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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.