Best of
Science-Fiction
1953
The Foundation Trilogy
Isaac Asimov - 1953
As the Old Empire crumbles into barbarism throughout the million worlds of the galaxy, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists must create a new entity, the Foundation-dedicated to art, science, and technology-as the beginning of a new empire. FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE describes the mighty struggle for power amid the chaos of the stars in which man stands at the threshold of a new enlightened life which could easily be destroyed by the old forces of barbarism. SECOND FOUNDATION follows the Seldon Plan after the First Empire's defeat and describes its greatest threat-a dangerous mutant strain gone wild, which produces a mind capable of bending men's wills, directing their thoughts, reshaping their desires, and destroying the universe.
The Martian Chronicles / The Illustrated Man / The Golden Apples of the Sun
Ray Bradbury - 1953
This giant omnibus volume collects three major works by this genre titan: The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and The Golden Apples of the Sun. It would be nearly impossible to identify three works more central to sci-fi than this trio.
The Caves of Steel
Isaac Asimov - 1953
Isaac Asimov's Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together. Like most people left behind on an over-populated Earth, New York City police detective Elijah Baley had little love for either the arrogant Spacers or their robotic companions. But when a prominent Spacer is murdered under mysterious circumstances, Baley is ordered to the Outer Worlds to help track down the killer. The relationship between Life and his Spacer superiors, who distrusted all Earthmen, was strained from the start. Then he learned that they had assigned him a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw. Worst of all was that the "R" stood for robot--and his positronic partner was made in the image and likeness of the murder victim!
The Robot Novels: The Caves of Steel / The Naked Sun
Isaac Asimov - 1953
(The first book in the series is the collection of short stories I, Robot or the expanded collection The Complete Robot.)
Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke - 1953
Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began.But at what cost? With the advent of peace, man ceases to strive for creative greatness, and a malaise settles over the human race. To those who resist, it becomes evident that the Overlords have an agenda of their own. As civilization approaches the crossroads, will the Overlords spell the end for humankind . . . or the beginning?
Untouched By Human Hands
Robert Sheckley - 1953
(1st serialized in Galaxy, '58)."The Monsters" (F&SF 1953/3) "Cost of Living" (Galaxy 1952/12) "The Altar" (Fantastic 1953/7&8) "Keep Your Shape" (Galaxy 1953/11; aka Shape) "The Impacted Man" (Astounding 1952/12) "Untouched by Human Hands" (Galaxy 1953/12; aka One Man's Poison) "The King's Wishes" (F&SF 1953/7) "Warm" (Galaxy 1953/6) "The Demons" (Fantasy Magazine 1953/3) "Specialist" (Galaxy 1953/5) "Seventh Victim" (Galaxy 1953/4--later expanded"Ritual" (Climax 1953; aka Strange Ritual) "Beside Still Waters" (Amazing 1953/10&11)
The Golden Apples of the Sun
Ray Bradbury - 1953
He saw the skin peel from the rocket beehive, men thus revealed running, running, mouths shrieking, soundless. Space was a black mossed well where life drowned its roars and terrors. Scream a big scream, but space snuffed it out before it was half up your throat. Men scurried, ants in a flaming matchbox; the ship was dripping lava, gushing steam, nothing!Journey with the century's most popular fantasy writer into a world of wonder and horror beyond your wildest dreams.Contents:- The Fog Horn (1951)- The Pedestrian (1951)- The April Witch (1952)- The Wilderness (1952)- The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl (1948)- Invisible Boy (1945)- The Flying Machine (1953)- The Murderer (1953)- The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind (1953)- I See You Never (1947)- Embroidery (1951)- The Big Black and White Game (1945)- A Sound of Thunder (1952)- The Great Wide World Over There (1952)- Powerhouse (1948)- En la Noche (1952)- Sun and Shadow (1953)- The Meadow (1953)- The Garbage Collector (1953)- The Great Fire (1949)- Hail and Farewell (1953)- The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
Four Frontiers
Robert A. Heinlein - 1953
Of course it's not so simple: there are rivals and red tape to overcome, and a totally unexpected and possibly lethal -- surprise waiting for them when they get there. Matt Dodson has heroic dreams of joining Space Patrol, so he becomes a Space Cadet and embarks on the long and difficult training that will show if he can do the job. His mettle is tested to the utmost when, on his first training flight he finds himself in the midst of an interplanetary crisis. Jim Marlowe grew up on the Red Planet, and when he's sent off to boarding school at Syrtis Major, he insists on taking his Martian pet with him. He doesn't anticipate how much trouble friendly little Willis will get him into -- and how paradoxically lucky that will turn out to be. Bill Lerner can't wait to leave an overcrowded Earth and become a Farmer in the Sky on Ganymede. He thinks he's ready for hard work and hardship -- but he has no idea what it will mean when things go wrong and the nearest help is four hundred million miles away!Includes:- Rocket Ship Galileo- Space cadet- Red planet- Farmer in the sky
Watchbird
Robert Sheckley - 1953
The idea is peace on Earth, see, and the way to do it is by figuring out angles.
E Pluribus Unicorn
Theodore Sturgeon - 1953
Contents:· The Silken-Swift · nv F&SF Nov ’53 · The Professor’s Teddy-Bear · ss Weird Tales Mar ’48 · Bianca’s Hands · ss Argosy (UK) May ’47 · Saucer of Loneliness · ss Galaxy Feb ’53 · The World Well Lost · ss Universe Jun ’53 · It Wasn’t Syzygy [“The Deadly Ratio”] · nv Weird Tales Jan ’48 · The Music · vi * · Scars · ss Zane Grey’s Western Magazine May ’49 · Fluffy · ss Weird Tales Mar ’47 · The Sex Opposite · nv Fantastic Fll ’52 · Die, Maestro, Die! · nv Dime Detective Magazine May ’49 · Cellmate · ss Weird Tales Jan ’47 · A Way of Thinking · nv Amazing Oct/Nov ’53
The Moon Moth
Jack Vance - 1953
It has also appeared in Jack Vance's collections The World Between and Other Stories (1965), The Worlds of Jack Vance (1973), The Moon Moth and Other Stories (1976), The Best of Jack Vance (1976), Green Magic (1979), Coup de Grace and Other Stories (2001), and The Jack Vance Treasury (2007).
Unready to Wear (The Galaxy Project)
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 1953
Vonnegut’s absolute familiarity with science fiction tropes and his mocking contempt for them are well displayed in a story which shifts between tragic cartoon and straightforward projection. His highly evolved humans in an indeterminate future have become body-transcending spirits and Vonnegut handles this vaporous situation with deadpan comedy suspended over unspeakable loss, a characteristic technique. In its fluidity--the story is parody masked as extrapolation; no, it is a horror story in the form of a parody. This kind of cross-category narrative attack was often used by Vonnegut and makes him difficult to label; he is too serious to be funny, too absurd (as in jailbreak or as in the concept of Billy Pilgrim’s alien Tralmalfadorians) to be taken as realism. Vonnegut when he wrote this story at 30 was still trying to find his voice, identify his material; as a laboratory of his enveloping subject matter and technique UNREADY TO WEAR is particularly interesting and disturbing, demonstrating that Vonnegut could have gone in any number of directions and perhaps by deliberately failing to make a decision, found his voice through indeterminacy. It is as a poet of indeterminacy then that Vonnegut went on to write his most famous novel, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE.ABOUT THE AUTHORKurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) is one of the most beloved American writers of the twentieth century. Vonnegut's audience increased steadily since his first five pieces in the 1950s and grew from there. His 1968 novel Slaughterhouse-Five has become a canonic war novel with Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to form the truest and darkest of what came from World War II.Vonnegut began his career as a science fiction writer, and his early novels--Player Piano and The Sirens of Titan--were categorized as such even as they appealed to an audience far beyond the reach of the category. In the 1960s, Vonnegut became closely associated with the Baby Boomer generation, a writer on that side, so to speak.Now that Vonnegut's work has been studied as a large body of work, it has been more deeply understood and unified. There is a consistency to his satirical insight, humor and anger which makes his work so synergistic. It seems clear that the more of Vonnegut's work you read, the more it resonates and the more you wish to read. Scholars believe that Vonnegut's reputation (like Mark Twain's) will grow steadily through the decades as his work continues to increase in relevance and new connections are formed, new insights made.ABOUT THE SERIESHorace Gold led GALAXY magazine from its first issue dated October 1950 to science fiction’s most admired, widely circulated and influential magazine throughout its initial decade. Its legendary importance came from publication of full length novels, novellas and novelettes. GALAXY published nearly every giant in the science fiction field.The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of GALAXY with new forewords by some of today’s best science fiction writers. The initial selections in alphabetical order include work by Ray Bradbury, Frederic Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Scheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Phillip Klass) and Kurt Vonnegut with new Forewords by Paul di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry Malzberg and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit GALAXY magazine and its founding editor Horace Gold.
One
David Karp - 1953
A dystopian novel set in a perversely benevolent future in which an attempt is made to remould the identity of a so-called heretic, Professor Burden, who had, up until then, regarded himself as a loyal citizen of the State.
Second Variety
Philip K. Dick - 1953
Left to their own devices, however, the claws develop robots of their own. II-V, the second variety, remains unknown to the few humans left on Earth. Or does it?Second Variety was adapted into the film Screamers.
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury - 1953
Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.
The Demolished Man
Alfred Bester - 1953
He is also an obsessed, driven man determined to murder a rival. To avoid capture, in a society where murderers can be detected even before they commit their crime, is the greatest challenge of his life.
The Time Machine and The Man Who Could Work Miracles
H.G. Wells - 1953
- Norman NicholsonThe Time Traveller knew that Time was only a kind of Space. The fantastic story of his adventures in a machine which could travel in any direction of Space and Time has captured the imagination of millions.H.G. Wells, one of the giants of twentieth-century literature, in this brilliant forerunner of today's SF did something which had never been done before and which has never been done since with the same vitality and bright inventiveness.The Time Machine...that little masterpiece - J.B. PriestleyAlso included is one of H.G.Wells' most popular and enduring short stories The Man Who Could Work MiraclesCover Illustration: Alan Lee
Against the Fall of Night
Arthur C. Clarke - 1953
. .Mankind has reached the heights of civilization. Men live thousands of years in perfect freedom and leisure—their wants are attended to by ingenious machines—peace and culture flourish in ways undreamed of in our time. And yet ... mankind is dying. The price of peace has been the loss of the needed human qualities of curiosity and drive—they have been bred out of the human race. So when young Alvin of Diaspar began asking questions, he was looked on as a dangerous freak, a throwback. But Alvin kept asking, kept looking, kept seeking out the truth ...... and what he found offered his people a dreadful choice—battle and destruction, or a new and richer destiny!
Specialist
Robert Sheckley - 1953
When the crew recover, they don't know their location in space and one of their members, known as Pusher, is dead.
Shambleau and Others
C.L. Moore - 1953
Moore. Shambleau and Others. New York: Gnome, [1953]. First edition, first printing. Octavo. 224 pages. Publisher's binding and dust jacket.List of stories:Black God’s KissShambleauBlack God’s ShadowBlack ThirstThe Tree of LifeJirel Meets MagicScarlet Dream
Atta
Francis Rufus Bellamy - 1953
Helpless, without food or weapons, Brokell faced certain death—but for the friendship of the ant called ATTA.
Science Fiction Adventures in Dimension
Groff ConklinTheodore Sturgeon - 1953
From H.G. Wells' Time Machine of 1895 until the present, this theme has fascinated SF writers as has no other single subject.Yesterday Was Monday (1941) story by Theodore Sturgeon Ambition (1951) novelette by William L. Bade The Middle of the Week After Next (1952) story by Murray Leinster And It Comes Out Here (1951) story by Lester del Rey Other Tracks (1938) novelette by William Sell Night Meeting (1950) story by Ray Bradbury The Flight That Failed (1942) novelette by A.E. van Vogt & E. Mayne Hull (aka Rebirth: Earth) Endowment Policy (1943) story by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett] The Mist (1952) story by Peter Grainger [as by Peter Cartur] What If... (1952) story by Isaac Asimov Tiger by the Tail (1951) story by Alan E. Nourse Business of Killing (1944) story by Fritz Leiber
To the End of Time
Olaf Stapledon - 1953
A Collection of the Best of Olaf Stapledon
The Last Planet / A Man Obsessed (Ace Double, D-96)
Andre Norton - 1953
A starship from a decaying Galactic empire, with a mixed human-alien crew, is exploring the outer fringes of the Milky Way. A crash-landing on an apparently empty planet marks the end of the voyage. With no hope of repairing the vessel, the surviving crewmen must plan their future, allot their resources, and explore all avenues for a new life on this world.
A Man Obsessed
is the story of a vengeance hunt in a nightmarish future when all medical practice is firmly in the control of the Government. It's both a psychological tale of a man deteriorating from the effects of dedicating his life to a (perhaps) foolish pursuit of one man, and a not-so-pretty look at the ultimate results of a socialized medicine policy. Great Stuff!
Space Space Space: Stories About the Time When Men Will Be Adventuring to the Stars
William SloaneAlan E. Nourse - 1953
Selection, introduction, and commentaries by William Sloane.Contents:Introduction by William Sloane"No Moon for Me" by Walter M. Miller, Jr."Trip One" by Edward Grendon"Tools of the Trade" by Raymond F. Jones"Hide and Seek" by Arthur C. Clarke"Master Race" by Richard Ashby"Dear Devil" by Eric Frank Russell"Courtesy" by Clifford D. Simak"Nightmare Brother" by Alan E. Nourse"Second Chance" by Walter Kubilius and Fletcher Pratt"Like Gods They Came" by Irving E. Cox, Jr.
IF Worlds of Science Fiction, 1953 September (Volume 2, No. 4)
James L. Quinn - 1953
Shaw A Case of Conscience • novella by James Blish The Trouble with Bubbles • shortstory by Philip K. Dick Planet of Dreams • shortstory by James McKimmey, Jr. Thy Rocks and Rills • novelette by Robert E. Gilbert The Romantic Analogue • shortstory by W. W. Skupeldyckle In the Forest • shortstory by Leslie Perri
A Sheckley Trilogy: Three Classic Tales of Science Fiction
Robert Sheckley - 1953
He had an entertaining gift for looking at society with a warped mirror, enabling us to see ourselves in a clearer reflection.“Keep Your Shape” is from the perspective of an alien race with the unseemly ability to change shape. In “The Seventh Victim“, murder is legal and sanctioned by society, and the gunman’s victim is a beautiful woman. And when a spaceship filled with diverse alien life forms is stranded without a star drive, they only have one chance of getting home again. That chance is with a “Specialist” from Earth.These three works were originally published in Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953.
Shadow of Tomorrow
Frederik PohlJohn Wyndham - 1953
M. KornbluthLove • (1952) • short story by Richard WilsonNot a Creature Was Stirring • (1951) • short story by Dean EvansThe Year of the Jackpot • (1952) • novelette by Robert A. HeinleinOrphans of the Void • (1952) • novelette by Michael ShaaraThe Luckiest Man in Denv • (1952) • short story by C. M. Kornbluth [as by Simon Eisner ]Halo • (1952) • novelette by Hal ClementThe Misogynist • (1952) • short story by James E. GunnThe Perfect Creature • (1937) • novelette by John WyndhamGenesis • (1951) • novelette by H. Beam PiperThe C-Chute • (1951) • novelette by Isaac AsimovTo a Ripe Old Age • (1952) • short story by Wilson TuckerThe New Gods Lead • (1951) • short story by Lester del Rey