. . . The career of The Leader remains one of the mysteries of history. This man, illegitimate and uneducated, hysterical and superstitious, gathered about him a crowded following of those who had been discontented, but whom he turned into fanatics. Apparently by pure force of personality he seized without resistance the government of one of the world's great nations. So much is unlikely enough. But as the ruler of a civilized country he imposed upon its people the absolute despotism of a primitive sultanate. He honeycombed its society with spies. He imprisoned, tortured, and executed without trial or check. And while all this went on he received the most impassioned loyalty of his subjects! Morality was abandoned at his command with as much alacrity as common sense. He himself was subject to the grossest superstitions. He listened to astrologers and fortunetellers--and executed them when they foretold disaster. But it is not enough to be amazed at the man himself. The great mystery is that people of the Twentieth Century, trained in science and technically advanced, should join in this orgy of what seems mere madness . . .
." . . The profound influence of civilian morale upon the course of modern war is nowhere more clearly shown than in the case of that monstrous war-engine popularly known as a 'Wabbly.' It landed in New Jersey Aug. 16, 1942, and threw the whole Eastern Coast into a frenzy. In six hours the population of three States was in a panic. Industry was paralyzed. The military effect was comparable only to a huge modern army landed in our rear...." ("Strategic Lessons of the War of 1941-43." -- U. S. War College. Pp. 79-80.)
A collection of the trend-setting stories from "the Dean of Science Fiction" which opened and explored such topics as first contact with aliens, the Internet, transfers among parallel universes, and many more. "The best of [these stories] are remarkable inventions, providing a window on to science fiction's first Golden Age that demonstrates exactly what made it golden" - Kirkus Review
This volume contains 7 short works by Murray Leinster, including: "Rogue Star," "Dear Charles," "Dead City," "Sam, This Is You," "The Other Now," The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator," and "The End.
Imagine a world, a time, a history so entirely unlike ours that -- "It's August 19, 2037. The United Nations is just fifty years old. Televisors are still black-and-white. The Nidics have just won the World Series in Prague. Com-Pub observatories are publishing elaborate figures on moving specks in space which they consider to be Martian spaceships on their way to Earth, but which United Nations astronomers cannot discover at all. Women are using gilt lipsticks this year. Heat-induction motors were still considered efficient prime movers." "Thorn Hard is a high-level flier for the Pacific Watch. Bathyletis is the most prominent of nationally advertised diseases, and was to be cured by RO-17, "The Foundation of Personal Charm." Somebody named Nirdlinger was President of the United Nations, and somebody else named Krassin was Commissar of Commissars for the Com-Pubs." This is the world that's been invaded, a world like -- and "unlike" -- our own. . . .
The first broadcast came in 1972, while Mahon-modified machines were still strictly classified, and the world had heard only rumors about them. The first broadcast was picked up by a television ham in Osceola, Florida, who fumingly reported artificial interference on the amateur TV bands. He heard and taped it for ten minutes--so he said--before it blew out his receiver. When he replaced the broken element, the broadcast was gone. But the Communications Commission looked at and listened to the tape and practically went through the ceiling. It stationed a monitor truck in Osceola for months, listening feverishly to nothing. Then for a long while there were rumors of broadcasts which blew out receiving apparatus, but nothing definite. Weird patterns appeared on screens high-pitched or deep-bass notes sounded--and the receiver went out of operation. After the ham operator in Osceola, nobody else got more than a second or two of the weird interference before blowing his set during six very full months of CC agitation. Then a TV station in Seattle abruptly broadcast interference superimposed on its regular network program. The screens of all sets tuned to that program suddenly showed exotic, curiously curved, meaningless patterns on top of a commercial spectacular broadcast. . . .
There was nothing on the island big enough to kill a man, yet each new day brought with it another bloody death, another mysterious disappearance. The first hint of something wrong at the outpost was the plane. It crazily circled the little island, its cargo-bay doors open, its radio dead. It seemed to hang in the air for a moment and then it dived downward, levelled and dipped again. It made a belly landing on the runway with its wheels still retracted. There was a singular, dead silence and then a shot rang out. The crew of two and the seven passengers had vanished, the cargo was strewn about and the fuel tanks had been emptied. And the pilot, after landing, had blown his brains out...
PLANET OF SAND: A world literally bald, completely covered by sand and devoid of life - or so the stranded spaceman thought until he saw the huge menacing girders whose origin and purpose he could not begin to fathom. WHITE SPOT: A gold locket containing a picture of a girl, found in millennia-old ruins on a planet some hundreds of light-years from Earth, threatens the existence of the entire human race. SECOND LANDING: A lost space team lands on a deserted planet, entirely unprepared for the strange world's one citizen; a great white amoeboid monster, hiding in wait to wreak its fury on any intruders.
When Stellaris, the first human interstellar ship, unexpectedly hurtles off the earth, it takes the ship's designer, Rob Cantrell, his girlfriend and a skeleton crew with it into the furthest reaches of space. If only that was their biggest problem! With no star maps, killer aliens on their tail and a ship that was only half finished, their journey home is going to be quite the challenge!
Charlatans or Prophets? At best, the tiny Kandarian Air Fleet would fight until its last ship was blown into infinity. At worst, it would be annihilated without a chance. To young Captain Bors, either course was unthinkable. The ruthless Dictator of Mekin had already subjugated twenty-two helpless planets. Now he wanted Kandar's unconditional surrender, or his vastly superior forces would blast it out of existence. It took a lot of guts, and the hope that is frequently born of despair, for a military man like Bors to throw in his lot with Talents, Incorporated, an untried, unscientific organization. Through peculiar gifts of extra-sensory perception, its personnel could, their leader insisted, out-think and out-guess even the most deadly dictator in the history of mankind. Could it? It just might. And it just might not. . . . But there was absolutely nothing to lose, and a free world (and a beautiful girl) to win. Captain Bors made his decision, and the loaded die was cast!
In a society fuelled by advertising, a small group of people finance man's first interstellar flight by selling the television rights to their adventures.
Tony Gregg was just an ordinary everyday American until the day he came into possession of an old Barkut coin. He knew it was more than just a collector's curio because there was no such place on any map of Earth, past or present. He learned then that it could be used as a key - a key to a GATEWAY TO ELSEWHERE. That was the beginning of one of the most fabulous and fantastic adventures that ever befell a young man looking for excitement. For Gregg plunged forthwith into a fourth-dimensional world of the Arabian Nights, where the djinns of Aladdin's Lamp were rampaging realities, and a lovely princess was waiting to be rescued!
When the twenty-first century drew to a close the whole human race began to revert to conditions closely approximating savagery. The low-lands were unbearable. Thick jungles of rank growth covered the ground. The air was depressing and enervating. Men could live there, but it was a sickly, fever-ridden existence. The whole population of the earth desired the high lands and as the low country became more unbearable, men forgot their two centuries of peace. They fought destructively, each for a bit of land where he might live and breathe. Then men began to die, men who had persisted in remaining near sea-level. They could not live in the poisonous air. The danger zone crept up as the earth-fissures tirelessly poured out their steady streams of foul gas. Soon men could not live within five hundred feet of sea level. . . .
Murray Leinster (June 16, 1896 - June 8, 1975) was a nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, an award-winning American writer of science fiction and alternate history. He wrote and published more than 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. In this book: Nightmare Planet The Fifth-Dimension Tube Invasion The Red Dust The Forgotten Planet This World Is Taboo The Aliens The Hate Disease The Mad Planet Operation: Outer Space The Pirates of Ersatz Creatures of the Abyss Morale, A Story of the War of 1941-43
Put yourself in the place of Kim Rendall, a handsome, idealistic young man living on a distant planet ruled by a super-efficient government. Here is industrialization carried to its illogical conclusion. Kim Rendall lives in the shadow of mechanized terror, for machines have taken over, and the disciplinary circuit keeps the inhabitants in check . . .
Roving through the uncharted vastness of deep space, Med Serviceman Calhoun of the Interplanetary Medical Service brings his mission of healing to isolated colonists far from Earth. Alone in his starship with only his pet tormal for companionship, Calhoun plunges into an uncharted void without stars or nebulae...discovers a planet whose inhabitants starve to death amid a bounty of food...and dares a quarantined world ruled by galactic untouchables!
The first battles began in the wilderness. The animals in the forests and glades struggled furiously for life and often fought with splendid courage. But they never won; they were always killed. And now it was man's turn...
The strange visitors had landed. Why had they come, and what unknown terror would they bring upon our world? The radio and television stations of the world carried the short, terrifying statement: The visitors were telepaths. These children from another time, another planet, were about to read human minds. They were utterly invincible. And they were infinitely dreaded... In the Pentagon and the Kremlin, leaders were grim with the awareness that all military secrets would be exposed...The overlords of the underworld realized the children could smash their most profitable rackets...And even ordinary citizens shuddered at the prospect of their shabby sins being found out. So four small children came to be hated by the entire world. A whole civilization wanted them dead.
Newark . . . Manhattan . . . Baltimore - one by one they went out. A succession of thriving communities suddenly put out like a guttered flame. Men, women, children sprawled like grotesque manikins. Steve Waldron knew it couldn't be plague. There had to be some connection with the disappearance of the nation's top scientists. And then he plunged to the center of a dead city and gaped at an unbelievable truth. What could he do against a force fearsome enough to engulf the entire nation?
Ten selected short stories from the master of pulp, Murray Leinster - pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, whose prolific career spanned the first six decades of the 20th Century. The Golden Age Masterwork of Sidewise in Time includes the Hugo Award-winning novella "Exploration Team". Full contents include: Sidewise in Time The Runaway Skyscraper The Mad Planet Politics Proxima Centauri First Contact A Logic Names Joe De Profundis If You Was a Moklin Exploration Team
Murray Leinster Collection * The Aliens * The Ambulance Made Two Trips * Attention Saint Patrick * Creatures of the Abyss * The Fifth-Dimension Catapult * The Fifth-Dimension Tube * The Forgotten Planet * The Hate Disease * The Invaders * Invasion * Juju * The Leader * The Machine That Saved The World * The Mad Planet * A Matter of Importance * Morale: A Story of the War of 1941-43 *
Centuries, eons from now the peculiar, fantastic, astounding mind if man will conquer strange new worlds and probe the meaning of the central core of infinity with instruments of incredible scientific precision! In the far-off era when man will defy gravity, space, time - to explore the universe and make immensity his own!
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.