go on a mission under a witless local official - a mission to catch a dangerous brigand. This is the funny story of their adventure to catch the brigand.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Analog/Astounding issues edited by John Campbell.

Henry Kuttner & C L Moore's "The Dark Angel" (short story, superman, free)

What happens when one member of a couple is a prodigy? In this case, the wife is superhuman - first of the new species of homo superior. Story is about the reactions of the couple to this realization.

Fact sheet.

First published: Startling Stories, March 1946.
Read online at UNZ: part 1 & part 2.
Note: Story begins several pages down on part 1; last page of part 1 is the same as first page of part 2.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner, C L Moore.

"Astounding Science Fiction", July 1955 (ed John W Campbell, Jr) (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Most, but not all, stories here are the same as those in Astounding (British ed), December 1955. Even the cover is the same.

Where I've a separate post on a story, link on its title goes there. For read stories, my rating appears in brackets. Links on authors fetch more works of author.

Table of contents.

1. [novelette] 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 the goals you think..."
2. [novelette] 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? 
3. [novelette] Frank Herbert's "Rat Race" (A): Rats are to men as men are to...
4. [ss] Robert Sheckley's "Earth, Air, Fire and Water": "The best way to use anything is the way it will do you the most good in the situation you happen to be in. Sometimes that's not all the way it was intended to be used..."
5. [ss] Eric Frank Russell's "Tieline" (as by Duncan H Munro) (B): "When you've got to put a lone man on a beacon-operator job, ten dozen solar syatems away from any other human--he needs an emotional tieline to Earth. But finding one isn't always easy."
6. [serial - part 4/4] 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 LV No 5".
Download scans as a cbr file. [via Alexander@pbscans]
Note: Download link points to a rar file that needs to be renamed cbr.
Related: Stories from Analog/Astounding (whole issues only) (only issues edited by John Campbell); old "pulps"; 1950s.

Clifford D Simak's "Tools" (novelette, free): Introducing very weird radioactive gaseous aliens

Key parts of this story involve Radon-222 gas, a natural radioactive decay product of radium, & the biggest cause of lung cancer among non smokers on earth. It also is the heaviest gas on earth, though its own decay products aren't gaseous. It's highly toxic.

Story summary.

Humans have been mining radium on Venus, where it's available in vast quantities. It's a key source of energy, & this mining business is a monopoly of Radium, Inc.

Someone discovered strange life-like properties in radon gas found there. In a lab, they've succeed, via special electrical sensors, to communicate with a bottled concentration of it. They've robotic mining devices whose brains are small confined concentrations of gas.

When the bottled gas intelligence in lab that has learned a lot about the human civilization leaks, gas all across Venus learns the things we know. So we have an adventure fighting an elusive omnipresent alien with completely unfamiliar thought processes.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Analog/Astounding issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Clifford D Simak.

Alice Munro's "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" (novelette, senility, non-genre, free)

It's a decently readable story, but I find the subject of senility depressing.

Story summary.

An old woman who's losing her wits is put in some kind of old age care home by her husband of 50 years. It's mostly about his depressing visits to see her periodically, her growing fondness for another man at the place, & the complicated relations that develop between the two couples.

Fact sheet.

First published: The New Yorker, 27 December 1999.
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Alice Munro.

Couple of minor stories from two magazines

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

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

Malcolm Jameson's "Brimstone Bill" (novelette, humor, free): Crooks are useful too!

A part of the story deals with sound engineering - how high frequency, inaudible, sounds affect us. I've no idea if there is any truth in that part.

Story summary.

A corrupt politician in high office collects protection money from a little world called Juno in asteroid belt. He maneuvers a spaceship returning home, with a lot of unspent sailors' salary, to land here for hull cleaning, a process that will ground the ship for a month, giving town ample time to clean the purses of the crew.

But ship captain has a weapon up his sleeve...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Analog/Astounding issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of Malcolm Jameson.

A E van Vogt's "Secret Unattainable" (novella, teleporting gadget, free)

This is van Vogt at his best. Far off concept, but very entertaining story.

Story summary.

Early in the beginning of WWII, a great German scientist is working on a cool gadget: you "focus" it anywhere in the universe, &, through an "orifice" that is part of the gadget, you can directly reach that location.

1. Want crude? Focus it inside an oil well anywhere, & help yourself!
2. Want to attack London? Focus it on someplace in the city you want your tanks in, & just drive through the "orifice"!
3. Want to put an enemy ship out of action at sea? Just drain its fuel tank!
4. ...

Scientist comes to the notice of establishment. Establishment wants his gadget, but the man cannot be trusted - his brother was executed by Nazis for political reasons sometime back. So they get him working on the gadget under careful watch, & arrest him as soon as the gadget is finished. Only the gadget is not going to do them any good, because the scientist indeed was using it as a tool for revenge...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, July 1942.
Download full text as part of the scans of the magazine it originally appeared in.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Analog/Astounding issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of A E van Vogt.

Henry Kuttner's "Sword of Tomorrow" (novella, adventure, free)

This is a complicated & very pulpish adventure in far future.

Story summary.

A US soldier is a prisoner of war of Japan near the end of WWII, held captive somewhere in China. From a fellow prisoner, he learns Tibetan "self-hypnotism", & goes into hibernation to avoid questioning.

War ends. A bombing raid destroyed his prison, & entombed him. No one finds him. There he lay hibernating for eons.

Eventually, he wakes into a future where continents don't look familiar & stars aren't familiar. Humans have since fallen to savagery, & again built a civilization, but historical trauma has made it impossible for them to conceive weapons, though they can build all other kinds of gadgets.

A would be dictator would see an opportunity when our hero comes into his time...

Fact sheet.

First published: Thrilling Wonder Stories, September 1945.
Read online at UNZ. Or download HTML from Arthur's Bookshelf or BookReader.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Henry Kuttner.