Bixby’s The Draw Examines Power and Will
Reading Time: 25 minutes A man, twisted by hatred and his own experience, blunders his way into absolute power.
Classics
Williamson’s Cosmic Express Embraces Progress
Reading Time: 16 minutes There is now, and indeed has always been, a tendency of society to split between those who favor progress and those who want things left well enough alone.
Vonnegut’s The Big Trip Up Yonder Casts Hilarious Fun at Generation Gap
Reading Time: 13 minutes This tale is an excellent example of Vonnegut’s grasp of the hilarious and sometimes macabre nature of humanity.
Leinster’s Scrimshaw Takes a Stab at the Moon
Reading Time: 21 minutes In this story, the stark life of a moon miner conflicts with the psychological burden of life on the moon in a beautiful connection of suspense and raw emotion.
Smith’s Helpfully Yours Blends Humor and Culture Clash
Reading Time: 48 minutes Different cultures hold different values. The laws and customs of a foreign land can feel downright alien.
Nourse Pits Art Versus Vengeance in The Link
Reading Time: 21 minutes The themes of power and beauty come together in a clash of wills, and of the soul, in this classic from Alan Nourse. The story portrays those who value power and have deep-seated senses of honor as the antagonists, who are nonetheless seduced by the soul of beauty.
Kuttner’s Ego Machine Takes a Playful Look at AI and the Human Brain
Reading Time: 14 minutes With public companies creating direct computer-brain interfaces, and the augmentation of human consciousness with AI just around the corner, the core theme of this story hits home in modern times.
Deford’s The Eel Mixes Globalization, Crime, and Punishment
Reading Time: 12 minutes This technique of intellectual suspense and argument is a great example of fantastic storytelling that doesn’t involve rayguns or spaceships.
Garret Makes Us Believe With Fifty Percent Prophet
Reading Time: 27 minutes Randall Garret weaves a fantastic tale with the suspense building throughout. What is precognition? Is it something that is a charlatan’s hoax or does it fall into the fringes of science?
Wolf Sets Standard for AI, Culture in Robots of the World, Arise!
Reading Time: 23 minutes By N.T. Narbutovskih The term “droid” has a special place in the heart of everyone who has a passing familiarity with science fiction. Mari Wolf coins the term in this quirky tale about robots, consciousness, and humanity. Wolf’s forecast of the rise of human-consciousness equivalent artificial intelligence has all the classic veneer of the Golden …
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Bradley’s The Planet Savers Engages Mental Health and Colonialism
Reading Time: 90 minutes In this story set in her incredible Darkover universe, Marion Zimmer Bradley masterfully blends science and fantasy, psychological suspense, and action.
Phillip K. Dick’s Mr. Spaceship Turns AI On Its Head
Reading Time: 36 minutes Any sacrifice for the greater good is acceptable. War doesn’t wait on the needs of the individual. These themes are present in today’s tense international environment just as they were when Dick wrote this packed tale. From AI to warfare to original sin, this story hits all the big questions. Classic Phillip K. Dick tales …
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Bova’s Next Logical Step Fuses AI and Warfare
Reading Time: 9 minutes Ben Bova weaves a short and impactful story that doesn’t get bogged down in the weeds.
Herbert’s Old Rambling House Shows the Truth in Greed
Reading Time: 10 minutes People will jump at the chance for more, better, newer. Frank Herbert sets up a clever byplay of greed in many forms in this story.
Damon Knight’s The Worshippers Shows Right From Wrong
Reading Time: 32 minutes Damon Knight gives us a roller-coaster ride through one person’s journey of both literal and metaphorical self discovery.
Pohl’s The Hated Explores Psychosis of Space Travel
Reading Time: 15 minutes What mental stress is waiting for our astronauts on extended journeys, and what treatment can we possibly offer them? Frederick Pohl gives us one fascinating option.
Silverberg’s Happy Unfortunate Tackles Racism in 1957
Reading Time: 25 minutes In this story, Silverberg brings us a brief glimpse into a deeply divided society, divided not just by differing values and ideas but by their very own physical bodies.
Vonnegut’s 2BR02B: Soft, what utopia through yonder window breaks?
Reading Time: 10 minutes What would you do if you could choose a future for humanity? Would you choose one of abject squalor, or would you make some small sacrifice for the betterment of future generations?
Anderson’s The Man Who Came Early Shows Aliens Among Us
Reading Time: 35 minutes People struggle to connect. These struggles resonate today more than ever. In modern media, we find ourselves confronted with viewpoints and even ways of life that we find alien.
Asimov’s Youth! Shows Us the True Aliens
Reading Time: 35 minutes The conflict between generations, stability and energy, has special in the current events of our time.
James Blish’s ‘One-Shot’ explores limits of technology
Reading Time: 17 minutes Institutions fail us. Destruction awaits us around every corner. These fears are as true today as in the 1950s, when James Blish wrote his short story “One-Shot.”
A Drama in the Air
Reading Time: 23 minutes We were to start at noon. The impatient crowd which pressed around the enclosed space, filling the enclosed square, overflowing into the contiguous streets, and covering the houses from the ground-floor to the slated gables, presented a striking scene.
The Evil Eye
Reading Time: 26 minutes The Moreot, Katusthius Ziani, travelled wearily, and in fear of its robber-inhabitants, through the pashalik of Yannina; yet he had no cause for dread.
Silence
Reading Time: 5 minutes “Listen to me,” said the Demon as he placed his hand upon my head. “The region of which I speak is a dreary region in Libya, by the borders of the river Zaire. And there is no quiet there, nor silence.”
The Star
Reading Time: 15 minutes It was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in December.
The Crystal Egg
Reading Time: 23 minutes There was, until a year ago, a little and very grimy-looking shop near Seven Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of “C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities,” was inscribed. The contents of its window were curiously variegated.
A Story of the Stone Age
Reading Time: 75 minutes This story is of a time beyond the memory of man, before the beginning of history, a time when one might have walked dryshod from France (as we call it now) to England, and when a broad and sluggish Thames flowed through its marshes to meet its father Rhine, flowing through a wide and level country that is under water in these latter days, and which we know by the name of the North Sea.
A Story of the Days to Come
Reading Time: 107 minutes This story is of a time beyond the memory of man, before the beginning of history, a time when one might have walked dryshod from France (as we call it now) to England, and when a broad and sluggish Thames flowed through its marshes to meet its father Rhine, flowing through a wide and level country that is under water in these latter days, and which we know by the name of the North Sea.
The Man Who Could Work Miracles
Reading Time: 22 minutes His name was George McWhirter Fotheringay—not the sort of name by any means to lead to any expectation of miracles—and he was clerk at Gomshott’s. He was greatly addicted to assertive argument. It was while he was asserting the impossibility of miracles that he had his first intimation of his extraordinary powers.