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james_davis_nicollLetter To a Phoenix by Fredric Brown
This might be Brown's second or third best known story, a long lived but not immortal man's discourse on the one immortal being he knows of.
He's kind of a creep, the sort who uses long life to marry an endless succession of teenaged girls so he can abandon them later on....
Spoilers below the cut.
The Gun Without A Bang by Robert Sheckley
Another Sheckley, another tale of a can't miss idea going horribly wrong. I am pretty sure one of the Trek authors made reference to this story, complaining that phasers don't command the same respect guns do, due to the lack of noise and fuss when you fire them.
At least the protagonist thought of the obvious way out of the pit he dug.
"I’ve lived through seven major atomic—and super-atomic—wars that have reduced the population of Earth to a few savages around a few campfires in a few still habitable areas."
How likely was it even in the 1940s when this was written that seven near-extinction events could have happened in 180,000 years or that six [1] resources consuming civilizations could have risen and died without, e.g., running the coal and oil beds to nothing?
1: Yeah, I wondered about that too.
This might be Brown's second or third best known story, a long lived but not immortal man's discourse on the one immortal being he knows of.
He's kind of a creep, the sort who uses long life to marry an endless succession of teenaged girls so he can abandon them later on....
Spoilers below the cut.
The Gun Without A Bang by Robert Sheckley
Another Sheckley, another tale of a can't miss idea going horribly wrong. I am pretty sure one of the Trek authors made reference to this story, complaining that phasers don't command the same respect guns do, due to the lack of noise and fuss when you fire them.
At least the protagonist thought of the obvious way out of the pit he dug.
"I’ve lived through seven major atomic—and super-atomic—wars that have reduced the population of Earth to a few savages around a few campfires in a few still habitable areas."
How likely was it even in the 1940s when this was written that seven near-extinction events could have happened in 180,000 years or that six [1] resources consuming civilizations could have risen and died without, e.g., running the coal and oil beds to nothing?
1: Yeah, I wondered about that too.
