Search Worlds Without End

Moonbase One is in trouble. The first colony on the moon has only a thirty-day emergency food supply now that their hydroponic farm and its valuable store of water has been destroyed. Unless something can be done quickly, the moonbase will fail and the space settlers will have to be returned to Earth.

Like all pioneering colonies, Moonbase One includes families with children. Three space-age teenagers -- Tom Wood, Benny Howard and Dave Mason -- participate as much in the daily routine of the colony as their parents do.

In the struggle to save the moon colony and find ways of replacing the water supply, the three boys and their misfit companion, George Garrison, learn what kind of courage and skill it takes to colonize a new world. They learn how meaningless the technical skills of scientists are if the necessary human qualities are not also present. When the success of the moon colony is finally assured, the teenagers set their eyes on the distant goal of Mars.

Hugo Award nominated short story. It orginally appeaered in Analog Science Fiction -> Science Fact, April 1966. The story can also be found in Above the Human Landscape: A Social Science Fiction Anthology (1972) edited by Willis E. McNelly and Leon E. Stover, and You and Science Fiction (1976), edited by Bernard C. Hollister.

It was coming. A wave of deep, blasting heat swept through him. Then it was gone. He was running down a long corridor of twisting, writhing flames that flung his body about and tore at him with tangible fingers.

He was glowing, burning, every fiber of him, with an incandescent blaze that would have blinded ordinary eyes.

But he was not ordinary. He was a god in an inferno of light, a great bubble of it that swept him on and on through the reaches of space and eternity, aeons beyond Kronweld. Waves flung him from one end of the universe to the other... ripping him apart, creating him...

He was alone in infinity, alone in the seething center of the act of birth!

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One was discovered by accident. A man in a mental hospital said he wasn't real. He wasn't.

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There were more. Scientists feared that half the population of Earth might be Syns.

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Methodically, the Syns were being rooted out and destroyed. In turn, they were carrying on their own fearful destruction of human life and works.

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Everyone's humanity had been challenged. Every man was aligned against each other...

...because no one knew what a Syn was.

It was supercivilization, a Utopia. At its core were the Cybernetic Brains, brains taken from geniuses who were promised they would live forever.

Then engineer Al Demming discovers the truth accidentally, the terrible truth transmitted to him by one of the brains. The brains are in reality slaves and in terrible torment. It was now up to Demming to stop the inhuman practice.

Just when he planned to make the announcement to the Governing Board, Demming learned that the Board knew about the hideous living death. What was the real reason behind the facade? How could he convince the Board to suspend the system before the Brains revolted and destroyed the world?

Table of Contents:

• 7 - The Non-Statistical Man - (1956) - novella
• 87 - The Moon Is Death - (1953) - short story
• 101 - The Gardener - (1957) - short story
• 119 - Intermission Time - (1953) - novelette

Table of Contents:

• 9 - The Toymaker - (1946) - novelette
• 67 - The Model Shop - (1947) - novelette
• 103 - The Deadly Host - short story (variant of Deadly Host 1945)
• 137 - Utility - (1944) - short story
• 173 - Forecast - (1946) - novelette
• 239 - The Children's Room - (1947) - novelette

This Island Earth's thrills and romance begin when engineer Cal Meacham places a routine order for parts; he never dreams he is making himself a pawn in a struggle for galactic supremacy.

A fixup novel derived from three stories appearing in Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1949 and 1950.

The 1955 film version, directed by Joseph Newman, is one of the best-known science fiction films of the 1950s.

Included in this volume are two short novels by Raymond F. Jones: "The Memory of Mars" originally appeared in the December, 1961 issue of Amazing Stories. "Cubs of the Wolf" originally appeared in the November, 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

The landing was unlike any they had ever made. But then they had never before seen a planet so strange as this one - with its wild seas, scarred plains, and rubbled cities. It looked as if it had been totally devastated by some type of nuclear destruction. And they were most curious - these aliens with their green-scaled faces and stubby tails - to explore this peculiar place where man had once existed - until their ship exploded and they were stranded with no means of survival and no hope of rescue. Unless their high priest - Ama of the Keelong - prayed to the higher power they had rebelled against. For this was a spiritual mission - and the Alcoran had lost their way.

Ron Barron never expectied to see Clonar again. Clonar, the boy who alone had survived the crash of an interstllar saucer-ship near Ron's home, had been rescued by his people and returned to Rorla, a planet in the Great Galaxy of Andromeda, almost a million light-years from Earth. When he left, he assured Ron that communication between Rorla and Earth would be impossible. Yet only a year later, Ron listened with growing excitement to Clonar's voice coming over the interstellar communication system, inviting Ron and his family to journey to Rorla to attend a conference of the Galactic Federation.

None of the Barrons could have known that Clonar's invitation was violently opposed by the Rorlans, nor that on Rorla was an unknown enemy who resented their coming - a man who saw Earth's destruction as a necessity. And it was a bitter coincidence that that man should be in charge of the colony of delegates. As representatives of a planet whose civilization was considered dangerous and too inferior for membership in the Federation, the Barrons found themselves at the mercy of suspicious and hostile strangers bent on proving Earth's civilization unsalvageable. Not until Ron's father becomes an innocent party to an assassination plot, do they fully realize to what extent the Rorlans will carry their deception.

Climaxed by a shocking courtroom scene in which Ron stands trial for Earth, this sequel to Raymond Jones's Son of the Stars is an intricately plotted tale of what could happen if earth were to come face to face with long-established civilizations of Outer Space.

The Algorans. masters of time travel, had lost control of the time channels. In despair, they stood helplessly by as the barbarian hordes of the devastating Bakori were unleashed on the universe. In the little town of Midland, U.S.A., Joe Simmons worked feverishly to assemble the only device that had a chance to stop them. He knew that success depended on a beautiful Algoran woman, Tamarina, yet he didn't even know if she would re-appear! This whole disaster was his fault.

"This person is not even human. It's impossible for me to diagnose the injury or illness of such a structure as his!" With these words and a worried frown, Doc Smithers sums up the case of the strange creature that lay on Ron Barron's bed. For the boy, Clonar, is like nothing earth's medical books have ever cataloged. And the day Ron Barron found him, staggering away from the wrecked metal disk that lay hidden near Longview, is one that put earth's existence in jeopardy!

In Son of the Stars, Raymond Jones has written of a forthright friendship between a young castaway from space and his earthly counterpart. How a cold and suspicious military, recognizing Clonar only as an alien from an astonishingly advanced civilization, turns friendship into treachery that threatens earth's existence, makes this an electrifying story with a thought-provoking theme. In scenes uncomfortably vivid, you'll meet soldiers and citizens of a typical American city; people like calculating General Gillispie and frightened Mrs. Barron, whose reactions to an "interplanetary" situation bring the world to the brink of destruction.

Clonar's words, "They're coming to destroy your world!" refer to a planet whose wars and strife might shortly spread to other worlds. Climaxed with a scene of power and drama unmatched in science fiction, Son of the Stars is a breath-taking book you won't put down until the very last page - and won't be able to forget until men reach the stars and learn for themselves!

Adventure stories don't normally make a point as well, but Raymond F. Jones is no ordinary adventure story writer. In this touching and beautiful tale, Morten Bradwell shares his son's adventures and learns a lesson he will never forget. Neither will you. For Morten Bradwell is one of the elite in a time and society where stupidity and ignorance have been conquered by genetic engineering. But his son Freeman is a Retard. The King of Eolim is the story of the Bradwell's search for a home that will truly be "home" for Free.

All his life Manvar has had a dream. One day, he will escape the harshly primitive, blizzard-torn lands of the north. He will follow the paths of the Ancients and see for himself the fabled lands of the south: lands without ice and snow and perpetual night; lands of warmth and light, where life is easy and comfortable within walled cities of incredible beauty. Manvar follows his dream, but finds it hollow. Life in the wondrous city of Delphos is not the paradise it seemed.

Mayfield was the typical college town. Nothing too unusual ever happened there until a mysterious comet was suddenly observed by the scientists on College Hill.

And then one day the modified engine on Ken Maddox's car began overheating mysteriously. By morning it didn't run at all.

Art's Garage, local headquarters for hot-rodders, was soon so full of cars that wouldn't run, that Ken's science club began working in the garage after school. It didn't take long for the club to discover that all the moving parts on these stalled cars had fused together. Soon all machinery had stopped in Mayfield. There was no longer any light or power anywhere. This mysterious creeping paralysis was spreading.

The copper-yellow glow of the comet seemed to have brought the whole world to a grinding halt. Airplanes, trains, generators and heavy machinery were immobilized. Finally man was left with only a few primitive tools and communication became possible only by means of amateur radio. In the resulting chaos parts of Mayfield were burned and looted by hunger-crazed mobs that stole and killed as they advanced.

Here is science fiction at its thrilling best. A startling and thought-provoking book that shows how human nature might react to catastrophe.

Speculate for a moment on the enormous challenge to archaeology when interplanetary travel is possible... and relics are found of a race extinct for half a million years! A race that was so far in advance of ours that they held the secret of life restoration! What happens when a member of that race is brought back after 500,000 years of death...

Also published as The Deviates.

In a world where but one man in a hundred, and eight women in a hundred, could produce children, only one science counted: Genetics. And the most respected, feared, and hated man in the world was the Chief of the Genetics Bureau, Robert Wellton. It was under his direction that gene charts were made of every citizen, and where those who dared to take the test discovered their fate. A few were Normals, who could be parents; the majority were Deviate-carriers, whose progeny would be monsters -- Uglies, as the Deviates were called.

Wellton alone knew the truth. The Genetics Program was failing, for fewer Normals were discovered every year. More and more citizens were falling back on their legal right not to be tested, not daring to learn that they might be Deviate-carriers. The whole world hungered for children, but each man and woman wanted to be the parents of the children they reared; and the fortunate few were hated by the vast majority.

But Wellton's father, who had been Genetics Chief before him, had discovered that not all Deviates were Uglies -- Nature's failures. Some were successes, improved human beings. These were telepathic and long-lived; their average intelligence level was that of the most intelligent Normals. They were what humanity needed.

Humanity could not accept them. Bitter and hate-filled, they would not believe that a Deviate could be anything but a monster; and the legal forces of the entire world were committed to the extermination of all Uglier on sight. Thus, Adam Wellton's giant plan was devised. And when he was assassinated, Robert Wellton carried it on. The plan called for the creation of a secret people -- the Children.

Born of Normal mothers, they were all Wellton's sons and daughters, bearing his improved genes. Telepathic as he was, Wellton was in mental contact with the Children from the moment of their birth, comforting and guiding them, sending them away from civilization to a hidden colony in the Canadian wilds. Here, under the direction of Wellton's first son, Barron, they built their own world. Here they waited for the mysterious being they knew only as the Father, who had promised to come to them some day and lead them to their destiny. For Wellton had never seen any of the Children -- nor had any of them seen him.

Then disaster struck, while the second generation of Children was growing up. A powerful committee, headed by a bitter man who suspected the existence of concealed Deviates, started an investigation. Wellton knew that Rossi and his associates would discover the secret, sooner or later. And there would be only one result: the Children would be hunted down and wiped out.

Thus starts a moving novel of fear and hope in a world where the only hope for humanity lay in that which all men feared.