Ran Rarak, captain of a cruiser belonging to the Federation of Stars, has been called back from duty to confront an extraordinary threat. The Dark Star, which is being tracked by the Bureau of Astronomical Knowledge, has changed course and is now veering dangerously close to the Sun. Ran Rarak must lead a fleet of ships to confront this menace.

Today's story is "The Star-stealers" by Edmond Hamilton. It appeared in the February 1929 issue of "Weird Tales" on pages 149 to 168 and 279 to 288.

Edmond Moore Hamilton (October 21, 1904 – February 1, 1977) was an American writer of science fiction during the mid-twentieth century. He is known for writing most of the Captain Future stories.

Hamilton was a central member of the remarkable group of Weird Tales writers assembled by editor Farnsworth Wright, that included H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Through the late 1920s and early 1930s Hamilton wrote for all of the science fiction pulp magazines then publishing, and contributed horror and thriller stories to various other magazines as well. He was popular as an author of space opera, a subgenre he created along with E. E. Smith. His story "The Island of Unreason" (Wonder Stories, May 1933) won the first Jules Verne Prize as the best science fiction story of the year (this was the first science fiction prize awarded by the votes of fans, a precursor of the later Hugo Awards).

In 1942 Hamilton began writing for DC Comics, specializing in stories for their characters Superman and Batman. He and artist Sheldon Moldoff created Batwoman in Detective Comics #233 (July 1956).

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

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Trixie O'Neill had had enough of the miners in Finchburg not treating her like a lady. So, she was going to go to Saturday Wells with Goreck, the Martian. What was worse was that she was taking her dandelions in their precious Terran soil with her! Well, the miners of Finchburg weren't going to stand for that...

"One Touch Of Terra" appeared in "Fantastic Universe," December 1956, pages 58 - 70.

Hannes Bok, a pseudonym for Wayne Francis Woodard (July 2, 1914 – April 11, 1964), was an American artist and illustrator, as well as an amateur astrologer and writer of fantasy fiction and poetry. He painted nearly 150 covers for various science fiction, fantasy, and detective fiction magazines, as well as contributing hundreds of black and white interior illustrations. Bok's work graced the pages of calendars and early fanzines, as well as dust jackets from specialty book publishers like Arkham House, Llewellyn, Shasta Publishers, and Fantasy Press. His paintings achieved a luminous quality through the use of an arduous glazing process, which was learned from his mentor, Maxfield Parrish. Bok shared one of the inaugural 1953 Hugo Awards for science fiction achievement (best Cover Artist).

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

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Looking for signs of intelligent life on other planets by trying to detect radio signals was a waste of time; it would take too much power to broadcast any significant distance. Light, however, was easier to project over the distances required to traverse interstellar space. And perhaps, signals from another intelligence have been detected, mistakenly interpreted as a star pulsating, its brightness changing due to some natural phenomenon. 

Well, it's something to do when you're stuck monitoring the weather at the South Pole...

"Answer, Please Answer" was published in "Amazing Stories," October, 1962.

Benjamin William Bova (November 8, 1932 – November 29, 2020) was an American writer and editor. During a writing career of 60 years, he was the author of more than 120 works of science fact and fiction, an editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, for which he won a Hugo Award six times, and an editorial director of Omni; he was also president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America.

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

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The Sheriff of Tonto City could expect anything to come out of the night in Wild Horse Valley—even an idea...

Today's story is "Henry Goes Prehistoric" by W C Tuttle. It appeared in the January 25th, 1948 issue of "Short Stories" magazine on pages 48 to 70.

W C Tuttle (November 11, 1883, Montana – June 6, 1969, Los Angeles County, California) was an American writer who sold more than 1000 magazine stories and dozens of novels, almost all of which were westerns.

Tuttle wrote mainly for pulp magazines; his main market was Adventure magazine. He also wrote for other publications such as Argosy, Short Stories, Street & Smith’s Western Story Magazine, Field & Stream, West, New Western Magazine and Exciting Western.

His best known character was Hashknife Hartley, who along with his friend Sleepy Stevens, served as unofficial detectives solving crimes on the ranches where they worked as cowboys. Other characters Tuttle created included Cultus Collins, Sad Sontag, and Henry Harrison Conroy, a former vaudeville actor turned sheriff.

In 1950-1951, Tuttle was narrator of the old-time radio series Hashknife Hartley, which featured adaptations of his stories.

He was also a screenwriter hailing back to the silent era. He wrote the screenplays for 52 films between 1915 and 1945.

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

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David Greaves began as a hero with his ship, Defiance, crash landing on Venus, but surviving unconscious in his Crash Capsule by using an experimental gas that might offer a chance to survive. 

Eons later and a universe away, he became instead a god!

"Die, Shadow!" appeared in the May 1963 issue of "Worlds of If Science Fiction" on pages 61 - 76.

Algirdas Jonas "Algis" Budrys (January 9, 1931 – June 9, 2008) was a Lithuanian-American science fiction author, editor, and critic. He was also known under the pen names Frank Mason, Alger Rome (in collaboration with Jerome Bixby), John A Sentry, William Scarff, and Paul Janvier. He is best known for the influential 1960 novel "Rogue Moon."

Incorporating his family's experience, Budrys's fiction depicts isolated and damaged people and themes of identity, survival, and legacy.

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

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The normal progress of a technology produces simpler and simpler gadgets involving more and more complex fundamental laws. And, of course, requiring less and less of the user . . .

"The Little Black Bag" appeared in the July 1950 issue of "Astounding Science Fiction" on pages 132 to 161.

"The Little Black Bag" is a complementary story to "The Marching Morons," also by C M Kornbluth; the little black bag in question having come from the future envisioned in that story.

"The Little Black Bag" won the 2001 Retroactive Hugo Award for Best Novelette (of 1951) and was also recognized as the joint-13th best all-time short science fiction story in the October and November 1971 Analog Science Fact & Fiction poll. It was among the stories selected in 1970 by the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the best science fiction short stories published before the creation of the Nebula Awards. As such, it was published in Volume One of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

"The Little Black Bag" was the basis of episodes (using the same title) in three television series: Tales of Tomorrow in 1952, Out of the Unknown in 1969, and Night Gallery in 1970.

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.

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

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When is an SOS not an SOS? When it's a trap. Lieutenant Dave Carter is lured to Deneb IV while on his way to recuperate on the vacation planet of Ophiuchus VII after a reactor explosion on his previous ship. Little did he know that, due to the nature of his treatment, he is the only man in the universe equipped to combat what awaits...

"The Mystery of Deneb IV" appeared in "Fantastic Science Fiction," February 1957, page 56 - 67.

Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is an American author and editor, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a Grand Master of SF. He has attended every Hugo Award ceremony since the inaugural event in 1953.

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

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The robot was strictly logical, reasoning, as only its perfect machine mind could, from observed facts to inevitable—if wacky—conclusion. 

Today's story is "Reason," by Isaac Asimov. It appeared in the April 1941 issue of "Astounding Science Fiction" on pages 33 to 45.

"Reason" is part of Asimov's Robot series, and was the second of Asimov's positronic robot stories to see publication.

In 1967, this short story was adapted into an episode of the British television series "Out of the Unknown" entitled "The Prophet".

The story was also broadcast as episode two of a five-part 15 Minute Drama radio adaptation of "I, Robot" on BBC Radio 4 in February 2017.

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

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The old man could feel orbits, sense trajectories, and calculate faster than the best computators. But he couldn't be trusted when he got a drink inside him. He was, however, Captain Kroll's only hope of getting home to the colony on Jupiter...

"Jonah of the Jove-Run" appeared in "Planet Stories," Spring 1948, pages 50 - 58.

Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.

Bradbury is widely known by the general public for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and his short-story collections The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951.) Most of his best known work is speculative fiction, but he also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including Moby Dick and It Came from Outer Space. Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books.

The New York Times called Bradbury "the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream."

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

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Across the frozen cliffs they loomed—the unbelievably ancient towers with the unimaginable engines deep inside them still pouring out their endless power. Dr. Sidney Lee, back from time away due to a breakdown, and believing the towers to represent a threat to humanity, vowed to uncover their secrets... 

"The Towers of Titan" appeared in the January 1962 issue of "Amazing Stories."

Benjamin William Bova (November 8, 1932 – November 29, 2020) was an American writer and editor. During a writing career of 60 years, he was the author of more than 120 works of science fact and fiction, an editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, for which he won a Hugo Award six times, and an editorial director of Omni; he was also president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America.

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

If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, please let me know using the Contact Form.