This is a parody of corporate management in a world where unions own the means of production and the managers are treated like factory workers.Faced with a corporate system that is breaking down - workers want immediate dividends rather than investments in developing new products - management goes on strike to readjust the power between management and unions.
"Did you ever wonder at the lonely life the bird in a cuckoo clock has to lead --" wrote the editor of "Fantastic Universe" in January, 1954, blurbing this tale "-- that it might possibly love and hate just as easily as a real animal of flesh and blood? Philip Dick used that idea for this brief fantasy tale. We're sure that after reading it you'll give cuckoo clocks more respect."
Was this ill-fated expedition the end of a proud, old race--or the beginning of a new one? There are strange gaps in our records of the past. We find traces of man-like things--but, suddenly, man appears, far too much developed to be the "next step" in a well-linked chain of evolutionary evidence. Perhaps something like the events of this story furnishes the answer to the riddle.
Eighteen men and two women in the closed world of a space ship for five months can only spell tension and trouble--but in this case, the atmosphere was "literally" poisoned.
Out on the ice-buried planet, Commander Red Stone led his Free Companions to almost certain death. They died for a dangerous dream that had only one chance in a thousand trillion to come true. Is there a better reason for dying?
There have been a number of interesting theories advanced about life on Mars, but the intriguing picture of the world of Longtree and Channeljumper in its infinite variations, tonal and thematic. The Mars of these two is an old culture, old and finite.
A stellar communications repairman is sent to repair a beacon on a planet, and discovers that its presence had a profound influence on the planet in question. Needing to deal with a locally evolved sentience and a bizarre ritual, the repairman needs to use his best plan to complete his mission and end up alive and whole too.
Neal ("Storm") Cloud, nucleonic genius, set out in his spaceship *Vortex Blaster* to track and destroy the vortices. What he finds extends far beyond any threat of nature.