This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains fifty science fiction short stories and novellas by more than forty different authors. Most of the stories in this collection were published during the heyday of popular science fiction magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s.Included within this work are stories by H. Beam Piper, Murray Leinster, Poul Anderson, Mack Reynolds, Randall Garrett, Robert Sheckley, Stanley Weinbaum, Alan Nourse, Harl Vincent, and many others.This collection is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.

With this story, I’ve enter a future in which mankind has spread itself far out into the galaxy of which Earth’s sun — and Earth itself, of course — are such microscopically small bits of dust. In Anderson’s concept, most life forms encountered seem to be essentially humanoid. In this story, indeed, they are not only humanoid, but measurably “human” in their psychological reactions. If one wanted to draw some comparisons, one could, I suppose, compare Cundaloa in this tale with the islands of the Pacific, and Skontar with the Scandinavian countries. Sweden, for example, is Swedish through and through. Hawaii? Whatever Hawaii is, and it sounds wonderful for a vacation, it surely no longer belongs to the original Hawaiians… You will get the point of this analogy as you read on, of course.Poul Anderson

In the year of grace 1345, as Sir Roger Baron de Tourneville is gathering an army to join King Edward III in the war against France, a most astonishing event occurs: a huge silver ship descends through the sky and lands in a pasture beside the little village of Ansby in northeastern Lincolnshire. The Wersgorix, whose scouting ship it is, are quite expert at taking over planets, and having determined from orbit that this one was suitable, they initiate standard world-conquering procedure. Ah, but this time it’s no mere primitives the Wersgorix seek to enslave — they’ve launched their invasion against Englishmen! In the end, only one alien is left alive — and Sir Roger’s grand vision is born. He intends for the creature to fly the ship first to France to aid his King, then on to the Holy Land to vanquish the infidel!Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1961.

Everything that lives contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It was the fate of the Assyrians and the Hittites, the Greeks and the Romans, the British and the Americans. And so it was for the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire. Conception, birth, growth, aging, death: This is the law of life, true for nations, worlds and stellar empires no less than for organisms.For the greatest and the smallest it is the same, differing on it in this: the greater the heights conquered, the greater the fall, the longer and darker the night that follows…The stories contained herein were first published as follows:“The Star Plunderer,” Planet Stories, 1952.“Outpost of Empire,” Galaxy, 1967.“A Tragedy of Errors” Galaxy, 1967.“The Sharing of Flesh,” Galaxy, 1968. Won Hugo and nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1969.“Starfog,” Analog, 1967.

When three Terrans — a space pilot, a planetary queen and an obese tycoon — crash-landed on Diomedes, they realized that the chances for survival were quite slim. The native food was totally poisonous to humans, and the survivors had only six weeks’ worth of supplies to get them across thousands of miles of unmapped territory to the one Terran outpost. Their only hope was to enlist the aid of the winged inhabitants of Diomedes, and these barbarian tribes cared only for battle and glory. There was little that could induce them to worry about the lives of three humans.

LARRY NIVEN'S KNOWN SPACE IS AFLAME WITH WAR!Once upon a time, in the very earliest days of interplanetary exploration, an unarmed human vessel was set upon by a warship from the planet Kzin -- home of the fiercest warriors in Known Space. This was a fatal mistake for the Kzinti, of course; they learned the hard way that the reason humanity had decided to study war no more was that humans were so very, very good at it.And thus began THE MAN-KZIN WARS. Now, several centuries later, the Kzinti are about to get yet another lesson in why it pays to be polite to those hairless monkeys from planet Earth.

The Mind Slavers are back--and only the cat-like Kzinti can save mankind now. This volume includes all-new tales of Larry Niven's Known Space--including one by Niven himself. Another blockbuster in the ongoing chronicle of humanity's greatest war.

The ninth shared-world anthology laid in Niven's Known Space universe during the wars against those fighting felinoids, the alien Kzin, offers four notably readable long stories. In the late Poul Anderson's "Pele," a human couple on a research expedition rescue a Kzin with more courage than sense. Hal Colebatch's "His Sergeant's Honor," probably the book's strongest entry, features a Kzin who backs up his race's fanatical concept of honor with keen tactical sense. In Paul Chafe's "Windows of the World," a member of the UN police, ARM captain Joel K. Allson, and Allson's Kzin partner confront a mysterious murder aboard an orbital habitat, along with several conspiracies and a beautiful suspect. Niven's own "Fly-By-Night" features Beowulf Shaeffer rescuing the title character from another Kzin with vaulting ambitions and a keen eye for legal loopholes. For action and military SF fans, these four tales intelligently develop the Kzin, who still have all the ferocity of their carnivorous, predatory ancestors but have assumed more complexity as they carry their civilization into space. At a time when mindless brutality may strike a somewhat negative note with many readers, more sophisticated Kzin will add to the audience for these well-wrought aliens and their human friends and foes. Stephen Hickman's menacing, prosthetically enhanced catlike hero from "His Sergeant's Honor" almost jumps off the jacket.

Like two giants the old enemies faced each other across the reaches of the galaxy — the Terran Empire and the Ythrian Domain. Terra was a Leviathan, encroaching ever further among the stars, promising peace and prosperity — but at the price of freedom. Ythri was smaller, but an empire in its own right, peopled by birdlike beings with a civilization and intellect that easily matched Terra’s own.Nominated for Nebula Award in 1973, Hugo and Locus awards in 1974.

Dominic Flandry gets sent to put down a rebellion against the Terran Empire. His investigation reveals that the rebellion is morally justified: an evil governor had engaged in mass murder against innocents. However, Dominic Flandry cannot stand by while the good-intentioned rebels throw the empire into chaos; neither can he allow the governor to bring his vile plans to fruition. To complicate things, Flandry falls in love with the rebel leader’s wife.

Won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 1969.Nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1969.

Manse Everard is a man with a mission. As an Unattached Agent of the Time Patrol, he's to go anyplace—and anytime!—where humanity's transcendent future is threatened by the alteration of the past. This is Manse's profession, and his burden: for how much suffering, throughout human history, can he bear to preserve?