Showing results by author "Frederik Pohl" in All Categories

A walk around the block, a quick drive, before shutting down your PC ? these short story collections are perfect for when you only have a few minutes to listen."

When prospector Bob Broadhead went out to Gateway on the Heechee spacecraft, he decided he would know which was the right mission to make him his fortune. Three missions later, now famous and permanently rich, Robinette Broadhead has to face what happened to him and what he is...in a journey into himself as perilous and even more horrifying than the nightmare trip through the interstellar void that he drove himself to take!

Twenty-four of the greatest science fiction stories of all time in this fourth sci-fi short story collection, including works by Jerry Dunham, Emmett Dowell, James Causey, Gordon Randall Garrett, James A. Cox, Phyllis Sterling Smith, Richard A. Sternbach, Robert Sheckley, E. G. Von Wald, Keith Laumer, Jerome Bixby, Frederik Pohl, Roger Dee, Arnold Marmore, James H. Schmitz, Lester del Rey, Cordwainer Smith, Ray Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick.

Roger Torraway watched in horror as the monster lurched, toppled over and died. Project Man Plus had gone suddenly and drastically wrong. The race to colonize Mars was too important, too costly, and America was already too committed, for plans to be scrapped. They would have to make a new Martian. And Roger Torraway was it, candidate for the endless surgery, operation after painful operation, that would enable him to survive on that faraway planet.

Frederik Pohl was on a streak when this Hugo Award-finalist novel was published in 1980. Now back in print after an absence of nearly a decade, this unique science fiction novel is as fresh and entertaining as ever. The story begins when the hero of Gateway finances an expedition to a distant alien spaceship that may end famine forever. On the ship, the explorers find a human boy, and evidence that reveals a powerful alien civilization is thriving on a transport ship headed right for Earth....

After millennia had passed, Mankind discovered the Heechee legacy (an alien culture that fled to the relative safety of a black hole) - in particular an asteroid stocked with autonavigating spacecraft. Robinette Broadhead, who had led the expedition that unlocked the many secrets of Heechee technology, is now forced once more to make a perilous voyage into space - where the Heechee are waiting. And this time the future of Man is at stake....

Advanced Heechee technology had enabled Robinette Broadhead to live after death as a machine-stored personality, enjoying his life by flitting along the wires from party to party with a host of other machine-people. But suddenly his decadent existence ends when an all-powerful alien race intent on the utter destruction of all intelligent life reappears after eons of silence, and threatens the lives of all heechee and humans.

Wan-To was the oldest and must powerful intelligence in the universe, a being who played with star systems as a child plays with marbles. Matter occupied so tiny a part of his vast awareness that humans were utterly beneath his notice.

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, it gave so little warning that Pompeiians were caught unawares, and many bodies were preserved in volcanic ash. Two thousand years later, in 2079, Pompeii is a popular theme park eagerly anticipating Il Giubeleo, the Jubilee celebration of the great anniversary. But Vesuvius is still capable of erupting, and even more threatening are terrorists who want to use the occasion to draw attention to their cause by creating a huge disaster.

It was very simple. Some combination of low temperature and high pressure had forced something from the seepage at the ocean bottom into combination with something in the water around them. And the impregnable armor around Subatlantic Oil's drilling chamber had discovered a weakness.

El viejo Tighe conquistó el país. ¡Ahora, escuchen! Todo eso ya se lo he contado. No me importunen más con la misma historia una y otra vez. Ustedes ya recuerdan la Gran Marcha desde las arenas del Recodo de Pung hasta el Pentágono.

The Boy Who Would Live Forever has a sense of wonder and excitement that will satisfy those who loved Gateway and will delight new listeners as well. In Gateway, long after the alien Heechee abandoned their space-station, Gateway (as humans dubbed it) allowed humans to explore new worlds. The Heechee, alarmed by the alien Kugel whose goal was to destroy all organic lifeforms, had already retreated to the galactic core, where they now lived in peace.

X Minus One premiered in April 1955 on NBC and ran until January 1958. Like its predecessor series, Dimension X, X Minus One featured stories by the greatest names in modern science fiction: Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Robert Bloch, and many more.

Auf dem Asteroiden "Gateway" nahe der Sonne werden knapp eintausend außerirdische Raumschiffe einer verschollenen Rasse gefunden, den "Hidschi". Niemand weiß, wie diese Raumschiffe funktionieren und wohin ihr Kurs führt. Es finden sich aber genügend wagemutige Piloten, sogenannte Prospektoren, die sie zu ihren unbekannten Zielen fliegen, um dort nach Hitschi-Technologie zu suchen. Obwohl die Verlustrate extrem hoch ist, verstehen die Menschen die Hitschi-Schiffe als Chance, dem Elend auf der ausgeplünderten Erde zu entkommen.

X Minus One premiered in April 1955 on NBC and ran until January 1958. Like its predecessor series, Dimension X, X Minus One featured stories by the greatest names in modern science fiction: Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Robert Bloch, and many more.

"Como suele decirse aquí, en Casiopea 43-G, hay buenas y malas noticias. Las malas noticias: no hay nuevos puestos de trabajo para graduados en astrofísica y mecánica cuántica. Las buenas noticias: conseguí un empleo. Empecé ayer. Trabajo como instructor para una escuela de conducción." Así comienza relatandole el protagonista a su madre los acontecimientos de su vida actual.

No tan lejos en el futuro, tal vez en algún momento a principios del siglo XXI, varias razas de extraterrestres interestelares han hecho contacto con la Tierra por radio taquiónica y, en lugar de enviar naves estelares o construir agentes androides, han adaptado un recurso natural. para sus fines: los seres humanos. Y a la mayoría de la raza humana no le importa esto, porque los extraterrestres tienen mucho conocimiento que ofrecer a cambio.

Die Erde wird von terroristischen Organisationen in Angst und Schrecken versetzt. Außerdem treten die Hitschi erstmals in Erscheinung. Aufgeschreckt durch Berichte ihrer Außenposten verlassen sie ihr Schwarzes Loch, um nach dem Rechten zu sehen. Broadheads lange verschollene Geliebte Klara wird von Wan, der in verschiedenen schwarzen Löchern nach seinem verschollenen Vater sucht, kaum gealtert aus dem schwarzen Loch geholt, findet Broadhead aber nur noch als KI vor.

Der mittlerweile schwerreiche Robinette Broadhead finanziert einen Forschungsflug in die Oortsche Wolke, um eine zuvor dort entdeckte Nahrungsmittelfabrik der Hitschi zu untersuchen. Wie bei Gateway handelt es sich um einen ausgehöhlten Asteroiden, angefüllt mit Hitschi-Technik.

Search the Sky is a satirical science fiction novel set in the far future, at a time when humanity has long since colonized the stars. It begins on a planet called Halsey's, which is in a state of decline. When a Longliner generation ship arrives, having failed to make contact with at least six other colonised planets, Ross (the main protagonist in the story) is sent to investigate what is going on at the other colonies. He is given access to a faster than light spacecraft that can make each journey almost instantly.