Books published by publisher Amazing Sci-Fi Classics

By the time I got myself all the way awake I thought I was alone. I was lying on a leather couch in a bare white room with huge windows, alternate glass-brick and clear glass. Beyond the clear windows was a view of snow-peaked mountains which turned to pale shadows in the glass-brick. Habit and memory fitted names to all these; the bare office, the orange flare of the great sun, the names of the dimming mountains. But beyond a polished glass desk, a man sat watching me. And I had never seen the man before. He was chubby, and not young, and had ginger-colored eyebrows and a fringe of ginger-colored hair around the edges of a forehead which was otherwise quite pink and bald. He was wearing a white uniform coat, and the intertwined caduceus on the pocket and on the sleeve proclaimed him a member of the Medical Service attached to the Civilian HQ of the Terran Trade City. I didn't stop to make all these evaluations consciously, of course. They were just part of my world when I woke up and found it taking shape around me. The familiar mountains, the familiar sun, the strange man. But he spoke to me in a friendly way, as if it were an ordinary thing to find a perfect stranger sprawled out taking a siesta in here. "Could I trouble you to tell me your name?"

Conn Maxwell told them: "There are incredible things still undiscovered; most of the important installations were built in duplicate as a precaution against space attack. I know where all of them are. “But I could find nothing, not one single word, about any giant strategic planning computer called Merlin!" Nevertheless the leading men of the planet didn't believe him. They couldn't, for the search for Merlin had become their abiding obsession. Merlin meant everything to them: power, pleasures, and profits unlimited. Conn had known they'd never believe him, and so he had a trick or two up his space-trained sleeve that might outwit even their fabled Cosmic Computer ... if they dared accept his challenge.

There was no life on the asteroid, but the miles of rock-hewn corridors through which the earth party wandered left no doubt about the purpose of the asteroid. It was a mighty fortress, stocked with weapons of destruction beyond man's power to understand. And yet there was no life here, nor had there been for untold centuries. What race had built this stronghold? What unimaginable power were they defending against? Why was it abandoned? There was no answer, all was dead. But—not quite all. For in a room above the tomb-like fortress a powerful transmitter beamed its birdlike, fluting sounds toward earth. Near it, on a huge star-map of the universe, with light-years measured by inches, ten tiny red sparks were moving, crawling inexorably toward the center. Moving, at many times the speed of light, with the acquired mass of suns ... moving, on a course that would pass through the solar system. The unknown aliens would not even see our sun explode from the force of their passing, would not even notice the tiny speck called Earth as it died....

As he heard that dread yet telltale spang against the hull of their spaceboat, young Jon Carver dropped his reelbook and sprang to his feet. His eyes looked swiftly to help his ears trace the sudden hiss he knew was their precious air escaping. In the back of his mind he heard the sudden grunt his father made, the sound of a falling body, his mother's frightened scream, and his brother's "What's wrong?" But he did not stop his own lanky, gangling body in its leap toward the outer bulkhead. And as he jumped, he pulled his handkerchief from his hip pocket. "Leaping tuna! If that isn't fixed quick, we'll lose our air," was his near-panicked thought. "We won't be able to get where we're going. Be lucky if we come out of it alive!" So, guided by the whistling, escaping air, Jon found the hole, nearly half an inch in diameter. Into it he wadded the corner of the cloth as best he could. The outward loss of their precious air slackened, although there was still some leakage he could not stop this way. He jumped to the nearest of the many emergency repair kits scattered about the ship. From it he grabbed a metal patch and an electric torch.Swiftly he plugged the latter into a wall socket. With it he quickly welded the patch into place, after pulling—with considerable difficulty—his handkerchief from the hole. "It'll do for now," he decided, after carefully examining his work and listening closely to make sure there was no more whistling-out of air. "But we'll have to go outside and really fill in and weld-plug that hole in the hull, but quick."He re-stowed the torch, then opened a flagon of emergency oxygen-helium mixture in front of the electric blowers that kept their air circulating—to replenish what had been lost. Only then—although it had been less than two minutes, really—did he turn back to the rest of the family. He had been somewhat surprised that his father had not come to help him; he had not been at all surprised that his brother had not. Jak was a grand guy—Jon thought the world of him—but he just wasn't worth a dead salmon in an emergency like this; he did not have a mechanical type of mind.Now, as he turned, Jon saw his mother and brother kneeling beside the prone body of his father, and noted with astonishment that she was crying. There was something stiff and unnatural about the man's body, too, lying there on the deck beside his recline seat.A sudden fear sent the boy leaping across the room. "What ... what happened? Pop isn't dead, is he?""No. Something made him fall, and he hit his head on the deck and knocked himself out," Jak said without looking up. "His foot caught in the footrest, and as he fell over the seat arm his leg broke."Jon dropped to his knees beside his weeping mother and threw an arm about her. His eyes were wide and damp with swift tears, for, in spite of the rapid growth his body had undergone in the past few years, he was still only sixteen—and he loved this splendid father of his with genuine devotion.It just couldn't be that Pop wouldn't live, he thought in panic. He couldn't make himself believe that he might no longer have the wonderful companionship and guidance and counsel of this grand man who had been his world.His mother, seeming to realize what the boy was undergoing, forced back her own grief to turn and gather this younger son into her arms, comforting him as only mothers can...

Through all the long cold hours of the Norland night the Martian had not moved nor spoken. At dusk of the day before Eric John Stark had brought him into the ruined tower and laid him down, wrapped in blankets, on the snow. He had built a fire of dead brush, and since then the two men had waited, alone in the vast wasteland that girdles the polar cap of Mars.

Dave stared around the office. He went to the window and stared upwards at the crazy patchwork of the sky. For all he knew, in such a sky there might be cracks. In fact, as he looked, he could make out a rift, and beyond that a ... hole ... a small patch where there was no color, and yet the sky there was not black. There were no stars there, though points of light were clustered around the edges, apparently retreating.

Mr. Pratt is well known for his "Reign of the Ray," and "The War of the Giants" where in both stories he showed his excellent knowledge of warfare, and what a future war might be like. We know that many scientists believe that life may originally have come to earth in the form of spores, from other solar systems and other universes. We therefore might really have had our home dim ages ago, on worlds distantly removed from our earth. The ability to travel the interstellar spaces, however, might also be possessed by other creatures—creatures driven by fear, necessity and by the will to conquer. And if they come, in mighty waves, with scientific powers far beyond us, to dominate the earth, a terrible time will face the puny human race. And in this story they do come, and provoke some of the strangest and most exciting adventures that have yet been recorded.

I've always wanted to write. But not until I discovered the old pulp science-fantasy magazines, at the age of sixteen, did this general desire become a specific urge to write science-fantasy adventures.I took a lot of detours on the way. I discovered s-f in its golden age: the age of Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, Ed Hamilton and Jack Vance. But while I was still collecting rejection slips for my early efforts, the fashion changed. Adventures on faraway worlds and strange dimensions went out of fashion, and the new look in science-fiction—emphasis on the science—came in.So my first stories were straight science-fiction, and I'm not trying to put down that kind of story. It has its place. By and large, the kind of science-fiction which makes tomorrow's headlines as near as this morning's coffee, has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations of young people feel at ease with a rapidly changing world.But fashions change, old loves return, and now that Sputniks clutter up the sky with new and unfamiliar moons, the readers of science-fiction are willing to wait for tomorrow to read tomorrow's headlines. Once again, I think, there is a place, a wish, a need and hunger for the wonder and color of the world way out. The world beyond the stars. The world we won't live to see. That is why I wrote THE DOOR THROUGH SPACE.—Marion Zimmer Bradley

They started giving me the business as soon as I came through the door into the Secretary's outer office.There was Ethel K'wang-Li, the Secretary's receptionist, at her desk. There was Courtlant Staynes, the assistant secretary to the Undersecretary for Economic Penetration, and Norman Gazarin, from Protocol, and Toby Lawder, from Humanoid Peoples' Affairs, and Raoul Chavier, and Hans Mannteufel, and Olga Reznik.It was a wonder there weren't more of them watching the condemned man's march to the gibbet: the word that the Secretary had called me in must have gotten all over the Department since the offices had opened."Ah, Mr. Machiavelli, I presume," Ethel kicked off."Machiavelli, Junior." Olga picked up the ball. "At least, that's the way he signs it.""God's gift to the Consular Service, and the Consular Service's gift to Policy Planning," Gazarin added."Take it easy, folks. These Hooligan Diplomats would as soon shoot you as look at you," Mannteufel warned."Be sure and tell the Secretary that your friends all want important posts in the Galactic Empire." Olga again."Well, I'm glad some of you could read it," I fired back. "Maybe even a few of you understood what it was all about.""Don't worry, Silk," Gazarin told me. "Secretary Ghopal understands what it was all about. All too well, you'll find."A buzzer sounded gently on Ethel K'wang-Li's desk. She snatched up the handphone and whispered into it. A deathly silence filled the room while she listened, whispered some more, then hung it up.They were all staring at me."Secretary Ghopal is ready to see Mr. Stephen Silk," she said. "This way, please."As I started across the room, Staynes began drumming on the top of the desk with his fingers, the slow reiterated rhythm to which a man marches to a military execution."A cigarette?" Lawder inquired tonelessly. "A glass of rum?"