Because this is a masculine world, the author of this fairytale is usually identified as the wife of Poul Anderson. But a few more incisive cameos of fantasy such as this, and Mr. Anderson may come to be identified as Karen's husband.
It may be that there is a weapon that, from the viewpoint of the one it's used on, is worse than lethal. You might say that death multiplies you by zero; what would multiplication by minus one do?
Through infinite deeps of space Jerry Foster hurtles to the Moon--only to be trapped by a barbaric race and offered as a living sacrifice to Oong, their loathsome, hypnotic god.
The ultradrive had just one slight drawback: it set up a shock wave that made suns explode. Which made the problem of getting back home a delicate one indeed...
Most people, when asked to define the ultimate in loneliness, say it's being alone in a crowd. And it takes only one slight difference to make one forever alone in the crowd....
When people talk about getting away from it all, they are usually thinking about our great open spaces out west. But to science fiction writers, that would be practically in the heart of Times Square. When a man of the future wants solitude he picks a slab of rock floating in space four light years east of Andromeda. Here is a gentle little story about a man who sought the solitude of such a location. And who did he take along for company? Charles the Robot.