This outstanding collection of nine of van Vogt’s best golden-age science-fiction stories was published in 1952, as a sort of companion volume to Destination Universe, his first short-story anthology published earlier that same year.
Curiously, almost all editions of Away and Beyond printed after 1952 have omitted the remarkable first story in this anthology, Vault of the Beast – van Vogt’s very first sci-fi story !
These are the original magazine versions of these quite timeless tales, (…)
Articles les plus récents
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"Away and Beyond" - A. E. van Vogt’s other great 1952 anthology
5 octobre 2015, par A. E. van Vogt -
"In Memoriam to William Makepeace Thackeray" - by Charles Dickens
4 octobre 2015, par Charles DickensWilliam Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) William Thackeray, author of the immortal Vanity Fair, wrote a number of other highly-regarded and well-selling novels during his very successful career, notably the well-known historical blockbuster novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon ; Catherine (whose central character is a rather nasty female criminal !) ; The History of Pendennis (a major social panorama, partially autobiographical) ; The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. (a sweeping historical novel set (…)
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Anton Chekhov’s funniest story : "From the Diary of a Violent-tempered Man" (1887)
4 septembre 2015, par Anton ChekhovAnton Chekhov wrote 522 short stories – and many other texts – during his all-too-short career. Although in the main they tend to centre on the dissatisfactions and less-than-joyous aspects of the lives of people from all walks of life, many of them do have a certain whimsical character bordering on the comical, particularly when dealing with servants and country folk somewhat susceptible to the demon drink.
This tale, consisting of the notes of a high-minded and very irascible professor (…) -
"Dormant" - a great golden-age sci-fi story by A. E. van Vogt (1948)
21 juillet 2015, par A. E. van VogtThis dramatic tale of the harrowing results of the discovery of a huge and very strange alien object on a remote Pacific island in the immediate post-WW2 years, told in typical and most effective van-Vogt-style from the “other’s” point of view, was first published in the November 1948 issue of Startling Stories, whose snappy cover here has surely not escaped your attention.
There was the following interesting comment by the editors in that rather splendid issue (198 large-format pages !!) (…) -
"Skirmish (Bathe Your Bearings in Blood !)" (1950) by Clifford Simak
20 mai 2015, par Clifford SimakOriginally published in the December 1950 issue of Amazing Stories under the rousing title Bathe Your Bearings in Blood !, always republished under the later and somewhat subtler — and rather more in keeping with the spirit of the story, it must be said — title of Skirmish, this striking account of one very average man’s struggle against machine-like aliens bent on rallying all of the world’s machines to their cause will probably leave as strong and unforgettable impression on you as it did (…)
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A 34,000-word German-English literary dictionary
17 avril 2015, par RayThe core of this 34,000-word bilingual literary dictionary consists of all of the words looked up in various dictionaries while working through some 60-odd German-language novels and short-story anthologies, as well as all of the commonly-used nouns and adjectives and all of the prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, pronouns and articles.
For each separate meaning of an entry-word we have included, in addition to its English translation, the original German-language definition and (…) -
"Vault of the Beast" – the first s-f story written by A. E. van Vogt (1940)
24 mars 2015, par A. E. van VogtA. E. van Vogt’s first published story was the celebrated Black Destroyer, that appeared in the August 1939 edition of Astounding Science Fiction.
But Black Destroyer was not actually van Vogt’s first science-fiction story : that distinction goes to this one, a remarkably inventive and dramatic space-adventure tale that he had submitted to the Astounding magazine in 1938.
Its publication was however delayed for editorial reasons, as a shape-changing alien had featured in Who Goes There (…) -
"The Sea Thing" by A. E. van Vogt (1940)
11 février 2015, par A. E. van VogtIn this very early story first published in the January 1940 edition of Unknown magazine, A. E. van Vogt made a rare but very successful venture into the realm of fantasy. Or rather near-fantasy, as the shark-god "Thing" (in human form !) that comes out of the sea to wreak revenge on a group of fishermen in an isolated area of the South Seas is an interesting and just-about-credible (especially at night in sufficiently-eerie surroundings) incarnation of the ancestral lore of the native (…)
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"Centaurus II" by A. E. van Vogt (1947) - a golden-age novelette never before republished
10 février 2015, par A. E. van VogtThis novelette, which was the cover story in the June 1947 issue of the celebrated science-fiction magazine Astounding Science Fiction, covers some of the same ground as van Vogt’s magnificent 1950 novel The Voyage of the Space Beagle : exploration of far-off star systems, discovery of highly-developed not to say superior alien civilisations and, especially, the grave dangers that internal social/sociological conflicts can and probably always will pose to the very survival of such long-term (…)
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INDEX OF THE 200 CHEKHOV TEXTS ON THIS SITE
1er janvier 2015, par RayIncluding the 188 Chekhov stories on this site, 12 captions by Chekhov to humorous diagrams and all known alternative English titles to the stories on this site. => in alphabetic sequence by English title(s)
=> in alphabetic sequence by Russian title
ENGLISH TITLES
75,000 A CONVERSATION A CYNIC A DAY IN THE COUNTRY A DEAD BODY A DEFENCELESS CREATURE A DOCTOR’S VISIT A DREARY STORY A FATHER A HAPPY ENDING A HAPPY MAN A JOKE A LADY’S STORY A LETTER A LIVING CALENDAR A MISFORTUNE A (…)