Search Worlds Without End

Table of Contents:

• A Martian Odyssey & Others ('49) & The Red Peri ('52)
• A Martian Odyssey/Tweel ('34) Weinbaum novelette
• An Autobiographical Sketch ('35) Weinbaum essay
• Dawn of Fame: The Career of Stanley G. Weinbaum/Studies in Science Fiction ('59) Sam Moskowitz essay
• Flight on Titan ('35) Weinbaum novelette
• Graph ('36) Weinbaum story
• Parasite Planet/Ham Hammond ('35) Weinbaum novelette
• Proteus Island ('36) Weinbaum novelette
• Pygmalion's Spectacles ('35) Weinbaum story
• Redemption Cairn ('36) Weinbaum novelette
• Revolution of 1950 ('38) Ralph Milne Farley & Weinbaum novella
• Shifting Seas ('37) Weinbaum novelette
• Smothered Seas ('36) Ralph Milne Farley & Weinbaum novelette
• The Adaptive Ultimate ('35) Weinbaum novelette
• The Brink of Infinity ('36) Weinbaum story
• The Circle of Zero ('36) Weinbaum story
• The Ideal/Manderpootz ('35) Weinbaum story
• The Last Martian Weinbaum poem
• The Lotus Eaters/Ham Hammond ('35) Weinbaum novelette
• The Mad Moon ('35) Weinbaum novelette
• The Planet of Doubt/Ham Hammond ('35) Weinbaum novelette
• The Point of View/Manderpootz ('36) Weinbaum story
• The Red Peri ('35) Weinbaum novella
• The Worlds of If/Manderpootz ('35) Weinbaum story
• Valley of Dreams/Tweel ('34) Weinbaum story

Once only, in the occasional travelling of thirty years, did I lose any important article of luggage; and that loss occurred, not under the haphazard, devil-take-the-hindmost confusion of English, or the elaborate misrule of Continental journeys, but through the absolute perfection and democratic despotism of the American system.

Contents:

• Introduction (Caxton's Book) - essay by Sam Moskowitz
• 3 - Preface (Caxton's Book) - (1876) - essay by Daniel O'Connell
• 5 - In Memorium - (1876) - essay by W. H. L. B.
• 13 - The Case of Summerfield - (1871) - novelette
• 34 - The Merchants' Exchange - (1876) - shortfiction
• 37 - The Deserted Schoolhouse - (1876) - shortfiction
• 50 - For an Album - (1876) - shortfiction
• 52 - Phases in the Life of John Pollexfen - (1876) - shortfiction
• 94 - The Love-Knot - (1876) - poem
• 95 - The Aztec Princess - (1876) - shortfiction
• 154 - The Mother's Epistle - (1876) - poem
• 156 - Legends of Lake Bigler - (1876) - shortfiction
• 171 - Rosenthal's Elaine - (1876) - poem
• 175 - The Telescopic Eye - (1876) - shortfiction
• 191 - The Emerald Eye - (1876) - poem
• 199 - The Earth's Hot Center - (1876) - shortfiction
• 212 - Wildey's Dream - (1876) - poem
• 218 - Whitherward - (1876) - shortfiction
• 229 - Our Wedding-Day - (1876) - poem
• 231 - The Old Year and the New - (1876) - poem
• 233 - A Pair of Myths - (1876) - shortfiction
• 247 - The Last of His Race - (1876) - poem
• 249 - The Two Georges - (1876) - shortfiction
• 260 - Masonry - (1876) - poem
• 262 - Pollock's Euthanasia - (1876) - poem
• 264 - Science, Literature and Art During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century - (1876) - essay
• 276 - The Enrobing of Liberty - (1876) - poem
• 279 - A Cake of Soap - (1876) - poem
• 280 - The Summerfield Case - (1876) - shortfiction
• 291 - The Avitor - (1876) - poem
• 293 - Lost and Found - (1876) - poem

A post-apocalyptic tale that chronicles man's shedding of his restricting nature and the realization of his perfection through the evolution of group cooperation and herd behavior.

When the sun suddenly dies, the remaining populations on earth are forced to move their societies underground. Like Noah and his ark full of animals and plants, they take with them their most valuable items for rebuilding their new world also: paintings, bronzes, violins, and books of poetry. After a few centuries of subterranean slaughter, somehow the inevitable victors emerge: secular saintly aesthetes who create a romantic neo-troglodytical artistic utopia through the prodigious use of prophylactics and capital punishment. And love.

The basic story is set in the nineteenth century, where a man asks his friends if they want to see something he has been working on and they all end up taking a trip to Venus, where there are different societies depending on if you live on the sun side or the no-sun side of the planet, where all you need as a human to survive is a fur coat and a pistol, and the people have tapped into the higher powers of the brain for communication.

The story of a man who has been placed in suspended animation for 100 years.

The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man; Relating Particularly his Shipwreck near the South Pole; his wonderful Passage thro' a subterraneous Cavern into a kind of new World; his there meeting with a Gawry or flying woman, whose Life he preserv'd, and afterwards married her; his extraordinary Conveyance to the Country of Glums and Gawrys, or Men and Women that fly. Likewise a Description of this strange Country, with the Laws, Customs, and Manners of its Inhabitants, and the Author's remarkable Transactions among them.

The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins is somewhat on the same plan as Robinson Crusoe, the special feature being the gawry, or flying woman, whom the hero discovered on his island, and married.

Masterpieces of Science Fiction is an anthology of science fiction short stories, edited by Sam Moskowitz. It was first published in hardcover by World Publishing Co. in 1966, and reprinted by Hyperion Press in 1974. The book collects eighteen tales by various authors, together with a historical and critical introduction by the editor and two non-fictional pieces relating to "Hans Pfaall" by its author, Edgar Allan Poe.

• 1 - Introduction (Masterpieces of Science Fiction) - essay by Sam Moskowitz
• 27 - Voyage to the Moon - [Les états et empires de la Lune et du Soleil] - short story by Cyrano de Bergerac
• 44 - The Mortal Immortal - (1833) - short story by Mary Shelley
• 60 - Hans Phaall--A Tale - (1835) - novella by Edgar Allan Poe
• 110 - Note on "Hans Phaall" - (1840) - essay by Edgar Allan Poe
• 118 - Richard Adams Locke - (1850) - essay by Edgar Allan Poe
• 128 - The Wondersmith - (1859) - novelette by Fitz-James O'Brien
• 168 - The Eternal Adam - (1957) - novelette by Jules Verne and Michel Verne (trans. of L'éternel Adam 1910) [as by Jules Verne]
• 207 - The Brick Moon - [Brick Moon] - (1872) - novella by Edward Everett Hale
• 276 - Lost in a Comet's Tail; or, Frank Reade, Jr.'s Strange Adventure with His New Air-Ship - juvenile - [Frank Reade, Jr.] - novelette by Luis Senarens [as by Luis P. Senarens]
• 313 - The Country of the Blind - (1904) - novelette by H. G. Wells
• 354 - The Place of Pain - (1914) - short story by M. P. Shiel
• 367 - The Los Amigos Fiasco - (1892) - short story by Arthur Conan Doyle
• 377 - The Resurrection of Jimber-Jaw - (1937) - novelette by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• 400 - The People of the Pit - (1918) - short story by A. Merritt
• 420 - System - short story by Josef Capek and Karel Capek (trans. of Systém 1908)
• 428 - Extra Sensory Perfection - (1955) - short story by Hugo Gernsback
• 435 - The Colour Out of Space - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1927) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
• 469 - Humanity on Venus - (1930) - short fiction by Olaf Stapledon
• 489 - Jungle Journey - (1958) - short story by Philip Wylie
• 520 - The Lotus Eaters - [Ham Hammond] - (1935) - novelette by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Robert Gray, ex-Army officer turned soldier of fortune, is hired by the American Exploration Society to find the Wusun, a fabled lost race. In a race against time, taking the path traveled by Marco Polo centuries before Gray uncovers a religious plot to keep the Wusun hidden- a plot which if revealed would rewrite the course of Eastern religious history forever!

Contents:

• Introduction (Life Everlasting and Other Tales of Science, Fantasy and Horror) - (1947) - essay by Sam Moskowitz
• A Piece of Linoleum - (1933) - shortstory by David H. Keller, M.D.
• Heredity - (1947) - shortstory by David H. Keller, M.D.
• Life Everlasting - (1934) - novella by David H. Keller, M.D.
• No More Tomorrows - (1932) - shortstory by David H. Keller, M.D.
• The Boneless Horror - (1929) - shortstory by David H. Keller, M.D.
• The Cerebral Library - [Taine - 7] - (1931) - shortstory by David H. Keller, M.D.
• The Dead Woman - (1934) - shortstory by David H. Keller, M.D.
• The Face in the Mirror - (1947) - shortstory by David H. Keller, M.D.
• The Thing in the Cellar - (1932) - shortstory by David H. Keller, M.D.
• The Thirty and One - [Tales from Cornwall - 4] - (1938) - shortstory by David H. Keller, M.D.
• Unto Us a Child is Born - (1933) - shortstory by David H. Keller, M.D.

The Master Key: An Electrical Fairy Tale, Founded Upon the Mysteries of Electricity and the Optimism of Its Devotees.

A young boy accidentally summons the Demon of Electricity who gives him certain electrical gifts to show the world. The boy concludes that neither he nor the world is ready for them. But a day will surely come, shortly...

In Baum's forward-looking electrical fairy tale, readers will find cell phones, television, DVRs, the taser, and much more, plus a rousing childhood adventure. And what about the rest of the marvels described in The Master Key? Will the Demon of Electricity reveal even more secrets in the future?

Who knows?

The book follows a young man who works for the Bronx Zoo as an ornithologist. He gets sent on exotic travels around the world as part of his job. He has strange adventures, or hilarious clamity, during his search for odd and extinct animals that are supposed to still exist. He can never quite realize his goal, but always finds a pretty girl to fall in love with, only to have her wisked away at the last moment.

England's trilogy, Darkness and Dawn (published in 1912, 1913 and 1914 as The Vacant World, Beyond the Great Oblivion and Afterglow) tells the story of 2 modern people who awake a thousand years after the earth was devastated by a meteor. They work to rebuild civilization.

The Vacant World - Beatrice Kendrick, and her boss, engineer Allan Stern, wakes up on an upper floor of a ruined Manhattan skyscraper, thousands of years in the future when civilization has been destroyed. The pair has been in a state of suspended animation for fifteen hundred years. Changes in the earth's features as well as monstrously mutated ""humans"" make it clear they have little hope of survival.

Beyond the Great Oblivion - Allan and Beatrice begin to discover the nature of the catastrophe that has split the Earth open. Rebuilding an airplane, they find a ""bottomless"" chasm near Pittsburgh where a huge portion of the Earth has been torn away to become a second moon. Alan and Beatrice earn the loyalty of the People of this Abyss and lead them from the chasm to New York.

The Afterglow - Allan and Beatrice, with the People of the Abyss, prepare to recolonize the Earth's surface. But first, they must defeat the devolved, cannibalistic survivors who populate Earth's cities.

A Round Trip to the Year 2000, or A Flight Through Time, in which various contemporary writers travel by Suspended Animation to 2000 CE, where they observe social conditions, and find themselves a popular anachronism.

This remarkable novel originally appeared in 1903 in The Argosy magazine, but was not published in book form until 1925. By then, Karel Capek's RUR had been written, and Cook's work, in which mechainical men appeared for the first time in science fiction, received little notice.

WHAT IS THE SHAPE OF THE FUTURE?

Who are the men who can, and do, use their imaginations with analytical brilliance to make all possivble futures a reality?

What is the talent, the imaginative power, these men and women bring to their work that makes it possible for them to project themselves thousands of years beyond our time--and to take their readers along with them?

Sam Moskowitz, "science fiction's leading historian," discusses the authors who have contributed most to a picture of worlds the Earth will some day know--the voyages to the stars, the dreamers of dreams, the most exciting writing and writers of our time.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• 1. Edward E. Smith, Ph.D
• 2. John W. Campbell
• 3. Murray Leinster
• 4. Edmond Hamilton
• 5. Jack Williamson
• 6. Superman
• 7. John Wyndham
• 8. Eric Frank Russell
• 9. L. Sprague de Camp
• 10. Lester del Rey
• 11. Robert A. Heinlein
• 12. A.E. van Vogt
• 13. Theodore Sturgeon
• 14. Isaac Asimov
• 15. Clifford D. Simak
• 16. Fritz Leiber
• 17. C.L. Moore
• 18. Henry Kuttner
• 19. Robert Bloch
• 20. Ray Bradbury
• 21. Arthur C. Clarke
• 22. Philip José Farmer
• 23. Starburst, Epilogue

A searching look at the curious and lively minds--the famous and the forgotten--who shaped the development of science fiction from its earliest beginnings in the 17th century to its modern flowering in the 1930s.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Explorers of the Infinite) - essay
• Cyrano DeBergerac - Swordsman of Space - [Studies in Science Fiction] - (1959) - essay
• The Sons of Frankenstein - (1958) - essay
• The Prophetic Edgar Allan Poe - [Studies in Science Fiction] - (1958) - essay
• The Fabulous Fantast, Fitz-James O'Brien - [Studies in Science Fiction] - (1958) - essay (variant of The Fabulous Fantast)
• Around the Worlds With Jules Verne - [Studies in Science Fiction] - (1958) - essay
• The Real Earth Satellite Story - (1957) - essay
• Ghosts of Prophecies Past, or, Frank Reade, Jr. and "Forgotten Chapters in American History" - essay
• The Wonders of H. G. Wells - [Studies in Science Fiction] - (1958) - essay
• The World, the Devil, and M. P. Shiel - essay
• Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Science Fiction - [Studies in Science Fiction] - (1959) - essay
• To Barsoom and Back with Edgar Rice Burroughs - essay
• The Marvelous A. Merritt - [Studies in Science Fiction] - (1959) - essay (variant of The Marvelous A. Merritt - Lord of Fantasy)
• Karel Capek: The Man Who Invented Robots - [Studies in Science Fiction] - essay (variant of Karel Capek: The Man Who Invented Robots 1960)
• Hugo Gernsback: "Father of Science Fiction" - essay
• The Lore of H. P. Lovecraft - essay
• Olaf Stapledon: Cosmic Philosopher - [Studies in Science Fiction] - (1960) - essay
• Space Opus: Philip Wylie - essay
• Dawn of Fame: The Career of Stanley G. Weinbaum - [Studies in Science Fiction] - (1959) - essay
• How Science Fiction Got Its Name - (1956) - essay
• The Future in Present Tense - essay

Written shortly after the guns of World War I fell silent, CITY OF ENDLESS NIGHT presents a strange yet well-conceived vision of the future that might have been, had the Great War ended differently. The premise is that allied bombing in an extended WWI had driven the Germans in Berlin underground into a series of bunkers and subterranean factories. The Germans quickly discovered ways of surviving under these conditions, while the Allies failed to figure out any means of ferreting them out, and the war turned into a frustrating stalemate.

The year is 2041. Since the end of WWI, Berlin has been an enormous subterranean city, home to 300 million citizens who have never seen the sun, and presided over by the autocratic Hohenzollern dynasty. Every aspect of life is regimented; from controlled rations that are issued on the basis of work-for-food, to a press that works exclusively under the auspices of the Information Service. Christianity has been abolished and all breeding is carried out on the basis of strict eugenic principles. Lyman De Forrest, an American chemist, discovers a way of neutralizing Berlin's defenses and, assuming the identity of a dead German man, enters the city to discover its hidden truths. The first outsider for decades to enter the forbidden metropolis, he is horrified to find a society where women are kept in isolation for breeding or the pleasuring of high status men. Can De Forrest escape this living tomb?

Published shortly after the end of WWI, this tremendous example of early dystopian science fiction is thought to have been the inspiration behind Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

A unique collection of tales that are contemporary classics--from the most productive period of science fiction by Edward E. Smith, John W. Campbell, Edmond Hamilton, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and other great modern writers.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Introduction (Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction) - essay by Sam Moskowitz
• 19 - The Vortex Blaster - [Vortex Blaster] - (1941) - short story by Edward E. Smith
• 44 - Night - [Twilight - 2] - (1935) - short story by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• 69 - A Logic Named Joe - (1946) - short story by Murray Leinster
• 89 - Requiem - (1962) - short story by Edmond Hamilton
• 111 - With Folded Hands... - [Humanoids] - (1947) - novelette by Jack Williamson
• 165 - Adaptation - (1949) - short story by John Wyndham
• 186 - The Witness - (1951) - novelette by Eric Frank Russell
• 213 - The Command - [Johnny Black] - (1938) - short story by L. Sprague de Camp
• 230 - Kindness - (1944) - short story by Lester del Rey
• 248 - We Also Walk Dogs - [Future History] - (1958) - novelette by Robert A. Heinlein (variant of "--We Also Walk Dogs" 1941)
• 277 - Enchanted Village - (1950) - short story by A. E. van Vogt
• 295 - Liar! - [Susan Calvin] - (1941) - short story by Isaac Asimov
• 316 - Microcosmic God - (1941) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• 350 - Huddling Place - [City] - (1944) - short story by Clifford D. Simak
• 372 - Coming Attraction - (1950) - short story by Fritz Leiber
• 389 - Doorway Into Time - (1943) - short story by C. L. Moore
• 412 - We Guard the Black Planet! - (1942) - novelette by Henry Kuttner
• 449 - The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton - (1939) - short story by Robert Bloch
• 461 - Wake for the Living - (1947) - short story by Ray Bradbury (variant of The Coffin)
• 471 - Before Eden - (1961) - short story by Arthur C. Clarke
• 485 - Mother - (1953) - novelette by Philip José Farmer

A lively history of the early days of science fiction fandom - the battles, brawls and break-ups, divisions, disasters and magnificent accomplishments of a highly talented and individualistic group of sci-fi enthusiasts - many of whom became today's great names in science fiction.

In The Second Deluge, filed with scenes of panic and disaster, the entire surface of the earth is submerged when the solar system enters a watery nebula, and only scientist-hero Cosmo Versal, and a small group of friends who believe in him survive by flying above the flood in a newly invented skyship.

In this work written in 1941, at the most frightening point of World War II, Stapledon projects two separate futures for humanity, depending not on the outcome of that particular conflict but on the failure or success of a future "Tibetan Renaissance" to influence the temper and ideology of the militaristic Russian and Chinese empires that threaten it. One of the futures involves worldwide Chinese imperialism and subsequent degeneration and extinction of the human race, unable to defend itself against speedily evolving rats. The other ends in overthrowing the empires and creation of a worldwide socialist utopia.

The Night Land is a classic horror novel by William Hope Hodgson, first published in 1912. As a work of fantasy it belongs to the Dying Earth subgenre. H. P. Lovecraft's described the novel as "one of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written". According to critical consensus, in this work, despite his often laboured and clumsy language, Hodgson achieves a deep power of expression, which focuses on a sense not only of terror but of the ubiquity of potential terror, of the thinness of the invisible bound between the world of normality and an underlying reality for which humans are not suited.

In the distant future, the sun has burned out, plunging the world into perpetual twilight. All of the remaining humanity has dwindled to a single, eight-mile-high pyramid called The Last Redoubt. Horrific creatures have evolved that lurk in the darkness. After a second dying Lesser Redoubt is discovered, one man is determined to rescue its last surviving inhabitant, but that means traversing the unknown and terrifying Night Land.

A history and anthology of scinece fiction in the popular magazines, 1891-1911, edited and with an introduction by San Moskowitz.

Table of Contents:

• 11 - Preface (Science Fiction by Gaslight) - essay by Sam Moskowitz
• 15 - Introduction: A History of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911 - essay by Sam Moskowitz
• 51 - A Corner in Lightning - (1898) - interior artwork by Paul Hardy
• 53 - The Thames Valley Catastrophe - (1897) - short story by Grant Allen
• 69 - The Doom of London - (1892) - short story by Robert Barr
• 79 - A Corner in Lightning - (1898) - short story by George Griffith
• 90 - The Tilting Island - (1909) - short story by Grena J. Bennett and Thomas J. Vivian
• 102 - Finis - (1940) - short story by Frank Lillie Pollock [as by Frank Lillie Pollack]
• 113 - An Express of the Future - interior artwork by A. J. Johnson (variant of An Express of the Future [2] 1895) [as by unknown]
• 115 - An Express of the Future - (1895) - short story by Michel Verne (trans. of Un express de l'avenir 1888) [as by Jules Verne]
• 120 - The Ray of Displacement - (1903) - short story by Harriet Prescott Spofford
• 134 - Congealing the Ice Trust - (1907) - short story by H. G. Bishop [as by Capt. H. G. Bishop, U.S.A.]
• 141 - Lord Beden's Motor - (1901) - short story by Harris Burland [as by J. B. Harris-Burland]
• 153 - The Monster of Lake LaMetrie - (1899) - interior artwork by Stanley L. Wood
• 155 - The Death-Trap - (1908) - short story by George Daulton
• 167 - The Air Serpent - (1911) - short story by Will A. Page
• 177 - The Monster of Lake LaMetrie - (1899) - short story by Wardon Allan Curtis
• 189 - The Voice in the Night - (1907) - short story by William Hope Hodgson
• 201 - The Land Ironclads - interior artwork by Claude A. Shepperson (variant of The Land Ironclads [3] 1903) [as by Claude A. Shepperson, R. I.]
• 203 - The Land Ironclads - (1903) - novelette by H. G. Wells
• 223 - The Dam - (1911) - short story by Hugh S. Johnson
• 233 - Submarined - (1905) - short story by Walter Wood
• 239 - The Purple Terror - (1899) - interior artwork by Paul Hardy (variant of The Purple Terror [2])
• 241 - The Purple Terror - (1899) - short story by Fred M. White
• 255 - Professor Jonkin's Cannibal Plant - [Professor Jonkin] - (1905) - short story by Howard R. Garis
• 265 - The Hybrid Hyperborean Ant - (1910) - interior artwork by Albert Levering (variant of The Hybrid Hyperborean Ant [5])
• 267 - An Experiment in Gyro-Hats - (1910) - short story by Ellis Parker Butler
• 280 - The Hybrid Hyperborean Ant - (1910) - short story by Roy L. McCardell
• 293 - Where the Air Quivered - (1898) - interior artwork by H. Piffard [as by Piffard]
• 295 - Where the Air Quivered - (1898) - novelette by Robert Eustace and L. T. Meade
• 312 - In Re State Vs. Forbes - (1906) - short story by Warren Earle
• 325 - Old Doctor Rutherford - (1891) - interior artwork by Louis Gunnis
• 327 - Old Doctor Rutherford - (1891) - short story by D. F. Hannigan
• 339 - Itself - (1907) - short story by Edgar Mayhew Bacon
• 351 - The Platinum Web - (1906) - interior artwork by G. W. Peters
• 353 - Citizen 504 - (1896) - short story by Charles H. Palmer (variant of The Alien Thread 1892)
• 361 - The Mansion of Forgetfulness - (1907) - short story by Don Mark Lemon

The scientific community has always shunned William Carpenter. A strange, hulking giant, a talented biochemical investigator, and the self-styled "greatest mind in the western world," he has locked himself inside a house with no windows, in the most desolate reaches of New Jersey, where he can conduct his experiments in peace and isolation. Here in his personal sanctuary, Carpenter has found something astonishing that could alter life on Earth as we know it: a chemical compound that can render all matter invisible, from rocks to plants to people.

But the twisted genius has no intention of using this breakthrough to benefit the planet. Instead, he is about to declare war on all humankind by launching an unseen campaign of terror and destruction. For years the world has ignored William Carpenter, labeling him insane, sociopathic, or worst of all, insignificant. And now the world will have to pay.

This work takes its readers on a thrilling journey to the planets and moons of our solar system, including Mars and Saturn before heading, at several times the speed of light, to Alpa Centauri, where they explore an Eden-like planet.

"Who Goes There?": The novella that formed the basis of "The Thing" is the John W. Campbell classic about an antarctic research camp that discovers and thaws the ancient body of a crash-landed alien. The creature revives with terrifying consequences, shape-shifting to assume the exact form of animal and man, alike.

Paranoia ensues as a band of frightened men work to discern friend from foe, and destroy the menace before it challenges all of humanity!

The story, hailed as "one of the finest science fiction novellas ever written" by the SF Writers of America, is best known to fans as THE THING - it was the basis of Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World in 1951, and John Carpenter's The Thing in 1982.

The Ghost Pirates is a powerful account of a doomed and haunted ship on its last voyage, and of the terrible sea-devils (of quasi-human aspect, and perhaps the spirits of bygone buccaneers) that besiege it and finally drag it down to an unknown fate.

Set in the Near Future, (from the POV of the 1930ies) a Scientist, so disgusted by what he self-righteously reguards as the decedance of modern civilization, instantaneously transforms the world by means of a Ray which obliterates all memory, all acquired knowledge, including how to talk. Hoping that in this tabula-rasa setting men, starting from instinct, will be able to create a just society; but only the smartest and toughest re-educate themselves in technology. The rest must die.

Swain, one member of an African expedition, becomes demented and attempts to exterminate a peculiar species of African ape. The other members of the expedition are befriended by an intelligent ape called the Captain. The expedition discover that the apes are in fact humans that have evolved in reverse due to exposure to a meteor and that the Captain was once human.

A collection of seven astounding journeys into tomorrow.

Contents:

• Forgetfulness
• The Escape
• The Machine
• The Invaders
• Rebellion
• Out of Night
• Cloak of Aesir

From the foreword to the 1915 edition: This book is the result of an attempt to carry the monopolistic principle to its logical conclusion.

Isaac Flint, a greedy billionaire businessman, plots to extract oxygen from the air and then sell it back to people if they want to live. Through bribes, blackmail and threats, he forces a group of scientists to develop a means of extracting the oxygen and forces politicians to cooperate with his plan. Soon, surrounded by a private army of guards to prevent the outraged populace from stopping him, Flint has "cornered" the oxygen market, and people everywhere have no choice but to pay for the air they breathe--or see themselves and their families die for lack of oxygen.

Where the crested invaders came from no man could say--but they threatened to bring destruction to the three civilized planets! Seeking a vacation, Interplanetary Guard Jack Sanders runs into romance and a space war!

Captain Masterman was a stalwart, seasoned British naval officer. He had been well respected within the ranks of his fellow naval peers--that is until he went missing at sea and came back spouting mad theories about sea demons with his crew having mysteriously disappeared. Submarine commander Donald Paget was skeptical of these wild claims, but he listened attentively to the old captain's stories in a saloon one day shortly before the captain died. As fate would have it, on his next voyage out Paget's submarine was assailed by the very monsters Masterman had warned him of! These translucent, insect-like, quasi-humanoid monsters devoured everything in sight and it seemed doubtful that Paget and his crew would ever see the ocean's surface again.

It arrived in the wee hours of the morning. Had an express train derailed? Were the Germans bombing the British countryside again? The truth was beyond Professor Toddleben's wildest dreams...

The professor's quaint estate of Applewood had unceremoniously become home to an extraterrestrial visitor. Saurus, an iguana-like creature borne Earthward from the stars, hatches from a leathery shell and demonstrates both a superlative mind and telepathic abilities. Professor Toddleben and his assistants learn to communicate with him--and from there the plot only thickens!