Search Worlds Without End

POWER!

Perhaps the rarest gift in the world is that ability to read the future, to know what will happen to a person, a group, even a country, and when it will happen!

EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION

The year is some indeterminate time in the future; Mickey Grant and Anna Enesco are involved in special studies for people who have shown extraordinary ESP talent. Their progress is as frightening as it is incredible.

But when our government sends them on missions that become increasingly dangerous and difficult, are their lives the price of their special pre-knowledge?

In the far future, Earth is beautifully planned, efficiently run, and happily united. But still it is a world with problems- people have become so lazy, so self-satisfied, that human progress has all but ceased. Addicts of the newly-developed "programmed dreams" are increasing at an enormous rate. Only a few individuals realize that the human race is destroying itself. This book is about what those few people do.

The time is the future. The government is a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy, mainly concerned with protecting the profits of large corporations. The Movement is a new and non-violent revolutionary group seeking to replace the political mess with a just and scientifically efficient socioeconomic system.

The Movement was staffed by some of the world's greatest intellectuals and scientists; unfortunately, they were amateurs in the business of revolution. The government could call on an army of ruthless professional agents - and they had no scruples about using violence.

What was the secret of San Raphael? It held too many faces from the past. Alex Germain recognized a former lover... then a noted intellectual... and a handsome, courtly Italian. All as young, as vital, as when Alex had first met them--decades earlier. Alex demanded the truth..but he had nothing to do with the murders that began to strike San Raphael. Suddenly the little Mexican village crackled with violence. Battle had been joined. To the losers: nothing but death. To the winners: eternity

THE GALACTIC MEDAL OF HONOR was the most important, the most coveted award of all time. It was given only to a handful of the bravest and most self-sacraficing of those defending earth from the mysterious alien invaders that had appeared fifty years before. It was almost always given posthumously.

The Bearer of this medal became the idol of all mankind, would never want for any necessity or luxury -- would never want for anything.

Everyone on Earth sought that medal.... One man was going to cheat to win it -- and live to regret it.

His words alone could change the world-completely and irrevocably. His words alone DID change the world. Was it mass hypnosis, a hex, or THE POWER?

It looked remarkably like a sterile, cold metallic coffin. It was the Intuitive Computer, a fantastic invention that would allow a user to assume the identity of any historical figure - Napoleon, Cleopatra, Hitler - anyone who ever existed. The possessor of this top-secret device would be able to witness the building of the pyramids, the crucifixion, the discovery of America.

The Intuitive Computer would revolutionize the studies of history, archaeology, anthropology; it would eventually revolutionize the entire entertainment and leisure industry. The lives of every person on Earth would be changed because of it.

IT WAS PROBABLY THE MOST DANGEROUS INVENTION IN THE HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE.

Contents:

• 9 - Introduction (Science-Fiction Carnival) - essay by Fredric Brown
• 12 - Preface (Science-Fiction Carnival) - essay by Mack Reynolds
• 15 - The Wheel of Time - (1950) - short story by Robert Arthur
• 37 - SRL Ad - (1952) - short story by Richard Matheson
• 49 - A Logic Named Joe - (1946) - short story by Murray Leinster
• 71 - Simworthy's Circus - (1950) - short story by Larry T. Shaw
• 89 - The Well-Oiled Machine - (1950) - short story by H. B. Fyfe
• 109 - Venus and the Seven Sexes - (1949) - novella by William Tenn
• 163 - The Swordsmen of Varnis - (1950) - short story by Clive Jackson
• 167 - Paradox Lost - (1943) - short story by Fredric Brown
• 189 - Muten - (1948) - short story by Eric Frank Russell
• 211 - The Martians and the Coys - (1951) - short story by Mack Reynolds
• 227 - The Ego Machine - (1952) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
• 283 - The Cosmic Jackpot - (1948) - short story by George O. Smith
• 301 - The Abduction of Abner Greer - (1941) - short story by Nelson S. Bond

New Arizona a lush, virgin planet teeming with rich vegetation and a vast hoard of mineral wealth. A company had been formed to colonise and exploit it, and the spaceship Titov set out with the Board of Directors and two thousand colonists. And shortly after the trip had begun, the trouble started.

The Board of Directors was only interested in the vast profits that could be made by stripping the planet of its natural resources which could be sold to the highest bidder. Not for them the gradual establishment of a pioneer community, of farmlands and villages.

The Colonists had given up everything by leaving Earth, and they wanted a new planet where they could work, prosper and establish a new and better way of life. They were determined to thwart the directors by any means they could find.

And after landing on New Arizona, someone smashes the radio and sabotages the life-craft. Now the balance is more even - but when a real crisis erupts it seems as if neither side will be alive to win!

In the near future, the nations of Earth have drawn closer together - an era hope and of co-operation, and progress will soon begin. But dreams of lasting peace are shattered by one momentous discovery. One of the members of an international team of scientists stationed on the moon has found an alien spacecraft - with all its incredible technology and weaponry intact. Every nation joins the mad scramble to learn the terrible secrets entombed by alien visitors eons before. Only one thing prevents total war - Werner Brecht, the discoverer of the vehicle, is the only one who knows its location and he has disappeared into thin air!

Hugo Award nominated story. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fact -> Fiction, August 1961. The story hasn't been reprinted in anthologies or collections. The copyright has expired so it is freely available from places like Project Gutenberg.

It was expanded to the full novel Day After Tomorrow (1976).

Table of Contents:

• Showing Off Reynolds - essay by Barry N. Malzberg
• Introduction - essay by Mack Reynolds
• Down the River - (1950) - shortstory
• Come in, Spaceport - (1974) - shortstory
• Compounded Interest - (1956) - shortstory
• The Business, As Usual - (1952) - shortstory
• Freedom - (1961) - novelette
• Revolution - (1960) - novelette
• Burnt Toast - (1955) - shortstory
• Your Soul Comes C.O.D. - (1952) - shortstory
• Good Indian - (1962) - shortstory
• No Return from Elba - (1953) - shortstory
• Pacifist - (1964) - shortstory
• Subversive - (1962) - shortstory
• Earthlings Go Home! - (1962) - shortstory
• Albatross - (1955) - shortstory
• The Enemy Within - (1967) - shortstory
• Survivor - (1966) - shortstory
• Fad - (1965) - novelette
• Spaceman on a Spree - (1963) - novelette
• The Adventure of the Extraterrestrial - (1965) - novelette
• Utopian - (1970) - shortstory
• Prone - (1954) - shortstory
• Second Advent - (1974) - shortstory

Morris should have functioned perfectly in the rigid totalitarian society of the future where every thought, every word, every action was controlled by the superstate. A state where everyone was watched night and day by the Great Eye of the internal security forces,

It was a strange, in many ways inhuman world, but the rewards were great for those who belonged to the right caste.

Morris belonged to the master class which ruled the entire world by brain power or brutality depending on which was needed. Morris was born right at the top - he had everything the Technate Society could provide - and yet he didn't belong.

Nonconformity could mean liquidation, but he was prepared to take the risk.

UTOPIA WAS NO FUN

They had a Guaranteed Annual Income and an automated world where no one had to work - but there was nothing to do!

When Morris and his friends ran out of beer, there was only one alternative - they decided to overthrow the government!

Blackman's Burden

Africa blazes in tomorrow's world!

Border, Breed Nor Birth

Is this the destiny of the dark continent?

Computer War

The odds were right for victory. The problem with computer warfare is that the computer is always logical while the human enemy is not - or doesn't have to be. And that's what the Betastani enemy were doing - nothing that the Alphaland computers said they would. Those treacherous foemen were avoiding logic and using such unheard-of devices as surprise and sabotage, treason and trickery. They even had Alphaland's Deputy of Information believing Betastani propaganda without even realizing it. Of course he still thought he was being loyal to Alphaland, because he thought that one and one must logically add up to two. And that kind of thinking could make him the biggest traitor of them all.

Code Duello

Section G, the top-secret security unit of United Planets, had a special problem on their hands wit the situation on Firenze. And for that special problem, they gathered together the most unusual squad in Section G's unusual history. It included: A research biologist who could bend steel bars like rubber bands A middle-aged lady with total total recall An interplanetary cowboy whose bullwhip was deadlier than a ray gun A brazen young lady acrobat who looked like an eight-year-old kid A mild young man who never lost a bet in his life And the best pickpocket that ever lived. But Firenze with its CODE DUELLO was to prove a match for the lot of them!

Computer War

The odds were right for victory. The problem with computer warfare is that the computer is always logical while the human enemy is not - or doesn't have to be. And that's what the Betastani enemy were doing - nothing that the Alphaland computers said they would. Those treacherous foemen were avoiding logic and using such unheard-of devices as surprise and sabotage, treason and trickery. They even had Alphaland's Deputy of Information believing Betastani propaganda without even realizing it. Of course he still thought he was being loyal to Alphaland, because he thought that one and one must logically add up to two. And that kind of thinking could make him the biggest traitor of them all.

Death is a Dream

Suspended animation, the doctor had said, was a simple matter - now that the bugs were ironed out. "You'll be safe here until we wake you, with the know-how to cure what's wrong." Brad Stevens chose the long cold sleep: and, as the doctor predicted, it worked. For Brad, death had been a dream, but the awakening was an incredible nightmare...

Dawnman Planet

Ron Bronston was sworn to protect the United Planets' dream - the pursuit of freedom and progress on all of the 3000 human-inhabited planets of the galaxy.

As an operative of the secret section of the United Planets' Bureau of Investigation, Bronston was called upon for some very unusual missions. But the present crisis was without precedent.

Man's sovereignty in his galaxy was challenged by a single madman and the super-weapons of the Dawnmen, the mysterious aliens from the unexplored vastness of the galaxy's center. Bronston, alone, had to find a way to stop them.

Inherit the Earth

The human race was rushing towards the brink of destruction, as huge global forces massed to strike at each other with all the awesome power of modern war weapons. war threats screamed from headlines, radio and television... and in a small, seemingly unimportant city in Africa, a group of men worked on a discovery and a plan that was to affect Earth's entire future.

They had developed a new type of creature - androids who were only the size of dolls, and apparently limited in intelligence. Yet they seemed to have a strange effect on the personalities of humans.

So far there were only a few score of the androids - but in time they were fated to inherit the Earth.

Mack Reynolds, a favorite of Science Fiction readers throughout the world, is best known for his novels of adventure, his wit, and especially for his ability to divine the social, economic and political developments of the future.

The two complete novels presented here are typical examples of his exceptional talents. DAWNMAN PLANET is a classic interplanetary adventure of the United Planets Organization -- a popular feature of many Reynolds' novels -- and its attempts to prevent a power-hungry madman and an advanced alien intelligence from conquering the galaxy. And DEPRESSION OR BUST, a novel making its first paperback appearance, is a biting but insightful satire on the political chaos resulting from an economic collapse that sweeps the United States of the future.

Mercenary From Tomorrow

Is the story of 21st Century Earth - a world where work is forgotten, where the masses fight boredom with trank pills and telly, and where it is almost impossible to leave the social class you were born in. You could break the class barrier only by hiring yourself out as a mercenary to fight in the prime-time wars that are fought to keep the telly-viewing public satisfied. That is the only way to move up the ladder - if you could stay alive long enough.

The Key to Venudine

Rodro's men were pushing past, were blundering with reeking weapons into the room to kill and take the princess away.

Lai half stretched up from the princess's restraining arms. The room was empty of other life apart from Sir Fezius and the two knights now lifting their swords, ready to cut down Lai.

A popping noise sounded like a drum bursting. A man appeared in the middle of the room.

One moment he was not there; the next he stood there, holding a bulky stick in his arm, peering about with a white face. He said something that sounded like "Skeet."

The next instant the room resounded with an avalanche roar and a hellfire blast of scorching flame.

Nebula Alert

The Iralians were humanoid and techically free citizens of the Galactic Empire. But as slaves they were prized above all others, for they had the unique capacity to transmit acquired knowledge through heredity. And so when the space mercenary Wanderer was hired by GLASS (Galactic League for the Abolition and Supression of Slavery) to take a cargo of Iralians home it was going to be a simple task!

For one thing, they'd be hunted by interstellar slavers for their priceless passengers.

For another, the Iralians themselves had other ideas which included mutiny and high treason.

And for the third and worst, they were too close to the Horsehead Nebula, whose capacity for warping time, space and the dimensions was a permanent Red Alert for all spacecraft.

The Rival Rigelians

The team from Earth had the task of raising backward planets to the home world's high level. The situation on Rigel was this:

"The most advanced culture on Rigel's first planet is to be compared to the Italian cities during Europe's feudalistic yeas. The most advanced of the second planet is comparable to the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish conquest."

"These planets are in your control to the extent that no small group has ever dominated millions before. No Caesar ever exerted the power that will be in your collective hands. For half a century, you will be as gods and goddesses!"

But the Rigelians were themselves descended from the lost colonists of old Earth and they could learn their lessons as fast as they could be taught.

In fact, they could even teach their teachers a thing or two. And therein lay the peril the professors from space never dreamed of.

Planetary Agent X

Newly accepted as a Special Agent of the star-spanning United Planets organization, Ronny Bronston found that his first assignment was one which had taken the lives of dozens of agents before him: he was to track down a man named Tommy Paine.

Behold the Stars

White Flag for Earthmen

Man had discovered a means of colonising the galaxy. Through a system of instantaneous matter transmission, men, machines, anything, could be sent light years away in seconds!

Only, men were not the only beings in the galaxy who were expanding, and at 200 light years from Earth the alien Gershmi people made their claims clear, with guns!

It would have been a fair fight between equally matched races, had not the very matter transmitter boxes which had made mankind's expansion possible, suddenly began to put men back together, 200 light years from Earth, with their will to fight removes, so that Earthmen were marching with white flags of truce straight into Gershmi fire!

The Age of Ruin

He fought his was across an alien world no man had ever mapped.

Code Duello

Section G, the top-secret security unit of United Planets, had a special problem on their hands wit the situation on Firenze. And for that special problem, they gathered together the most unusual squad in Section G's unusual history. It included: A research biologist who could bend steel bars like rubber bands A middle-aged lady with total total recall An interplanetary cowboy whose bullwhip was deadlier than a ray gun A brazen young lady acrobat who looked like an eight-year-old kid A mild young man who never lost a bet in his life And the best pickpocket that ever lived. But Firenze with its CODE DUELLO was to prove a match for the lot of them!

The Five Way Secret Agent

The world situation has become so confused that a young American living on Negative Income Tax finds himself drafted into an international espionage assignment by no less than 5 opposing interests.

Mercenary From Tomorrow

21st Centure Earth--a world where work is forgotten, where the masses fight boredom with trank pills and telly, and where it is almost impossible to leave the social class you were born in. You could break the class barrier only by hiring yourself out as a mercenary to fight in the prime-time wars that are fought to keep the telly-viewing public satisfied. That is the only way to move up the ladder...if you could stay alive long enough...

The Rival Rigelians

The team from Earth had the task of raising backward planets to the home world's high level. The situation on Rigel was this:

"The most advanced culture on Rigel's first planet is to be compared to the Italian cities during Europe's feudalistic yeas. The most advanced of the second planet is comparable to the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish conquest."

"These planets are in your control to the extent that no small group has ever dominated millions before. No Caesar ever exerted the power that will be in your collective hands. For half a century, you will be as gods and goddesses!"

But the Rigelians were themselves descended from the lost colonists of old Earth and they could learn their lessons as fast as they could be taught.

In fact, they could even teach their teachers a thing or two. And therein lay the peril the professors from space never dreamed of.

Planetary Agent X

Newly accepted as a Special Agent of the star-spanning United Planets organization, Ronny Bronston found that his first assignment was one which had taken the lives of dozens of agents before him: he was to track down a man named Tommy Paine.

The Space Barbarians

John of the Hawks was a proud, young man, proud of his people, proud of his heritage, and proud of his ability to count coup on his clann's traditional enemies. He knew what was right and what was wrong - the four great books had laid down the way things had to be.

Which is why the uncouth ways of the clannless drifters from space outraged him so. Not only did these peddlers know nothing of the finesse of proper combat, they knew nothing of the respect due to such things as the coup stick, the right way to capture a wife, and the sanctity of the clann's elders.

Worse still, they had some idiotic notion that that cheap silvery metal so commonly used for plumbing and horse-bits, known as platinum, was somehow of special merit.

Well, one could excuse an outrage or two on the grounds of ignorance, but there came a time when any good clannsman, such as John certainly was, must decide to teach these barbarians from space a lesson!

The Eyes of Bolsk

Was he puppet or sword-arm for a world's unseen master?

Contents:

• 5 - The Man in the Moon - (1950) - novelette
• 29 - Please to Remember - (1953) - shortstory
• 41 - Tourists to Terra - (1950) - shortstory
• 50 - The Hatchetman - (1951) - novelette by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds
• 97 - Mercy Flight - (1951) - shortstory
• 109 - One of Our Planets Is Missing! - (1950) - shortstory
• 121 - Final Appraisal - (1952) - shortstory
• 134 - Six-Legged Svengali - (1950) - shortstory by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds
• 145 - Troubador - (1951) - shortstory
• 157 - The Word from the Void - (1950) - shortstory
• 162 - Your Soul Comes C.O.D. - (1952) - shortstory
• 168 - Desperate Remedy - (1954) - novelette
• 202 - After Some Tomorrow - (1956) - shortstory
• 219 - Off Course - (1954) - shortstory
• 229 - United We Stand - (1950) - shortstory
• 237 - Optical Illusion - (1953) - shortstory
• 241 - I. Q. - (1961) - shortstory
• 261 - Stowaway - (1953) - novelette
• 289 - Halftripper - (1951) - shortstory
• 298 - Ask Me No Questions! - (1951) - shortstory
• 310 - D. P. from Tomorrow - (1953) - shortstory

Commune 2000 A.D. depicts a North America in which 90 percent of the population is unemployed and on government assistance, and yet everyone leads a comfortable lifestyle, with plenty of food, beautiful spacious housing, efficient public transportation, and an array of electronic devices. Crime and envy are almost entirely eliminated. There is no pollution and the landscape has been restored, with factories and highways underground. Computers and automation make this utopia possible. In fact, every year people take an intelligence/aptitude test, and the government computers select the best individuals for the tiny number of jobs available.

The fact that everyone has a middle class income and lifestyle without working allows them to leave the cities and band together into communes of the like-minded (a commune of homosexuals, a commune of artists, a commune of people who like to get high on drugs every day, etc.) The main character, a graduate student in the social sciences, is tasked by his graduate adviser to write his thesis on the communes, and he travels from commune to commune, interviewing communards and taking notes.

Imagine a future in which the US government builds colossal self-contained cities to house anyone who wishes to live there. it is a virtual paradise except...

SHYLER-DEME IS UNDER SEIGE!

The enemy has no face. It does not show on the scanners. It avoids the world's most sophisticated surveillance system. But it leaves a wake of profitless crime and motiveless murder...

And puts the future of mankind's paradise-on-earth in peril!

Reynolds has turned his productive imagination towards the growing phenomenon of mobile living in America. Taking us decades into the future, he tells the story of a world where people have taken to the road EN MASSE, in huge mobile 'towns' composed of hundreds, or even thousands of inhabitants, attempting to deal with a hostile and over organized world.

A reprise of Edward Bellamy's classic Utopian novel, displaying Reynolds ideas about the politics and economics of an energy-affluent society

In this sequel to: Looking Backward, from the Year 2000 -

Julian West had been put into a hypnotic trance and placed in a sealed room. Then the house burned down and he was forgotten... until he awoke 40 years later. It was the year 2000, and it seem like Utopia....

The Wide syndrome

It is the not-too-distant future. The space colony Lagrangia, on the moon's orbit, is an idyllic utopia of parks, mountains, streams and blue skies. Lulled by its beauty, citizens can sometimes forget that the 'stream' are recycled water, and the 'blue skies' are titanium strips bound together. But there are a few who can never forget. There are the victims of the Wide syndrome - a terrifying form of contagious, claustrophobic madness that can strike anyone - at any time - on Lagrange Five.

L-5, a point in the Earth-Moon System where orbits are forever and the new age of Freedom and Plenty can begin. Now, they're trying to kill the man in charge of the first L-5 colony, and Private Eye Rex Bader is the man who will have to find and stop them. But who are the killers? Only time -- and blood -- will tell!

Rex Bader has finally solved the mystery of who is trying to kill the Director of the first L-5 space colony. The Mafia? The KGB? Anti-Space fanatics? Answer: all three. The question now is can Rex continue to protect the Director against his many enemies. If he can't the history of man in space may be short indeed.

Island One, the U.S.'s first space colony and symbol of an American Renaissance, is in trouble. Low morale, shoddy workmanship, unexplained malfunctions and avoidable accidents have become a way of life. Is it the Russians? Home-grown anti-technologists? Arabs afraid of cheap solar power from Space--or something even more sinister? When the President ordered secret agent Peter Kapitz to find out what was going on, Peter's first discovery is that the Soviets are indeed involved. His second is that they are not alone.

He will probably not live to make a third.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It was originally published in If, October 1965. No other publications are known at this time.

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It orginally appeared in Analog Science Fiction -> Science Fact, July 1965. The story can also be found in the anthologies Analog 5 (1967), edited by John W. Campbell and Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space (1984) edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Charles G. Waugh and Isaac Asimov. It is included in the collection The Best of Mack Reynolds (1976).

The First Star Trek Novel!

The U.S.S. Enterprise is headed to Starbase 12 for shore leave, supplies and repairs. Food is running low and the engines need servicing. A distress signal diverts the Enterprise to a solar system on the outer edge of explored space. Upon hearing of the emergency mission, Dr. McCoy expresses his concern about the mental health of the crew to Kirk. In Dr. McCoy's opinion, the Enterprise has been on patrol for such a long period of time that the crew is in danger of developing a form of space madness known as cafard.

Upon reaching the NGC 400 solar system, the Enterprise crew comes across three planets populated by different human settlers who had been unhappy with the social or political order of Earth. One planet has reverted to a Stone Age state, another has a mid-20th Century technology while the third maintains a level of technology capable of space travel and advanced weaponry.

Kirk and crew must determine who sent a distress signal and the nature of the emergency. Along the way, they encounter a warrior society, a planet where drugs are used to control the general population and a culture consisting of an elite class with clones handling the day-to-day chores required by society.

Amazonia had a reputation for strangeness even among the zany worlds of the United Planets Federation. It was a spartan planet ruled by a fearsome military caste -- made up exclusively of women. The males of Amazonia usually wound up in some warrior's harem.

When Guy Thomas arrived he was allowed the privilege of landing only because he offered the government profitable trade agreements, but it wasn't long before his real plans were fulfilled by his secret meetings with the male-liberationist revolutionary group, The Sons of Liberty. They needed a lot of help.

The more he got involved, however, the more he got the feeling that something was wrong with the whole setup. Guy Thomas was soon to learn that there was more to Amazonia than met the eye -- AND HE WASN'T GOING TO LIKE THE TRUTH AT ALL!

Legally, the United Planets Organization could do nothing about the repressive, backward planetary governments of Falange, Stalin and Doria. It was imperative, however, that something be done. The UP had proof that a race of highly advanced, warlike aliens existed somewhere in the depths of space -- the human-held worlds had to be ready to meet the challenge when it came.

For this reason the secret corps, Section G, was formed. No government could be allowed to hold up the progress of mankind; Section G was ordered to bring them down -- by any means necessary!

Note: Fixup of the stories "Fiesta Brava" and "Psi Assassin".

It was a milk run. At least, that's what they told Ronny Bronston this job would be. "Just like a vacation," his boss had said. All he and the giant Dorn Horsten would have to do is visit the planet Einstein and see if there was any reason not to admit them to United Planets.

The planet was a paradise, where the people had bred themselves for intelligence and beauty, where everyone was completely free. Free, sometimes, to get into more trouble than they could handle. Only Ronny could get them out of that trouble; and that's how he wound up on the Dawnworld, in a gladiator's arena!