Status Updates From The Science Fiction Roll of...

"Abdication" by A. E. Van Vogt and E. Mayne Hull (1943). Double crossed in outer space, with invisibility cloaks and goggles that let you see people wearing invisibility cloaks.

"The Hurkle is a Happy Beast" by Theodore Sturgeon (1949). An alien whose powers of invisibility are reversed on Earth, visits an Earth middle school classroom.

An excerpt from _The Skylark of Space_ (a novel) by Edward Elmer Smith, Ph.D. (1928). Wow! A nearly 100 year old science fiction story. It was one of my favorites in the collection. Astronauts face off against a vastly superior alien who can control matter at the atomic level, but, much like a Star Trek replicator that doesn't have the pattern, the alien is mystified and can't control human physiology.

“Science Fiction, The Sprit of Youth” by illustrator Frank R. Paul (1939) is the very first World Con guest of honor speech. Interesting from an historical perspective for sure.

"The Meaning of the Word 'Impossible'" by Willy Ley (1967), a speech he gave. Proving that the impossible is... possible!

"Sanity" by Fritz Leiber (1944). Up is down. Left is right. Sanity is insanity. And vice versa.

"The Long Watch" by Robert Heinlein (1949) which sounded so familiar, until I realized why--I already read this story as part of Heinlein's story collection, The Past through Tomorrow. c.f. https://www.goodreads.com/user_status... . My thoughts remain the same as before!

"The Prophets of Doom" by Hugo Gernsback (his World Con guest of honor speech in 1952) is a funny little speech where Hugo (the man the Hugo Awards are named after) belittles predictions across human history.

"Dust" by Lloyd Eshbach (1939) definitely suffers scientifically from having been written well before we humans figured out how to get to the Moon and back. I love how "neo-hydrogen" saves the main character's bacon from the infestation that befalls his spacecraft (that is Earth to Moon and back to Earth worthy).

"The Monster" by Lester del Rey (1951). Shades of the novel, Frankenstein, and also Asimov's early Robot stories, but set in a future society where humans are trying to wage war using expendable and short-lived constructs.

“Dog Star” by Arthur C. Clarke (1962). Short. Sweet. Dogs are humans’ best friends, even humans living on the moon.

“Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell — what a treat to stumble across the story that The Thing (the movie) is based upon without knowing ahead of time that was the case! The movie is much better. The story is mostly talking and actually white boring. 😆

“Daybroke” by Robert Bloch (1958) is a post-nuclear war survival story. Who wins in a nuclear war? The last line reveals the answer.

“The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov, and “How Beautiful with Banners” by James Blish, are two very different stories. One spans nearly an infinity of time and obsessed with the question, “can entropy be reversed?“ The other lasts but a minute or less and ponders the question, “did my virus bubble spacesuit just have an affair with a native Titanian?” What the…?

“Kings Who Die” by Poul Anderson is a fun tale of a rescue of an adrift spaceman by his enemy, and subsequent discussion between him and the big bad boss, who tries to convince him to agree to a rather fascinating plan, with an unexpected ending!

The Introduction, by Fredrick Pohl, was a delightful history of early American science fiction and science fiction conventions. Some interesting facts and tidbits!