Lost Sci-Fi
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The Plagiarist From Rigel IV
by Evan Hunter
read by Scott Miller
Part 30 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Plagiarist From Rigel IV by Evan Hunter - Writing stories was hard work-unless Fred had a typewriter like "Reggie" that could write by itself! Nonsense? Fred agreed until he met- THE PLAGIARIST FROM RIGEL IV
I bought the typewriter in a pawn shop on Third Avenue.
The pawn shop proprietor was a balding old man with a walrus mustache.
"How much?" I asked him.
"Five dollars," he said casually.
I glanced at him skeptically. The machine was a Remington Noiseless, with italics, probably worth a little over a hundred new, and it couldn't have been more than a year or two old.
"How much?" I asked.
"Five dollars, is what I said. Five." He held up the fingers of his widespread hand. "Five. One-two-three...."
"What's wrong with it?" I asked suspiciously.
The old man shrugged. "Something has to be wrong with it? Listen, young man, don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
"How come it's so cheap?"
The old man sighed deeply. "You try to do a favor, you get all kinds of questions. Would you feel happier if I charged you fifty-five dollars?"
"I wouldn't pay fifty-five dollars. I haven't got that much money."
"Have you got five dollars? Can you pay that much?"
"Yes. But...."
"All right, take the machine. A case goes with it. Believe me, young man, this is a bargain."
"Five dollars?" I asked again.
"Five dollars. You want it? Yes or no? I got other things to do."
"I'll take it."
The old man smiled. "Good, you'll never regret it."
He slid the machine off the counter and put it into its case. He snapped the case shut then, locked it, and handed me the two keys.
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The Misplaced Battleship
One Con Man Against The Universe's Deadliest Weapon
by Harry Harrison
read by Scott Miller
Part 92 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Misplaced Battleship by Harry Harrison - It might seem a little careless to lose track of something as big as a battleship ... but interstellar space is on a different scale of magnitude. But a misplaced battleship-in the wrong hands!-can be most dangerous.
When it comes to picking locks and cracking safes I admit to no master. The door to Inskipp's private quarters had an old-fashioned tumbler drum that was easier to pick than my teeth. I must have gone through that door without breaking step. Quiet as I was though, Inskipp still heard me. The light came on and there he was sitting up in bed pointing a .75 caliber recoilless at my sternum.
"You should have more brains than that, diGriz," he snarled. "Creeping into my room at night! You could have been shot."
"No I couldn't," I told him, as he stowed the cannon back under his pillow. "A man with a curiosity bump as big as yours will always talk first and shoot later. And besides-none of this pussyfooting around in the dark would be necessary if your screen was open and I could have got a call through."
Inskipp yawned and poured himself a glass of water from the dispenser unit above the bed. "Just because I head the Special Corps, doesn't mean that I am the Special Corps," he said moistly while he drained the glass. "I have to sleep sometime. My screen is open only for emergency calls, not for every agent who needs his hand held."
"Meaning I am in the hand-holding category?" I asked with as much sweetness as I could.
"Put yourself in any category you please," he grumbled as he slumped down in the bed. "And also put yourself out into the hall and see me tomorrow during working hours."
He was at my mercy, really. He wanted sleep so much. And he was going to be wide awake so very soon.
"Do you know what this is?" I asked him, poking a large glossy pic under his long broken nose. One eye opened slowly.
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Fondly Fahrenheit
The Heat Of Murder In A Cold Future
by Alfred Bester
read by Scott Miller
Part 264 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester - On Paragon III, amidst endless rice fields under a burning orange sky, a sinister discovery sparks an intense manhunt. Escape and survival hinge on unraveling the mystery of an android capable of murder.
He doesn't know which of us I am these days, but they know one truth. You must own nothing but yourself. You must make your own life, live your own life and die your own death ... or else you will die another's.
The rice fields on Paragon III stretch for hundreds of miles like checkerboard tundras, a blue and brown mosaic under a burning. sky of orange.
In the evening, clouds whip like smoke, and the paddies rustle and murmur. A long line of men marched across the paddies the evening we escaped from Paragon III. They were silent, armed, intent; a long rank of silhouetted statues looming against the smoking sky. Each man carried a gun. Each man wore a walkie-talkie belt pack, the speaker button in his ear, the microphone bug clipped to his throat, the glowing view-screen strapped to his wrist like a green-eyed watch. The multitude of screens showed nothing but a multitude of individual paths through the paddies. The annunciators uttered no sound but the rustle and splash of steps.
The men spoke infrequently, in heavy grunts, all speaking to all.
"Nothing here."
"Where's here?"
"Jenson's fields."
"You're drifting too far west."
"Close in the line there."
"Anybody covered the Grimson paddy?"
"Yeah. Nothing."
"She couldn't have walked this far."
"Could have been carried."
"Think she's alive?"
"Why should she be dead?"
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The Broken Axiom
A Battle Between Reason And The Unknown
by Alfred Bester
read by Scott Miller
Part 437 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Broken Axiom by Alfred Bester - The Laws of Physics State That Two Bodies Cannot Occupy the Same Space at the Same Time-but Dr. Halday Finds a Loophole!
Alfred Bester was an American science fiction author, editor, and scriptwriter whose bold imagination and innovative prose reshaped the genre. A native New Yorker, Bester studied psychology and philosophy before turning to writing in the late 1930s, contributing stories to pulps like Thrilling Wonder Stories. During the 1940s he worked extensively in comics, scripting for DC titles such as Superman, Green Lantern, and Batman, where he co-created enduring concepts including the Green Lantern Oath.
Bester's true breakthrough came in the 1950s with two landmark novels: The Demolished Man (1953), the first Hugo Award winner for Best Novel, a dazzling blend of crime fiction and telepathy; and The Stars My Destination (1956), a revenge-driven space opera often hailed as one of science fiction's greatest works.
Beyond novels, Bester's short stories are regarded as classics for their experimental flair. He also worked in radio, television, and magazine editing, spending time as features editor for Holiday magazine. Though his later novels received mixed reception, Bester's mid-century works remain milestones of modern science fiction. Celebrated for his wit, linguistic play, and relentless energy, Alfred Bester is remembered as one of the field's most original and enduring voices.
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Lancelot Biggs: Master Navigator
When Blunders Become Brilliance In Outer Space
by Nelson S. Bond
read by Scott Miller
Part 447 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Lancelot Biggs: Master Navigator by Nelson S. Bond - Trust Lancelot Biggs to get his ship into a mess just when speed and good navigation meant the prize contract of the year...!
Everything happens to me. We finished taking on cargo at 13:10, Solar Constant Time, and I went to my turret for firing orders from the Sun City spacedrome officer. I plugged in the audio and stared into the familiar pan of Commander Allonby.
I said, "Freight lugger Saturn preparing to up gravs, Commander. Standing by for the O.Q."
His jaw dropped like a barometer in a cyclone. He gasped, "You, Sparks? And the Saturn? What in blue space are you doing in port?"
"Don't look now," I advised him, "but we've been here since day before yesterday. Matter of fact, you and me h'isted elbows together last night at the Cosmic Bar, remember?"
"Remember?" he howled. "How could I? The last I heard of you, Cap Hanson was running the Saturn through the planetoids on some sort of cockeyed transmutation experiment![1] When did you get back? How did you-?"
"Damn!" I groaned, "and double-damn!" I knew what had happened. It was that confounded new invention of Lancelot Biggs'. It was a uranium audio plate which, when activated in low radiations, acted as what you might call a "time-speech-trap."
In other words, I was talking to Allonby not as he was now, but as he had been five months ago!
Don't ask me how it works. I'm a stranger here myself. Anyhow, I shook my head, shifted the dials, picked up Allonby in the current time level, got a take-off order and relayed it to the bridge. Pretty soon a bell dinged, another one donged, and a slow, humming vibration tingled through the ship as our hypatomics caught hold. I steadied myself for the lift-
And whammo!
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Ground
A Deadly Puzzle In Alien Skies
by Hal Clement
read by Scott Miller
Part 448 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Ground by Hal Clement - They were inside the sun, in a temperature of 900 Kelvin. With the refrigerators out there was only one wild chance to pull through.
The little ship plunged into the star.
If anyone had asked Jack Elder to justify his uneasiness, he could not have obliged. He might even have gone so far as to deny any such feeling; but he would not have been speaking the truth. He had every con- fidence in the refrigerators of the Wraith, untried as they were; he had helped design them; but the phrase, "Inside a star," which he had used sо casually in New York a few short weeks ago, now seemed to carry a more tangible-and deadly-implication.
Admittedly, the words had been a half truth, designed to impress an already awe-struck audience; the fringes of VV Cephei's far-flung atmosphere did technically constitute a portion of the giant sun, and he was certainly well within those fringes, but the environment was certainly not the raging hell of an atomic furnace which an unwary listener to his words might have been led to supрове. There was actually solid matter outside the spherical hull of the tiny interstellar traveler.
Elder sneaked a glance at the other men in the small cabin. Dressler, who had collaborated with him in the design of the heat-distributor, was looking at the recording dials pertaining to the device with every appearance of satisfaction. Snell, the astrophysicist, was sitting before the control board of his weird mass spectrograph that was mounted outside the hull, and periodically working knobs and switches that changed plates and altered the sensitivity regions of the device.
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Fall of Knight
Sir Ian's Plan Wasn't In The Space Manual
by A. Bertram Chandler
read by Scott Miller
Part 449 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Fall of Knight by A. Bertram Chandler - Sir Ian's proposal shocked them all. They were spacemen. This was not a thing that they'd know how to do.
It is customary for the spacemen serving in the Federation's star ships to sneer at the titles bestowed, with a lavish hand, by the Kingdom of Waverley upon its spacefaring subjects. An officer who rises to become Master of one of the Empress Class vessels equivalent to the Federation's Alpha Class-is invariably, after a short period of probation, dubbed Knight. His Chief Engineers-Reaction and Interstellar Drives-usually are given the title of Esquire, as is the First Mate. There are quite a few Dames among the senior Pursers and Catering Officers.
A spaceman is a spaceman, however, no matter what fancy handle he has to his name, He has to know his stuff, otherwise he would not be where he is. He has to be efficient, otherwise he would never wear upon his shoulders the four gold stripes of captaincy. So it was with Captain Sir Ian MacLachlan Stuart, Master of the interstellar liner Empress of Skye. When things went wrong he coped, and nobly, and saw to it that his officers coped.
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Dead Man's Planet
A Ghostly Vigil On A Frozen Asteroid
by Russ Winterbotham
read by Scott Miller
Part 452 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Dead Man's Planet by Russ Winterbotham - For unmarked ages a dead man kept his ghostly vigil on that barren, frozen asteroid.
"A life-saver!" Mick said, bringing the space freighter down with a gentle bump on the huge, shapeless mass of rock and iron that floated between Mars and Jupiter.
The term huge was purely relative, for the asteroid was scarcely ten miles in diameter at its thickest point, and its axis could not have been more than twelve miles long.
Mick switched off the rockets, opened a locker and pulled forth a suit of heavy, furlined, airtight garments which he slipped over his uniform.
The communication speaker buzzed.
"Hey, Mick! Are you still on the bridge?"
Alf Rankin was calling from the charting room.
"Yes, Alf. What's the trouble." Mick Conner was sealing his space suit.
"This isn't an ordinary asteroid, Mick. It isn't barren. There's stuff growing on it."
"That's nothing to get goggle-eyed about, Alf. There's moss on Eros which is smaller than this. And there are 142 different kinds of plants and one intermediate-animal-vegetable-organism on Juno."
"Hm-m!"
Of course this was a surprise to Alf, who had never made a landing on the asteroids before. Science had rather neglected the asteroids during the rapid development of interplanetary flight, yet there were many interesting sights to be seen on the 4,000 minor planets that floated between Jupiter and Mars.
"Get on your space togs and oxygen helmet and we'll fix that broken jet," Mick said. "We'll be ready to go in three hours."
Mick sealed his helmet and stepped into the automatic lock leading from the control bridge to the roof of the streamlined rocket.
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Summertime on Icarus AKA the Hottest Piece of Real Estate in the Solar System
Trapped Where The Sun Never Blinks
by Arthur C. Clarke
read by Scott Miller
Part 453 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Summertime on Icarus by Arthur C. Clarke - Alone on the scorching side of this tiny little world, an astronaut races against time as the blazing sun creeps closer to incinerating him. Survival depends on outthinking the most unforgiving environment in the solar system.
When Colin Sherrard opened his eyes after the crash, he could not imagine where he was. He seemed to be lying. trapped in some kind of vehicle, on the summit of a rounded hill which sloped steeply away in all directions. Its surface was seared and blackened, as if a great fire had swept over it. Above him was a jet-black sky crowded with stars; one of them hung like a tiny, brilliant sun, low down on the horizon.
Could it be the sun? Was he so far from Earth? No-that was impossible. Some nagging memory told him that the sun was very close-hideously close-not so distant that it had shrunk to a star. And with that thought, full consciousness returned. Sherrard knew exactly where he was, and the knowledge was so terrible that he almost fainted again.
He was nearer to the sun than any man had ever been. His damaged space-pod-a miniature spaceship, only ten feet long-was lying on no hill, but the steeply-curving surface of a world only two miles in diameter. That brilliant star sinking swiftly in the west was the light of "Prometheus," the ship that had brought him here across so many millions of miles of space. She was hanging up there among the stars, wondering why his pod had not returned like a homing pigeon to its roost. In a few minutes she would have passed from sight, dropping below the horizon in her perpetual game of hide-and-seek with the sun.
That was a game that he had lost. He was still on the night side of the asteriod, in the cool safety of its shadow, but the short night would be ending soon.
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Strange Alliance
Allies Born Of Desperation, Not Choice
by Bryce Walton
read by Scott Miller
Part 454 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Strange Alliance by Bryce Walton - Haunted by their dark heritage, a medieval fate awaited them....
Doctor Spechaug stopped running, breathing deeply and easily where he paused in the middle of the narrow winding road. He glanced at his watch. Nine a.m. He was vaguely perplexed because he did not react more emotionally to the blood staining his slender hands.
It was fresh blood, though just beginning to coagulate; it was dabbled over his brown serge suit, splotching the neatly starched white cuffs of his shirt. His wife always did them up so nicely with the peasant's love for trivial detail.
He had always hated the silent ignorance of the peasants who surrounded the little college where he taught psychology. He supposed that he had begun to hate his wife, too, when he realized, after taking her from a local barnyard and marrying her, that she could never be anything but a sloe-eyed, shuffling peasant.
He walked on with brisk health down the narrow dirt road that led toward Glen Oaks. Elm trees lined the road. The morning air was damp and cool. Dew kept the yellow dust settled where spots of sunlight came through leaves and speckled it. Birds darted freshly through thickly hung branches.
He had given perennial lectures on hysterical episodes. Now he realized that he was the victim of such an episode. He had lost a number of minutes from his own memory. He remembered the yellow staring eyes of the breakfast eggs gazing up at him from a sea of grease. He remembered his wife screaming-after that only blankness.
He stopped on a small bridge crossing Calvert's Creek, wiped the blood carefully from his hands with a green silk handkerchief. He dropped the stained silk into the clear water. Silver flashes darted up, nibbled the cloth as it floated down. He watched it for a moment, then went on along the shaded road.
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The Nothing Equation
Logic Meets The Unknown In Deep Space
by Tom Godwin
read by Scott Miller
Part 455 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Nothing Equation by Tom Godwin - The space ships were miracles of power and precision; the men who manned them, rich in endurance and courage. Every detail had been checked and double checked; every detail except-
The cruiser vanished back into hyperspace and he was alone in the observation bubble, ten thousand light-years beyond the galaxy's outermost sun. He looked out the windows at the gigantic sea of emptiness around him and wondered again what the danger had been that had so terrified the men before him.
Of one thing he was already certain; he would find that nothing was waiting outside the bubble to kill him. The first bubble attendant had committed suicide and the second was a mindless maniac on the Earthbound cruiser but it must have been something inside the bubble that had caused it. Or else they had imagined it all.
He went across the small room, his magnetized soles loud on the thin metal floor in the bubble's silence. He sat down in the single chair, his weight very slight in the feeble artificial gravity, and reviewed the known facts.
The bubble was a project of Earth's Galactic Observation Bureau, positioned there to gather data from observations that could not be made from within the galaxy. Since metallic mass affected the hypersensitive instruments the bubble had been made as small and light as possible. It was for that reason that it could accommodate only one attendant.
The Bureau had selected Horne as the bubble's first attendant and the cruiser left him there for his six months' period of duty. When it made its scheduled return with his replacement he was found dead from a tremendous overdose of sleeping pills. On the table was his daily-report log and his last entry, made three months before...
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The Sea Raiders
by H. G. Wells
read by Scott Miller
Part 457 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Sea Raiders by H. G. Wells - Along the quiet Devon coast, something stirs beneath the waves-something with tentacles, teeth, and a hunger for flesh. When it rises, the seaside will never be the same…
Until the extraordinary affair at Sidmouth, the peculiar species Haploteuthis ferox was known to science only generically, on the strength of a half-digested tentacle obtained near the Azores, and a decaying body pecked by birds and nibbled by fish, found early in 1896 by Mr. Jennings, near Land's End.
In no department of zoological science, indeed, are we quite so much in the dark as with regard to the deep-sea cephalopods. A mere accident, for instance, it was that led to the Prince of Monaco's discovery of nearly a dozen new forms in the summer of 1895, a discovery in which the before-mentioned tentacle was included. It chanced that a cachalot was killed off Terceira by some sperm whalers, and in its last struggles charged almost to the Prince's yacht, missed it, rolled under, and died within twenty yards of his rudder. And in its agony it threw up a number of large objects, which the Prince, dimly perceiving they were strange and important, was, by a happy expedient, able to secure before they sank. He set his screws in motion, and kept them circling in the vortices thus created until a boat could be lowered. And these specimens were whole cephalopods and fragments of cephalopods, some of gigantic proportions, and almost all of them unknown to science!
It would seem, indeed, that these large and agile creatures, living in the middle depths of the sea, must, to a large extent, for ever remain unknown to us, since under water they are too nimble for nets, and it is only by such rare, unlooked-for accidents that specimens can be obtained.
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Two Black Bottles
In The Dusty Cabinet Lies A Secret Too Dangerous To Open
by H. P. Lovecraft
read by Scott Miller
Part 458 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Two Black Bottles by H. P. Lovecraft - Old Dominie Vanderhoof was dead, but he did not rest in his grave, for evil was afoot in the old Dutch church.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft was known for pioneering cosmic horror-a genre emphasizing the insignificance of humanity in an indifferent universe. Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft was a sickly and reclusive child, heavily influenced by classical literature, science, and the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Lord Dunsany.
Despite financial struggles and limited literary success during his lifetime, Lovecraft created the Cthulhu Mythos. His most famous works include The Call of Cthulhu, At the Mountains of Madness, and The Shadow over Innsmouth.
Though he died in poverty at age 46, his work gained widespread recognition posthumously, shaping modern horror fiction and pop culture.
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Martians Never Die
The Immortal Bodyguard Of The Red Planet
by Lucius Daniel
read by Scott Miller
Part 459 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Martians Never Die by Lucius Daniel - It was a wonderful bodyguard: no bark, no bite, no sting ... just conversion of the enemy!
At three-fifteen, a young man walked into the circular brick building and took a flattened package of cigarettes from his shirt pocket.
"Mr. Stern?" he asked, throwing away the empty package.
Stern looked with hard eyes at the youthful reporter. He recognized the type.
"So they're sending around cubs now," he said.
"I'm no cub-I've been on the paper a whole year," the reporter protested, and then stopped, realizing his annoyance had betrayed him.
"Only a year. The first time they sent their best man."
"This ain't the first time," said the young man, assuming a bored look. "It's the fourth time, and next year I don't think anybody will come at all. Why should they?"
"Why, because they might be able to make it," Beryl spoke up. "Something must have happened before."
Stern watched the reporter drink in Beryl's loveliness.
"Well, Mrs. Curtis," the young man said, "everyone has it figured out that Dr. Curtis got stuck in the fourth dimension, or else lost, or died, maybe. Even Einstein can't work out the stellar currents your husband was depending on."
"It's very simple," replied Beryl, "but I can't explain it intelligibly. I wish you could have talked to Dr. Curtis."
"Why is it that we have to come out here just once a year to wait for him? Is that how the fourth dimension works?"
"It's the only time when the stellar currents permit the trip back to Earth. And it's not the fourth dimension! Clyde was always irritated when anyone would talk about his traveling to Mars in the fourth dimension."
"It's interdimensional," Stern put in.
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And Miles to Go Before I Sleep
A Journey Across The Stars To A Long-forgotten Home
by William F. Nolan
read by Scott Miller
Part 460 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
And Miles to Go Before I Sleep by William F. Nolan - He knew, to the exact minute, when he was going to die. And Earth was too far away to reach....
Alone within the humming ship, deep in its honeycombed metal chambers, Murdock waited for death. While the rocket moved inexorably toward Earth-an immense silver needle threading the dark fabric of space-he waited calmly through the final hours, knowing that the verdict was absolute, that hope no longer existed.
Electronically self-sufficient, the ship was doing its job perfectly, the job it had been built to do. After twenty years in space, the ship was taking Robert Murdock home.
Home. Earth. Thayerville, a small town in Kansas. Clean air, a shaded street, and a white, two-story house at the end of the block. Home-after two decades among the stars.
Sitting quietly before the round port, seeing and not seeing the endless darkness surrounding him, Murdock was remembering.
He remembered the worried face of his mother, her whispered prayers for his safety as he mounted the rocket ramp those twenty years ago; he could still feel the final, crushing handshake of his father moments before the outer airlock slid closed. His mother had been 55 then, his father 63. It was almost impossible to believe that they were now old and white-haired.
And what of himself?
He was now 41, and space had weathered him as the plains of Kansas had weathered his father. He, too, had labored as his father had labored-but on strange, alien worlds, under suns far hotter than Sol. Murdock's face was square and hard-featured, his eyes dark and deep under thrusting ledges of bone. He had changed as they had changed.
He was a stranger going home to strangers.
Carefully, Murdock unfolded his mother's last letter, written in her flowery, archaic hand, and received just before Earth take-off.
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Hide and Seek
Trapped On A Moon With Nowhere To Run
by Arthur C. Clarke
read by Scott Miller
Part 462 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Hide and Seek by Arthur C. Clarke - It's obvious that, a fight between one man in a spacesuit, and a full-fledged space cruiser is, certainly, "no contest". True-but you've got the wrong slant!
We were walking back through the woods when Kingman saw the gray squirrel. Our bag was a small but varied one-three grouse, a couple of pigeons and four rabbits-one, I am sorry to say, an infant in arms. And contrary to certain dark forecasts, both the dogs were still alive.
The squirrel saw us at the same moment. It knew that it was marked for immediate execution as a result of the damage it had done to the trees on the estate, and perhaps it hadd lost close relatives to Kingman's gun. In three leaps it had reached the base of the nearest tree, and vanished behind it in a flicker of gray. We saw its face once more, appearing for a moment round the edge of its shield a dozen feet from the ground; but though we waited, with guns leveled hopefully at various branches, we never saw it again.
Kingman was very thoughtful as we walked back across the lawn to the magnificent old house. He said nothing as we handed our victims to the cook-who received them without much enthusiasm-and only emerged from his reverie when we were sitting in the smoking room and he remembered his duties as a host.
"That tree-rat," he said suddenly-he always called them "tree-rats," on the grounds that people were too sentimental to shoot the dear little squirrels-"it reminded me of a very peculiar experience that happened shortly before I retired. Very shortly indeed, in fact."
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Bleekman's Planet
On A Distant World, Nothing Was As It Seemed
by Randall Garrett
read by Scott Miller
Part 463 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Bleekman's Planet by Randall Garrett and Robert Silverberg - Thornwald had done his tour of duty for the Solar Service; now it was time for him to retire But a life of relaxation would not be simple on-Bleekman's Planet
Looking around cautiously, Mac Thornwald eased himself down from the window ledge where he had been crouching. It was less than a ten-foot drop, but because of the pain in his left ankle he didn't dare to drop too heavily. His right leg would have to take the brunt of the shock.
As he struck the plastosteel pavement, he clamped his lips together to cut short the moan of pain that welled up as his left foot twisted under him.
He staggered a little and then straightened to look around. No one had heard anything. The city around him was still silent. He still had a chance. Only the ghostly whispers of the air-reptiles drifting through the sky could be heard.
Taking a deep breath, he reholstered the pistol he was clutching and began limping up the dark street toward the Governor's Mansion.
Eventually, the numbing pain began to leave his foot. The stun beam had hit the nerves near the ankle, but the effect wore off after several minutes of walking. Okay, he thought. I'm back in business again. The Governor of Bleekman's Planet had reckoned wrong when he tried to take personal property away from an ex-Patrolman.
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The Hermit of Mars
The Only Man On Mars, Guarding The Past No One Else Knew
by Stephen Bartholomew
read by Scott Miller
Part 464 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Hermit of Mars by Stephen Bartholomew - He was the oldest man on Mars ... in fact, the only one!
When Martin Devere was 23 and still working on his Master's, he was hurt by a woman. It was then that he decided that the only things that were worthwhile in life were pure art and pure science. That, of course, is another story, but it may explain why he chose to become an archeologist in the first place.
Now he was the oldest human being on Mars. He was 91. For many years, in fact, he had been the only human being on Mars. Up until today.
He looked through the transparent wall of his pressurized igloo at the puff of dust in the desert where the second rocket had come down. Earth and Mars were just past conjunction, and the regular automatic supply rocket had landed two days ago. As usual, Martin Devere, taking his own good time about it, had unloaded the supplies, keeping the things he really needed and throwing away the useless stuff like the latest microfilmed newspapers and magazines, the taped TV shows and concerts. As payment for his groceries he had then reloaded the rocket with the written reports he had accumulated since the last conjunction, plus a few artifacts.
Then he had pushed a button and sent the rocket on its way again, back to Earth. He didn't mind writing the reports. Most of them were rubbish anyway, but they seemed to keep the people back at the Institute happy. He did mind the artifacts. It seemed wrong to remove them, though he sent only the less valuable ones back. But perhaps it couldn't be helped. One time, the supply rocket had failed to return when he pushed its red button-the thing was still sitting out there in the desert, slowly rusting. Martin Devere had happily unloaded the artifacts and put them back where they belonged. It wasn't his fault.
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The Quantum Jump
Exploring The Unknown Was Easy. Understanding What He Found Was The Real Challenge
by Robert Wicks
read by Scott Miller
Part 465 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Quantum Jump by Robert Wicks - Captain Brandon was a pioneer. He explored the far reaches of space and reported back on how things were out there. So it was pretty disquieting to find out that the "far reaches of space" knew more about what went on at home than he did.
BRANDON was looking at the Milky Way. Through his perma-glas canopy, he could see it trailing across the black velvet of space like a white bridal veil. Below his SC9B scout-ship stretched the red dust deserts of Sirius Three illuminated by the thin light of two ice moons. He looked at the Milky Way.
He looked at it as a man looks at a flickering fireplace and thinks of other things. He thought of the sun, 52 trillion miles away, a pinpoint of light lost in the dazzle of the Milky Way-the Earth a speck of dust in orbit just as this planet was to its master, Sirius.
Nine light years away. Of course, thirteen years had passed on Earth since they had left, because the trip took four years by RT-relative time. But even four years is a long time to be shut up in Astro One with five other men, especially when one of them was the imperious Colonel Towers.
"A quantum jump-that's the way to beat the Reds," the colonel had said a thousand times. His well-worn expression had nothing to do with quantum mechanics-the actual change in atomic configuration due to the application of sufficient energy. Rather, it was a slang expression referring to a major advance in inter-planetary travel due to a maximum scientific and technological effort.
"Let 'em have Mars and Venus," the colonel would say-"Let 'em have the whole damn Solar System! We'll make a quantum jump-leap-frog ahead of 'em. We'll be the first men to set foot on a planet of another solar system."
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Guaranteed-Forever!
Products Beyond Science, Promises Beyond Belief
by Frank M. Robinson
read by Scott Miller
Part 467 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Guaranteed-Forever! by Frank M. Robinson - Manning had spent his life exposing mail order frauds. But Forsythe's outfit topped them all. Its products were too good to exist-yet!
Clark Street, just north of Chicago's Loop, was the symbol of a million things, all of them bad, Manning thought. Bumpy paving bricks rutted with street car tracks and bordered on both sides by cheap saloons and quarter-a-night flop houses. Hot summer nights when the drunks clustered like flies on the sidewalks and Newberry Park was crowded with cranks trying to save the world and floozies just trying to make a living in it. Old magazine stores where a nickle bought a copy of an old comic magazine and a five spot bought photographs guaranteed to make a high school kid's eyes pop out.
Clark Street, where a thousand and one manufacturing gyp artists had office space.
He slowed the car and went through the motions of parking. He jockeyed it in towards the curb. There was a scraping sound, and he cut the motor.
"You ought to watch it, Fred," Wheeler said. "You scraped the paint."
"It's just a scratch," Manning said quietly. "Just the fender."
"You scrape a fender on these models," Wheeler said doggedly, "and you have to get a whole new paint job. It costs money."
Manning looked coldly at the fat man sitting next to him.
"The government's got money; it can afford it."
The fat man shrugged and changed the subject. "How did the biopsy come out?"
"I don't know." Somewhere deep inside Manning a dozen tiny hands plucked a pain nerve. "The doctor will send me a report in a couple of days." The doctor had already told him that morning but he didn't want Wheeler to know. "Let's forget it. Who's on the list this time?"
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The Metal Man
Trapped Between Flesh And Steel
by Jack Williamson
read by Scott Miller
Part 468 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Metal Man by Jack Williamson - Beneath the dust of a college museum stands a statue too lifelike to be mere art-Professor Thomas Kelvin, transformed by a strange and deadly fate. The Professors chilling account reveals the price of tampering with forces beyond human understanding.
The Metal Man stands in a dark, dusty corner of the Tyburn College Museum. Just who is responsible for the figure being moved there, or why it was done, I do not know. To the casual eye it looks to be merely an ordinary life-size statue. The visitor who gives it a closer view marvels at the minute perfection of the detail of hair and skin; at the silent tragedy in the set, determined expression and poise; and at the remarkable greenish cast of the metal of which it is composed, but, most of all, at the peculiar mark upon the chest. It is a six-sided blot, of deep crimson hue, with the surface oddly granular and strange wavering lines radiating from it-lines of a lighter shade of red.
Of course it is generally known that the Metal Man was once Professor Thomas Kelvin of the Geology Department. There are current many garbled and inaccurate accounts of the weird disaster that befell him. I believe I am the only one to whom he entrusted his story. It is to put these ſantastic tales at rest that I have decided to publish the narrative that Kelvin sent me.
For some years he had been spending his summer vacations along the Pacific coast of Mexico, prospecting for radium. It was three months since he had returned from his last expedition, Evidently he had been successful beyond his wildest dreams. He did not come to Tyburn, but we heard stories of his selling millions of dollars worth of salts of radium, and giving as much more to institutions employing radium treatment.
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Postmark Ganymede
Defying Death To Deliver Across The Stars
by Robert Silverberg
read by Scott Miller
Part 469 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Postmark Ganymede by Robert Silverberg - Consider the poor mailman of the future. To "sleet and snow and dead of night"-things that must not keep him from his appointed rounds-will be added, sub-zero void, meteors, and planets that won't stay put. Maybe he'll decide that for six cents an ounce it just ain't worth it.
"I'm washed up," Preston growled bitterly. "They made a postman out of me. Me-a postman!"
He crumpled the assignment memo into a small, hard ball and hurled it at the bristly image of himself in the bar mirror. He hadn't shaved in three days-which was how long it had been since he had been notified of his removal from Space Patrol Service and his transfer to Postal Delivery.
Suddenly, Preston felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and saw a man in the trim gray of a Patrolman's uniform.
"What do you want, Dawes?"
"Chief's been looking for you, Preston. It's time for you to get going on your run."
Preston scowled. "Time to go deliver the mail, eh?" He spat. "Don't they have anything better to do with good spacemen than make letter carriers out of them?"
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Man of Distinction
One Man Against Logic And The Universe
by Michael Shaara
read by Scott Miller
Part 470 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Man of Distinction by Michael Shaara - Being unique is a matter of pride-but being a complete mathematical impossibility?
The remarkable distinction of Thatcher Blitt did not come to the attention of a bemused world until late in the year 2180. Although Thatcher Blitt was, by the standards of his time, an extremely successful man financially, this was not considered real distinction. Unfortunately for Blitt, it never has been.
The history books do not record the names of the most successful merchants of the past unless they happened by chance to have been connected with famous men of the time. Thus Croesus is remembered largely for his contributions to famous Romans and successful armies. And Haym Solomon, a similarly wealthy man, would have been long forgotten had he not also been a financial mainstay of the American Revolution and consorted with famous, if impoverished, statesmen.
So if Thatcher Blitt was distinct among men, the distinction was not immediately apparent. He was a small, gaunt, fragile man who had the kind of face and bearing that are perfect for movie crowd scenes. Absolutely forgettable. Yet Thatcher Blitt was one of the foremost businessmen of his time. For he was president and founder of that noble institution, Genealogy, Inc.
Thatcher Blitt was not yet 25 when he made the discovery which was to make him among the richest men of his time. His discovery was, like all great ones, obvious yet profound. He observed that every person had a father.
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The Velvet Glove
Robots And The Fragile Balance Of Power
by Harry Harrison
read by Scott Miller
Part 471 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Velvet Glove by Harry Harrison is a sharp, thought-provoking tale that examines what it truly means to be human. First published in Fantastic Universe in 1956, the story follows a robot named Jon Venex, built to serve humanity in a society where machines have begun to think, feel, and perhaps surpass their creators. When Jon meets a human woman who sees beyond his metal shell, the story becomes both a love story and a quiet tragedy about prejudice, purpose, and identity. With crisp dialogue and a touch of irony, Harrison explores the uneasy relationship between man and machine-long before artificial intelligence became a common theme in science fiction.
Like much of Harrison's early work, The Velvet Glove blends social commentary with pulpy adventure energy. It reflects his fascination with how technology reshapes ethics and emotion, and how progress can expose the flaws in human nature. Beneath the futuristic surface lies a timeless question: if a machine can feel compassion, who is truly more human?
Harry Harrison (1925–2012) was an American author best known for his wit, imagination, and biting satire. Born in Stamford, Connecticut, he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II before turning to writing and illustrating for pulp magazines. He gained fame with the Stainless Steel Rat series-rollicking space adventures featuring a charming rogue-and with Make Room! Make Room! (1966), the grim novel that inspired the film Soylent Green.
Harrison's work often mixed humor with moral inquiry, challenging the militarism, greed, and hypocrisy of modern life while celebrating intelligence and individuality. Whether through a rebellious con man or a soulful robot, his stories reminded readers that humanity's greatest strength-and weakness-lies in its capacity to choose compassion over control.
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The Day the Monsters Broke Loose
When The Monsters Took The Field, Humanity Took Flight
by Robert Silverberg
read by Scott Miller
Part 472 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Day the Monsters Broke Loose by Robert Silverberg - People were trampled underfoot, people were crunched by ten-foot teeth in huge, fanged jaws - people died by the hundreds that day were eaten like tidbits!
Next week they'll be holding the Big Show, the Spectacular of Spectaculars, in Chicago. 150,000 people will be packed into Soldier Field to watch a couple of alien monsters rip each other to shreds.
Well, I'm not going to be there, for once. I'm going to be a couple of thousand miles away, in Los Angeles, sitting in a little bar off Wilshire where they don't have video, and I'll be guzzling synthoscotch and trying to forget all about my part in next week's show.
I'm the guy who caught the creatures that are going to perform next Fiveday night. I'm Jim Barstow of Barstow Eхpediters, Incorporated. We Bring 'em Back Alive is our motto, shamefully stolen from a great hunter of a couple of centuries ago, and right up until our last trip we were considered the top outfit in our line. But now I want to sell my share and get out of the filthy business while I still have a little piece of my soul left.
We made our first trip to World Twelve of Star System DA-7116 exactly two years ago. Herschel, my booking agent, gave me a buzz on the telestat one morning and said he had landed a fat contract for us. Barstow Expediters happened to be between jobs at the moment, and I was enjoying the pleasant layoff, but I obediently came shuttling across the country to New York for the contract interview.
We were being hired by J. Franklin Magnus of Magnus Promotions-the number one spectacle-producer of the twenty-second century. Magnus was famous for the way he threw. money around. I flew to New York determined to soak him for all he would part with.
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The Life–Work of Professor Muntz
Where Time Splits, Beer Flows, And Chaos Reigns
by Murray Leinster
read by Scott Miller
Part 473 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Life–Work of Professor Muntz by Murray Leinster - Multiple time-tracks lead to the Ajax Brewery!
Nobody would ordinarily have thought of Mr. Grebb and Professor Muntz in the same breath, so to speak, yet their careers impinged upon each other remarkably. Mr. Grebb was a large, coarse person, with large coarse manners and large coarse pores on-an oversized nose. He drove a beer truck for the Ajax Brewing Company, and his ene dominant desire was to get something on Joe Hallix, who as head of the delivery service for Ajax, was his immediate boss.
Professor Muntz, on the other hand, was the passionately shy and mouselike author of "The Mathematics of Multiple TimeTracks," who vanished precipitately when he found himself famous. In that abstruse work he referred worriedly to experimental evidence of parallel time-tracks, and other physicists converged upon him with hopeful gleams in their eyes, and he fled.
Professor Muntz couldn't talk to people. But they wanted to know about his expеriments. They couldn't make any. They didn't know how to start, and to them the whole thing had been abstract theory. But he had made experiments and they wanted to ask about them, so he ran away in an agony of shyness.
That was that. No one human being could seem less likely to be affected by Professor Muntz' life-work than Mr. Grebb, and no life-work could seem more certainly immune to Mr. Grebb than Professor Muntz'. But life is full of paradoxes, and the theory of multiple time-cracks is even fuller. Therefore...
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The Men Return
A Journey Through Ruins Older Than Memory
by Jack Vance
read by Scott Miller
Part 474 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Men Return by Jack Vance - Alpha caught a handful of air, a globe of blue liquid, a rock, kneaded them together....
The Relict came furtively down the crag, a shambling gaunt creature with tortured eyes. He moved in a series of quick dashes, using panels of dark air for concealment, running behind each passing shadow, at times crawling on all fours, head low to the ground. Arriving at the final low outcrop of rock, he halted and peered across the plain.
Far away rose low hills, blurring into the sky, which was mottled and sallow like poor milk-glass. The intervening plain spread like rotten velvet, black-green and wrinkled, streaked with ocher and rust. A fountain of liquid rock jetted high in the air, branched out into black coral. In the middle distance a family of gray objects evolved with a sense of purposeful destiny: spheres melted into pyramids, became domes, tufts of white spires, sky-piercing poles; then, as a final tour de force, tesseracts.
The Relict cared nothing for this; he needed food and out on the plain were plants. They would suffice in lieu of anything better. They grew in the ground, or sometimes on a floating lump of water, or surrounding a core of hard black gas. There were dank black flaps of leaf, clumps of haggard thorn, pale green bulbs, stalks with leaves and contorted flowers. There were no recognizable species, and the Relict had no means of knowing if the leaves and tendrils he had eaten yesterday would poison him today.
He tested the surface of the plain with his foot. The glassy surface (though it likewise seemed a construction of red and gray-green pyramids) accepted his weight, then suddenly sucked at his leg. In a frenzy he tore himself free, jumped back, squatted on the temporarily solid rock.
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The Hills of Home
Was It Memory-or The Delusion Of A Restless Mind?
by Alfred Coppel
read by Scott Miller
Part 475 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Hills of Home by Alfred Coppel - In the quiet beauty of a late-summer riverbank, a soldier returns to the place that shaped him. But the peace of home hides memories and truths he can't escape.
The river ran still and deep, green and gray in the eddies with the warm smell of late summer rising out of the slow water. Madrone and birch and willow, limp in the evening quiet, and the taste of smouldering leaves....
It wasn't the Russian River. It was the Sacred Iss. The sun had touched the gem-encrusted cliffs by the shores of the Lost Sea of Korus and had vanished, leaving only the stillness of the dusk and the lonely cry of shore birds.
From downstream came the faint sounds of music. It might have been a phonograph playing in one of the summer cabins with names like Polly Ann Roost and Patches and Seventh Heaven, but to Kimmy it was the hated cry of the Father of Therns calling the dreadful Plant Men to their feast of victims borne into this Valley Dor by the mysterious Iss.
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The Genius of Lancelot Biggs
A Madcap Space Adventure With The Galaxy's Most Unlikely Hero
by Nelson S. Bond
read by Scott Miller
Part 477 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Genius of Lancelot Biggs by Nelson S. Bond is one of the most beloved entries in the Lancelot Biggs series-a blend of clever humor, scientific imagination, and classic spacefaring adventure. Biggs is the quintessential "reluctant genius," a bumbling yet brilliant space engineer whose accidental brilliance repeatedly saves his shipmates aboard the Saturnian Queen. In The Genius of Lancelot Biggs, Bond captures the charm of golden-age science fiction with a comedic twist: Biggs invents improbable solutions to cosmic disasters while maintaining a disarming humility that makes him both heroic and human.
The Lancelot Biggs stories first appeared in Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures throughout the 1930s and 1940s, later collected in Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman (1950). The series stood out for mixing slapstick wit and genuine scientific curiosity at a time when pulp sci-fi often leaned heavily on melodrama. Biggs was Bond's most famous creation-a character whose inventive blunders and bursts of genius inspired later comic sci-fi heroes like Douglas Adams's Arthur Dent.
Nelson S. Bond (1908–2006) was an American author, playwright, and literary agent whose fiction bridged pulp science fiction, fantasy, and adventure. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Bond became a prolific contributor to magazines like Blue Book, Amazing Stories, and Astounding Science Fiction. His work often featured strong characterizations and humor, qualities that distinguished him from many of his contemporaries. Beyond Lancelot Biggs, Bond wrote the Meg the Priestess fantasy series and numerous tales of human resilience and irony. Later in life, he turned to radio, television, and theater, earning accolades for his versatility.
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Thirty Degrees Cattywonkus
A Home Tilted Toward Madness
by James Bell
read by Scott Miller
Part 478 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Thirty Degrees Cattywonkus by James Bell - It doesn't take a heap of leaving to make any house a nightmare. One vanishing door will do nastily.
It was a tremendous house. And they were newlyweds. And were still a mite flighty. And for a while that accounted for the whole thing.
At the moment, it seemed to Ernie Lane that in a house which even the real estate agent said had "either" eleven or twelve rooms, it was quite conceivable that he and Melinee had overlooked that extra room.
After all, they had only been living at 1312 Cedar Lane for four days and had hardly had time to make a complete survey of the place.
Now it was quite different. For Ernie Lane had stopped walking hurriedly past that extra door, had stopped giving it only casual curiosity, had even stopped wondering afterward.
This night he had come home a bit tired, gone directly to greet his loving wife, and then decided to put a stop to the gnawing question.
While Melinee fried the chicken, Ernie walked carefully and wordlessly to the dim hallway. He went past the staircase, past the telephone, to the darkest spot between the living room and the study. He stood for a strange moment-there was no extra door.
He felt the refinished wall, his fingertips searching for hidden panels. There was none.
"Supper's ready," Melinee called. "Ernie?"
But it had been there last night, the night before, the night before that, and the very first night the real estate agent brought them over. In fact, he recalled, that was the reason the agent had been uncertain about the number of rooms. And why had he passed it off as a joke, simply turning from the extra door without opening it?
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The Night Wire
Terror On The Wire In The Dead Of Night
by H. F. Arnold
read by Scott Miller
Part 479 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Night Wire by H. F. Arnold - From Xebico a strange and uncanny story came over the wire in the wan hours before the dawn. The Night Wire by H. F. Arnold.
H. F. Arnold is best remembered for this chilling short storyThe Night Wire, first published in Weird Tales in 1926. Though his total output was small, he had only three published stories, The Night Wire has kept his name alive among fans of early speculative fiction. The Night Wire blends horror, mystery, and science fiction in a way that was striking for its time, and it remains one of the most reprinted stories from the magazine's long run. Little is known about Arnold's life, which has only deepened the sense of mystery surrounding him, but his contribution to the genre has endured for nearly a century.
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The First Spaceman
The Glory Of Spaceflight-and The Terrible Price Of Survival
by Gene L. Henderson
read by Scott Miller
Part 480 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The First Spaceman by Gene L. Henderson - Rogers was a hero . . if only he hadn't come back alive!
Gene L. Henderson was one of the many writers who helped fill the pages of the science fiction magazines during the late 1940s and 1950s. He didn't publish a large number of stories, but the ones he did leave behind are remembered for their mix of fast-moving adventure, big ideas, and very human characters.
The First Spaceman is probably his best-known story published in 1954, which captures both the excitement and unease people felt at the beginning of the Space Age. Like a lot of his contemporaries, Henderson liked to explore where technology might take us and what that would mean for the future of humanity. Not much is known about his personal life, but his stories still carry the flavor of a time when science fiction was growing up from pulp entertainment into something larger.
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The Meteor Girl
A Meteor Opens A Door-and A Hero Steps Through
by Jack Williamson
read by Scott Miller
Part 482 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Meteor Girl is an early science fiction story by Jack Williamson, first published in 1931. It follows a young telegraph operator whose ordinary night shift is disrupted when a meteor crashes nearby - bringing with it something far stranger than stone. The encounter pulls him into a mystery that blends young love, cosmic possibility, and the unknown forces that move between worlds. Williamson uses simple, direct prose to create a sense of widening wonder as the familiar gives way to the extraordinary.
The story reflects the optimism and curiosity of early pulp-era SF. Rather than grim speculation, it leans toward discovery - the idea that the universe is full of secrets waiting to be stumbled over by unsuspecting people with open eyes. Like many early Williamson pieces, it treats science not as abstraction but as an adventure through which ordinary lives are suddenly changed.
Jack Williamson (1908–2006) was one of the longest-lived and most respected voices of American science fiction. Raised in rural New Mexico, he began selling stories to the pulps as a teenager and remained active well into the 21st century - his career spanning from the age of airships to the age of the internet. Williamson wrote across styles and decades, from space opera to thoughtful sociological SF, producing works like The Legion of Space, Darker Than You Think, and later the Hugo and Nebula-winning Terraforming Earth.
He bridged generations of the genre, studying it formally and teaching it at Eastern New Mexico University while still publishing fiction. Williamson's work helped move science fiction from pulp entertainment to a literature of ideas, and The Meteor Girl stands as an early glimpse of the imagination that would make him a pillar of the field.
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Don't Look Now
A Third Eye On A World Gone Mad
by Henry Kuttner
read by Scott Miller
Part 483 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Don't Look Now by Henry Kuttner - That man beside you may be a Martian. They own our world, but only a few wise and far-seeing men like Lyman know it!
The man in the brown suit was looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar. The reflection seemed to interest him even more deeply than the drink between his hands. He was paying only perfunctory attention to Lyman's attempts at conversation. This had been going on for perhaps fifteen minutes before he finally lifted his glass and took a deep swallow.
"Don't look now," Lyman said.
The brown man slid his eyes sidewise toward Lyman; tilted his glass higher, and took another swig. Ice-cubes slipped down toward his mouth. He put the glass back on the red-brown wood and signaled for a refill. Finally he took a deep breath and looked at Lyman.
"Don't look at what?" he asked.
"There was one sitting right beside you," Lyman said, blinking rather glazed eyes. "He just went out. You mean you couldn't see him?"
The brown man finished paying for his fresh drink before he answered. "See who?" he asked, with a fine mixture of boredom, distaste and reluctant interest. "Who went out?"
"What have I been telling you for the last ten minutes? Weren't you listening?"
"Certainly I was listening. That is-certainly. You were talking about-bathtubs. Radios. Orson-"
"Not Orson. H. G. Herbert George. With Orson it was just a gag. H. G. knew-or suspected. I wonder if it was simply intuition with him? He couldn't have had any proof-but he did stop writing science-fiction rather suddenly, didn't he? I'll bet he knew once, though."
"Knew what?"
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The Incredible Aliens
A Personal Dilemma Among The Stars
by William Bender Jr.
read by Scott Miller
Part 484 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Incredible Aliens by William Bender Jr. - Narant's personal problem seemed of more importance than his mission as an interstellar investigator. But they combined when he met-The Incredible Aliens
It was only a tiny dot on the view screen when the military lookout on the armed cruiser identified it as an alien spaceship and sounded the general alert. Technicist Ninth Class Narant, chief psychanalyst aboard, studied its approach with a rebellious, almost passionate hope that the impossible was at last going to happen.
Or was it impossible? They were the first men to visit this planetary system. Why couldn't they expect to encounter a truly superior race for a change?
Intently, Narant examined the course of the alien craft. Rather mischievously he hoped the stranger would suddenly adopt evasion tactics showing it had detected their presence in the black void between the 6th and 7th planets of the Star Restus. That would certainly be a sign of superiority! And what a blow to Central Scientific Headquarters back home. The anti-detection shield was one of their proudest accomplishments.
And yet, though still wishful, Narant realized deep in his heart that such hopes were blighted. Illogical and improbable. No people in the Universe could even compare with them. Explorers and merchants and military ships and privateers had prowled all the great planetary systems of the galaxy. They and their technology reigned supreme everywhere. Indeed, the accumulated evidence of their supremacy even formed the irrefutable foundation of Central Scientific's dogma on selective breeding.
"I must ask you to leave the bridge now, doctor." The voice, crisp and authoritative, crackled over Narant's shoulder.
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Later Than You Think
The Secret Buried In The Earth
by Fritz Leiber
read by Scott Miller
Part 485 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Later Than You Think by Fritz Leiber - It's much later. The question is ... how late?
Obviously the Archeologist's study belonged to an era vastly distant from today. Familiar similarities here and there only sharpened the feeling of alienage. The sunlight that filtered through the windows in the ceiling had a wan and greenish cast and was augmented by radiation from some luminous material impregnating the walls and floor. Even the wide desk and the commodious hassocks glowed with a restful light. Across the former were scattered metal-backed wax tablets, styluses, and a pair of large and oddly formed spectacles. The crammed bookcases were not particularly unusual, but the books were bound in metal and the script on their spines would have been utterly unfamiliar to the most erudite of modern linguists. One of the books, lying open on a hassock, showed leaves of a thin, flexible, rustless metal covered with luminous characters. Between the bookcases were phosphorescent oil paintings, mainly of sea bottoms, in somber greens and browns. Their style, neither wholly realistic nor abstract, would have baffled the historian of art.
A blackboard with large colored crayons hinted equally at the schoolroom and the studio.
In the center of the room, midway to the ceiling, hung a fish with irridescent scales of breathtaking beauty. So invisible was its means of support that-also taking into account the strange paintings and the greenish light-one would have sworn that the object was to create an underwater scene.
The Explorer made his entrance in a theatrical swirl of movement. He embraced the Archeologist with a warmth calculated to startle that crusty old fellow. Then he settled himself on a hassock, looked up and asked a question in a speech and idiom so different from any we know that it must be called another means of communication rather than another language. The import was, "Well, what about it?"
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The Man Who Was Pale
A Tale Of Mystery, Madness, And The Unknown
by Jack Sharkey
read by Scott Miller
Part 488 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Man Who Was Pale by Jack Sharkey first appeared in Fantastic Science Fiction Stories in December 1959. It begins quietly, on a moonlit night as a man recounts the strange visions that have haunted him since childhood-visions of another life he seems to live only in dreams. As his story unfolds, reality and illusion blur, creating a chilling sense that his dream-self might be more real than the waking world. Sharkey builds his unease gradually, through atmosphere and introspection rather than violence, exploring themes of duality, memory, and the thin veil separating worlds. The result is a story that lingers in the imagination long after it ends, more ghostly than gruesome, and deeply human beneath its mystery.
Jack Sharkey (1931–1992) was an American writer known for his wit, imagination, and versatility across science fiction, fantasy, and mystery. A frequent contributor to Fantastic, If, and Galaxy magazines, Sharkey's stories often combined humor with a sly sense of irony. He was equally at home writing eerie speculative tales or lighthearted satire, bringing intelligence and empathy to both. Beyond short fiction, he wrote plays, mystery novels, and even stage adaptations, earning a devoted following for his deft storytelling and inventive twists.
Like many pulp-era authors, Sharkey captured the restless spirit of mid-century speculative fiction-a time when imagination pushed against the limits of reality. The Man Who Was Pale exemplifies his gift for weaving unease and wonder together, inviting readers to question not just what is real, but who they truly are when the lights go out.
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Gambler's Asteroid
On An Asteroid Of Chance, The Only Gamble Was Life Itself
by Manly Wade Wellman
read by Scott Miller
Part 489 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Gambler's Asteroid by Manly Wade Wellman - Patch Merrick and Zaarrgon Try to Win a Stake in Order to Escape the Vengeance of a Dazzling but Dangerous Beauty!
The asteroid Hector was once a jagged space-crumb with few attractions, little gravity and no atmosphere whatever, but a shrewd Venusian opportunist changed all that. He had encased the tiny world in glassite and artificially speeded up an already lively spin. What fuel fed his atomic turbines was a mystery, but it was powerful stuff indeed. Centrifugal force did the rest. The glassite sheath prevented the oxygen from escaping and the glassite served as a transparent floor for visiting gamblers.
Gambling supported Hector. There were cafes, entertainers, luxury apartments, but gambling drew the crowds. Many fortunes were lost at Hector's tables, and not so many won. Even king gamblers came to brief. And big Patch Merrick, for all his many skills, was no king gambler.
He stood at a silvery table in the main salon. From somewhere seeped Venusian chirp-water music. A Martian joy-lamp shed stimulus-rays overhead. The televisos on the walls presented a variety of spectacles-formalized comi-tragedy for Martians, Terrestrial news events for Earthmen, and an attitude dance by a Ganymedean girl for outer planet inhabitants. Under the glassite floor whirled Heaven's star-sparked abyss. In the midst of this splendor, Merrick wagered his last value-units.
"Play" chorused the fringe of gamblers. There were froggy Venusians, Terrestrial junketers, Jovian colonials of varied descent. Only Martians, who sometimes read minds, were excluded from play. They only watched, their squidlike bodies metal-harnessed beneath their robes, their flowery craniums nodding, their artificial larynxes slurring amused comment.
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The Old Timer
The Final Heir To Mars' Lost Glory
by Richard R. Smith
read by Scott Miller
Part 490 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Old Timer by Richard R. Smith - Shakish was the last of his kind. If the insulting Earthmen had only bothered to find out why he was a rare being they would have lived a while lot longer.
Richard Rein Smith is an American science fiction writer known for his work during the mid-20th century's Golden Age of sci-fi. He wrote a number of action-packed short stories such as The Angry House, Compatible, The Snare, Alien Equivalent, and Pick a Crime, many of which explore classic sci-fi themes like advanced technology, alien worlds, identity, and moral conflict.
Besides his shorter works, Smith also published longer adventure novels under various pseudonyms. For example, he is credited with The Savage Stars (1981), writing as Reinsmith, in which survivors of a spaceship crash strive to build a civilization on a harsh, uncharted planet.
Though not as widely known as some of his contemporaries, Smith's work is appreciated by fans of vintage science fiction for its bold plots, imaginative settings, and pulp-style thrills.
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Shadow World
Into The Fourth Dimension
by Ray Cummings
read by Scott Miller
Part 492 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
When two Americans step into the "shadow world" of the fourth dimension, they expect danger, but they don't expect what they find: an advanced civilization on the brink of collapse, a stolen life-force called abcilene, and a growing fear of an enemy across the border. Tom Jarvis and Peter Hantzen have one mission - return to Earth with the rare substance they call radiumite, a resource that could stop a global war before it starts. But every world has its own politics, and every mission has its traitor. Someone isn't who they seem, and the thefts happening in this strange dimension may already have deadly consequences.
Written by Ray Cummings, one of the most important early voices in science fiction, "Shadow World" blends scientific speculation, alien culture-building, and thriller pacing. Cummings helped shape the genre in the 1920s and '30s with stories that explored parallel universes, time travel, and dimensional physics long before they became mainstream sci-fi themes. His famous quote still echoes today: "Time is what keeps everything from happening at once." A defining author of the early pulps, he worked for Thomas Edison, wrote for Argosy and Amazing Stories, and inspired generations of writers who built on his cosmic imagination.
This is vintage, high-concept science fiction at its best - a world of thought-communication, shimmering life-energy, and heroes forced to choose between loyalty, survival, and the fate of two universes. What begins as a scientific mission becomes a moral crisis, a battle of ideologies, and a race against both war and betrayal.
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The Dream Snake
Nightmares That Linger Beyond The Edge Of Sleep
by Robert Ervin Howard
read by Scott Miller
Part 493 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Dream Snake by Robert E. Howard is a haunting fusion of horror, fantasy, and dreamlike fatalism. First published posthumously in 1933, it tells the eerie tale of a man tormented by a recurring vision of a monstrous serpent-a vision that may be more than a dream. As the narrator drifts between waking and nightmare, Howard blurs the line between reality and the supernatural, crafting an atmosphere thick with dread and inevitability. Unlike his sword-and-sorcery adventures, The Dream Snake is a psychological horror story, rooted in primal fears and suffused with the poetic melancholy that defined much of Howard's darker work. It reveals his gift for evoking beauty and terror in equal measure, a glimpse into the subconscious mind of a writer who understood both the hero's courage and the dreamer's despair.
Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) was an American author best known as the creator of Conan the Barbarian and the father of the sword-and-sorcery genre. Born in Peaster, Texas, and raised in the small town of Cross Plains, Howard poured his imagination into the pages of Weird Tales magazine, where he introduced vivid characters such as Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis, and Bran Mak Morn. His writing combined muscular adventure with poetic intensity, reflecting both the rugged landscape of Texas and his fascination with ancient civilizations and mythic struggle. Though his life was tragically brief, Howard's influence is immense-his characters have inspired films, comics, and generations of fantasy writers. Beyond the blood and thunder of his tales lies a deep sense of melancholy and longing, qualities seen clearly in The Dream Snake and his many atmospheric poems. Today, Robert E. Howard stands as one of the most powerful voices of early 20th-century imaginative fiction, a storyteller whose creations continue to live in the dreams of readers worldwide.
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Cosmic Tragedy
Humanity's Last Stand Among The Stars
by Thomas S. Gardiner
read by Scott Miller
Part 494 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Cosmic Tragedy by Thomas S. Gardiner - Humanity's reach for the stars promised glory, but destiny had other plans. In the vast silence of space, triumph and tragedy walk side by side.
The big man with the iron grey hair stared morosely out the quartz window and across the roofs of Greater New York. Far down the canyon streets a few motor cars still ran and over the swinging aerial bridges scattered pedestrians carefully wended their way. Their grotesque figures with the heavy metal helmets that reminded the watching man of the half-mythical sea monsters of the past or divers that used to explore wrecks were far different from the jostling crowds that had crowded the ways only a few short days ago. But that was before the plague-the plague of the whispering death.
John Cortland, United Utilities Power magnate, sighed as he turned from the quiet streets below. Somberly he regarded a tiny light beam that came from the mirror of a galvanometer that trembled and danced continually. He mused over the events of the past few days and wondered at their meaning. Like a caged tiger he paced the metal lined room waiting for the word that would spell success or disaster. Five days before it had first appeared. A whispering, a singing and vibrating had manifested itself. It was not local but appeared simultaneously all over the earth. This whispering, as of elfish voices, was not annoying at first; but it changed and alternated from a shrill whine back to the eery murmuring that was first noticed. Young Cavendish at the Black Laboratories had first tracked down the cause of the strange sounds-as to its ultimate origin, that was still veiled in mystery.
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Poor Little Warrior!
Swapping Marital Monotony For Prehistoric Mayhem
by Brian W. Aldiss
read by Scott Miller
Part 495 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Poor Little Warrior! by Brian W. Aldiss - A man flees his tedious modern life by traveling back to the age of dinosaurs, convinced he'll find freedom in prehistoric adventure. But his dream of escape soon reveals just how small-and fragile-he truly is.
Brian W. Aldiss was one of the most celebrated science fiction authors of the 20th century. Born in England, he grew up surrounded by books and began publishing stories in the 1950s. Over his long career, he wrote more than 40 novels and around 400 short stories.
Aldiss won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.
In 2005 he was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his contributions to literature.
He passed away in 2017 one day after his 92nd birthday.
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Shandy
Love, Jealousy, And A Shape-shifting Companion
by Ron Goulart
read by Scott Miller
Part 498 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Shandy by Ron Goulart is a witty, offbeat science fiction story that showcases his trademark blend of humor and human insight. At its heart is Nancy Tanner and her unusual companion, Shandy-a teddy bear, a lion, an ape, and something far stranger. What begins as a lighthearted look at affection and rivalry evolves into a reflection on identity and emotion in a world where technology and fantasy intertwine. Like much of Goulart's work, Shandy balances satire and sentiment, using absurd situations to reveal truths about love, loneliness, and what it means to be human. His sharp dialogue and breezy style make the story both funny and unsettling, a perfect example of how he could infuse whimsy with warmth.
Ron Goulart (1933–2022) was one of the most versatile and prolific voices in American popular fiction. Born in Berkeley, California, he wrote hundreds of stories and novels across genres-science fiction, mystery, fantasy, and comic adventure-often marked by his quick wit and social satire. A frequent contributor to Galaxy and If magazines, Goulart was also known for his media tie-in novels and for reviving pulp heroes like The Avenger. Beyond fiction, he was a noted historian of comics and pulp literature, authoring nonfiction works such as Cheap Thrills and Comic Book Culture. Goulart's writing combined humor with compassion, capturing the eccentricities of modern life and the absurdities of technology with a light but insightful touch. His work remains a bridge between the pulp era's exuberance and the self-aware irony of modern speculative fiction.
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The Secret Flight of Friendship Eleven
The Space Race's Best Kept Secret
by Alfred Connable
read by Scott Miller
Part 499 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Secret Flight of Friendship Eleven by Alfred Connable - Behind closed doors and under the cover of night, a spacecraft rises. Conceived in confidence and launched in silence, this is the unforgettable tale of Friendship Eleven.
In its major details, project Friendship Eleven was perhaps the best-kept secret since Hiroshima. It was initiated on August 14, 1961, following a massive screening of potential astronauts. Because of the flight's special purposes (unknown even to us before blast-off time), qualifying interviews and examinations used rigid criteria which were largely foreign to the previous experience of the examiners.
Seven astronauts were chosen, but by the end of the first month's tests it became apparent that one of them was unsuitable. This was our first confused clue that something extraordinary was afoot. Robin Hood (his true name) had been a picturesque aviator of some renown in the early 1940's. Barely two weeks before Pearl Harbor, he had won the Distinguished Flying Cross for destroying nine suspicious aircraft, including occupants, which had approached him one evening in a beautiful moonlit sky over the Fiji Islands.
It was a particular misfortune that Major Hood should fail so early in the training period. Project spokesmen had considered him a prime contender for orbit. Curiously, they repeatedly praised him as the leading, and most consistently articulate, contributor to the poetry section of The Air Force Times. Incidentally (which was not known to us at the time), his demise left the Project without a single experienced test pilot.
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Process
The Forest Thinks And Aliens Must Answer
by A. E. Van Vogt
read by Scott Miller
Part 500 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
Process by A. E. van Vogt - An ancient intelligence stirs, locked in a struggle for survival against forces both familiar and alien. But when outsiders arrive with their own secret agenda, the battle takes an unexpected and perilous turn.
Alfred Elton van Vogt, (A. E. van Vogt) was born on April 26, 1912, in Edenburg, Manitoba, Canada, and grew up on a series of remote farms in the prairies before his family eventually settled in Winnipeg. A shy and introspective child, he developed a love for stories at an early age, devouring books and radio dramas while imagining vast adventures of his own. Before turning to science fiction, van Vogt worked as a census taker, farmhand, and in advertising, sharpening his skills as a writer with confession stories and radio scripts.
In 1939, inspired by reading the landmark issue of Astounding Science Fiction that featured John W. Campbell's vision of a "new wave" of science fiction, van Vogt decided to devote himself fully to the genre. His first published story, "Black Destroyer," appeared in Astounding in July 1939 and made an immediate impact. From that moment, van Vogt emerged as one of the Golden Age's most influential authors.
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The Abominations of Yondo
A Journey Beyond Sanity Into A Desert Of Nightmares
by Clark Ashton Smith
read by Scott Miller
Part 504 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
The Abominations of Yondo is one of Clark Ashton Smith's earliest and most haunting tales, first published in 1926. It tells the story of a man exiled into the desolate desert of Yondo, a realm of grotesque landscapes and unspeakable horrors. As he wanders through twisted forests, decaying idols, and monstrous beings, the narrator's fear builds toward madness, revealing a world that feels ancient, alien, and indifferent to human existence. More prose poem than traditional narrative, it captures the essence of Smith's imagination-lush, decadent, and steeped in both beauty and dread. The story laid the groundwork for his later cosmic fantasies set in realms like Zothique and Hyperborea, where decay and divinity coexist under dying suns.
Clark Ashton Smith (1893–1961) was an American writer, poet, and artist whose work helped define the golden age of weird fiction. Born in Auburn, California, Smith was largely self-educated, developing a vast vocabulary and a fascination with the macabre. Encouraged by H. P. Lovecraft and a contributor to Weird Tales, Smith created vividly imagined worlds filled with doomed civilizations, decadent sorcerers, and monstrous gods. His stories-such as The City of the Singing Flame and The Dark Eidolon-combined rich, lyrical language with a sense of cosmic fatalism that rivaled Lovecraft's. Beyond fiction, he was an accomplished poet and sculptor, blending sensuality and strangeness across art forms. Though less known in his lifetime, Smith's influence has only grown, his ornate visions continuing to inspire generations of fantasy and science fiction writers.
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No Evidence
Death On The Edge Of Reality
by Victoria Lincoln
read by Scott Miller
Part 505 of the Lost Sci-Fi series
No Evidence by Victoria Lincoln - A man begins to sense that part of himself has slipped away-only to reappear in Ireland, where he was born. What unfolds is a haunting tale of divided identity and the eerie possibility of living two lives at once.
Victoria Lincoln (1904–1981) was an American novelist, biographer, essayist, and occasional contributor to speculative fiction, best remembered for her psychological insight and the quiet, persistent tension woven into her work. Born in Fall River, Massachusetts-a town infamous for its connection to Lizzie Borden-Lincoln grew up with a keen awareness of history, local legend, and the undercurrents of human behavior. She studied at Radcliffe College, later embarking on a writing career that spanned novels, nonfiction, journalism, and short fiction.
Lincoln's 1934 novel February Hill was among her earliest successes, later adapted into both a stage play and a motion picture. She went on to publish widely in respected periodicals, writing essays, social commentary, and book reviews. But she also had an enduring fascination with mystery and crime, which culminated in her acclaimed biography A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight (1967), a meticulous psychological portrait of Fall River's most infamous resident. That book, drawing upon her own intimate knowledge of the town, remains one of the most compelling examinations of the Borden case ever written.
Over the decades, Victoria Lincoln's work earned her respect not only for its literary polish but also for its unique mixture of empathy and unflinching observation.