Golden Age Fiction

A strange and curious little story, about the moonlight mating of flowers.

"Vallisneria Madness" appeared in the May 1937 issue of Weird Tales on pages 612 to 616.

Ralph Milne Farley was the pen name of the science fiction writing collaboration between Roger Sherman Hoar, state senator and assistant Attorney General for Massachusetts, and his daughter Caroline Prescott Hoar.

Vallisneria is a genus of submerged freshwater aquatic plant, commonly called eelgrass, tape grass or vallis, that spreads by runners and sometimes forms tall underwater meadows. It is dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants. Single female flowers grow to the water surface on very long stalks. Male flowers grow on short stalks, become detached, and float to the surface.

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Roger Sherman Hoar (April 8, 1887, Waltham, Massachusetts – October 10, 1963) was an American state senator and assistant Attorney General for the state of Massachusetts. He wrote and published science fiction under his own name, and from 1932 in collaboration with his daughter, Caroline Prescott Hoar, under the pseudonym of Ralph Milne Farley.

He was a great-great-grandson of Founding Father Roger Sherman.

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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].

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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/.

Professor Halley had perfected his machine for shrinking objects to sub-atomic size, and his trusty assistant, Hale McLaren was ready to make the journey into the sub-atomic universe. His daughter, Shirley, who loved Hale, was also determined to go, and Halley reluctantly agreed. 

The plan was to bring them back in half an hour, but Halley had made one vital miscalculation...

"Out of the Sub-universe" appeared in "Amazing Stories Quarterly," Summer 1928, pages 378 - 381.

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Roman Frederick Starzl (1899–1976) was an American writer. He, and earlier, his father (John V. Starzl), owned the Le Mars Globe-Post newspaper of Le Mars, Iowa. His writing is largely forgotten now, but he was called a "master" by the pioneer of space opera E. E. "Doc" Smith. Starzl's Interplanetary Flying Patrol, in "The Hornets of Space," may have influenced Smith's Galactic Patrol.

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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].

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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/.

Whatever goes up must come down. Including moon rockets. But there's no law saying what they must come down to.

"Down to Earth" appeared in the November 1963 issue of Amazing Stories on pages 53 to 71.

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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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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].

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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 blunder by a stock clerk meant that Mark Forepaugh and his servant, Gunga, were stranded on Inra without power until the relief ship arrived. But they couldn't stay in an unpowered trading station; they had to venture out and get to the Mountains of Perdition where they had a better chance of being rescued. That trip, however, necessitated a trip through the hostile jungle of Inra...

"The Planet of Dread" appeared in "Astounding Stories of Super-Science," August 1930, pages 147 - 157.

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Roman Frederick Starzl (1899–1976) was an American writer. He, and earlier, his father (John V Starzl), owned the Le Mars Globe-Post newspaper of Le Mars, Iowa.

His writing is largely forgotten now, but he was called a "master" by the pioneer of space opera E E "Doc" Smith. Starzl's Interplanetary Flying Patrol, in "The Hornets of Space," may have influenced Smith's Galactic Patrol.

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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].

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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/.

When is a suicide not a suicide? When there is an aging husband concerned about his health, a beautiful young wife, and a large life insurance policy. Hercule Poirot is called in by the insurance company to investigate.

"The Marsdon Manor Tragedy" appeared in the March 1924 issue of "The Blue Book Magazine" on pages 121 to 126.

"The Marsdon Manor Tragedy" first appeared in "The Sketch" in 1923 in the UK. In 1924 it appeared in the short story collection "Poirot Investigates." In 1991 it was broadcast in episode 6 of season 3 of the BBC's "Poirot" series, titled "The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor."

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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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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].

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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/.

Vincenzo and Aziz had a plan to steal one of the ice-sweepers orbiting Saturn and use it as their pirate base. Henry, for whom this was his first job, was 'volunteered' to be stranded in space in the path of the ice-sweeper and be 'rescued' and gain access to the ship. But when Ranjit saved Henry's life, he started having second thoughts. And then, Joachim and the beautiful Morna came aboard.

"Outside Saturn" appeared in "Infinity Science Fiction," January 1958, pages 104 - 123.

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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, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, 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/.

For a man who never flew before to step from an airplane into space thousands of feet above the earth--that takes nerve! Yet old Beth knew that was the only slim chance for his fire-trapped logging crew.

"Fire of Retribution" appeared in "Argosy All-Story Weekly," October 20, 1928, pages 712 - 717.

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Lawrence Louis Donovan (July 1885 – March 11, 1948) was an American pulp fiction writer who wrote nine 'Doc Savage' novels under the pseudonym "Kenneth Robeson",' a pen name that was used by other writers of the same publishing house. However, there are nine 'Doc Savage' novels duly credited to Donovan, published between November 1935 and July 1937. Three of his Doc Savage novels were "adapted" as early Superman comic book stories.

He employed various pen names; "Austin Gridley", "Patrick Everett", "Patrick Lawrence", "Wallace Brooker" and "Clifford Goodrich". Other pen names included "Don Lewis", "Don Lawrence" and "Larry Dunn", by which Donovan concealed his identity in the lurid Spicy Stories magazines. 

After a falling out with his editor in 1938, Donovan moved over to the rival Thrilling Publications, where he wrote under the house name of "Robert Wallace".

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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 Machine," they exclaimed, "feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being. The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine."

"The Machine Stops" appeared in the November 1909 issue of "The Oxford and Cambridge Review."

After initial publication in The Oxford and Cambridge Review (November 1909), the story was republished in Forster's "The Eternal Moment and Other Stories" in 1928.

After being voted one of the best novellas up to 1965, it was included that same year in the popular anthology "Modern Short Stories." In 1973 it was also included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two.

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Edward Morgan Forster OM CH (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author. He is best known for his novels, particularly "A Room with a View" (1908), "Howards End" (1910) and "A Passage to India" (1924). He also wrote numerous short stories, essays, speeches and broadcasts, biographies and some plays. Many of his novels examine class differences and hypocrisy.

His short story "The Machine Stops" (1909) is often viewed as the beginning of technological dystopian fiction.

Considered one of the most successful of the Edwardian era English novelists, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 22 separate years. He declined a knighthood in 1949, though he received the Order of Merit upon his 90th birthday. Forster was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1953, and in 1961 he was one of the first five authors named as a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature.

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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].

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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/.

I was there to recruit the Unmarried Mother. But first I had to gain his confidence by allowing him to 'settle' with the one who'd gotten him pregnant when he was a woman, and had ruined his chances of joining the Space Corps. I trusted that he wouldn't kill him. That would be problematic...

"All You Zombies" appeared in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction," March 1959, pages 5 - 15.

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Robert Anson Heinlien (July 7, 1907 – May 8, 1988) was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accuracy in his fiction, and was thus a pioneer of the subgenre of hard science fiction.

He was considered one of the "Big Three" of English-language science fiction authors, and a best-selling science-fiction novelist for many decades. Notable Heinlein works include "Stranger in a Strange Land," "Starship Troopers" (which helped mold the space marine and mecha archetypes) and "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress." His work sometimes had controversial aspects, such as plural marriage in "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," militarism in "Starship Troopers" and technologically competent women characters who were formidable, yet often stereotypically feminine—such as Friday. Heinlein also coined terms that have become part of the English language, including 'grok', 'waldo' and 'speculative fiction'.

Heinlein was named the first Science Fiction Writers Grand Master in 1974. Four of his novels won Hugo Awards, and fifty years after publication, seven of his works were awarded "Retro Hugos"—awards given retrospectively for works that were published before the Hugo Awards came into existence.

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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].

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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 rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea, Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be. 

— Chesterton: Lepanto.

"The Black Kiss" appeared in the June 1937 issue of Weird Tales on pages 678 to 690.

Although Robert Bloch is credited, "The Black Kiss" was written entirely by Henry Kuttner.

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Robert Albert Bloch (April 5, 1917, Chicago, Illinois – September 23, 1994, Los Angeles, California) was an American fiction writer, primarily of crime, psychological horror, and a relatively small amount of science fiction. He was a protégé of H. P. Lovecraft, who was the first to seriously encourage his talent. He is best as the writer of Psycho (1959), the basis for the film of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock.

He won the Hugo Award (for his story "That Hell-Bound Train"), the Bram Stoker Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He served a term as president of the Mystery Writers of America (1970) and was a member of that organization and of Science Fiction Writers of America, the Writers Guild of America, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Count Dracula Society. In 2008, The Library of America selected Bloch's essay "The Shambles of Ed Gein" (1962) for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American true crime.

Bloch was a contributor to pulp magazines such as Weird Tales in his early career, and was also a prolific screenwriter and a major contributor to science fiction fanzines and fandom in general.

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, or a genre you'd like me to include more of, 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/.