To save her newborn son, Dr. Helen Murray has to remain behind on an alien world. But is she alone? As her son, Robin, becomes older, he acts strangely and describes other people that Helen cannot see.
The Day the Earth Stood Still: Selected Stories of Harry Bates
UNABRIDGED (7 hrs and 21 mins)
By Harry Bates
Narrated By William Coon
Overall
(19)
Performance
(2)
Story
(1)
In Farewell to the Master, Cliff Sutherland, a freelance reporter, is determined to get more photos of the giant robot that stands as a silent sentinel over his dimensional space-traveling ship. Cliff is determined to have an overnight vigil to get behind the mystery of the slain alien known as Klaatu.
Mad! Impossible world! Sun-blasted by day, cold-wracked by night - and life condensed by radiation into eight days! Sim eyed the Ship - if he only dared reach it and escape! ... but it was more than half an hour distant - perhaps the limit of life itself! From the author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. Originally published in the Fall 1946 issue of Planet Stories. It was later reprinted under the title Frost and Fire.
As a man surveys the countryside for the construction of a reservoir, he comes across a stretch of barren farmland leeched of life. An aged survivor of the town tells him the tale of a rural farmer's family and their path to madness and unspeakable horror.
Micki says:
"Horrible narration, ruins a great story."
Garin Featherstone has been sent to explore a mysterious blue haze that was spotted in the polar region. There he discovers a lost civilization and a strange environment of vivid green lands, crimson tree trunks, and golden rivers. He must save Thrala of the light against the lizard men.
On the planet Glory, missionaries live in a constant unpredictable environment. Sister Mary and her husband, Brother Raymond, try to contend with the flits, which live satyr-like existences. The missionaries are exasperated with this world's disregard for cause and effect. The only constant is the clock that they brought with them. And therein lies the problem.
The Company was a powerful, efficient, and monstrous insurance organization that controlled the entire world, scientifically regulating everything in life: war, epidemics, one-a-day food pills and test-tube sex...all through the use of its patented, terrifying human deep-freeze vault. Claims Adjuster Wills, a great believer in the Company, begins to have second thoughts when he meets beautiful and sorrowful Rena, whose radical father lies in a frozen subterranean vault.
Matt Harker and his people have journeyed for far too long. They're a rag-tag group of Earthmen and Venusians floating on the Sea of Morning Opals... floating without a home and with very little hope, victimized by hostile natives, burning fevers, bad soil, and bad luck.
When land is sighted, Harker makes the decision to scale the mountainous terrain in the dim hopes of finding a new home. With two companions, he ascends to encounter unknown malevolent alien beings.
When Ray Baker meets a woman on his sojourn, he doesn't know if he wants to kill her or sleep with her. Ray doesn't understand his urge to murder. But he feels it like all the other Deathlanders. Just as he knows the girl feels it. Laying down their arsenal of weapons will leave them both vulnerable. The cost of a moment of intimacy may lead to the last moments of their lives. And what to do when the act is over, and both their minds turn back to murder.
Man has conquered space, but not without costs. To maintain the space lanes, Scanners have to undergo an operation in which their brain is severed from their sensory inputs to block the Pain of Space. A man named Adam Stone claims that he has a found a way to travel in the deep of space without the use of the Scanners - and the community of Scanners has decided that he must die. But one Scanner realizes the madness of that solution.
When Clovis McLaurin receives an urgent letter from his father, the scientist Dr. Ford McLaurin, he rushes in the dead of winter to his father's ranch. He is attacked by wolves during his journey, but wolves are not the only thing running with the pack. Stella Jetton, the daughter of his father's assistant, is running with the wolves, dressed in only a silk slip in the bitter cold. Clovis recognizes the blood-stained face of the girl he loves, but not her eyes.
Taylor felt life was pretty good. Sure living in an underground bunker developing more sophisticated weapons to bomb the Soviets was less than ideal. But he had a pretty wife, and he was safe from the radioactive poisoned environment that existed above ground. The leadies, a sophisticated robot servant, could inform them of the devastating destruction, the bombed out cities, and the further Soviet attacks. But it was a strange fact that the latest leadie to return to the bunker showed no sign of radioactivity.
When Raf Kurbi's spaceship from Earth burst into unexplored skies of the far planet Astra, it was made welcome by the natives of a once-mighty metropolis. But Kurbi was unaware of three vital things.
A Sheckley Trilogy: Three Classic Tales of Science Fiction
UNABRIDGED (2 hrs and 4 mins)
By Robert Sheckley
Narrated By Mark Douglas Nelson
Overall
(11)
Performance
(1)
Story
(1)
Robert Sheckley, master of the science-fiction short-story form, created numerous tales of dark humor. He had an entertaining gift for looking at society with a warped mirror, enabling us to see ourselves in a clearer reflection.
A trading spaceship often has to carry unusual cargo. But none as strange as the blubberous pig-like alien known as the wub. The captain of the ship decides that the wub may make an excellent meal for him and the crew. But the wub might have something to say about it.
A future New York City has changed since a nuclear bomb left areas of radiation that threaten the residents. Women wear coverings over their faces as the latest fashion trend. An Englishman in New York saves a girl from a speeding coupe with fish hooks on its fender. He finds himself attracted and repelled by the girl in this classic story of future shock from a science-fiction grand master.
Working in a military research facility, Kramer comes up with a system of installing a man's brain as the central processor of a rocket. Since a pilot could not withstand the pressures of deep space flight, a willing sacrifice will need to be made. Kramer's ex-wife, Dolores, remembers an old professor, Professor Thomas, that she and Kramer had attended in college. Professor Thomas is near the end of his lifespan. His mind is still agile, and it is agreed that it is his mind that will go into the rocket.
Future humanity has found the secret of faster-than-light travel, but it comes with great dangers. To minimize these dangers, man can pilot ships through the up-and-out with cats as their partners. Underhill shares his mind with his cat-partner, the Lady May, and must travel to the terrible open places between the stars. Only by working together can they defend themselves and the ship's passengers against the dragons in the emptiness of space.
What is more idyllic than a small Midwestern agricultural town? Peaksville would sound like a scene right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, except little Anthony is a monster! What happens when a child is omnipotent, and with his mind he can execute his every desire and petulant whim? Tonight, there's a birthday party for Dan Hollis at Anthony's house. It's a party all the townspeople will remember...always!
