Fiction

In the near future from a 1950’s perspective, the first space station, in orbit around the Earth, gets knocked out of orbit due to pilot miscalculation. The subsequent disaster, with shuttle and space station crash landing near San Francisco, creates a public furor calling for the end of the space program. General Oglethorpe, the earth side base commander in charge of the space program, recruits Dr. Paul Medick, an expert in psychology and psychometrics, to head a new project: to eliminate human error. Oglethorpe is certain that men can be made to be more mechanical, operating with the same reliability of the machines which they operate.

Rick Raphael (1919-1994) was a US writer and journalist who began publishing sci-fi with "A Filbert is a Nut" for Astounding in November 1959 and established a considerable reputation in the field with a comparatively small output of about ten stories, most of them assembled in The Thirst Quenchers (coll 1965) and Code Three (fixup 1966).

He began by breaking things that morning. He broke the glass of water on his night stand. He knocked it crazily against the opposite wall and shattered it. Yet it shattered slowly. This would have surprised him if he had been fully awake, for he had only reached out sleepily for it. Nor had he wakened regularly to his alarm; he had wakened to a weird, slow, low booming, yet the clock said six, time for the alarm.

Sometimes an organizational setup grows, sets its ways, and becomes so traditional that once-necessary jobs become unnecessary.

In a parallel universe, on the other side of the sun from the Earth, is planet Tarth, where the great wars are fought between its inhabitants.

One way to hide an ex-officio agency of the United States Government was to label it truthfully -- The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research.

How could a man tell the difference if all the reality of Earth turned out to be a cosmic hoax? Suppose it turned out that this was just a stage set for students of history?

Dr. Joachim sat in the small room behind his reception hall and held his fingers poised above the keys of the rather creaky electrotyper on his desk. The hands seemed to hang there, long, slender, and pale, like two gulls frozen suddenly in their long swoop towards some precious tidbit floating on the writhing sea beneath, ready to begin their drop instantly, as soon as time began again.

No, I'm not the guy who tested the McGuire. I'm the guy who stole it. The "McQuire" is the MG-YR-7, a new kind of starship. It's supposed to be artificially intelligent, but it's AI unit has crashed six times, hence the "7."

Gordon Randall Garrett was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He wrote many stories for Astounding and other science fiction magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. He taught Robert Silverberg the techniques of selling large quantities of action-adventure science fiction, and collaborated with him on two novels about Earth bringing civilization to an alien planet. Garrett wrote under a variety of pseudonyms including: David Gordon, John Gordon, Darrel T. Langart, Alexander Blade, Richard Greer, and Ivar Jorgensen. He was also a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, as "Randall of Hightower.”. The short novel Brain Twister, written by Garrett in conjunction with his friend Laurence Janiferr was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1960.

Utopia had been reached. All the problems of mankind had been solved. It was the perfect State. If you doubted it, you died.

The Harn first came to the Warden's attention through its effect on the game population of an area in World 7 of the Warden's sector. A natural ecology was being maintained on World 7 as a control for experimental seedings of intelligent life-forms in other similar worlds.

Rafael Sabatini (1875 - 1950) was an Italian/English writer of novels of romance and adventure. Sabatini was born in Italy, to an English mother and Italian father - both opera singers.

First published in 1931, this new edition is now available.

At the turn of the 20th century, Richard Austin Freeman (1862-1943) emerged as an author to be reckoned with in the world of detective fiction, introducing the highly memorable scientific detective Dr. Thorndyke, an early forensic sleuth.

Short stories of crime and mystery involving Dr. Thorndyke, the "Scientific Investigator." This also happens to be the book where Austin Freeman claimed to have created the inverted detective story or "howcatchem.

We have said that there are many and strange shadows, memories surviving from dim pasts, in this FANTASTIC UNIVERSE of ours.