Golden Age Fiction

A little whimsy, now and then, makes for good balance. You could find this type of humor anywhere, but only a topflight science-fictionist could have written this story, in just this way...

"The Eyes Have It" appeared in "Science Fiction Stories," 1953, pages 128 - 130.

-----

Did you ever wonder at the lonely life the bird in a cuckoo clock has to lead—that it might possibly love and hate just as easily as a real animal of flesh and blood?

Larry Thomas bought a cuckoo clock for his wife—without knowing the price he would have to pay.

"Beyond the Door" appeared in "Fantastic Universe Science Fiction," January 1954, pages 101 - 106.

-----

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American science fiction writer. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories. His fiction explored philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness.

Dick's influence has been widespread, extending into Hollywood filmmaking. Popular films based on his works include Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990 and 2012), Screamers (1995), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), and Radio Free Albemuth (2010). In 2015, The Man in the High Castle (1962) was a dapted into a multi-season television series, based on Dick's 1962 novel; and in 2017 Channel 4 produced the anthology series Electric Dreams, based on various Dick stories.

In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer included in The Library of America series.

-----

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 at [email protected].

-----

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

Mrs. Bellowes, along with a lot of other older women, had paid good money to stay at Mr. Thirkell's Restorium and eventually on to the greatest adventure life could offer. But after yet another delay, she just had to take matters into her own hands...

"A Little Journey" appeared in "Galaxy Science Fiction," August 1951, pages 152 - 158.

-----

The new game the children are playing is going to be the best game ever! It's called 'Invasion!' and their new friend, Drill, is helping them prepare for Zero Hour, when the game begins.

"Zero Hour" appreaed in "Planet Stories," Fall 1947, pages 40 - 45.

-----

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."

-----

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 at [email protected].

-----

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

Ed Loyce was a practical man. He liked to fix things himself. And if he couldn't fix it himself, he'd call someone. When he saw what was hanging in the town square, and no one doing anything about it, he had to go and investigate...

"The Hanging Stranger" appeared in "Science Fiction Adventures" magazine, December 1953, pages 122 - 136.

-----

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American science fiction writer. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories. His fiction explored philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness.

Dick's influence has been widespread, extending into Hollywood filmmaking. Popular films based on his works include Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990 and 2012), Screamers (1995), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), and Radio Free Albemuth (2010). In 2015, The Man in the High Castle (1962) was a dapted into a multi-season television series, based on Dick's 1962 novel; and in 2017 Channel 4 produced the anthology series Electric Dreams, based on various Dick stories.

In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer included in The Library of America series.

-----

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 at [email protected].

-----

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

How do you kill a man without killing him? 

This was the problem Colonel Donovan had to solve if Earth was to win the war against Antares. Suicide was not an option; the killing of one's own soldiers was just wrong. But a way had to be found to prevent captured soldiers from divulging information about the disposition of Earth's forces.

"The Way Out" appeared in "Infinity Science Fiction," June 1958, pages 110 - 125.

-----

Richard Rein Smith (November 28 1930 – ) is an American science fiction writer, and a writer of novels in other genres under various pseudonyms, some of which are as yet unrevealed.

-----

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 at [email protected].

-----

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

The Pas-udeti war-fleet had turned the flank of the human war-fleet, and, for the first time in a century, the humans were retreating. But this planet around Orion was Tony's home. He'd been born here. He had Pas-udeti friends. He'd known them for five years. They were building a model spaceport. Nothing would change...

"Tony and the Beetles" appeared in "Orbit," December 1953, pages 60 - 71.

-----

Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American science fiction writer. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories. His fiction explored philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness.

Dick's influence has been widespread, extending into Hollywood filmmaking. Popular films based on his works include Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990 and 2012), Screamers (1995), Minority Report (2002), A Scanner Darkly (2006), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), and Radio Free Albemuth (2010). In 2015, The Man in the High Castle (1962) was adapted into a multi-season television series, based on Dick's 1962 novel; and in 2017 Channel 4 produced the anthology series Electric Dreams, based on various Dick stories.

In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer included in The Library of America series.

-----

If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, let me know at [email protected].

-----

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

Dinner with Samlaan Britt at West o' Mars was the pinnacle of Peache's career, but he was determined to get to the truth of the rumors that surrounded the founding of West o' Mars.

Peache believed that behind every man lies the influence of a woman. Influence, though, can take odd forms...

"West o' Mars" appeared in "Infinity Science Fiction," April 1958, pages 110 - 125.

-----

Charles Louis Fontenay (March 17, 1917 – January 27, 2007) was an American journalist and science fiction writer. He wrote science fiction novels and short stories.

-----

If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, let me know at [email protected].

-----

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

Rufus Sollenar, creator of EmpaVid, a revolutionary entertainment system, had everything. However, the Special Public Relations Office of the International Association of Broadcasters needs to ensure that its members investements were safe, especially as Cortwright Burr, Sollenar's biggest competitor, recently visited the Martian engineers... 

"Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night" appeared in "Galaxy Magazine," December 1961, pages 110 - 131.

-----

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.

-----

If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, let me know at [email protected].

-----

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

It was only a tiny scout ship from somewhere beyond the stars; only one alien creature occupied it. But the ship's mission spelled life to its fellow creatures and death to all living creatures on Earth. And against the super-science of the raider stood one terrified old man and his dog...

"Nobody Saw The Ship" appeared in "Future combined with Science Fiction Stories," May-June 1950, pages 40 - 49 and 94 - 97.

-----

Murray Leinster (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975) was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays.

-----

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 at [email protected].

-----

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

In a small grimy shop selling bric-a-brac and antiquities in Seven Dials, London, was a large crystal egg. The shop's proprietor, a Mr. C Cave, was reluctant to sell, even when offered the outrageous sum of five pounds! His step-family didn't understand; there was so much they could do with such a fortune!

What was it about that crystal egg that prevented Mr. Cave from selling?

"The Crystal Egg" appeared in "Tales of Space and Time," published in 1900 by Harper & Brothers, pages 1 - 33.

-----

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.

-----

If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, let me know at [email protected].

-----

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

When Captain Makki is found dead on a routine hop from Earth to Mars, there are only three suspects; Lefler, the astrogator, Taat, the ship's doctor, and Robwood, the engineer. One of them must have done it. But who? And why?

"Earth Transit" appeared in "Infinity Science Fiction," September 1957, pages 18 - 33.

-----

Charles Louis Fontenay (March 17, 1917 – January 27, 2007) was an American journalist and science fiction writer. He wrote science fiction novels and short stories.

-----

If there's a story you'd like me to narrate, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, let me know at [email protected].

-----

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