It's possible that you won't agree with us that Pat Pending's latest adventure is a delightful story--possible IF you haven't been used to laughing in recent years. Blue Book printed more than a dozen of these stories by Nelson Bond about the "greatest inventulator of all time".
This is a sci-fi story about a hermit who is being harassed and wants to find out why. The harassment escalates until he finds a note warning him that this is a matter of life and death. He begins this journey going deeper into the woods. Where is he bing led, and what will he find there that is so crucial.
Lise is a young female Novo Homonid or Novonid, an artificial humanoid species created on Planet Varada for slave labor. Novonids have green, chlorophyll-rich skin to derive nourishment from sunshine which makes them perfect fieldworker slaves. As the Novonid population increases, the Varadans are finding Novonids useful for low- and no-wage urban labor. Lise comes of age while living in the Green Zone, a Novonid ghetto, as tensions between Humans and Novonids threaten to become violent.
The chartered Zarathustra Company had it all their way. Their charter was for a Class III uninhabited planet, which Zarathustra was, and it meant they owned the planet lock stock and barrel. They exploited it, developed it and reaped the huge profits from it without interference from the Colonial Government. Then Jack Holloway, a sunstone prospector, appeared on the scene with his family of Fuzzies and the passionate conviction that they were not cute animals but little people.
An old woman comes to Mars because a fraudulent travel agent offers a "trip to heaven". She and other members of her traveling group find an extremely battered and derelict rocket which was supposed to be used for the last part of the trip. And it is used for that trip, in a pretty literal sense.
The Solar League ambassador to the Lone Star Planet has the unenviable task of convincing New Texans that a s'Srauff attack is imminent, and dangerous. Unfortunately it's common knowledge that the s'Srauff are evolved from canine ancestors--and not a Texan alive is about to be scared of a talking dog! But unless he can get them to act, and fast, there won't be a Texan alive, scared or otherwise!