PDF Books in Space Opera Fiction
Collision Orbit
by Clyde BeckThere's one good thing about a blowout. You don't need a mechanic to tell you what the trouble is when it happens. This was the first blowout I ever had, but as soon as I heard that explosive pinging whistle and felt the floppy jolting and the terrifying sensation of a vehicle out of control, I knew what was wrong. I reached forward and cut the pow..
Citadel of the Green Death
by Robert Emmett McDowellJoel Hakkyt stirred impatiently in the prisoner's chair. His features, homely, strong-boned and intelligent, were inscrutable. But he didn't know how much longer he could bottle up his indignation. It had been accumulating all during his trial. Now this delay!The machines had been whisked from the chamber. The investigating psychologist should have..
Sword of Fire
by Robert Emmett McDowellThe Mizar, a glittering needle with stubby, backswept wings, hurtled out of deep space, arced into orbital flight a thousand kilometers above the surface of the planet. The starship had approached from the night side. Now, as it decelerated rapidly, it flashed into the raw orange daylight of the planet's K1 type sun, angled downward into the strato..
The Rocketeers Have Shaggy Ears
by Keith BennettThe Commander's voice went droning on, but Hague's fatigued brain registered it as mere sound with no words or meaning. He'd been dazed since the crash. Like a cracked phonograph, his brain kept playing back the ripping roar of jet chambers blowing out with a sickening lurch that had thrown every man in the control room to the floor. The lights had..
Madmen of Mars
by Erik FennelAll this time we've kept quiet as a whole cageful of mice. And with good reason. During the Big Scare, while everyone was afraid that the Exclusion Ultimatum meant the Martians wanted an interplanetary war, the Earth Governments would have been only too ready to hang, shoot, stab, gas, electrocute, freeze, burn, poison, impale and/or defenestrate t..
Bratton's Idea
by Manly Wade WellmanOld Bratton, janitor at the studios of Station XCV in Hollywood, was as gaunt as Karloff, as saturnine as Rathbone, as enigmatic as Lugosi. He was unique among Californians in professing absolutely no motion picture ambitions. Once, it is true, a director had stopped him on the street and offered to test him for a featured role, but old Bratton had..
Equation for Time
by R. R. WinterbothamThe secret of time travel has been discovered. No one has traveled through time as yet, although man has explored the universe for more than twenty light years from the sun. But the day of time travel is not far distant. It had simple beginnings. All great things began in simple ways. Newton and the apple were the beginnings of modern understanding..
Eyes That Watch
by Raymond Z. GallunHe, Sam Conway, was back from Mars now. Back from red, ferric deserts no Earthly boot had ever touched before. Back from bitter cold and aching dryness. Back from dazzling yellow hazes of dust and suspended ice crystals. No more need to wear oxygen armor in a thin, ozone-tainted atmosphere now. Back from solitude, and the endless fight to keep aliv..