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Cities in the Sky episodes
- Mr Loneliness, by Henry Slesar
It is lonely out there in space. Very, very lonely! A man needs to see a human face, hear a human voice. So visitors have to be sent out somehow—by some means.
This short story appeared in the February 1957 issue of Super-Science Fiction.
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Henry Slesar (June 12, 1927 – April 2, 2002) was an American author and playwright. He is famous for his use of irony and twist endings. After reading Slesar's "M Is for the Many" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock bought it for adaptation and they began many successful collaborations. Slesar wrote hundreds of scripts for television series and soap operas, leading TV Guide to call him "the writer with the largest audience in America."
In 1955, he published his first short story, "The Brat" (Imaginative Tales, September, 1955). While working as a copywriter, he published hundreds of short stories—over forty in 1957 alone—including detective fiction, science fiction, criminal stories, mysteries, and thrillers in such publications as Playboy, Imaginative Tales, and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine; he was writing, on average, a story per week.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
12 min - My Robot, by Henry Slesar
Faw-faw, the robot designed and built by his father, was his story-teller, his companion, his protector, his revenge! But where was he now? What had they done to him? How he wished Faw-faw were here!
This short story appeared in the February 1957 issue of Fantastic Science Fiction, under the pen name of O H Leslie.
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Henry Slesar (June 12, 1927 – April 2, 2002) was an American author and playwright. He is famous for his use of irony and twist endings. After reading Slesar's "M Is for the Many" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock bought it for adaptation and they began many successful collaborations. Slesar wrote hundreds of scripts for television series and soap operas, leading TV Guide to call him "the writer with the largest audience in America."
In 1955, he published his first short story, "The Brat" (Imaginative Tales, September, 1955). While working as a copywriter, he published hundreds of short stories—over forty in 1957 alone—including detective fiction, science fiction, criminal stories, mysteries, and thrillers in such publications as Playboy, Imaginative Tales, and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine; he was writing, on average, a story per week.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, let me know at [email protected].
14 min - Blind Play, by Chandler Davis
Blind Play
Nick Pappas, hired-killer from Callisto, was strictly out for Pappas--out for Number One, as they used to say. And now those fools in the vanishing spaceship thought that number was up!
This short story appeared in the May 1951 issue of Planet Stories.
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Horace Chandler Davis (August 12, 1926 – September 24, 2022) was an American-Canadian mathematician, writer, educator, and political activist, and a minor science fiction writer.
Davis began his writing career in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946. From 1946 through 1962 he produced a spate of science fiction stories, mostly published there. One of the earliest, published May 1946, was The Nightmare, later the lead story in A Treasury of Science Fiction, edited by Groff Conklin.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, let me know at [email protected].
31 min - The Man Who Could Work Miracles, by H G Wells
Mr. Fotheringay was a sceptic. He didn't believe in miracles, and he was going to prove it to Mr. Beamish, only...
This short story appeared in the collection Tales of Space and Time published by Harper & Brothers in 1900.
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Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Wells' science fiction novels are so well regarded that he has been called the "father of science fiction".
As a futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility and biological engineering before these subjects were common in the genre. Brian Aldiss referred to Wells as the "Shakespeare of science fiction."
Wells rendered his works convincing by instilling commonplace detail alongside a single extraordinary assumption per work – dubbed "Wells's law." His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine (1895), which was his first novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), the military science fiction The War in the Air (1907), and the dystopian When the Sleeper Wakes (1910).
Wells was a diabetic and co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association (Diabetes UK) in 1934.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, let me know at [email protected].
45 min - How Deep the Grooves, by Philip José Farmer
Dr. James Carroad was prepared to experiment on his own unborn son to demonstrate that he could condition unquestioning loyalty in potential citizens, removing certain freedoms. However, Nature, or God, or the universe, had beaten him by a long way....
This short story appeared in the February 1963 issue of Amazing Stories.
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Philip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. He is best known for the World of Tiers (1965–93) and Riverworld (1971–83) series. He is noted for the reworking of the lore of celebrated pulp heroes. Farmer often mixed real and classic fictional characters and worlds. Such works as The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (1973) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) are early examples of literary mashup novels.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
30 min - The Wounded, by Philip José Farmer
No one was supposed to be able to recognize him. But those damned polaroid glasses they give you at the 3D movies...
This short story appeared in the October 1954 issue of Fantastic Universe.
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Philip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. He is best known for the World of Tiers (1965–93) and Riverworld (1971–83) series. He is noted for the reworking of the lore of celebrated pulp heroes. Farmer often mixed real and classic fictional characters and worlds. Such works as The Other Log of Phileas Fogg (1973) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) are early examples of literary mashup novels.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, let me know at [email protected].
17 min - The Untouchable Adolescents, by Harlan Ellison
The aliens wouldn't accept help, though their world was about to explode. They were adolescents. Adolescence is the time when you aren't smart enough to ask for help....
This short story appeared in the February 1957 issue of Super-Science Fiction, under the pen name of Ellis Hart.
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Harlan Jay Ellison (May 27, 1934 – June 28, 2018) was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction and for his outspoken, combative personality. His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media.
Some of his best-known works include the 1967 Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", considered by some to be the single greatest episode of the Star Trek franchise (he subsequently wrote a book about the experience that includes his original teleplay), his "A Boy and His Dog" cycle (which was made into a film), and his short stories "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" and "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman".
He was also editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, let me know at [email protected].
41 min - Stopover Planet, by Robert E Gilbert
Early morning deliveries were part of the Honeychile Bakery Service. But on this particular morning the bakery was collecting, not delivering!
This short story appeared in the August 1953 issue of Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy.
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Robert E. Gilbert (May 6, 1924 – April 4, 1993) was an American science fiction writer.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, please let me know at [email protected].
18 min - The Space Between, by Robert E Gilbert
Jak and Drusilla were on their way back to Earth, to the Wollongong Obstetric Hospital to be precise, for Drusilla had developed an acute case of pregnancy, when they were waylaid by ... pirates!?
This short story appeared in the Spring 1955 issue of Planet Stories.
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Robert E. Gilbert (May 6, 1924 – April 4, 1993) was an American science fiction writer.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, let me know at [email protected].
32 min - The Diamond Lens, by Fitz-James O'Brien
What was he prepared to do to pursue his life's ambition become the foremost microscopist? It turned out, almost anything. But what he discovered was to change, and ruin, his life.
This novelette appeared in the October 1933 issue of Amazing Stories.
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Fitz James O'Brien (also spelled Fitz-James; 25 October 1826 – 6 April 1862) was an Irish-American Civil War soldier, writer, and poet often cited as an early practitioner of science fiction.
He wrote for the Home Journal, the New York Times, and the American Whig Review. His first important literary connection was with Harper's Magazine, and beginning in February 1853, with The Two Skulls, he contributed more than sixty articles in prose and verse to that periodical. He likewise wrote for the New York Saturday Press, Putnam's Magazine, Vanity Fair, and the Atlantic Monthly.
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If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, let me know at [email protected].
1 hr 3 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].