Five Fantastic Stories

<p><strong><em>Five Fantastic Stories</em> brings together five sharp strange and memorable works of classic science fiction and fantasy by Algis Budrys Frank Herbert Robert Sheckley Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Jamie Wild.</strong> These are stories of alien contact future war psychological danger technological absurdity social satire and worlds where one wrong assumption can change everything. From military defeat and interstellar respect to alien observation homicidal madness and a machine-age promise that solves every problem in the same horrifying way this collection captures the range and bite of mid-century speculative storytelling.</p><p>Included here are The Stoker and the Stars by Algis Budrys Missing Link by Frank Herbert Bad Medicine by Robert Sheckley and 2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Each story offers a different doorway into the fantastic: Budrys's hard-edged space-age conflict Herbert's interest in perception and alien intelligence Sheckley's dark comic attack on sanity and social machinery Vonnegut's bleakly funny vision of population control and bureaucratic death and Wild's pulp-driven sense of wonder.</p><p>This Positronic edition is suited to readers of classic science fiction vintage fantasy short fiction pulp-era magazines social satire alien encounter stories dystopian fiction and the early work of major speculative writers. <em>Five Fantastic Stories</em> is a compact anthology with unusually strong name recognition pairing Herbert Vonnegut Budrys and Sheckley with the speed irony danger and conceptual punch that made magazine science fiction one of the most inventive storytelling forms of the twentieth century. Explore other exciting Positronic Books devoted to classic science fiction fantasy and mystery.</p>