"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."
In the olden years, long long ago, with the spring-tide fair and the summer’s heat there came on the world distress and shame. For gnats and flies began to swarm, biting folks and letting their warm blood flow. Then the Spider appeared, the hero bold, who,...
In a certain country there once lived an old man who had three sons. Two of them had their wits about them, but the third was a fool. The old man died and his sons divided his property among themselves by lot. The sharp-witted ones...
Mother Earth and Other Stories by Isaac Asimov: Between Robots, Empires, and Human Nature Isaac Asimov’s Mother Earth and Other Stories gathers a fascinating range of his shorter works, spanning from lighthearted robot tales to speculative meditations on politics, ecology, and the human condition.The fil rouge...
There once was a rich merchant named Marko—a stingier fellow never lived! One day he went out for a stroll. As he went along the road he saw a beggar—an old man, who sat there asking for alms—“Please to give, O ye Orthodox, for Christ’s...
When Space Turns to Horror Stanisław Lem has often been described as a visionary of science fiction, but to call The Invincible simply “sci-fi” feels inadequate. Lem doesn’t write speculative adventures of exploration and discovery: he writes existential horror. Solaris is, at its core, a ghost...
-- The following review contains heavy spoilers on Liu Cixin's first novel in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy: The Three-Body Problem. Proceed with caution -- The first time I opened The Three-Body Problem, I didn’t quite realise I was stepping into a new dimension of...
There once was a poor little orphan-lad who had nothing at all to live on; so he went to a rich moujik and hired himself out to him, agreeing to work for one copeck a year. And when he had worked for a whole year,...
When Asimov’s Universe Starts to Merge There’s undoubtedly a gap — one might call it an evolution — between The Robots of Dawn and the two earlier novels of the Robot series. This third entry, first published in 1983, stands at a crossroads in Isaac Asimov’s...
A certain woman was very bumptious. Her husband came from a village council one day, and she asked him: “What have you been deciding over there?” “What have we been deciding? why choosing a Golova.” “Whom have you chosen?” “No one as yet.” “Choose me,” says the woman. So as soon...
A bad wife lived on the worst of terms with her husband, and never paid any attention to what he said. If her husband told her to get up early, she would lie in bed three days at a stretch; if he wanted her to...
