Variety SF

Robert Heinlein - "Blowups Happen" (novelette, about nuclear power plants, free)

2008-07-24T23:30:00.004+05:30

While very readable, substantial parts of it are dated & it sometimes gets too imaginative. Story was written when "there was not a full gram of purified U-235 on this planet". Story summary.One single huge nuclear power plant in the US. It meets some 13% of the country's energy needs! This is a world where solar energy is widely used - most households have their energy requirements met by solar panels on roof tops. This is also the worlds where "road cities", built along the length of rolling roads of the "The Roads Must Roll", are common; these rolling roads also primarily run on solar power. Anyway, because of the possibility that "tons" of uranium core of the plant might blow out at any time, everyone on the plant is constantly on edge. This is the one major thread of the story - frequent nervous breakdown of the technical staff because of onerous responsibility of the safety of the mankind. Second thread is about the development of atomic rocket fuels that can give a rocket earth escape velocity. Story is apparently older than first space flight. Idea is to somehow make smaller piles than critical mass of nuclear material fissionable in a controlled way. One of the shunted engineers (Calvin Harper, because of imminent nervous breakdown) & his friend (Gus Erickson) do some superheroic work to develop this atomic fuel in days or weeks! But making this small piles requires the big pile! They will later outfit a rocket with engines based on this fuel - again on a schedule that will give creeps to best engineers out there. Third thread is about how moon got its craters - some imagination run wild. There was once life on it, based on an active gas heavier than oxygen but still dependent on water. And intelligent beings who built atomic power plants that blew up to kill life on the whole world & threw a lot of the crust into space. Craters were formed by those blown blocks of crust that didn't get escape velocity & fell back. Thomas P Harrington, an astronomer & Director of US Naval Observatory, has developed this lunar thesis. He has convinced both King, General Superintendent of the plant & the local man in charge, & Dr Lentz, a well known psychologist retained by King, that this plant poses a similar scale threat to earth. That's how we get the final thread. Convincing, even blackmailing, the reluctant Board of Directors of the company that owns the plant to ship it out to space. The big pile will be fitted into a big rocket & sent to an orbit far enough away from earth to avoid danger. Small piles manufactured there will be used to run little & safe plants back on earth. Notes. Story features a "telechronometer", a wrist watch "radio-synchronized with the master clock at Washington." Somewhat akin to modern PCs synchronizing time off an internet server. Apparently, such wrist watches are also commercially available now.Fact sheet.First published: Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1940. Rating:...

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New single issue of The Infinite Matrix is online

2008-07-24T23:28:00.000+05:30

With 3 stories: Cory Doctorow's "Nimby and the Dimension Hoppers" (reprint). 'Doctorow says "'Nimby and the Dimension Hoppers' is one of my most widely reprinted stories, and it's one of a very small handful of stories that I hadn't yet published for free online."'Jasmina Tesanovic's "Cats and Cars".Yanna Dubinianska's "Barge over Black Water".[Via SFScope]

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Christopher Anvil's "The Gentle Earth" (novella, alien invasion, free): Alien attackers are bothered by terran weather

2008-07-23T23:30:00.006+05:30

No big idea here, but an enjoyable story. It's not always logical - e.g., star faring aliens surprised at things about earth that you won't expect them to be surprised at. But a lot of action & many funny situations. Story summary.Technologically advanced aliens have been watching earth for a while. And are alarmed at the rate of human progress. Sooner or later, humans are going to raid their world. Why not nip the trouble in the bud, & don't allow the bad situation to arise? While there are dissensions - punishment without actual crime - the threat is too big, & decision to militarily attack earth is taken. Much of the story is of actual attack, & eventual peace treaty that is supposed to save both aliens & humans (& which I found wishful). Tlasht Bade is the very competent leader of invasion force, & was actually against the invasion. Sission Runckel, second rate chief of his staff, is a hawk & was on the side of attack. Much of the story is set in the US; some in Caribbean & a few bits near end in Indonesia. Attackers have quickly occupied much of the middle US - cutting off east & west coast. They'll also occupy lot of places on east coast during the story. They'll set up factories, material transfer gates, ... Many humorous situations as they encounter specific features of earth's weather & of local culture. What makes them retreat is winter! They're cold blooded, & tend to hibernate when temperature drops below a certain level. It's during their winter retreat to Indonesia that the silly peace treaty will be signed. Collected in.David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".Fact sheet.First published: Astounding Science Fiction, November 1957. Rating: A Download full text.

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Tor giveaways

2008-07-23T23:28:00.000+05:30

All the novels Tor made available once a week during the last few months to their mailing list subscribers are available on one page to everyone for a few more days, including in some more formats. [Via More Words, Deeper Hole]

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Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies" (short story, time travel, humor, free)

2008-07-22T23:30:00.001+05:30

Who is whose mother, father, lover, child, kidnapper, employer, ...? Solid confusion. Very amusing & totally crazy tale of convoluted relationships. Rusty has more to say at Best Science Fiction Stories. Glenn Davies' "In His Image" is a simpler & less interesting variation published a few months back. Fact sheet.First published: F&SF, March 1959. Rating: A Download full text. Related: All stories of Robert Heinlein; all time travel stories.

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Theodore Sturgeon's "Thunder and Roses" (novelette, nuclear apocalypse, free): Finding hope for humanity in an angry world

2008-07-21T23:30:00.006+05:30

The most interesting thing about this story is contrast with Arthur Clarke's "The Last Command". Both are about nuclear war & total annihilation of one side. In both stories, the annihilated side still has enough firepower left to annihilate the other side. Both stories are written with military men as protagonists or major characters. Both differ from umpteen stories about nuclear doom in their theme of forgiveness. In Clarke's version, US has destroyed USSR. A USSR crack team capable of punitive retaliation is stopped to give humanity a chance, even if it's without USSR. In Sturgeon's version, it's US that is annihilated by unnamed enemies. And while there is enough ammunition to retaliate, there are survivors awaiting imminent death that are working to give humanity a chance - even if it will be without the US. Title comes from the lyrics of a song I'm unfamiliar with: "When you gave me your heart, you gave me the world, You gave me the night and the day, And thunder, and roses, and sweet green grass, The sea, and soft wet clay." Collected in.David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".Fact sheet.First published: Astounding Science Fiction, November 1947. Rating: B Download full text. Related: All stories of Theodore Sturgeon.

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67 online stories: Tor, Keith Laumer collection, & 2 Indian ezines (Indian Science Fiction & Fantasy, & The Scientific Indian)

2008-07-21T23:28:00.005+05:30

I've not read any from the list below, & in fact hadn't even heard of any author except Laumer, Scalzi, & Stross. So no comments on quality. Tor's much talked about new site is live in a blog format with a stories-only feed, plus two stories already: John Scalzi's "After the Coup", & Charles Stross' "Down on the Farm". Bug: Clicking the link of items in stories-only feed gives 404 error! Not sure if this also happens with their master feed. So it's useful only to get notifications when new stories are up; then go hunt on their site! Free SF Reader linked Keith Laumer's collection "The Lighter Side" a week back. 10 stories, all online. "Indian Science Fiction & Fantasy" appears to be a relic of dot com era, & has been long dead. But its archives still contain 47 original stories in English - all by Indian authors. "The Scientific Indian" is run by an Indian in England. It has a stories-only feed, infrequently gets new story updates, & currently has 8 stories in archives. All stories are by Indian authors.

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Poul Anderson's "Turning Point" (short story, first contact, free): Human space farers scared by aliens with primitive technology

2008-07-21T00:46:00.006+05:30

A bunch of humanoid aliens living primitive hunter/gatherer existence on an earth-like world the humans will call Joril. A human ship, not really interested in colonization but only for a brief stop over, lands near a village. Human space farers have well understood & practiced ways of dealing with alien aboriginals - only "there were certain disturbing symptoms", in spite of general peace & primitive local technology. For one thing - locals seem to learn too fast. As the story progresses over a span of several days, humans discover an extremely scary fact - even a little child here has intelligence that will put a human genius to shame, & their smarts are well beyond the grasp of human mind. They have primitive tech only because they never needed it. But now that they know - they are moving way too fast. How to protect humanity from an onslaught that is bound to happen soon? Many options are considered & discarded - including exterminating the communities the visitors came into contact with. Ultimately a peaceful solution... Collected in.David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".Fact sheet.First published: Worlds of If, May 1963. Rating: A Download full text.

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Arthur Clarke's "The Sentinel" text version is online

2008-07-21T00:45:00.002+05:30

QuasarDragon links this Hairy Green Eyeball post that attaches 7 JPEG files containing the text of the story. JPEGs appear to be photographed from a book. MP3 of this story was already online. This is a very famous story. Among the most reprinted, & one of the key stories they went into "2001 A Space Odyssey" novel & the movie.

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Fritz Leiber's "A Pail of Air" (short story, post apocalypse, free): "survival in the face of desperate circumstances"

2008-07-19T23:30:00.007+05:30

Leiber is another author I got introduced to via the wrong story, & kept avoiding. This one is a much better story compared to his "Coming Attraction" (included in Silverberg's SF Hall of Fame, vol 1). While I won't put it in the league of best stories by anyone, it's a fine example of fighting extreme adversity with a positive outlook. Many familiar tropes have been mixed well. Story summary.A "black star" (or "dead sun") was moving through milky way in a direction opposite Sol, & passed rather close by. Earthmen never had a warning. At the time of passing earth was on one side of sun - towards black star; other planets were on the other side of the Sun. In the gravitational tug of war between the Sun & the visitor, earth got torn away from Sun & was captured by the black star; moon was pulled in by Sun - so earth doesn't even have moon now. There were major geological upheavals on earth at the time of passing - leading to much destruction. Parts of this narrative sound like H G Wells' "The Star". More than a decade has passed since the event. Earth is now in orbit around this new sun, & its axial rotation period is now 10 times longer. It's now a dead frozen world with no sunlight, currently "beyond the orbit of the planet Pluto", moving "farther out all the time." A hardy man named Harry not only survived with his wife, they decided to have children after the event & teach them what it takes to survive in this harsh world. No one else is known to be alive, though near the end of the story they will not only meet other survivors but find hope in this world. Story is narrated by the 10 year old son of Harry. His accounts of the events are based on what he has heard from his parents - he himself has never known a friendlier earth. Fourth member of the family is his sister. Family has figured out a way of living in a makeshift shack ("Nest") that is not airtight. They burn coal for fire that they get from somewhere on a lower floor of the old building that now houses the Nest & is mostly under the frozen atmosphere; these coals were may be previously collected (I'm not clear). Living off old canned food, I think - I don't recall many mentions of food sources. Title comes from buckets of solid oxygen the family needs to collect from outside & melt in fire indoors - since earth's atmosphere is now frozen. Some interesting descriptions of this world: "when the Earth got cold, all the water in the air froze first and made a blanket ten feet thick or so everywhere, and then down on top of that dropped the crystals of frozen air, making another white blanket sixty or seventy feet thick maybe.""all the parts of the air didn't freeze and snow down at the same time.""First to drop out was the carbon dioxide... Next there's the nitrogen ... it's the biggest part of the blanket. On top of that and easy to get at, which is lucky for us, there's the oxygen that keeps us alive. Pa says we live better than kings ever did,...

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Eoghann Irving recommends some online classics

2008-07-19T23:28:00.003+05:30

Eoghann Irving's post titled "The History of Science Fiction: 1900 - 1909" at Solar Flare does a round up of some important classics from the period, along with short commentary & online story links. I first learned of H G Wells' "The First Men in the Moon" when I read a short remark about it in Arthur Clarke's "Earthlight". But it has been lying around unread. Blame my growing impatience with novel-length stories! I've already posted on E M Forster's "The Machine Stops" & Rudyard Kipling's "With the Night Mail". Former is an important story in that its tropes are still around & because of some of its prophetic technology; but it's generally a dark story about machine dystopia. Kipling's is now only of historical interest - an early hard sf story that I won't call important. Incidentally, Ashley Arnold wrote up a satire on Hugo Gernsback in the flash fiction piece titled "Gernsback's Monkeys" some months back - basically about his supposed stinginess towards authors (also commented upon by ... was it Arthur Clark? don't recollect). Hugo Gernsback is a very important figure in the field. Also, Hugo Awards are named after him. Credits: I found Irving's post via SF Signal.

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Charles Stross on authors' curse

2008-07-19T23:26:00.002+05:30

Jonathan McCalmont at SF Diplomat dissects certain aspects of Charles Stross' fiction in this somewhat longish post titled "The Stross Formula". Stross's two responses in the post's comments are very enlightening. [via SF Signal]

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Bruce Sterling clarifies steampunk

2008-07-19T23:24:00.002+05:30

Bruce Sterling clarifies certain attributes of "steampunk" in this interview with Lon S Cohen at Matrix Online. Note: From the looks of it, URL linked above doesn't appear to be persistent. I've a feeling it will fetch a completely different article next month! Well - for the moment, it fetches the right one. And if it does indeed fetch something else next month, I'll refrain from linking anything from Matrix Online in future.

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No post today

2008-07-19T00:53:00.002+05:30

Was a bit busy, & now it's rather late in the day - almost 1 am already. Sorry.

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Robert Sheckley's "Hunting Problem" (short story, science fiction, humor, free): Alien can be totally incomprehensible!

2008-07-18T00:30:00.005+05:30

My introduction to Sheckley came via "A Wind Is Rising". That was the wrong story to get introduced to author. This is the right one. I would have picked up my second Sheckley much earlier if I'd read this. Beautiful. Story summary."Elbonai" - an alien world, & also the name of the race of local intelligent beings - far advanced compared to us. They float up in the sky, take cosmic radiation for food, are shape shifters, ... But they were not always like this. Eons back, their ancestors had been land dwellers with needs similar to humans. They'd come from somewhere to colonize this world - killing off a lot of local life in the process, among them a species called "Miresh". It's currently a fad to spend at least some time on ground in a physical form similar to their ancestors, & living off land like they did! Sort of alien steampunk. Drog is a very lazy young scout doing this retro thing as a member of "Charging Mirash Patrol, number 19" - one of the groups of scouts. Some scouts have recently spotted a herd of 3 bull Miresh somewhere away from Scouts' ground camp - these animals were supposed to be extinct. To win special honors at forthcoming "Scouter Jamboree", a festival where Patrols compete, Drog has accepted a challenge from his Leader: to go hunt one of these Mirash, & bring back its pelt for display during Jamboree - but using ancestral hunting techniques. Story is a sometimes very amusing account of his hunt, as Mirash prove to be more trouble than expected. He will eventually succeed in getting the hide, but Mirash are a tough lot & can live through a skinning! Happy enough ending for all concerned. Collected in.David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".Fact sheet.First published: Galaxy Science Fiction, September 1955. Rating: A Download full text. Related: All stories of Robert Sheckley.

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Murray Leinster's "Long Ago, Far Away" (novella, time travel, free): A couple faces extreme dilemma

2008-07-17T01:51:00.005+05:30

It's actually longer than a typical novella - may be near the upper limit. Idea is very similar to John G Hemry's relatively recent & interesting story "Small Moments in Time": time travel has put an individual or two to extreme dilemma - to let large population of the other time die so own present is secure, vs jeopardizing current time by acting in a humane way. I personally find Leinster's version more interesting - he uses longer length to make it a more nuanced story. This is the first story I've read that includes the idea of conservation of mass & energy during time travel. It fixes the total mass + energy in the universe at any moment in time. To time travel, you must exchange this with target time to keep the universe consistent! I suppose this idea alone can be used to build a good story; here it's peripheral. Story is not always logical & sometimes challenges credulity; but it's a fast moving story, & I found it easy to ignore minor issues. Story summary.Humans have been around on earth for millions or billions of years! And in those remote times, they were technological way ahead of current humanity. It was a disaster that wiped them out. Most of them, anyway. A few discovered time travel, & are seeking refuge in our time. This is the story of an advance party of teenage refuge seekers, & the complex reactions they generate in current time. Disaster that struck this ancient world was the explosion of the fifth planet, along with its "two moons". It not only created the current asteroid belt between Mars & Jupiter, but also resulted in severe mountain-sized meteor bombardment of inner worlds - including earth. They didn't get a lot of warning. Colonizing other worlds in Sol won't solve the problem - all inner worlds were being hit. We aren't told (or may be I forgot) why they didn't try interstellar colonization - probably lack of time. Only at the eleventh hour, when much of this world was dead, did a small community successfully built time travel machine - to seek refuge in a far & safe enough future. The advance party of 4 teenagers - Fran (boy of 14), Zani (girl), Mal (girl), & Hod (boy) - will set up some equipment in current to ease transfer of rest of the party - some 2000 individuals in all. That is all that remains of this world. But a lot goes wrong on kids arrival in present time Antarctica. Brad Soames of US station in Antarctica smashes the gate they are building to let rest of their people come. Kids blow up rest of their stuff except minor toys to ensure it doesn't fall in wrong hands. They're taken to US - to a secure military facility. Only Soames (feeling guilty for stranding kids) & Gail Haynes (a reporter who was in US station in Antarctica at the time kids arrived) have been with kids all along, & slowly piece together the story & gain kids' confidence. Rest of US establishment has its own agenda where kids welfare doesn't count. Rest of the world is also...

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For Indian readers: Hindi audio & review of Asimov's "Nightfall"!

2008-07-17T01:49:00.005+05:30

This review by Unmukt of Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall" (original novelette version, not later novelization) is the first one I've seen in Hindi. He also links this apparently Hindi audio version of the story (Ogg Vorbis format), along with English MP3 version at Escapepod. I've not heard either of these versions.

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Ross Rocklynne's "Quietus" (short story, first contact, free): "who we are creates a bias in how we view the world"

2008-07-16T00:44:00.006+05:30

Concept is very similar to Eric Frank Russell's "Dear Devil": A post-apocalypse earth, with few remaining humans turned to primitive existence. Well intentioned aliens have come to help the local sentients. But what a difference in the way the plot develops & ends! Story summary.Tommy, 21 year old, is the sole human remaining in a small green patch on an otherwise dead earth. At least he thinks so, till he learns of a very shy girl too. And there is Blacky - Tommy's pet talking crow! Blacky actually behaves like talking parrots we are familiar with, but author tells us it's a crow. We have a love story here - both Tommy & girl are attracted to each other. But whenever they're about to meet, Backy's speech scares her away. On a separate thread, we have two alien visitors: Tark & his mate, Vascar. From a world called Alcon. They see signs of existence of sentients once upon this now dead world, & feel sad. Land on the sole green patch with the intention of locating the local sentients, & helping them get back up their old glory. The rub is: these visitors are sentient birds. There will be some drama, their near conclusion that Blacky is the sentient & Tommy is his draft animal (Blacky often rides on Tommy's shoulder)! And sad ending - when Blacky has scared away the girl for umpteenth time & Tommy is in the rage & aliens decide to protect the sentient from his gone berserk beast of burden! Collected in.David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".Fact sheet.First published: Astounding Science Fiction, September 1940. Rating: A Download full text.

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Dozois' Best of Year #25 (2008) is out

2008-07-16T00:42:00.002+05:30

Locus reports that Gardner Dozois' "The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-fifth Annual Collection" (2008) is out. Also, a few days back, Niall at Torque Control posted a long review article on Jonathan Strahan's "The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 2". This book also collects the "best" stories of 2007.

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L Sprague de Camp's "A Gun for Dinosaur" (novelette, time travel, free): Description of flora & fauna of Cretaceous period

2008-07-15T00:52:00.007+05:30

When introducing this story, David Drake tells us that "Men-against-dinosaur stories are as old as magazine SF... de Camp turned what had been occasional subjects for stories into defined subgenres." Well, there is an earlier Arthur Clarke's "Time's Arrow", but it's still an interesting story. Story summary.It's a frame story - main dinosaur hunting story described in the small outer frame. Mr Rivers, a hunter who's partner in the time travel safari outfit named "Rivers and Aiyar", is giving an anecdote to Mr Seligman, a prospective client Rivers is refusing to take because he weighs too little. Rest of this post is about the main story. Main story is of a hunt. Human time travelers go to "April twenty-fourth, eight-five million B.C." in Cretaceous period. To hunt dinosaurs for fun! They will spend several days there. There is also a short thread of an accident after their return - but I won't get into that. Critique. The most interesting thing for me was meticulous attention to detail when describing local environment during a certain part of Cretaceous: local terrain; animals, insects & flying creatures; weak points of different kinds of dinosaurs from a hunter's perspective; best strategy to escape when a dinosaur is after you; ... I've no idea if these descriptions are based on known facts, or solely the author's imagination; but they put life into the story. The story has it flaws, some of them due to my personal biases: I grew up in a family where consciously killing any kind of life is taboo. Hunting stories are not really the kind I go for.There is colonial era here - "sahibs", interactions among the characters, their biases & value systems, ... It's not very often that I can like stories set in that period.It's not always a logical story. You take an expensive trip to cretaceous & won't do your own work; you carry with you a staff like cook & helpers!Some rather obnoxious characters. Courtney James, one of the clients on safari, will kill anything that moves for the shear thrill of using his gun! August Holtzinger, the other client, is out hunting so he can hang the stuffed head of the killed animal in his drawing room! Note: Holtzinger is killed by a tyrannosaur during safari when trying to save life of a cornered James. James dies by the end of the story because, well, because bad boys die in good stories!But for me, the details of local environment made up for all its flaws. Beautiful story. See also. I've posted on at least 3 other stories on similar themes: Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" is a far less rigorous version of the same plot.Arthur Clarke's "Time's Arrow" is an interesting variant.Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park", of course, puts things upside down - by bringing dinosaurs to our time rather than humans going to their time.Collected in.David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".Fact sheet.First published: Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1956. Rating: A Download...

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Michael Shaara's "All the Way Back" (short story, first contact, free): An answer to Fermi's Paradox

2008-07-13T23:30:00.003+05:30

If the theory says galaxy must be full of habitable worlds & intelligent life, why haven't we met aliens yet? Light read, occasionally amusing, but with a dark ending. Story summary.300 years after setting foot on Mars, & 200 years after exploration of neighboring stars began, humans have found only 4 dead & unusable worlds in all the nearly 1000 star systems they've explored. Fifth one, discovered during the course of this story, is achingly earth-like & spells doom for explorers & may be humanity too! Jansen & Cohn are in a scout starship. They've been off earth for 11 years, & have examined a lot of star systems - none with a planet, let alone a habitable one. They go into cold sleep during the long ride between stars. Next one they're about to examine, the star Mina, is the last before they head back home. It's here that they find an earth-like world. It appears devoid of animal, or even insect, life, but it is full of plants. And parts show signs of old intelligent construction & radiation. We will later learn it was wrecked in a nuclear war. But that is long past; they touch down in a radiation free area. Their entry into Mina system was noted by a patrol of Galactic Scouts; looks like there is of government covering large areas of galaxy - the "Galactic Federation". The aliens we meet are not only humanoid, but physically indistinguishable from humans! And these Scouts employ a "Mind-Search" staff that can telepathically do a lot of things to sentient beings at distances as great as a light year! Amusing parts are where aliens are tracking the human ship. Anyway, after the humans touch down, the representatives of Scouts come to make contact. Communications is no problem because of telepathy. They tell humans about the already claimed status of this world, the terrible reason the star systems around Sol are void of not only life but worlds, & the unhappy fate of humanity... Collected in.David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".Fact sheet.First published: Astounding Science Fiction, July 1952. Rating: A Download full text. Related: All first contact stories.

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Lots of online fiction by famous authors

2008-07-12T23:30:00.002+05:30

Seeing Free SF Reader's recent links to webscription collections, I thought of looking up his older similar posts. It has turned out to be a much longer job than I thought, but hopefully worth the trouble. I'm still only partly through his list. There won't be my normal post today. Here are links to 10 online collections by famous authors; many have only a few stories online. Collection links go to online site; story links to my relevant posts. Keith Laumer's "Legions of Space". "Two complete novels, and four shorter works". Novels: "A Trace of Memory", "Planet Run". Shorts: Shorts: THE CHOICE, THREE BLIND MICE, MIND OUT OF TIME, MESSAGE TO AN ALIEN.Keith Laumer's "Odyssey". All 7 stories online: "GALACTIC ODYSSEY", "A Trip To The City", "Hybrid", "Combat Unit", "The King Of The City", "Once There Was A Giant", "Dinosaur Beach".Keith Laumer's "Future Imperfect". All 7 stories online: "CATASTROPHE PLANET", "THE WALLS", "COCOON", "FOUNDER'S DAY", "PLACEMENT TEST", "WORLDMASTER", "The Day Before Forever". Cordwainer Smith's "When the People Fell". Many stories. 7 online: "No, No, Not Rogov!", "War No. 81-Q", "Mark Elf", "The Queen of the Afternoon", "Scanners Live in Vain", "The Lady Who Sailed The Soul", "When the People Fell". "Scanners Live in Vain" & "No, No, Not Rogov!" are supposed to be very famous; I've read only the former & didn't really like it. "Scanners Live in Vain" also appears to be the story on which this year's Nebula nominee Jennifer Pelland's "Captive Girl" is based. A. Bertram Chandler's "Catch the Star Winds". Many stories, one online: "CHANCE ENCOUNTER". I've not read this story. While I've liked some Chandler stories more than others, I'm yet to really dislike one of his stories.Robert A. Heinlein's "Expanded Universe". Many stories, 5 online: " LIFE-LINE", "SUCCESSFUL OPERATION", "BLOWUPS HAPPEN", "SOLUTION UNSATISFACTORY", "THE LAST DAYS OF THE UNITED STATES" (is it fiction?). "Life-Line" is Heinlein's first published story.Murray Leinster's "A Logic Named Joe". 7 stories, all online: "The Dean of Gloucester, Virginia", "A Logic Named Joe", "Dear Charles", "Gateway To Elsewhere", "The Duplicators", "The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator", "The Pirates of Zan". I've not read any, but I'd quoted Wikipedia's recommendation for "A Logic Named Joe" yesterday when linking its MP3 version.Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol". Many stories, 1 titled "Time Patrol" online.Christopher Anvil's "THE INTERSTELLAR PATROL". No ToC, but one story is online: "The Claw And The Clock" (download).Christopher Anvil's "Interstellar Patrol II-The Federation of Humanity". Many stories, 5 online: "Riddle Me This", "The Unknown", "The Throne And The Usurper", "The Trojan Hostage", "Warlord's World".

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Specialized feeds

2008-07-12T23:28:00.003+05:30

This post is only for regulars subscribed via a feed reader. I just became aware of a feature of Blogger, the software underneath this site, that lets me offer a variety of specialized feeds based on post labels (tags), in addition to main feed that includes every post. E.g., feed only of posts about free online stories, A-rated stories, stories first published in Analog/Astounding magazine, only flash fiction, stories by Ray Bradbury, stories published under the joint pseudonym Lewis Padgett of Henry Kuttner & C L Moore (arguably among their most interesting fun stories), stories featuring aliens or robots, only content posts (skip administrative ones like "no post today"), ... There are hundreds of tags available, occasionally illogically named - to confuse every kind of reader! Here is the full list of tags I consolidated last (I do it infrequently). Here is how to access the feed associated with a tag. Posts fetched by a tag X have URLs that look like "http://variety-sf.blogspot.com/search/label/X"Corresponding feed URL is "http://variety-sf.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/X"E.g., "http://variety-sf.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/free" will fetch only posts about free fiction.Caveats.Specialized feeds will naturally fetch fewer posts than main feed. Very specialized feeds, like only anthologies or only stories by a specific author, might not see a post for months.Tags corresponding to author names may differ from the way the name is often written. To cut total tag length, I often (but not always) remove any middle name. Names containing "," - like "James Tiptree, Jr" - differ because of tag character constraints. Non-ASCII characters in author names are also simplified to most-similar ASCII character. Safest way to get the right URL is by looking up tag list or often author list.I occasionally forget to put all applicable tags on a post at the time of publishing, & come back & put more tags a day or two later. Such posts will show up later in specialized feeds than in main feed.Credits: I found this technique via Digital Inspiration.

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Keith Laumer's "The Last Command" (short story, science fiction, thriller, free): A monster of a war machine is on the loose

2008-07-11T23:30:00.004+05:30

Beats a Bond movie any day. In my book, at least. Gripping story. Note there is also an unrelated Arthur Clarke story of this title. I'm wondering if Elizabeth Bear's "Tideline" that has been much in news this year because of award nominations takes its robot tank idea from this older story. But the two stories are very different, & Bear's version is way too soft compared to the machine here. There was a Hollywood movie I cannot recollect the name of. Giant beasts, or insects, moving underground. Emerge at surface at will & terrorize everyone. A part of this story is may be a more plausible version of it. Story summary.A war fought with massive, powerful & competent nuclear-powered robotic combat machines. Eventually the war ends, some of the fighting units are decommissioned, along with most of these machines. Machines are incapacitated, disarmed, & buried deep underground in massive concrete bunkers. 70 years have passed. Everyone has forgotten about the war & the war machines' burial ground. A spaceport is coming up at the site of the burial ground. Months into the project, some blasting of the project has done something inadvertent: stirred "Lenny" aka a Bolo Mark XXVIII Combat Unit, once of Dinochrome Brigade, into life in its underground tomb! It's mostly dead, batteries gone, & very low reserve batteries. We are about to witness the ruin this near dead machine can wreck! Machine doesn't know the war is over. It's trying to contact its comrades & commander - no luck. So it's now all alone, & must still do its war duty to the best of its ability! Lot of horror above surface as it digs its way through the ground - sort of a small moving earthquake. Nothing is able to injure it - let alone stop it, not even the military bombing that comes later in the story. And it's headed towards a mall in the nearby city - thinking it is an Enemy deception! Acting Brigade Commander of Lenny's unit, Lieutenant Sanders, is now an old man, & is seeing the drama on TV. He will finally stop the machine. Collected in.David Drake, Jim Baen, & Eric Flint (Ed)'s "The World Turned Upside Down".Fact sheet.First published: Analog, January 1967. Rating: A Download full text.

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Some online stories of Murry Leinster & Keith Laumer

2008-07-11T23:28:00.003+05:30

I just became aware of online MP3 versions of Murry Leinster's "First Contact" (download) & "A Logic Named Joe" (download). They probably have been around a while, but I didn't know that. "First Contact" is not only a first rate story, but one that is said to have introduced the word "first contact" into the language of sf in the sense of human/alien first contact; in fact, according to Wikipedia, Leinster's heirs unsuccessfully sued Paramount Pictures for use of these words in the title of the movie "Star Trek: First Contact". According to Wikipedia, "A Logic Named Joe" 'contains one of the first descriptions of a computer ... in fiction. In the story, Leinster was decades ahead of his time in imagining the Internet. He envisioned logics in every home, linked through a distributed system of servers..., to provide communications, entertainment, data access, and commerce'. I haven't read this story. And Free SF Reader linked the online collection of Keith Laumer stories titled "A Plague of Demons" (compiled by Eric Flint) today. It includes a full length novel, plus many shorter works. I've not read any of these stories. My experience with Laumer is restricted to "The Last Command" (my post on this fantastic story follows in a few minutes).

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