A lean wind wails through the age-old avenues of Dawningsburgh. Mornings, it brings sand from surrounding hills and scrubs at fresh paint, neon signs endlessly proclaiming the city’s synthetic name and street markers in seven languages. At sunrise it prepares the dunes for footprints of scurrying guided tourists. When icy night clamps down and the intruders scamper to their hotels, the wind howls as it flings after them a day’s collection of paper cups, bottle caps and...
Science fiction and fantasy have going hand-in-hand since long before the term «science fiction» was coined. Among the earliest examples is Gulliver of Mars, by Edwin L. Arnold (originally published in 1905) – and the genre grew and flourished through the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs (A Princess of Mars, etc.), Poul Anderson (Three Hearts and Three Lions , etc.) Lin Carter (Jandar of Callisto , etc.) and so many more. Here are four novels – and four very different takes on the mix of fantasy and...
When explorers land on a seemingly unpopulated planet, they discover a sugarcane-like substance growing in seemingly cultivated fields, and the canes ring like a pipe organ at night. They need organic matter for their replicators and plants for their hydroponics, so they harvest some of it. Big mistake!
An old woman slowly loses the battle to insanity, or perhaps to her own fey nature, after her husband dies while coming home from his monthly shopping trip. But something supernatural may be in play… A classic fantasy!
After a plague has killed almost everyone on the planetm a young woman, newly married, is as far as she knows the last person alive. Her radio engineer husband had made her promise to keep going on air every night to sing, hoping that anyone else still alive will hear her and come find her… [Also published as «The Last Woman»]
Catastrophe had visited Earth and left it completely destroyed. But mankind had already bridged the galactic gap, and on the planets of the Centaurus system the discovery of the Memory Bank had brought man to the brink of immortality. The custodian of the Bank and ruler of the Centauran council was the most beautiful woman of the Centauran world, thousand-year-old Marian.<P> Lieutenant-Commander Merck was a non-depositor. He had an intuitive feeling of the danger of the Memory Bank: that...
When the first expedition from Earth arrived on Mars, they were greeted with open arms. Not only had the Martians long ago learned all they wanted about Earth – they wanted nothing to do with us. To quote their welcoming committee: «You Earth people don't know your own history. You have always been incorrigible. When Mars was younger, we drove you back to your own planet, whereupon you tumbled into savagery for a gratifyingly long time. The really intelligent Martians then emigrated to the...
