Science Fiction Stories

Working on the theory that you can skin a sucker in space as well as on Earth, the con team of Harding and Sheckly operated furtively but profitably among natives of the outer planets. That is--until there was a question of turnabout being fair play in a world where natives took their skinning literally!

If Saranta wished to qualify as one who loved his fellow man, he should have known that often the most secretive things are the most obvious.

In the not-so-far future, an AI Engine struggles with its own existence, while a famous Law Master finally gets his heart's desire.

This was the endless problem of all spaceship cooks: He had to feed the men tomorrow on what they had eaten today!

Old Mr. Wiley and the dog came over every night. but were they real?

Why don't you find yourself some nice little American girl," his father had often repeated. But George was on Venus. and he loved pale green skin. and globular heads and most of all, George loved Gistla.

We've been taught from childhood that the earth is round and that Columbus discovered America. But maybe we take too much on faith. This first crossing for instance. Were you there? Did you see Columbus land? Here's the story of a man who can give us the straight facts.

The space ships were miracles of power and precision; the men who manned them, rich in endurance and courage. Every detail had been checked and double checked; every detail except--

Sometimes getting a job is harder than the job after you get it--and sometimes getting out of a job is harder than either!

Millions of years in the distant future, a posthuman scientist is attempting to build a time machine and tests it by sending two boxes with a hastily gathered batch of educational toys into the past. When the boxes fails to return, he believes the entire experiment to be a failure, he discontinues his efforts. One box arrives in the middle of the 20th century and the second in the latter part of the 19th century. Both have had their time-travel circuitry irreparably damaged by the journey.