In a blasted America where the cities are dangerous, improvised, and half-dead, Sam Dunlap arrives in New York with Arthur, a suitcase-sized brain kept alive in a tank and fitted with typewriter keys for a voice. To protect Arthur and his mysterious cargo, Sam bribes his way into a hotel, then heads into a fortified, lawless former Macy's to buy an electric typewriter, a wheelbarrow, a rifle, and other essentials, discovering a city where canned food rots, skeletons sit forgotten in stalle...

Bored with his own era, the narrator uses a historical index to leap into a past he imagines will be full of danger, secrecy, and excitement. What he finds instead is a grimy, slang-charged city where every wrong word can turn deadly, and his earnest search for the Mafia lands him amid the rival gangs called the Leopards and the Boomer Dukes. His grand romantic notions collapse into chaos when he is beaten unconscious, wakes as rookie patrolman Walter Hutner, and begins to suspect that the...

Herrell McCray, a deep-space navigator on a routine voyage near Betelgeuse, is ripped without warning from his ship and dropped into a dark, hostile maze where nothing seems physically possible. He wakes disoriented, unable even to see his own body, surrounded by a baffling mix of human relics, alien machinery, and shifting walls, and soon realizes he may be trapped far outside normal space and time. As McCray fights to survive heat, fumes, and confusion with only a spacesuit and space-ax,...

In a nameless riverside bar, drunken space veteran Byron drifts through guilt, memory, and a dread he cannot quite name. A woman's nervous cough jolts him into recalling Gilvey and the other men who shared his one-way voyage to Mars, and the encounter quickly turns into a descent into the trauma he has spent years trying to drown. Byron reveals that the crew was chemically prevented from killing one another during the trip, but the restraint lasted only two years. Now back on Earth, he is ...

At a vast underwater oil operation, manager Muhlenhoff is jolted when a sudden breach in the deep-sea drilling chamber triggers pressure-driven corrosion that could destroy the entire project. As the board panics, he imposes discipline, gathers a specialized task force, and insists on calm, methodical action instead of retreat, revealing a crisis that tests both engineering and leadership. In his private office, he reflects on how far he has risen from hands-on technical work to corporate ...

Frederik Pohl was a famous science-fiction writer.This collection contains the following novels and short stories :PythiasThe Knights of ArthurThe Tunnel Under the WorldPlague of PythonsSurvival KitWolfbaneSearch the SkyThe Five Hells of OrionThe HatedThe Day of the Boomer Dukes

On a storm-lashed Jersey shore, Howard Mooney is broke, bored, and hungry for anything that might change his luck. Then a drenched stranger in a silvery outfit appears at his door with a briefcase full of sealed metal spheres, a demand for help, and the unsettling suggestion that time itself can be navigated like a map. The stranger, Harse, is no ordinary traveler but something far stranger: a refugee from the future carrying a "survival kit" packed with impossible technology and dangerous...

A condemned man begins his confession on the eve of execution, admitting that he killed Laurence Connaught—the old friend who once saved his life. As he retraces their reunion in Washington, a Senate guard's routine existence is shattered by a violent foreign-relations debate, a grenade attack, and Connaught's impossible survival, which convinces the narrator that his friend has discovered something beyond ordinary human limits. Pressed for the truth, Connaught reveals a startling secret: ...

In the rigid prison-world of the Jug, Captain Liam O'Leary believes order, rehabilitation, and class duty can hold society together—until he meets Sue-Ann Bradley, a detainee who refuses to accept the role assigned to her. Her case, tied to the forbidden crime of violating the Categoried Class laws, exposes a civilization built on genetic specialization, inherited status, and the dangerous idea that people must never mix across boundaries. O'Leary's confidence begins to crack as he sees th...

Frederik Pohl was one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time, with a career that spanned 7 decades (and won him every major award in the field). Included are ten of his classic novels and short stories:PLAGUE OF PYTHONSTHE DAY OF THE BOOMER DUKESMY LADY GREENSLEEVESTHE TUNNEL UNDER THE WORLDPYTHIASSEARCH THE SKY (written with C. M. Kornbluth)THE HATEDTHE KNIGHTS OF ARTHURSURVIVAL KITPREFERRED RISK (written ...

The Greatest Sci-Fi Books - Cyril M. Kornbluth Edition' emerges as a seminal anthology that rejoices in the rich tapestry of science fiction through the lens of Cyril M. Kornbluth's visionary work, complemented by the collaborative brilliance of Frederik Pohl. The collection navigates diverse themes of dystopia, technological ascendancy, and socio-political commentary, framed within various literary styles from satirical wit to poignant narrative depths. This anthology not only revisits in...

Frederik Pohl was an influential writer and editor. As an editor he won three Hugo awards for best professional magazine. As a writer he won four Hugo Awards and three Nebulas. Pohl was awarded the title of Grand Master by the Science fiction Writers of America and is a member of the Science Fiction Hall of fame. Collected here are a novel and five stories that helped Pohl carve his name onto the science fiction field. His stories are imaginative and powerful. Included here are 'Preferred ...