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AN AFFAIR WITH GENIUS is a collection of Joseph L. Green's early work, and includes the stories:

Table of Contents:

• Jinn (1968)
• The Decision Makers (1965)
• Once Around Arcturus (1962)
• The Engineer (1962)
• Single Combat (1964)
• Life-Force (1962)
• An Affair with Genius (1969)
• Tunnel of Love (1965)
• Dance of the Cats (1965)

Mankind is threatened with extermination by a race of three hundred foot high aliens from another star system. Gold, a specially created superman, is called to Earth's moonbase to take on a desperate mission. He must take over a specially built control room inside a captured giant's brain and return him to the enemy planet.

The year is 2011. For the first time in recorded history an alien artifact has been sighted approaching Earth; if it can be captured, Man's oldest dream - contact with an alien species - will have been fulfilled. And his technology given a hundred year boost into the future.

But according to the radical activist organization, New Friends of the Earth (FOE), the technology we already have has led us to the edge of disaster: the answer is not more, but less technology. FOE is determined that no contact will be made with the star probe - and they are prepared to use violence to prevent it.

Only one man, space technology billionaire Harold "Jesus" Hentson has the nerve and the power to defy FOE - and even he will have to risk everything that gives his life meaning: his financial empire, the life of his son, and his father's hope of immortality. If he fails, the probe will return to the depths of interstellar space, leaving mankind alone again. This time perhaps forever.

Refuge. That was what the humans called this rich, attractive planet--a refuge from starving, over-populated Earth. And the Colonists could provide millions of tons of desperately needed produce for the hungry billions left on their home planet.

If only the native inhabitants of Refuge weren't so natural-born lazy: harmless, it's true, but actually nothing more than a bunch of loafers. If the loafers could be made to turn to, Refuge could really be the Earth's breadbasket.

But the Loafers steadily refused to 'turn to'--there was nothing the humans could do about it. And the years went by. And everyone remained friendly and quiet. Until one day, a young human, born and raised on Refuge, decided he'd rather join the Loafers!

Marooned on a strange world, forcibly separated from the woman he loves, and attacked by hostile aliens, Leo's plight seems hopeless. But desperate situations call for desperate measures. When Leo befriends one of his alien pursuers an unlikely alliance grows between the tough passionate Earthman and the coldly logical, sexless Shemsi.

Only with this alien's assistance, Leo realises, can he be reunited with Misty and discover the strange secrets of Birth Mountain and of the powerful queens who rule there.

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, April 1965. The story can also be found in World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr. It is included in the colection An Affair with Genius (1969) and Conscience Interplanetary (1975).