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Cities in the Sky episodes
- Incident, by Thomas J O’Hara
A floating coffin was the ship, its lone survivor specter-gaunt and adrift in a pitiless universe.
This short story appeared in the May 1955 issue of Fantastic Universe.
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If you have information about this author, I would be grateful if you could let me know at [email protected].
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
12 min - Public Enemy, by Kendell Foster Crossen
At long last, Public Police Officer Brad Raynor was going to see some action--perhaps he’d have some of the excitement that policemen in the past experienced every day!
This short story appeared in the December 1952 issue of Dynamic Science Fiction.
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Kendell Foster Crossen (July 25, 1910 – November 29, 1981) was an American pulp fiction and science fiction writer. He was the creator and writer of stories about the Green Lama (a crime-fighting Buddhist superhero whose powers emerged upon the recitation of the Tibetan mantra "Om mani padme hum") and the Milo March detective and spy novels.
His pen names included Richard Foster, Bennett Barlay, Kent Richards and Clay Richards, Christopher Monig (the name of the ghost of the town of Crossen on the Oder), and M.E. Chaber (from the Hebrew word ‘mechaber’, meaning author).
He wrote hundreds of radio scripts for The Green Lama, Suspense, The Saint, Mystery Theater, and others. His later television credits include 77 Sunset Strip, The Man from Blackhawk, Man and the Challenge, and Perry Mason.
Crossen was one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America and the uncredited editor of its first anthology, Murder Cavalcade (1946).
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
23 min - Youth, by Isaac Asimov
Red and Slim found the two strange little animals the morning after they heard the thunder sounds. They knew that they could never show their new pets to their parents.
This novelette appeared in the May 1952 issue of "Space Science Fiction".
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Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as popular science and other non-fiction.
Asimov's most famous work is the "Foundation" series, the first three books of which won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. His other major series are the "Galactic Empire" series and the "Robot" series. He also wrote more than 380 short stories, including the social science fiction novelette "Nightfall", which in 1964 was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
1 hr 16 min - The Voices, by Edward Wellen
Nicholas Kane was sitting at his desk when he heard the voices. This was a departure from the usual, and he heard them only once—but that one time turned out to be once too often for Kane.
This short story appeared in the March 1954 issue of Universe Science Fiction.
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Edward Wellen (born Edward Paul Levy, October 2, 1919 – January 15, 2011 was an American mystery and science fiction writer.
As of 1993, it was estimated that, in addition to two novels, Wellen had published 250 mysteries in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and assorted anthologies.
In his 1995 collection, Tales of the Batman, Wellen's novella was optioned by Tri-Star Pictures as a vehicle for Robin Williams. That project never came to fruition, but an audiobook featuring actor René Auberjonois was released in the same year.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
8 min - The Graveyard Rats, by Henry Kuttner
A gruesome fate befell the old caretaker of the cemetery in the horrible burrows beneath the graves.
This short story appeared in the March 1936 issue of Weird Tales.
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Henry Kuttner (April 7, 1915, Los Angeles, California – February 3, 1958, Los Angeles, California) was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and horror. He contributed several stories to Lovecraft’s Cthulu Mythos, adding a few lesser-known deities to the Mythos pantheon.
Kuttner wrote under a plethora of pseudonyms which many believe prevented him from garnering the fame that he should have had.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
20 min - Song in a Minor Key, by C L Moore
He had been promising himself this moment for how many lonely months and years on alien worlds?
Today's story is "Song in a Minor Key" by C L Moore. It appeared in the January 1957 issue of "Fantastic Universe" on pages 79 to 81.
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Catherine Lucille Moore (January 24, 1911, Indianapolis, Indiana, US – April 4, 1987, Hollywood, California, US) was an American science fiction and fantasy writer. She was among the first women to write in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Moore's work paved the way for many other female speculative fiction writers.
Her early work included two significant series in Weird Tales. One features the rogue and adventurer Northwest Smith wandering through the Solar System; the other features the swordswoman/warrior Jirel of Joiry, one of the first female protagonists in sword-and-sorcery fiction.
Moore married her first husband Henry Kuttner in 1940, and most of her work from 1940 to 1958 (Kuttner's death) was written by the couple collaboratively. They were prolific co-authors under their own names, although more often under any one of several pseudonyms.
As "Catherine Kuttner", she had a brief career as a television scriptwriter from 1958 to 1962. She retired from writing in 1963.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
7 min - Idol's Eye, by Carol Emshwiller
Who’d have dreamed the destiny awaiting Philippa?
This short story appeared in the February 1958 issue of Future Science Fiction.
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Carol Emshwiller (born Agnes Carolyn Fries in Ann Arbor, Michigan, April 12, 1921 – February 2, 2019) was an American writer of avant-garde short stories and science fiction who won prizes for her work including the Nebula Award to the Philip K. Dick Award.
Ursula K. Le Guin has called her "a major fabulist, a marvelous magical realist, one of the strongest, most complex, most consistently feminist voices in fiction." Among her novels are Carmen Dog and The Mount. Her last novel, The Secret City, was published in April 2007.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
17 min - Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates
The robot was harmless, in fact couldn't be moved in any way whatever—till a newsman stuck his nose in where it didn't belong!
This novelette appeared in the October 1940 issue of "Astounding Science Fiction".
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Hiram Gilmore "Harry" Bates III (October 9, 1900 – September 1981) was an American science fiction editor and writer.
His short story "Farewell to the Master" (1940) was the basis of the science fiction movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951).
In 1983, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” was inducted into the Science Fiction Film Hall of Fame as part of the Balrog Awards, which were given from 1979 to 1985.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
1 hr 56 min - The Nothing, by Frank Herbert
The Nothings stemmed from the future’s tragic lack of courage. But one man and woman dared to shape a more audacious tomorrow.
This short story appeared in the January 1956 issue of "Fantastic Universe."
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Franklin Patrick Herbert Jr. (October 8, 1920 – February 11, 1986) was an American science-fiction author, best known for his 1965 novel Dune and five sequels, with Dune winning the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1965 and sharing the Hugo Award in 1966 with ...And Call Me Conrad by Roger Zelazny. He also wrote short stories and worked as a newspaper journalist, photographer, book reviewer, ecological consultant, and lecturer.
In 1942, he served in the U.S. Navy's Seabees for six months as a photographer, but suffered a head injury and was given a medical discharge. He subsequently moved to Portland, Oregon where he reported for The Oregon Journal.
Herbert was the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's education writer from 1969 to 1972 and lecturer in general studies and interdisciplinary studies at the University of Washington (1970–1972). He worked in Vietnam and Pakistan as a social and ecological consultant in 1972, and in 1973 he was director-photographer of the television show The Tillers.
Herbert had retired from newspaper writing by the end of 1972, becoming a full-time fiction writer, and enjoying considerable commercial success during the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1979, Herbert met anthropologist Jim Funaro with whom he conceived the Contact Conference. In June 1981, Herbert was a guest of honour at Advention '81 in Adelaide, South Australia.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
28 min - Blood Lands, by Alfred Coppel
“You will never take us away from our land, men from the stars ... and no one who has touched this, our sacred land, shall ever leave it!”
This short story appeared in the December 1952 issue of Dynamic Science Fiction.
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Alfredo Jose de Arana-Marini Coppel (November 9, 1921 – May 30, 2004) was an American author. Born in Oakland, he served as a fighter pilot in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. After his discharge, he started his career as a writer. He became one of the most prolific pulp magazine authors of the 1950s and 1960s, adopting the pseudonyms Robert Cham Gilman and A.C. Marin and writing for a variety of pulp magazines. Though writing in a variety of genres, including action thrillers, he is known for his science fiction novels and short stories.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
26 min
About Cities in the Sky
From the publisher's feed
Classic Stories of Science and Fantasy Fiction.
Science fiction and fantasy stories have captivated audiences for as long as stories have been told. The Epic of Gilgamesh, written around 2000…
BCE, is often cited as one of the earliest science fiction, or fantasy fiction, stories, depending who you talk to.
Speculative fiction began to take shape prior to and during the European Enlightenment, encouraged by the new scientific discoveries being made. Thomas More's 1516 book, "Utopia", describes an island nation whose inhabitants have developed a seemingly perfect society. Several books from this period deal with voyages to, or societies living on, the moon; Johannes Kepler's "Somnium", 1634, Francis Godwin's "The Man in the Moone", 1638, and Cyrano de Bergerac's "Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon", 1656. Voltaire's "Micromégas", 1752, suggests that people of other worlds may be more advanced than those of Earth.
Mary Shelley's classic novel "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus", published in 1818, contains the archetypal 'mad scientist' experimenting with advanced technology. Another of her novels, "The Last Man", in 1826, is cited as the first Dystopian story.
Alexander Veltman's novel "The forebears of Kalimeros: Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon", 1836, was the first Russian science fiction novel and the first novel to use time travel, although via a magical hippogriff rather than technological means.
Samuel Butler's 1872 novel "Erewhon" describes machines that could become sentient and replace humans. Edward Everett Hale's "The Brick Moon", published serially in 1869 in The Atlantic Monthly, was the first story to describe an artificial satellite. "The Case of Summerfield" written by William Henry Rhodes and published in 1871 in the Sacramento Union newspaper, introduces the first 'weapon of mass destruction' used by a 'mad scientist' to blackmail the world. Edward Page Mitchell published science fiction short stories in The Sun for more than a decade, from 1874 onwards, dealing with invisibility, faster than light travel, teleportation, time travel, cryogenics, mind transfer, mutants, cyborgs and mechanical brains.
In the 19th Century, Jules Verne and H G Wells represented divergent styles of speculative fiction. Verne's mix of accurate technology and daring romantic adventures could be considered the earliest 'hard' science fiction. Well's more didactic approach skipped over much of the science and technology in order to critique Victorian society, and could be considered the first 'soft' science fiction. Both were commercially successful, and showed that a comfortable living could made writing such stories.
American author L. Frank Baum's book "Tik-Tok of Oz", 1914, contains the first literary appearance of handheld wireless communicators. Jack London's science fiction short stories "The Unparalleled Invasion", published in McClure's in 1910, and "The Red One", published in Cosmopolitan in 1918, contain germ wafare and extraterrestrials, respectively.
Then came the so-called golden age of science fiction from around the mid-1920s to the mid-1940s. Pulp magazines such as Astounding Stories, Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, Galaxy, If Magazine, and Weird Tales filled newstands and helped launch the writing careers of many of the giants of science fiction; household names such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Leigh Brackett, and Frank Herbert. The rich heritage upon which they drew, and to which they contributed, continues to influence modern science fiction and fantasy writers, and will undoubtedly do so far into the future.
Please note that performance of a story is not a condoning, endorsement, or promotion of attitudes, prejudices, biases or opinions therein—particularly of gender and gender roles, ethnicity, disability, and sexuality—that an inhabitant of modern times would find distasteful.
If there's a story that you'd like me to narrate, let me know at [email protected].