The People of the Black Circle is a collection of fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard featuring his seminal sword and sorcery hero Conan the Barbarian. Hill chieftan Conan heads into the Himelian mountains to rescue the Vendhyan queen, as Turanians, Afghulis, and Irakzais are caught in the machinations of demonic sorcerors of the Black Circle.
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.
Something Was Very Wrong, Out There Among The Stars...The interstellar transport had touched down on six other colony worlds - and all six had been devoid of human life. Where was everybody? It was almost as if humankind, when separated by cosmic distances from Mother Earth, could not survive.
Dave stared around the office. He went to the window and stared upwards at the crazy patchwork of the sky. For all he knew, in such a sky there might be cracks. In fact, as he looked, he could make out a rift, and beyond that a... hole... a small patch where there was no color, and yet the sky there was not black. There were no stars there, though points of light were clustered around the edges, apparently retreating.
The cars on high-speed highways must follow each other like sheep. And they need shepherds. The highway police cruiser of tomorrow however must be massively different-- as different as the highways themselves!
A young woman objects to being sedated into placidity, as is the norm in the overcrowded, genetically optimized future.She also refuses to be paired with a somnolent drip of a fellow, who needs medication to act at an even minimal level of energy. Then you've got the young spacer, who believes he has discovered an efficient hyperdrive that could open the stars to humanity. He is told to cool his heels in a dead-end assignment until he discovers the error in his mathematics.