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Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Sands of Time by P. Schuyler Miller P. Schuyler Miller. Peter Schuyler Miller (born February 21, 1912 in Troy , New York ; died October 13, 1974 on Blennerhassett Island , West Virginia ) was an American science fiction writer and critic. contents. Miller's parents were the chemist Philip Schuyler Miller and the teacher Edith May, née Figgis. He grew up in the Mohawk Valley in New York State, which established his lifelong interest in the Iroquois culture and archaeological legacy . In later years he was a dedicated amateur archaeologist, contributing to the anthropological division of the Carnegie Museum , the Eastern States Archeological Society , the Van Epps- Hartley Chapter of the New York Archeological Association , the Society for American Archeology, and the Society for Pennsylvania Archeology , for their journal Pennsylvania Archaeologist he was interim editor. When Miller died in 1974, aged only 62, he was on a field trip to a Fort Ancient culture archaeological site west of Parkersburg , West Virginia. Miller was a good student, gave the graduation speech of his year at the age of 15 and then studied chemistry at Union College in Schenectady , where he graduated with a Masters in 1932 . He then worked as a laboratory assistant at the General Electric Research Institute in Schenectady until 1934 . From 1937 to 1952 he worked in adult education and public relations at the Schenectady Museum and eventually became its director. From 1952 to 1974 he was a technical writer for the Fisher Scientific Company in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania . From his youth, Miller was an avid reader of science fiction, starting with the stories of Jules Verne . In August 1924 he bought his first SF magazine, an issue of Hugo Gernsback's Science and Invention , and was henceforth a loyal reader of pulp magazines such as Argosy and Weird Tales, and later of Astounding . He began contributing to the early fanzines , became a member of the Fantasy Amateur Press Association (FAPA), corresponded with Robert E. Howard , the creator of Conan the Cimmerian , for whom he and his friend John D. Clark wrote a “résumé " Which appeared in Howard's The Hyborean Age in 1938 . However, he was not satisfied with reading science fiction and being an active member of the SF fandom of the 1930s, but began writing SF stories himself. In 1930 he won the Air Wonder competition advertised by Gernsback, which was endowed with 150 dollars in gold - a tremendous sum for Miller, then 18, and not just for him, which is why there were over 500 entries. The story, The Red Plague , was of course also printed in Wonder Stories and Gernsback said it was one of the best stories that has appeared in his magazines so far. Over the next 20 years Miller published around 50 stories and a novel, Genus Homo (1950, German as Die neue Herrherr ), which he wrote together with Lyon Sprague de Camp , in which the apes have evolved in a distant future and now the Rulers of the world, an idea that was later taken up in Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes . When science fiction began to appear less in pulp magazines and more as paperback and eventually as a hardback book from the 1950s onwards, Miller remained an avid reader and buyer. However, he no longer had to buy a lot, but received review copies, because from 1945 he had started to write SF reviews for Astounding , which from 1951 appeared regularly under the title The Reference Library . By the end of his life he wrote hundreds of book reviews, practically every SF title worth reading during this time was competently discussed by him, although he usually did not make too great claims, but he was still considered reliable. When his sister left a large part of Miller's library to the Carnegie Museum after his death , a catalog was created and published which contained 3,500 volumes excluding the paperbacks, which was another 4,600 volumes. Miller was honored with the Special Convention Award as best critic at the Worldcon 1963 in Baltimore . In 1975 he was posthumously awarded the Locus Award for his work as an SF critic . He is credited with coining the term Hard-SF for scientifically and technically oriented science fiction. The Sands of Time by P. Schuyler Miller. Anthopology 101: The Best of Time and Space. By Bud Webster. For me, as with many people of my generation (give or take a few years), the primary source for science fiction and fantasy was the library, both school and public. My parents didn't read it; my mother read mysteries and my father read only the daily paper, and my older sibs wouldn't begin reading sf or fantasy until much, much later, so I didn't have sf books or magazines around the house. But the library was sanctuary for me. Nobody would chase me, nobody would yell at me, and best of all, nobody there would rag me for reading books. I'd have stayed there forever if I could have. It was quiet, cool, and it's where I became addicted to books, both as artifacts and because of the content. I was probably all of nine years old when I first found the thick, heavy collections of stories edited by Conklin and Healy & McComas for the first time. But there they were, that pair of behemoths: Adventures in Time and Space (ed. Raymond J. Healy and Francis McComas, Random House 1946) and The Best of Science Fiction (ed. Groff Conklin, Crown 1946). They changed my life, and without a doubt altered the way I read science fiction, and I wasn't the only one. For decades after their initial publication, those two books were not just the cornerstones of any library sf section, but supporting walls. They were checked out over and over, rebound again and again, replaced and set out once more to be pored over again. One of the most significant reasons these two books are so important in the field of science fiction is that they contain between hard covers for the first time stories, most of them now considered classics of the era, that would otherwise have been almost impossible to obtain. Pulp magazines, from which the vast majority of the stories came, were never intended to be kept, but thrown away. They were printed on the cheapest paper, barely bound between thin covers, and as soon as the next issue hit the stands the old numbers disappeared, covers stripped, into trash heaps. Other anthologies had preceded, of course. J. Berg Esenwein's Adventures to Come (McLoughlin Brothers, 1937) was the first, although it had no measurable affect on the literature. The Other Worlds (Funk, 1941), edited by Phil Stong, author of State Fair , took at least half its content from Weird Tales ; Stong was critical of most magazine science fiction, calling it "pablum of reiterated nonsense." Donald A Wollheim edited two; The Pocket Book of Science Fiction (Pocket Books, 1943), which was not only the first paperback science fiction anthology but the first such anthology to lay claim to being science fiction, and Portable Novels of Science (Viking, 1945). But as important as these were, none of them would have the impact that the Conklin and Healy & McComas books would have. Consider: two major hard-cover publishing houses commissioned large and representative anthologies of science fiction, something that had never been done before on this scale. Even the fan presses hadn't yet collected pulp stories by different authors in a single volume. This was an open admission by the publishers that they no longer considered science fiction to be pulp trash, but a marketable and viable literature worthy of preservation. So, how did they happen? I've gone into detail about Conklin's entry into publishing elsewhere, so I won't repeat it here. Suffice it to say that he wrote his first book (on lending libraries) in 1934 and stayed in publishing freelance from then until his death in 1968. Although Conklin had read Wells' Men Like Gods in 1924 and had gleefully read his roommate's collection of old Argosy and All-Story pulps with their "scientific romances" by Garritt P. Service, Austin Hall and Merritt in the early '30s, he didn't become what he termed "an earnest devotee" of modern sf until 1944. That was the year he proposed The Best of Science Fiction to Crown Books. Healy and McComas met through Anthony Boucher sometime in the 1930s, most likely because all three were active in (gasp!) socialist politics. McComas, in fact, was made to feel unwelcome at his job with a major oil company because he attempted to unionize the office workers. In 1941 he began a series of jobs in publishing, most notably two years at Random House. They pitched the idea to Random House president Bennet Cerf, and were given the go-ahead. The race was on. Obviously, since they were assembling the anthologies more or less simultaneously, there's no story overlap; this is, of course, one of the reasons they complement each other so well. It also means that, since Healy & McComas got there first, they were able to nail the cream of the Astounding crop before Conklin had a chance to pick. Nevertheless, the Conklin is not an inferior book because of it; Conklin was perfectly capable of finding quality work among the vast number of pulp stories that were left. Let's look at why these two workhorses have outlasted so many others. First and most important, the editors knew what they were looking for and how to get it. All three editors read avidly, if not voraciously, and not only in the genre. Conklin had already edited a collection of stories from two of the most respected literary magazines of the day, Smart Set and New Republic , and McComas did extensive editorial work for Random, Henry Holt, and Simon and Schuster. Then there was the ocean of material from which they could choose. Certainly that ocean was pretty shallow and thin in places, but there were also plenty of depths to be plumbed and that's what they set about doing. Between the two books, there are 75 stories by 53 authors contained in almost 1800 pages. The earliest is Poe's "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains," but there are six other stories that pre-date Gernsback's Amazing Stories . The latest was Leinster's "First Contact" from the May 1945 Astounding . Perhaps as important as who was in the book was where the stories came from: a full 56 of the 75 were taken from Astounding , 45 of those from John W. Campbell's tenure as editor. The next highest number came from the Wonder group with six. If nothing else, this demonstrates that the editors considered Astounding to be the pre-eminent source for sf stories, a contention with which I certainly cannot argue. The tables of contents speak far louder than I can here: in both books, there are seven Heinlein stories (three as by Anson MacDonald); four each by Van Vogt, Padgett, and Don A. Stuart (John W. Campbell, for those of you who don't know); and a brace of stories by Asimov, Rocklynne, Boucher, Cartmill, and others. Leinster, Bester, Fredrick Brown, Eric Frank Russell, Nelson Bond. it would have been more amazing if these books had not stood the test of time. Here is the table of contents for Adventures in Time and Space: Introduction - Raymond J. Healy & J. Francis McComas "Requiem" - Robert A. Heinlein "Forgetfulness" - Don A. Stuart "Nerves" - Lester del Rey "The Sands of Time" - P. Schuyler Miller "The Proud Robot" - Lewis Padgett "Black Destroyer" - A. E. van Vogt "Symbiotica" - Eric Frank Russell "Seeds of the Dusk" - Raymond Z. Gallun "Heavy Planet" [with Frederik Pohl] - Lee Gregor (pseud. of Milton A. Rothman) "Time Locker" - Lewis Padgett "The Link" - Cleve Cartmill "Mechanical Mice" - Maurice G. Hugi (as by Maurice A. Hugi) "V-2: Rocket Cargo Ship" - Willy Ley "Adam and No Eve" - Alfred Bester "Nightfall" - Isaac Asimov "A Matter of Size" - Harry Bates "As Never Was" - P. Schuyler Miller "Q.U.R." - Anthony Boucher (as by H. H. Holmes) "Who Goes There?" - Don A. Stuart "The Roads Must Roll" - Robert A. Heinlein "Asylum" - A. E. van Vogt "Quietus" - Ross Rocklynne "The Twonky" - Lewis Padgett "Time-Travel Happens!" - A. M. Phillips "Robots Return" - Robert Moore Williams "The Blue Giraffe" - L. Sprague de Camp "Flight Into Darkness" - Webb Marlowe (pseud. of Francis J. McComas) "The Weapon Shop" - A. E. van Vogt "Farewell to the Master" - Harry Bates "Within the Pyramid" - R. DeWitt Miller "He Who Shrank" - Henry Hasse "By His Bootstraps" - Anson MacDonald "The Star Mouse" - Fredric Brown "Correspondence Course" - Raymond F. Jones "Brain" - S. Fowler Wright. Two of the pieces, the Ley and the Phillips, are articles. The Hugi is something of an oddity; although many references list this as having been ghosted by Eric Frank Russell, it was, in fact, written by Hugi and then re-written by Russell to make it salable. Friends are good things to have. Editor McComas even "snuck" one of his own stories in under his pseudonym, Webb Marlowe, but to be fair, it originally appeared under that name in the February 1943 Astounding , so no foul. But look at that line-up! How many of those stories have you read over and over, in "Best Of" collections and "Golden Age" anthologies over the years? How many of them are now considered classics? Now stop and realize that at the time this book was assembled, they were not considered classics, just what the editors thought were the best they could get of the yarns they'd enjoyed as science fiction fans. Easy enough to look back now and say, "Well, yes, but surely they knew . " Except that they didn't. Nobody did. The field was still too new. Back then, "classic" science fiction was Wells, Verne, and Poe. "But weren't the stories they chose popular with the readership of the pulp magazines?" you might ask. Of course, but that readership numbered in the tens of thousands at best. Adventures in Time and Space would reach many times that in its first few years, and eventually millions more while (apart from collections, both private and public) the original magazines moldered and disappeared. The immortality of those stories was, in a very real way, assured. (As an aside, I'll point out that one of the more delightful experiences I've had in 45 years of literacy was reading the late Alva Rogers' A Requiem for Astounding with the Healy & McComas beast at my right hand; when Rogers discussed a story he particularly liked that was also in the anthology, it was a simple matter to shift from one book to the other. I didn't even have to move my head much.) Groff Conklin missed out on those stories, since he began his project later than Healy & McComas did, but not only was he able to find more stories, he was able to get his book out sooner then they did. How? Well, that's open to speculation, but it's very possible that it was as simple as The Best of Science Fiction having a single editor through which candidate stories would be filtered instead of two. I think it's more likely that there were other factors as well this was, after all, a race but the Single Editor Theory has a certain elegance that appeals to me. Here are the contents of The Best of Science Fiction : Concerning Science Fiction - John W. Campbell, Jr. Introduction - Groff Conklin Part One: The Atom "Solution Unsatisfactory" - Anson MacDonald "The Great War Syndicate" - Frank R. Stockton "The Piper's Son" - Lewis Padgett "Deadline" - Cleve Cartmill "Lobby" - Clifford D. Simak "Blowups Happen" - Robert Heinlein "Atomic Power" - Don A. Stuart Part Two: The Wonders of Earth "Killdozer!" - Theodore Sturgeon "Davey Jones' Ambassador" - Raymond Z. Gallun "Giant in the Earth" - Morrison Colladay "Goldfish Bowl" - Anson MacDonald "The Ivy War" - David H. Keller "Liquid Life" - Ralph Milne Farley Part Three: The Superscience of Man "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" - Edgar Allan Poe "The Great Keinplatz Experiment" - Arthur Conan Doyle "The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes" - H. G. Wells "The Tissue-Culture King" - Julian Huxley "The Ultimate Catalyst" - John Taine "The Terrible Sense" - Calvin Peregoy (pseud. of Thomas McClary) "A Scientist Divides" - Donald Wandrei Part Four: Dangerous Inventions "Tricky Tonnage" - Malcolm Jameson "The Lanson Screen" - Arthur Leo Zagat "The Ultimate Metal" - Nat Schachner "The Machine" - Don A. Stuart Part Five: Adventures in Dimension "Short-Circuited Probability" - Norman L. Knight "The Search" - A. E. van Vogt "The Upper Level Road" - Warner van Lorne (pseud. of F. Orlin and Nelson Tremaine) "The 32nd of May" - Paul Ernst "The Monster from Nowhere" - Nelson Bond Part Six: From Outer Space "First Contact" - Murray Leinster "Universe" - Robert Heinlein "Blind Alley" - Isaac Asimov "En Route to Pluto" - Wallace West "The Retreat to Mars" - Cecil B. White (pseud. of William H. Christie) "The Man Who Saved the Earth" - Austin Hall "Spawn of the Stars" - Charles W. Diffin "The Flame Midget" - Frank Belknap Long, Jr. "Expedition" - Anthony Boucher "The Conquest of Gola" - Leslie F. Stone "Jackdaw" - Ross Rocklynne. Note that the book is divided into themes. Conklin pioneered the theme anthology at least eighteen of his 41 anthologies were themed , and in fact called one of his early anthologies Science Fiction Adventures in Dimension after that section of this book. This book has a few anomalies that should be mentioned. First, due to a mix-up, the Nelson Bond story was credited to Donald Wandrei in the first printing; this was because Wandrei had written a story with the same title. The Stockton title, as Conklin explains in his introduction, was edited because, in Conklin's words, "In order to bring this short novel it ran to over 125 pages in the original down to manageable size for an anthology of short stories, I have excised endless descriptions of Stockton's other weapons, and much of the details of Britain's bumbling defense against them." Works for me. Again, though, look at the titles and authors on that list: "Universe," "Killdozer," "Blowups Happen," "First Contact," Heinlein (four times!), Van Vogt, Boucher, Bond, Padgett. Conklin may not have had first pick, but he did better than just all right. And continued to do so, I might add. When The Best of Science Fiction was reprinted as a trade paperback in 1963 by Bonanza, he cut 18 stories from the original, indicating that in the intervening 17 years both the readers and writers of science fiction had become sophisticated enough that those dozen-and-a-half simply were no longer representative of "the best." Whether, as some have argued, that this was an excuse for making the book smaller and thus cheaper to produce for a low-budget publisher is, I think, irrelevant; Conklin picked the right 18 stories to cut. Ah, but even comprehensive anthologies have to close at some point. The editorial process not only decides whose name goes on the contents page, but whose doesn't as well. Healy & McComas are unapologetic about it, saying, "Anthologists, like critics, in offering their choices and opinions must expect the coals of dissent and the bitter bile of contumely upon their heads. We, too, will be subjected to censure for the twin sins of omission and commission." For his part, Conklin doesn't disagree, saying, ". the nature of any fairly comprehensive branch of writing makes it a foregone conclusion that no one anthology can actually represent it, without taking on the dimensions of an unabridged dictionary." Indeed, the books are big enough as they are. Much bigger and you'd need a block and tackle just to haul them down off the shelf. And what names are conspicuous in their absence from the lists? Frederik Pohl, Ray Bradbury, Jack Williamson, Fritz Leiber, Wilson Tucker, and Hal Clement all published before 1945, among many others perhaps less deserving of preservation. Of the 75 stories contained in these two books, all but a bare handful have been anthologized and collected over and over, in a few cases more than a dozen times. I have to wonder which anthologies, if any, from the last quarter-century will be able to make that claim; only time will tell, but I suspect damned few. Over the years, I've been asked by non-readers of science fiction what books I would recommend as being good introductions to the literature many times, as I'm sure plenty of others have, too. I've never failed to name these two as the first of my top five choices for short-story anthologies. If I were asked to teach a class in the history of the field, these would be at the head of the required reading list. I don't think it's possible to over-estimate their value as single-volume repositories of the best and brightest of the first 20 years of science fiction; anyone who reads these two books and pays attention will have a good enough grasp of what makes science fiction what it is to be able to take off on their own and find further rewards in the field. They aren't hard to find. They've been reprinted over and over; the original printings are common enough on eBay and ABE Books, as well as in used-bookshops; the Conklin has been done as an "instant remainder" and available in chain bookstores for a number of years. So, track them down and buy them, if you don't already have them. Hold them in your hands and feel the heft of all those spaceships and robots and aliens and time machines. Feel the weight of not only the years past in which they originally appeared, but the decades and centuries into the future that they gleefully represent. Set them aside for your grandkids to marvel over; seal them away for a posterity yet to come if you like; put them both on a shelf by themselves and wait for them to breed, if you think they might. Or you could do what I plan to do right after I finish this article: run into the next room, grab one, and start reading it again . P. Schuyler Miller. Peter Schuyler Miller (February 21, 1912 – October 13, 1974) was an American science fiction writer and critic. Contents. Miller was raised in New York's Mohawk Valley, which led to a lifelong interest in the Iroquois Indians. He pursued this as an amateur archaeologist and a member of the New York State Archaeological Association. He received his M.S. in chemistry from Union College in Schenectady. He subsequently worked as a technical writer for General Electric in the 1940s, and for the Fisher Scientific Company in Pittsburgh from 1952 until his death. Miller died October 13, 1974 on Blennerhassett Island, West Virginia. He was on an archaeological tour to the "Fort Ancient culture" site west of Parkersburg at the time. Works. Miller wrote pulp science fiction beginning in the 1930s, and is considered one of the more popular authors of the period. His work appeared in such magazines as Amazing Stories , Astounding , Comet , The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , Marvel Tales , Science Fiction Digest , Super Science Stories , Unknown , Weird Tales , and Wonder Stories , among others. An active fan of others' work as well as an author, he is also known as an early bibliographer of Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories in the 1930s, together with his friend John D. Clark. Miller gradually shifted into book reviewing beginning in 1945, initially for Astounding Science Fiction and later for its successor, Analog . He began a regularly monthly review column in the former in October, 1951. As a critic he was notable for his enthusiasm for a wide coverage of the science fiction field. He was awarded a special Hugo Award for book reviews in 1963. His extensive collection of papers, maps, books and periodicals, accumulated largely as a result of his review work, was donated to the Carnegie Museum after his death by his sister Mary E. Drake. They now form the basis of the P. Schuyler Miller Memorial Library at the Edward O'Neill Research Center in Pittsburgh. Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Books. See how BookTrackr lets you customize WWEnd to reflect YOUR reading history. BookTrackr highlights the books you've read, your favorites, what you're reading now and what you want to read next. Adventures in Time and Space. This book does not appear to be part of a series. If this is incorrect, and you know the name of the series to which it belongs, please let us know. Synopsis. Within the pages of Adventures in Time and Space , you'll discover landmark works ranging from the fantastic to the prophetic to the frivolous. Here are the voyages of discovery, and inquiry, from the imaginations of such gifted writers as Lester Del Rey, Robert A Heinlein, A.E. Van Vogt, Anthony Boucher, L Sprague de Camp, Isaac Asimov and Fredric Brown, to name a few. Table of Contents: Robert A. Heinlein, "Requiem" (1940) John W. Campbell, Jr., "Forgetfulness" (1937) Lester del Rey, "Nerves" (1942) P. Schuyler Miller, "The Sands of Time" (1937) Lewis Padgett, "The Proud Robot" (1943) A. E. van Vogt, "Black Destroyer" (1939) Eric Frank Russell, "Symbiotica" (1943) Raymond Z. Gallun, "Seeds of the Dusk" (1938) Milton A. Rothman, "Heavy Planet" (1939) Lewis Padgett, "Time Locker" (1943) Cleve Cartmill, "The Link" (1942) Maurice G. Hugi, "Mechanical Mice" (1941) Willy Ley, "V-2: Rocket Cargo Ship" (essay) (1945) Alfred Bester, "Adam and No Eve" (1941) Isaac Asimov, "Nightfall" (1941) Harry Bates, "A Matter of Size" (1934) P. Schuyler Miller, "As Never Was" (1944) Anthony Boucher, "Q. U. R." (1943) John W. Campbell, Jr., "Who Goes There?" (1938) Robert A. Heinlein, "The Roads Must Roll" (1940) A. E. van Vogt, "Asylum" (1942) Ross Rocklynne, "Quietus" (1940) Lewis Padgett, "The Twonky" (1942) A. M. Phillips, "Time-Travel Happens!" (essay about the Moberly-Jourdain incident) (1939) Robert Moore Williams, "Robot's Return" (1938) L. Sprague de Camp, "The Blue Giraffe" (1939) J. Francis McComas, "Flight Into Darkness" (1943) A. E. van Vogt, "The Weapon Shop" (1942) Harry Bates, "Farewell to the Master" (1940) R. DeWitt Miller, "Within the Pyramid" (1937) Henry Hasse, "He Who Shrank" (1936) Robert A. Heinlein, "By His Bootstraps" (1941) Fredric Brown, "The Star Mouse" (1942) Raymond F. Jones, "Correspondence Course" (1945) S. Fowler Wright, "Brain" (1932) Excerpt. No excerpt currently exists for this novel. Be the first to submit one! Reviews. There are currently no reviews for this novel. Be the first to submit one! You must be logged in to submit a review in the BookTrackr section above. Images. No alternate cover images currently exist for this novel. Be the first to submit one! The Sands of Time by P. Schuyler Miller. "As Never Was" © Astounding, Jan 1944 The Titan, 1952 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award "The Cave" © Astounding Stories, Jan 1943 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ rare find "Dust Of Destruction" © Wonder Stories, Feb 1931 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ rare find ------"The Fate of the Neptunians" (Cosmos Series) © Science Fiction Digest, Jul 1932 Fantasy Magazine, Dec 1934 Perry Rhodan, Ace Books --/ fourth place space sf series --/ wonder award --/ awesome scale --/ rare find. Unreal. This is simply the most unique event in history of science fiction, the collaboration between the brightest stars in the field, some at the beginning of their career, some at the peak of their powers. The list of writers is a shining "all-star" galaxy in itself. The fiction is. well, it's certainly big-scale, brimming with grand conflict, ridiculous science, unpronounceable names and places, and more BANG that you ever encountered between soft book covers - testing, in fact, the limits of reader's imagination and believability. Impossibly hard to find today, "Cosmos" spanned the issues of "Science Fiction Digest", and then "Fantasy Magazine" (the installments were not printed in the issues themselves but as a separately- bound supplements). Personally I liked the "Last Poet" part of the serial and the crazy, absolutely delirious space battle extravaganza contributed by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach. A multi-dimensional "Wrongness of Space" anomaly attacks our system; a bunch of alien menaces and mad scientists pop out of every wrinkle of time and space, flying around (some may say chaotically) and driving the serial to its bang-up finish - good old Edmond Hamilton destroying planets Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus with an atomic disintegrator ray in his "Armageddon in Space". In other words, "The Cosmos" series is well worth searching out, it's a monumental literary artifact from the "wonder pulps" era, quite enjoyable even to this day. "Forgotten" (also as "The Forgotten Man of Space") © Wonder Stories, Apr 1933 Startling Stories, Winter 1946 Strange Ports of Call, ed. by August Derleth, 1948 The Titan, 1952 --/ cool space sf story --/ wonder award --/ emotion award "Dances with Wolves" set on a desert planet, with intense Italian western overtones. Big-eyed aliens are cute, and humans are ridiculously callous and mean, but this is not the point (though at the time it must've been a novelty to depict aliens as good guys and men as baddies) - the true pleasure of the story is in its tough-as-nails description of a desperate journey across Martian desert, with quite beautiful, almost surreal, narrative style. Recommended, both as a western and as a moderately-exciting planetary yarn. "Living Isotopes" © Super Science Stories, Sep 1940 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award --/ rare find "Old Man Mulligan" © Astounding Stories, Dec 1940 The Titan, 1952 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award "The Sands of Time" © Astounding Stories, Apr 1937 --short fiction : 1971 Astounding/Analog All-Time Poll /10 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ rare find ------P. Schyler Miller "Spawn" © Weird Tales, Aug 1939 --/ second place apocalyptic sf novella --/ wonder award --/ idea award: Elemental Monsters --/ style award --/ awesome scale --/ emotion award --/ shock value --/ rare award. Some stories are docile and can be easily re-told by the campfire, or in a circle of friends; some stories are so ferocious and wild, that you can only shake your head, utter "what the heck was that ?" and forget trying to tell someone about the experience. How could anyone convey the steam- roller impact of crushing imagery and seriously twisted cataclysmic events, over-the-top emotional charge and enough horrific visuals to make any special effects producer sweat with professional envy? This is a shocking story, which inherits some fearsome atmosphere from H. P. Lovecraft, some from Clark Ashton Smith, some from Donald Wandrei. The mesmerizing, almost trance-like narrative, which only gets weirder with every page until it reached some feverish pitch that no writer or reader can sustain for long. You are almost exhausted by the time the story ends. It's enough to say that even seasoned dark fantasy writers of the period (Henry Kuttner, for example) were overwhelmed and deeply impacted by it. The Elemental Beings arise from sinister spores: the carnivorous ocean, the hungry gold-mountain, the undead prophet and his undead spawns - all wage battles against each other and against stunned mankind. All this looks and feels like Japanese disaster animation on drugs, 50 years ahead of its time. Add to it some kind of Russian revolution "red terror" mad marriage with Apocalypsis. I guarantee you, you will never forget the imagery in this warped tale, for better or for worse. review: 23-Jan-07 (read in 2007) "Status Quondam" © New Tales of Space and Time, 1951 --/ cool sf story --/ rare find "Tetrahedra of Space" © Wonder Stories, Nov 1931 Startling Stories, Sep 1948 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ awesome scale --/ idea award "The Thing on Outer Shoal" © Astounding Stories, Sep 1947 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ rare find.