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She was wonderful and Forsdon was in love. But he'd seen the future and knew that in five days she was slated for murder!

Nothing moved or stirred. Everything was silent, dead. Only the gun showed signs of life ... and the trespassers had wrecked that for all time. The return journey to pick up the treasure would be a cinch ... they smiled.

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In order to make Izaak Walton's sport complete, there must be an angler, a fish, and some bait. All three existed on Arz but there was a question as to which was which.

On Tenthmonth 1, 2457 A.D., at exactly 9 a.m. Planetary Federation Time— but with a permissible error of a millionth of a second either way— in the fifth sublevel of New- New York Robot Postal Station 68, Black Sorter gulped down ten thousand pieces of first-class mail. This breakfast tidbit did not agree with the mail-sorting machine. It was as if a robust dog had been fed a large chunk of good red meat with a strychnine pill in it. Black Sorter's innards went whirr-klunk, a blue electric glow enveloped him, and he began to shake as if he might break loose from the concrete. He desperately spat back over his shoulder a single envelope, gave a great huff and blew out toward the sorting tubes a medium-size snowstorm consisting of the other nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine pieces of first-class mail chewed to confetti. Then, still convulsed, he snapped up a fresh ten thousand and proceeded to chomp and grind on them. Black Sorter was rugged.

The Collectors,” concerning the debut of Robie the robot vending machine, “the logical conclusion of the development of vending machines. All the earlier ones had stood in one place, on a floor or hanging on a wall, and blankly delivered merchandise in return for coins, whereas Robie searched searched for customers.” Robie is a turtle-ish fellow with wheels, radar sensors, and the prerecorded voice of a popular TV star. Robie is initially played for laughs, misunderstanding his targeted consumer as often as not, and amusing the crowd more than successfully peddling any wares. As with most Leiber stories (let’s just not speak of “The Big Holiday” again) this one actually feels like it takes place within a living future history, with news items about Pakistan-fueled tensions between the USA and USSR flitting in and out on the periphery of the vending scene, a “legless veteran of the Persian War” offended at how Robie looks too much like the “Little Joe Paratanks,” and so on. In the midst of this celebration of modern capitalist technology, the Russian rockets start raining down – but the machinery of rampant consumerism is only slightly slowed by this development. Robie, who had been at the center of a crowd, “slowly scanned a full circle. There was nothing anywhere to interest his reference silhouettes. Yet whenever he tried to move, his under-scanners warned of low obstructions. It was very puzzling.” He asks the first man to stand if he wants a smoke, tries to give a lollipop to a fire hydrant because his vision was blurred by the EMP, and when people begin to cry out for water, he offers to sell them soda for a quarter. Capped off by the arrival of a rescue team, “more robotlike in their asbestos suits than he in his metal skin.”

the story follows the titular puppet traversing the fictional city of Krat, plagued by both an epidemic of petrification disease and a puppet uprising. P who has to work through the dystopian city of Krat. Along the way, he'll meet characters with familiar names to the original story, and learn what it takes for him to become a "real boy."

When Marsy Gras shot off its skyrockets, Mars Observatory gave it the works—fireworks!

It is no use. It's too late. The earth—I must dig—alone.

Any problem posed by one group of human beings can be resolved by any other group." That's what the Handbook said. But did that include primitive humans? Or the Bees? Or a ...

There have been a number of interesting theories advanced about life on Mars, but few have equaled Charles Fritch's intriguing picture of the world of Longtree and Channeljumper in its infinite variations, tonal and thematic. The Mars of these two is an old culture, old and finite.

Tradition is the handling down of customs beliefs, culture and heritage. Opposite of tradition would be modernism, progressiveness and forwardness. Opposite of traditional would be modern, progressive, moving forward, new, deviated, untraditional and unestablished.

The aliens were quite impressed by Earth's technical marvels—they found them just delicious!

"Nuts to you!" was what Narli knew Earthmen would tell him ... only it was frismil nuts!

Tack power drives on a sewing circle and you can needle the world into the darndest mess!

It’s much later. The question is . . . how late?

Early morning deliveries were part of the Honeychile Bakery Service. But on this particular morning, the service was reversed!

Simms had the toughest assignment of his career. He must fight his way through Venusian intrigue to deliver a sealed cylinder—a cylinder that held his dishonorable discharge from the service.

Snow in summer is of course impossible. Any weather expert will tell you so. Weather Bureau Chief Botts was certain no such absurdity could occur. And he would have been right except for one thing. It snowed that summer.

If you let a man learn, and study, and work—and clamp a lid on so that nothing he takes into his mind can be let out—one way or another he'll blow a safety valve!

To the young travelers of tomorrow.

It is a tough assignment for a child to know where a daydream ends and impossibility begins! Ronny was playing by himself, which meant he was two tribes of Indians having a war. "Bang," he muttered, firing an imaginary rifle. He decided that it was a time in history before the white people had sold the Indians any guns, and changed the rifle into a bow. "Wizzthunk," he substituted, mimicking from an Indian film on TV the graphic sound of an arrow striking flesh. "Oof." He folded down onto the grass, moaning, "Uhhhooh ..." and relaxing into defeat and death. "Want some chocolate milk, Ronny?" asked his mother's voice from the kitchen. "No, thanks," he called back, climbing to his feet to be another man. "Wizzthunk, wizzthunk," he added to the flights of arrows as the best archer in the tribe. "Last arrow. Wizzzz," he said, missing one enemy for realism. He addressed another battling brave. "Who has more arrows? They are coming too close. No time—I'll have to use my knife." He drew the imaginary knife, ducking an arrow as it shot close.

The story is set in 2158 A.D., after the invention of a medicine called Anti-Gerasone, which is made from mud and dandelions and is thus inexpensive and widely available. Anti-Gerasone halts the aging process and prevents people from dying of old age as long as they keep taking it; as a result, America now suffers from severe overpopulation and shortages of food and resources. With the exception of the very wealthy, most of the population appears to survive on a diet of foods made from processed seaweed and sawdust. Gramps Ford, his chin resting on his hands, his hands on the crook of his cane, was staring irascibly at the five-foot television screen that dominated the room. On the screen, a news commentator was summarizing the day's happenings. Every thirty seconds or so, Gramps would jab the floor with his cane-tip and shout, "Hell, we did that a hundred years ago!" Emerald and Lou, coming in from the balcony, where they had been seeking that 2185 A.D. rarity--privacy--were obliged to take seats in the back row, behind about a dozen relatives with whom they shared the house. All save Gramps, who was somewhat withered and bent, seemed, by pre-anti-gerasone standards, to be about the same age--somewhere in their late twenties or early thirties. Gramps looked older because he had already reached 70 when anti-gerasone was invented. He had not aged in the 102 years since. "Next one shoots off his big bazoo while the TV's on is gonna find hisself cut off without a dollar--" his voice suddenly softened and sweetened--"when they wave that checkered flag at the Indianapolis Speedway, and old Gramps gets ready for the Big Trip Up Yonder." He sniffed sentimentally, while his heirs concentrated desperately on not making the slightest sound. For them, the poignancy of the prospective Big Trip had been dulled somewhat, through having been mentioned by Gramps about once a day for fifty years.