Tuesday, January 31, 2012

James H Schmitz's "The Hub: Dangerous Territory" (ed Eric Flint) (collection, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Cover image of fiction collection The Hub, Dangerous Territory by James H Schmitz, edited by Eric Flint. Image shows a scene from the novel The Demon Breed - heroine with her two otter helpers, planning next action against invading aliens.
Whole book is online at Baen Books. Includes one novel & nine short stories.

Table of contents (10 stories, best first).

  1. [novel] "The Demon Breed" aka "The Tuvela" (A); download; Analog, September/October 1968: Humanity has secret super-human rulers!
  2. [novelette] "Grandpa" (A); download; Analog, February 1955: A group of early explorers on a newly opened world is trapped by a local lifeform. Only the ingenuity of our teenage hero can save the group's life...
  3. [novelette] "Trouble Tide" (A); download; Analog, May 1965: Detectives burst a smuggling operation.
  4. [novella] "The Searcher" (B); download; Analog, February 1966: Human heroes fight off an evil alien.
  5. [ss] "Balanced Ecology" (B); download; Analog, March 1965: A jungle world knows how to defend itself against greedy humans.
  6. "The Other Likeness" (B); download; Analog, July 1962: A small band of humans thinks redesigned, human-looking, aliens have penetrated the human worlds - to destroy the human civilization. So they're doing what they can to catch the aliens...
  7. "Attitudes" (B); download; F&SF, February 1969: Sole survivor of an accidentally destroyed human world has has come to civilization seeking help - he's carrying brain dumps of a lot of his dead compatriots. He wants Federation to supply him with many artificially created human bodies which he will animate with his dead friends. He also wants help colonizing a new world with this crowd. Federation helps, but someone is wondering...
  8. "The Machmen" (B); download; Analog, September 1964: "Machmen" are machine-men, some medically-induced transformation that turns them into "Homo
    Superior". Only, it's illegal & unsafe. One of the would-be victims being chased for forcible transformation into machman turns out to be someone more capable than strongmen expected.
  9. [novelette] "The Winds of Time" (B); download; Analog, September 1962: A man & a woman are trapped, kidnapped, & ... harassed ... by ... aliens.
  10. [ss] "A Nice Day for Screaming" (B); download; Analog, January 1965: One of the early exploration ships in "pseudospace", a kind of parallel space, is chased by ... something.
Related: Stories of James H Schmitz.

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