Before Star Trek or Gene Roddenberry and before Star Wars and George Lucas, the science fiction writers of the 1950s and 1960s were writing some of the hippest genre literature of the era. Here are three imaginative novellas from some of these pioneers of pulp science fiction.

Star Ways by Poul Anderson is an action-packed saga of the Nomads, space gypsies voyaging endlessly through the cosmos, and of Joachin of the starship Peregrine, who must act as both bait and trap for the deadliest foe the Nomads had ever known.

In George Henry Smith’s Druids’ World, a fantasy of a crumbling civilization with ties to King Arthur’s era, a strong leader, Adam Max McBride, faces off with both a corrupt ruling class and horrible nonliving polymorphs in a battle to save the homeland.

In The Day the World Stopped by Stanton A. Coblentz, a US president and his advisors plan to use the ultimate weapon in “preventive war” against Red China, while a young senator who tries to avert the calamity gets unexpected help from space visitors who offer him the use of their special powers.

What if we were all designed to be smarter than we actually are?

Unbeknown to its inhabitants, the solar system has, for millions of years, been caught in a force field that effectively suppresses intelligence. When in the course of normal galactic movement the solar system breaks free of the force field, gone are the inhibiting effects, and a remarkable change begins to sweep across the earth—a change with sometimes surprising, sometimes chilling aftereffects.

Human life is dramatically transformed, as people with IQs of 400 find themselves living within social structures and institutions designed for people of considerably lower intelligence. Others refuse to accept what has happened and band together in a rebellion against the new order. Human relationships with other creatures on the planet are likewise thrown into upheaval, as animals rediscover their native intelligence. Soon the transfigured humanity is reaching for the stars, leaving behind our earth to the less intelligent humans and animal lifeforms. Brain Wave is a fascinating “what if” novel, as well as an exploration into the ways in which human society is organized and the assumptions that are made about how we value life. It is also a novel about equality and what happens when the hierarchical structures we know and trust finally disappear.

From the multiple Hugo and Nebula award-winning author: “A panoramic story of what happens to a world gone super intelligent” (Astounding Science Fiction).

With “wonderfully logical detail . . . exciting storytelling and moving characterization” (Anthony Boucher), science fiction master Poul Anderson explores what happens when the next stage of evolution is thrust upon humanity and animals. As Earth passes out of a magnetic field that has suppressed intelligence for eons, the mental capacity for all mammals increases exponentially, radically changing the structures of society.

A mentally impaired farm worker finds himself capable of more delicate and intelligent thoughts than he ever dreamed. A young boy on holiday manages to discern the foundations of calculus before breakfast. Animals that were seen as livestock and pets can now communicate clearly with their owners and one another. And an already brilliant physics researcher now uses his boundless intellect to bring humankind to the stars-even as his wife plunges into an existential crisis. For all of them, the world will never be the same . . .

No longer a brash, young ensign, Captain Dominic Flandry has risen in rank, but now appreciates fully that the Terran empire is old and tired, wanting to be left in peace. But the enemies it has made and the competing empire of Merseia will give it no peace. Too evenly matched for open warfare not to destroy them both, the opponents engage in subtle thrust and counter-thrust, feint and counter-feint, with Flandry in the thick of it.
Though through this and his succeeding adventures he will struggle gloriously and snatch victory from the alien jaws of defeat, Flandry is yet a tragic figure: a man who knows too much history, who knows that battle, scheme, and even betray as he will, in the end it will mean nothing. For with the relentlessness of physical law the Empire is falling and the Long Night is approaching. If that darkness is not to fall in his own lifetime, if the things he cares about are to be saved, he must do what he can. And anyone, human or alien, who gets in his way will most definitely regret it.
Contains mature themes.

When You Trade Upon a Star!
Think self-congratulating Federation lackeys are going to be the ones to boldly go where no one has gone before? Think again! Now second-son of nobility David Falkayn, hot to prove his worth, leads a team of alien capitalists through deadly threat and gnarly interplanetary dilemma. The mission: to keep intergalactic trade forever free-and always profitable!
Contains mature themes.

Sir Dominic Flandry is now an Admiral, but takes little joy in his new rank. He sees the rot in the Terran Empire on every hand and knows that the Long Night will inevitably fall upon the galaxy. His consolation is that measures he has taken while doing what he can to postpone the Empire’s final collapse may shorten the coming galactic dark age and hasten the rise of a new interstellar civilization. In the meantime, he’ll enjoy the comforts of a decadent civilization-and he’ll always be ready for one more battle against the Empire’s enemies.
Contains mature themes.

The multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Grand Master of Science Fiction delivers “an exciting culmination to an ambitious saga” (Publishers Weekly).

Far into the reaches of space, Anson Guthrie and a band of colonists have forged a new existence on Amaterasu not as physical beings but as downloaded consciousness watched over by the benevolent Life Mother. Yet as idyllic as their lives may be, back home on Earth the situation is growing grim.

Earth’s inhabitants are now completely dependent-and so controlled-by an intelligent machine known as the Teramind. But the instinctual human desire to be free is not something the Teramind has included in its calculations. The seeds of rebellion are growing.

Suspecting a conspiracy to suppress humankind’s last vestiges of freedom, Guthrie and his loyal companions make a dangerous journey back to Earth-risking everything to preserve humanity’s independent destiny.

The thrilling conclusion to Anderson’s four-volume, award-winning epic vision of mankind’s evolution, begun in Harvest of Stars, “Fleet of Stars is a grand story that gets bigger and better with every page” (Larry Bond).

Artificial intelligence has been developed to a point where human intelligence can be uploaded into a computer, achieving a sort of hybrid immortality. Astronaut Christian Brannock welcomes this technology, technology that will make it possible for him to achieve his dream and explore the stars.

A billion years later, Brannock is dispatched to Earth to check on some strange anomalies. While there, he meets Laurinda Ashcroft, another hybrid upload. Brannock and Ashcroft join forces and investigate Gaia, the supermind dominating the planet, and learn the truth of her terrifying secret plans for Earth.

The virtual persona of a long-dead visionary entrepreneur threatens to incite a revolution from space that could topple Earth’s powerful and repressive religious-technological dictatorship in this ingenious science fiction classic.
In the future, individual freedom is a thing of the past. North America is a police state controlled by the Avantist government, a despotic, techno-religious ruling order that promises an impending transcendence for the oppressed. Space, however, remains free, thanks to Anson Guthrie’s powerful Fireball Corporation. Guthrie’s corporeal self died many generations ago, but his essence lives on, preserved forever in a computerized state that enables him to inspire his loyal employees and adherents to keep reaching for the farthest stars. But now the totalitarian enemy, led by sadistic secret policeman Enrique Sayre, has gained possession of a Guthrie download, intending to subvert it to the Avantist cause, thereby breaking Fireball’s hold on the cosmos. The corporation is doomed unless ace pilot Kyra Davis can smuggle a still-unreconstructed version of Guthrie out of enslaved America and rocket him to the moon and beyond, where Fireball’s virtual creator can attempt to stoke the flames of revolution-and change the direction of his world.

Earth lies crushed in the grip of totalitarianism. To save her planet, Kyra Davis is sent on a mission to liberate the last bastion of freedom and to rescue its legendary leader. Her bold adventure will sweep her from Earth’s rebel enclaves to the decadent court of an exotic lunar colony.

Many centuries in the future, no great destiny for humankind exists on Earth. The Lunarians, genetically engineered human adaptations bred to survive on the moon, have spread out toward the stars. But not even their colony on distant Proserpina is free from the suffocating influence of the Teramind, the vast network of intelligent machines that preserves order and logic in the universe. In his search for inspiration, poet and pilot Jesse Nichol discovers a new purpose when he reunites with his former lover, the mesmerizing Lunarian Falaire. Coerced into criminal hijacking, Jesse suddenly finds himself part of a bold anti-artificial intelligence conspiracy that could ultimately spell disaster, for nothing escapes the Teramind, especially humanity’s desperate pursuit of freedom. And when human and machine are in conflict, the outcome will rock many worlds.

The third volume in what ranks among SFWA Grand Master Poul Anderson’s greatest creation, Harvest the Fire imagines a machine-dominated future beyond the cataclysmic eras of Harvest the Stars and The Stars Are Also Fire. A breathtaking continuation of the epic tale, it is a story of courage and insurrection that celebrates the indomitable human spirit and the unconquerable restlessness of a race born to explore new worlds.

The Interbeing League had been formed to make contact with new intelligent races in the galaxy and offer them membership. But when the League encountered the Hokas, furry creatures strongly resembling the teddy bears of Earth, the League’s agent, Alexander Jones, could have been excused for wishing he had a simpler assignment than making sense out of the Hokas-such as singlehandedly stopping an interstellar war.
Not that the fuzzy aliens were unfriendly. In fact, they loved everything about humans, and adopted various Terram cultures wholesale and in every little detail-but with a bit of confusion about the differences between fact and fiction. So, if the Hokas suddenly started outing out the parts in a rip-roaring, shoot-em-up Western, or brought to life the London of Sherlock Holmes, complete with a pip-puffing, deerstalker-wearing Hoka, or suddenly decided to fly the Jolly Roger and lead a life of adventure and piracy on the high seas, mate-well, that was to be expected. And as the Hokas threw themselves wholeheartedly into progressively wilder worlds from Terran history and fiction, Jones could be excused for feeling that his grip on reality was hanging by a single, thin, increasingly frayed thread.

Nicholas van Rijn, the most flamboyant member of the Polesotechnic League of star traders, could see dark times ahead. Fellow league members were using tactics verging on outright piracy, and others were all too eager to sell starships and high-tech weapons to alien barbarians. A planet not previously known for interstellar commerce suddenly revealed a secret fleet of armed starships, and started building an empire. Even if Van Rijn and his right-hand man David Falkayn could find a way to stop this blatant aggression, the glory days of the League were over. Hereafter, for its own protection against well-armed alien marauders the Earth must maintain a strong military fleet, and one charismatic man would found an empire that would learn nothing of the lessons history taught about the fates of other empires as it began annexing other star systems, whether they wanted to join the Terran Empire or not . . .
Contains mature themes.

Captain Dominic Flandry has been knighted for his many services to the Terran Empire-an Empire which is old, jaded, and corrupt, as Flandry well knows-but he also knows that the Empire is better than anything that is likely to take its place. And while that “Sir” before his name may be an added attraction to comely ladies (not that he has ever lacked for the pleasant company of the same), he expects that it will also bring him less welcome attention from envious “colleagues” within the empire.
What it is not likely to do is make him more of an object of interest to the alien Merseians, whose plots against the Empire he has repeatedly foiled. They already are as aware as they can be of how much simpler their plans to rule the galaxy would be if their most dangerous adversary were the late Sir Dominic Flandry.
Contains mature themes.

This science fiction novel describes the epic voyage of the spacecraft Leonora Christine, which will take a fifty-strong crew to a planet some thirty light years distant.

From practically the very first page, Tau Zero sets scientific realities in dramatic tension with the very real emotional and psychological states of the travelers, exploring the effect of time contraction due to traveling at near-light speed on the human psyche. This tension is a dynamic that Anderson explores with great success over the course of the novel as fifty crewmembers settle in for the long journey together. While they are a highly trained team of scientists and researchers and therefore professionals, they are also a community of individuals, each of them trying to create for him or herself a life in a whole new space–or, literally, in space.

It isn’t long, however, before the voyage takes a turn for the worse. The ship passes through a small, uncharted nebula that makes it impossible to decelerate the ship. Their only hope is to do the opposite and speed up. But acceleration towards and within the speed of light means that time outside the spaceship passes even more rapidly, sending the crew deeper into space and further into an unknown future.

A New York Times Notable Book and Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist: This epic chronicle of ten immortals over the course of history “succeeds admirably” (The New York Times).

The immortals are ten individuals born in antiquity from various cultures. Immune to disease, able to heal themselves from injuries, they will never die of old age-although they can fall victim to catastrophic wounds. They have walked among mortals for millennia, traveling across the world, trying to understand their special gifts while searching for one another in the hope of finding some meaning in a life that may go on forever.

Following their individual stories over the course of human history and beyond into a richly imagined future, “one of science fiction’s most revered writers” (USA Today) weaves a broad tapestry that is “ambitious in scope, meticulous in detail, polished in style” (Library Journal).

Others have written science fiction on the theme of immortality, but in The Boat of a Million Years, Poul Anderson made it his own. Early in human history, certain individuals were born who live on—unaging, undying—through the centuries and millennia. This story follows them over two thousand years, up to our time and beyond—to the promise of utopia and to the challenge of the stars.

As time goes on, these unique individuals must learn to cope with—and hide—their true nature. Facing suspicion by the mortals around them, they become wanderers, disconnected even from their families. But hope lies ahead.

A milestone in modern science fiction and a New York Times Notable Book when first published in 1989, this is one of a great writer’s finest works.

This acclaimed fantasy classic of men, elves, and gods is at once breathtakingly exciting and heartbreakingly tragic.
Poul Anderson’s novel The Broken Sword draws on similar Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon sources as The Fellowship of the Ring. In his greed for land and power, Orm the Strong slays the family of a Saxon witch-and for his sins, the Northman must pay with his newborn son. Stolen by elves and replaced by a changeling, Skafloc is raised to manhood unaware of his true heritage and treasured for his ability to handle the iron that the elven dare not touch. Meanwhile, the being who supplanted him as Orm’s son grows up angry and embittered by the humanity he has been denied. A pawn in a witch’s vengeance, the creature Valgard will never know love, and consumed by rage, he will commit a murderous act of unspeakable vileness.

It is their destiny to finally meet on the field of battle-the man-elf and his dark twin, the monster-when the long-simmering war between elves and trolls finally erupts with a devastating fury. And only the mighty sword Tyrfing, broken by Thor and presented to Skafloc in infancy, can turn the tide in a terrible clashing of faerie folk that will ultimately determine the fate of the old gods.

This classic fantasy takes listeners to a world similar to that of J. R. R. Tolkien’sLord of the Rings.

Thor has broken the sword Tyrfing so that it cannot strike at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree that binds together earth, heaven, and hell. But now the mighty sword is needed again to save the elves in their war against the trolls, and only Skafloc, a human child kidnapped and raised by the elves, can hope to persuade Bolverk the ice-giant to make Tyrfing whole again. But things are never easy, and along the way Skafloc must also confront his shadow self, Valgard the changeling, who has taken his place in the world of men.

A superb dark fantasy of the highest, and most Norse, order The Broken Sword is a fantasy masterpiece.

College student, ex-marine, and martial artist Malcolm Lockridge is in prison awaiting his trial for murder when he receives an unexpected visit from an extraordinarily beautiful woman named Storm. Claiming to be a representative of the Wardens, a political faction from two thousand years in the future, Storm offers the astonished young man a proposition: freedom in return for his assistance in recovering an unspecified lost treasure. But it is not long before Malcolm realizes that, in truth, he’s been recruited as a soldier in the Wardens’ ongoing war against their rivals, the Rangers. And this war is different from any that has ever been fought, because the battlefield is not a place but time itself.

Traveling backward and forward through corridors connecting historical epochs separated by thousands of years, Malcolm is soon embroiled in a furious conflict between the forces of good and minions of evil. But the deeper he is pulled into this devastating time war, the clearer Malcolm’s ultimate role in humankind’s destiny becomes, causing the troubled young soldier from the twentieth century to question whether he’s been chosen to fight on the side of good or evil . . . and if such a distinction even exists.

Eleven essential classics in one volume

This volume is the definitive collection of the best science fiction novellas published between 1929 and 1964, containing eleven great classics. No anthology better captures the birth of science fiction as a literary field.

Published in 1973 to honor stories that had appeared before the institution of the Nebula Awards, the Science Fiction Hall of Fame introduced tens of thousands of young readers to the wonders of science fiction and was a favorite of libraries across the country.

This volume contains the following:

Introduction by Ben Bova

Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson

Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr. (as Don A. Stuart)

Nerves by Lester del Rey

Universe by Robert A. Heinlein

The Marching Morons by C. M. Kornbluth

Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (as Lawrence O’Donnell)

… And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell

The Ballad of Lost C’Mell by Cordwainer Smith

Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson

Humans and their genetically altered descendants struggle to find their place in a universe controlled by a benevolent artificial intelligence in this brilliant classic of future speculation.
On a far-future Earth, a linked system of artificial intelligences called the cybercosm runs the planet and the universe far more efficiently than any flesh and blood ruler ever could, in essence rendering the human race obsolete. On the Earth’s moon, genetically engineered Lunarians carrying the DNA of Dagney Beynac-a descendant of the legendary Anton Guthrie, founder of the powerful and visionary Fireball Enterprises-struggle to preserve their lives, their freedom, and their satellite’s resources in the face of threats posed by encroaching humans and controlling machines. Over a span of five centuries, tensions have increased in the wake of the political and technological revolutions that reshaped their universe. And suddenly radical change is in the offing once more, as a secret kept hidden since the earliest days of Lunar colonization is about to be revealed-one that could effectively shut down the cybercosm and plunge the universe into chaos.

The Buck Starts Here!
Think there’s an unbridgeable gulf between human and alien thought? Not so! There’s a common tongue, all right-and Nicholas Van Rijn speaks it fluently: trade. For behind the buffoonish blarney and bawdy bonhomie of the Falstaffian Van Rijn is a man who gets things done. A born wheeler-dealer who usually leaves both sides better off in the bargain. (While pocketing a hefty cut of the profits himself, of course!)
With “The Man Who Counts” and a passel of other tales included, this is the first of three volumes set to contain the complete cycle of Polesotechnic League books and stories by transcendently gifted science fiction master (how does seven Hugos and three Nebula Awards strike you?) Poul Anderson-and starring Nicholas Van Rijn, his most famous character of all!
Contains mature themes.

The gathering forces of the Dark Powers threaten the world of man. The legions of Faery, aided by trolls, demons, and the Wild Hunt itself, are poised to overthrow the Realms of Light. Holger Carlsen, a bemused and puzzled twentieth-century man mysteriously snatched out of time, finds himself the key figure in the conflict. Arrayed against him are the dragons, giants, and elfin warriors of the armies of Chaos and the beautiful sorceress Morgan le Fay. On his side are a vague prophecy, a quarrelsome dwarf, and a beautiful woman who can turn herself into a swan, not to mention Papillon, the magnificent battle horse, and a full set of perfectly fitting armor, both of which were waiting for him when he entered the magical realm. The shield bears three hearts and three lions—the only clue to Holger Carlsen’s true identity. Could Carlsen really be a legendary hero, the only man who can save the world?

Forget minor hazards like nuclear bombs. The discovery of time travel means that everything we know, anyone we know, might not only vanish, but never even have existed. Against that possibility stand the men and women of the Time Patrol, dedicated to preserving the history they know and protecting the future from fanatics, terrorists, and would-be dictators who would remold the shape of reality to suit their own purposes. But Manse Everard, the Patrol’s finest temporal trouble-shooter, bears a heavy burden. The fabric of history is stained with human blood and suffering which he cannot, must not do anything to alleviate, lest his tampering bring disastrous alterations in future time. Everard must leave the horrors of the past in place, lest his tampering-or that of the Patrol’s opponents, the Exaltationists-erase all hope of a better future, and instead bring about a future filled with greater horrors than any recorded by past history at its darkest and most foul.

It is the twilight of the Terran Empire. The warriors who made it great are long gone now, and the Traders of the Polesotechnic League who made it possible are the dimly-remembered stuff of legend. Alien enemies prowl its outer precincts, and Sector Governors conspire for the Throne of Man. On Terra herself, those who occupy the labyrinthine corridors of power busy themselves with trivialities and internal politics, as outside the final darkness gathers.
In this scene of terminal disarray one man stands like a giant: Dominic Flandry, Agent of the Terran Empire. In three full-length novels, he will rise from young ensign to lieutenant commander as he outthinks rivals and thwarts adversaries, blazing a trail across the galaxy in defense of an Empire which barely appreciates him and against alien enemies who appreciate him all too well.
Contains mature themes.