Cities in the Sky

Hercule Poirot's little grey cells penetrate straight to the heart of the solution when a million dollars worth of bonds are at stake.

"The Million Dollar Bond Robbery" appeared in the book "Poirot Investigates," published by "The Bodley Head Limited" in 1921 on pages 80 to 91.

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Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952.

A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction," Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime"—now trademarked by her estate—or the "Queen of Mystery." She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

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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/.

The Galaxy had a nice, stable civilization — Till Earth-men, the prize gadget maniacs of space, came along!

Homo Sol appeared in the September 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction on pages 117 to 131.

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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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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

The telepaths were a danger and a threat—to a world grown monstrous. But the human mind can unlock a multitude of doors.

"The Forerunners" appeared in the March 1956 issue of "Fantastic Universe" on pages 59 to 69.

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Norman Arkawy

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Stanley Henig

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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/.

Shambleau. A name out of myth and legend. The Greeks on Earth had a name for it, as did the civilizations on countless other planets. Northwest Smith, itinerant adventurer, was about to find out just how mythical the creature was...

"Shambleau" appeared in the November 1933 issue of "Weird Tales" on pages 531 to 550.

"Shambleau" was the first published story of Moore's anti-hero, Northwest Smith.

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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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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

How much is the health of the mind tied to the health of the body. George Gregory is about to find out...

"The Artificial Man" appeared in the Fall 1929 issue of "Science Wonder Quarterly" on pages 78 to 83.

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Clare Winger Harris (January 18, 1891, Freeport, Illinois – October 26, 1968, Pasadena, California) was a pioneering science fiction writer whose short stories were published during the 1920s. She is credited as the first woman to publish stories under her own name in science fiction magazines. Her stories often featured strong female characters.

Harris began publishing stories in 1926 and soon became popular with readers, with most of her fiction appearing in the influential magazine Amazing Stories. She published a total of twelve stories, all but one of which were collected in 1947 as “Away From the Here and Now”; a full collection was not published until 2019 when “The Artificial Man and Other Stories” appeared.

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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/.

A man came out of the sky and they took him and hanged him from the nearest tree thinking that they lynched a devil. But perhaps they crucified a saint instead—there in the beauty of the desert.

"Biddy and the Silver Man" appeared in the February 1957 issue of "Fantastic Science Fiction" on pages 6 to 29 and 110 to 130.

It appeared under the pen name of E K Jarvis, a house pen name of Fantastic, as Harlan Ellison had another story published in that month's issue.

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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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Music: "Mesmerizing Galaxy" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Kirby was always up for adventure, for trying out one of Professor Martyn's new inventions. His latest invention, however, which could grow or shrink a man indefinitely, promised to revolutionize science. But at what cost...?

"The Man from the Atom" appeared in "Amazing Stories," April 1926, pages 62 to 66 and May 1926, pages 140 to 147.

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G Peyton Wertenbaker (1907-1968) was a US author and editor, one of the pioneers of Hugo Gernsback's development of "Scientifiction" (science fiction.) His first story, written when he was fifteen, "The Man from the Atom" (August 1923 Science and Invention) appeared in the special "scientifiction" issue of Gernsback's premier science magazine and concerns an invention that allows a man to grow so vast and so quickly that he moves beyond into the macrocosm and is unable to return to Earth. His further adventures are told in "The Man from the Atom (Sequel)" (May 1926 Amazing), the first new story published in Amazing Stories.

Wertenbaker wrote only five science fiction stories before turning to novel writing and editing. He served on the editorial board of Fortune magazine from 1933 to 1938, and became a contributing editor to Time Magazine in 1939. In 1950 he became involved with the fledgling Aerospace industry, returning to some degree to his first love. In 1958 he joined NASA as a speechwriter, eventually becoming chief historian of the Aerospace Medical Division.

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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/.

King could remember how golden and glorious the house had seemed to men-and what the science he hated had done to his friends.

"Keepers of the House" appeared in the January 1956 issue of "Fantastic Universe" on pages 82 to 93.

"Keepers of the House" is also included in "The Best of Lester del Rey," published in 1978, a collection of several of his most acclaimed short stories from the 1930s to the 1950s.

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Lester del Rey (real name Leonard Knapp) (June 2, 1915, Saratoga Township, Minnesota, – May 10, 1993, New York City, New York), was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the author of many books in the juvenile Winston Science Fiction series, and the fantasy editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction imprint of Ballantine Books (subsequently Random House.)

Del Rey first started publishing stories in pulp magazines in the late 1930s, at the dawn of the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction.

He was a member of a literary banqueting club, the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. Del Rey was the model for "Emmanuel Rubin."

His 1938 story "Helen O'Loy" was selected for the prestigious anthology The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He was awarded the 1972 E. E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (the "Skylark") by the New England Science Fiction Association. He won a special 1985 Balrog Award for his contributions to fantasy, voted for by fans and organized by Locus magazine. The Science Fiction Writers of America named him its 11th SFWA Grand Master in 1990, presented 1991.

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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/.

They were the heirs of space-flight: They planned to be the first humans to land on Alpha Centauri, but the original Hartnett expedition had been lost and they had to find it first. They followed the signals and found that they led to what looked like a one-way excursion to the screwiest planetoid in the galaxy!

"Einstein's Planetoid" appeared in "Science Fiction Quarterly," Spring 1942, pages 99 to 117.

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Cyril M Kornbluth

Cyril M Kornbluth (July 2, 1923 – March 21, 1958) was an American science fiction author and a member of the Futurians. He used a variety of pen-names, including Cecil Corwin, S D Gottesman, Edward J Bellin, Kenneth Falconer, Walter C Davies, Simon Eisner, Jordan Park, Arthur Cooke, Paul Dennis Lavond, and Scott Mariner.

As a teenager, he became a member of the Futurians, an influential group of science fiction fans and writers. While a member of the Futurians, he met and became friends with Frederik Pohl, Donald A Wollheim, Robert A W Lowndes, and his future wife Mary Byers. He also participated in the Fantasy Amateur Press Association.

Robert A W Lowndes

Robert Augustine Ward "Doc" Lowndes (September 4, 1916 – July 14, 1998) was an American science fiction author, editor and fan. He was known best as the editor of Future Science Fiction, Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Quarterly, among many other crime-fiction, western, sports-fiction, and other pulp and digest sized magazines for Columbia Publications. Among the most famous writers he was first to publish at Columbia was mystery writer Edward D Hoch, who in turn would contribute to Lowndes's fiction magazines as long as he was editing them. Lowndes was a principal member of the Futurians. His first story, "The Outpost at Altark" for Super Science in 1940, was written in collaboration with fellow Futurian Donald A Wollheim, uncredited.

Frederick Pohl

Frederick George Pohl Jr. (November 26, 1919 – September 2, 2013) was an American science-fiction writer, editor, and fan, with a career spanning nearly 75 years.

From about 1959 until 1969, Pohl edited Galaxy and its sister magazine If; the latter winning three successive annual Hugo Awards. His 1977 novel Gateway won four "year's best novel" awards: the Hugo, the Locus, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He won the Campbell Memorial Award again for the 1984 collection of novellas The Years of the City. For his 1979 novel Jem, Pohl won a U.S. National Book Award, and it was a finalist for three other year's best novel awards. He won four Hugo and three Nebula Awards, including receiving both for the 1977 novel Gateway.

In 1993, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named Pohl its 12th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, and he was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1998.

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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/.

True, the Robot Equality Act had been passed—but so what?_ New York was a bad town for robots this year. In fact, all over the country it was bad for robots....

"The Velvet Glove" appeared in the November 1956 issue of "Fantastic Universe" on pages 59 to 75.

"The Velvet Glove" also appeared in "War with the Robots," a collection of short stories by Harry Harrison published in 1962. The collection's central theme is robots being able to do things better than humans.

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Harry Max Harrison (March 12, 1925 – August 15, 2012) was an American science fiction author, known mostly for his character The Stainless Steel Rat and for his novel Make Room! Make Room! (1966). The latter was the rough basis for the motion picture Soylent Green (1973). Long resident in both Ireland and the United Kingdom, Harrison was involved in the foundation of the Irish Science Fiction Association, and was, with Brian Aldiss, co-president of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group.

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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/.