Just because a man can do something others can't does not, unfortunately, mean he knows how to do it. One man could eat the native fruit and live. but how?
That he was a phony Swami was beyond doubt. That he was a genuine prophet, though, seemed. but then, what's the difference between a dictator and a true prophet? So was he....
Zeckler was a con-man, a human con-man. But he had no idea what he was up against when he decided to try to outwit the Altairians, an alien race that believes telling the truth is a weakness. Really he never had a chance.
On the Earth of the future, cities are overcrowded and the elite have nothing to do but buy fame from people who really do the work. A faster than light drive is invented and Jed Cochrane, a television producer, seizes the chance to change the course of history and free the people who are willing to work for themselves and not be faceless proles.
The most dangerous, utterly vicious carnivorous animal the Galactics knew had escaped. to Earth! Because contact with Earth was forbidden, they knew little of Earth. which led to certain false conclusions.
Having been fired out of the giant Columbiad space gun, the Baltimore Gun Club's bullet-shaped projectile, along with its three passengers, Barbicane, Nicholl and Michael Ardan, begins the five-day trip to the moon. A few minutes into the journey, a small, bright asteroid passes within a few hundred yards of them, but does not collide with the projectile. The asteroid had been captured by the Earth's gravity and had become a second moon.
In the title tale, narrator James 14 returns home with Mama to 1898 village when his father Les, time-traveller Ambassador to aliens, vanishes from 1975 jet-pack city. When the "mothaship" takes the anointed few into the brave new world, those left behind are angry. "0wnz0red" asks - what happens when hackers hack the human body?
There are times when a broken tool is better than a sound one, or a twisted personality more useful than a whole one. For instance, a whole beer bottle isn't half the weapon that half a beer bottle is.