Dave Conroy wakes chained aboard an Earth-orbiting satellite, where the contemptuous Major Hawes informs him that he and the other "volunteers" have been condemned to deadly radiation duty. Recruited from convicts and drunks, they are trapped in a brutal system that trades prison for a slow, agonizing death. As Dave pieces together how he was lured there during a drunken night, he faces the horror of the ruined men already laboring in the jetroom and realizes he is expected to suffer the s...

Drug Themes in Science Fiction explores how imagined chemicals have shaped one of literature's most revealing genres, from early cautionary tales to visions of expanded consciousness and social control. Introduced by Robert Silverberg and framed as part of a research series on drug use, the book connects the rise of science fiction's popularity with the upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s, arguing that the genre offers a sharp lens on changing attitudes toward drugs, freedom, and human ...

On his seventeenth birthday, Larry faces the most important choice of his life: remain in the drugged comfort of childhood or step into the uncertain demands of adulthood. In a future society where children are raised on an "unworry" drug that erases fear and responsibility, his robonurse presents three capsules that will decide whether he stays in blissful dependence or begins the irreversible path to maturity. As his father welcomes him into the "Age of Anxiety," Larry is thrust toward a...

When the last radio signals go silent, Haverford believes he is the final human being left on Earth. A lonely amateur operator who has spent years retreating from the world, he is the last person anyone would expect to survive an alien invasion. Yet as the Lanthaii descend in silvery ships and sweep across the globe with terrifying speed, his sealed room becomes a fragile fortress against extinction. One by one, voices vanish from the airwaves. Friends in distant countries fall silent. Cit...

When Chuck Matthews comes to Abel Harwood's house hoping to see Laura, he instead witnesses Harwood's long-secret experiment split open a shimmering vortex in the street. From that breach pour glowing alien entities, and Harwood's cold indifference makes the danger even more terrifying as Chuck is driven into the chaos of the first attack. The invaders seem to thrive on radiation and electrical energy, vanishing in the rain and lightning only to reveal a far greater threat still lurking in...

In the ashes of atomic war, Mayor Lloyd Riddell has rebuilt Center City into a fragile refuge of hope, only to see that peace threatened by neighboring Northburg and its conquest-driven leader, David Barr. When a spy is killed and a warning reaches him, Riddell refuses to answer violence with violence, even as his hatred for Barr burns hot enough to tempt him toward war. Instead, he sends his ally Ken Naylor on urgent errands and goes alone to confront the danger at its source. On the road...

J. F. Corrigan runs the Corrigan Institute, a booming interstellar "zoo" that recruits alien specimens for the one place they all dream of seeing: Earth. On Ghryne, his office is packed with hopeful applicants, desperate petitioners, and bizarre creatures whose longing for Terra is matched only by Corrigan's talent for turning it into profit. Brisk, satirical, and full of sharp alien color, the story follows Corrigan as he sorts genuine prospects from scams, all while keeping one eye on th...

Dane Harrell volunteers for a desperate experiment: entering the mind of a captured Dimellian scout through a thought-helmet in hopes of stealing military secrets that could turn the tide of Earth's war. What he finds is not a passive prisoner but a vivid, hostile psychic world shaped like an alien home terrain, with a distant castle guarding the knowledge he needs and an enemy already waiting to stop him. Inside this mental battleground, Harrell and the Dimellian can change size, vanish, ...

Kiley is a swaggering jewel thief who thinks he's finally found the perfect partner in Thaklaru, an alien mind-reader with a talent for turning suspicion into profit. Trapped in an alien prison after a failed burglary, Kiley is offered freedom in exchange for cooperation—and discovers that Thaklaru can project hypnosis through him, letting the pair slip past guards, crack security, and steal almost anything they desire. Their alliance quickly becomes a dazzling crime spree across an entire...

Lost Sci-Fi Books 501 thru 505 brings together five imaginative tales from the strange, surprising corners of vintage science fiction. Alien worlds, unexplained visitors, forbidden places, and mysteries that refuse to yield easy answers await in this collection.The Sweeper of Loray by Robert Sheckley takes us to a distant world where even an apparently ordinary job can conceal something far more dangerous.The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar by F...

Al Fieldston comes to the Sunland Health Colony expecting seclusion, discipline, and the chance to finish the novel he has long meant to write. Instead, he finds a sunlit nudist world where embarrassment, temptation, and comic surprise arrive almost immediately, beginning with Joanie Baker's easy confidence and his friend Jack Meehan's infectious enthusiasm for the colony's unusual freedoms. A Chicago advertising copywriter with a background in journalism, Al has taken a three-month leave ...

Laura Haynes comes to New York from Kansas dreaming of a break in show business, only to discover how quickly hope can turn predatory. In theatrical agent Ned McCarten's office, her talent is tested, her body appraised, and her ambitions turned against her in a brutal encounter that exposes the city's ruthless underbelly. Shattered and alone, Laura wanders Manhattan in shock, fighting shame and despair until she is taken in by Marilyn Rivers, a streetwise prostitute whose tea, shelter, and...