Psichopath

Today Project Gutenberg adds a story by Randall Garrett, perhaps best remembered for his Lord Darcy series, and the next-to-last Hawk Carse yarn.

Illustrated by van Dongen

"Psichopath" by Randall Garrett (Analog Science Fact & Fiction, October 1960)

"Given psi powers like clairvoyance and telepathy, solving problems of sabotage would be easy, of course. That is, it seems that way at first thought!"

(Astounding Stories, November 1932)

The Passing of Ku Sui (A Complete Novelette) by Anthony Gilmore

"A screaming streak in the night—a cloud of billowing steam—and the climax of Hawk Carse's spectacular "Affair of the Brains" is over."

Illustrated by Paul Orban

"DP" by Arthur Dekker Savage (If Worlds of Science Fiction, September 1954)

"Once upon a time life was perfection. Government made sure its citizens were supplied with every comfort and pleasure. But sometimes perfection breeds boredom and ..."

The Sound of Silence

Analog Science Fact & Fiction June, 1962

"The Sound of Silence" by Barbara Constant

"Most people, when asked to define the ultimate in loneliness, say it's being alone in a crowd. And it takes only one slight difference to make one forever alone in the crowd...."

Analog Science Fact & Fiction May, 1962

"Sight Gag" by Laurence M. Janifer

"Intelligence is a great help in the evolution-by-survival—but intelligence without muscle is even less useful than muscle without brains. But it's so easy to forget that muscle—plain physical force—is important, too!"

Servotron

"Join Us or Die!"

Remember the Alamo!

Editor John W. Campbell, Jr. does his thing...

Analog Science Fact & Fiction, December 1961

"Remember the Alamo!" by T. R. Fehrenbach

"This is, I think, one of the most powerful comments on the modern social philosophy I have seen —- a really blood-chilling little tale...."

The Man Who Played to Lose

(Analog Science Fact & Fiction, October 1961)

"The Man Who Played to Lose" by Laurence M. Janifer

"Sometimes the very best thing you can do is to lose. The cholera germ, for instance, asks nothing better than that it be swallowed alive...."

The Skull

Today an early story by the legendary PKD and some pseudo-science courtesy of editor John W. Campbell, Jr. which anticipates the later work of Fortean author W. Raymond Drake.

(If Worlds of Science Fiction, September 1952)

"The Skull" by Philip K. Dick

"Conger agreed to kill a stranger he had never seen. But he would make no mistakes because he had the stranger's skull under his arm."

(Analog Science Fact & Fiction, March 1961)

"The Four-Faced Visitors of Ezekiel" by Arthur W. Orton

'Ezekiel, they say, "saw de wheel"—but he saw somewhat more than that. And Orton suggests that what he saw made perfectly good sense ... to the understanding!'

EDIT: I made Orton sound too original; his article just revisits ideas already popularized in Morris K. Jessup's book UFOs and the Bible (1956).

Disqualified

The first stories of two authors today. Charles L. Fontenay was a Tennessee newspaperman who wrote for If before quitting the genre in the early 1960's, only to attempt a return in the 1990's. Leigh Richmond wrote in collaboration with her husband Walt. According to John Clute, writing in the Encyclopedia of SF, they used their stories to express opposition to "orthodox scientific thinking" and founded something called the Centric Foundation to advance this opinion.

(Cover by Max Reach)

"Disqualified" by Charles L. Fontenay (If Worlds of Science Fiction, September 1954)

"If Saranta wished to qualify as one who loved his fellow man, he should have known that often the most secretive things are the most obvious."

(Cover by Schoenherr)

"Prologue to an Analogue" by Leigh Richmond (Analog Science Fact & Fiction, June 1961)

"Finnagle's Law shows that many times we don't get the effect we planned on. But ... there's an inverse to that famous law, too...."