Free summaries
Science-Fiction & Fantasy — page 8
446 public-domain science-fiction & fantasy books, summarised. Page 8 of 10.
The Victory of Klon
Wilbur S. Peacock
This science fiction tale follows a desperate struggle for political power on a dark, swampy Venus, where an alien protagonist’s ambition to secure leadership leads to an unintended planetary tragedy.
Summit
Mack Reynolds
Two world leaders meet in private to maintain a fragile, artificial peace, knowing that their respective societies depend entirely on the perpetuation of global tension to avoid economic and political collapse.
What Need of Man?
Harold Calin
The quest for space exploration is a cold, calculated machine that discards human intuition in favor of flawed automation. This stark story explores the lethal arrogance behind the race to the stars and the dehumanization of those expected to fly.
Wind
Charles L. Fontenay
A desperate rescue mission across a treacherous, wind-scoured planet turns into a test of ingenuity when a Dutch colonist realizes his only hope to save a dying child is to harness the very gale that threatens to kill them.
Old Mr. Wiley
Greye La Spina
A fading family’s legacy hinges on the spectral intervention of a long-dead ancestor, who returns to save his sickly descendant from a cold, uncaring home.
The men return
Jack Vance
This stark, surreal vision portrays the final survivors of humanity adrift in a reality where the laws of physics have collapsed, leaving them to scavenge for survival in a nightmare of shifting, illogical matter.
After Some Tomorrow
Mack Reynolds
The survival of the human race rests on the shoulders of one man, yet his matriarchal society refuses to let him lead. Trapped in a rigid, post-apocalyptic hierarchy, he must find a way to break the cycle of extinction before his people vanish entirely.
Dream Town
Henry Slesar
A traveler stranded in a quiet village finds himself caught between the mundane world and a shared, nocturnal fantasy that demands a deadly price for entry.
Test Problem
Alan J. Ramm
A student faces the ultimate test of creation: building a solar system from raw space. The challenge is not just technical, but existential, as his own unconscious mind begins to manifest the unexpected.
The Big Headache
Jim Harmon
A brilliant, world-renowned mathematician is cured of his debilitating migraines by two desperate scientists, only for them to discover that eliminating the pain has come at a catastrophic cost to his genius.
The Hoplite
Richard Sheridan
The ultimate machine is a lethal extension of the man within, yet the warrior trapped inside finds that in gaining the power of a god, he has surrendered the possibility of being human.
Double-Cross
Frederik Pohl
A revolutionary leader on a colonized Venus plots to destroy an Earth-ship, but his obsession with betrayal leads him to engineer his own downfall in a dark, ironic turn of fate.
Excitement for sale
Stephen Marlowe
A bored housewife’s yearning for a life of glamour is answered by a mysterious peddler, who offers a transformation that turns her humdrum existence into a high-stakes, breathless adventure. She soon discovers that the thrill of the extraordinary is inseparable from the peril of the unknown.
Homesick
Lyn Venable
The universe offers no welcome to those who have outlived their own era. An aging crew finds that returning home after a thirty-year voyage is not a triumph, but a fatal alienation.
Lost Art
G. K. Hawk
This story explores the terrifying fragility of a society that has surrendered its survival to automated technology. When a cargo ship crashes in a frozen wilderness, two men discover that their reliance on machines has rendered them helpless in the face of nature.
Operation R.S.V.P
H. Beam Piper
The world’s two greatest superpowers find themselves suddenly irrelevant, outpaced by an unexpected rival who has been quietly poaching their best minds to build a better future—or a more terrifying end.
Export Commodity
Cox, Irving E., Jr.
A stranded, emotionless scout from a sterile, logical empire discovers that the most valuable resource on Earth is not its oil, but the irrational, defiant power of human love.
Hang head, vandal
Mark Clifton
The stars represent humanity’s greatest ambition, but the path to them is littered with the corpses of worlds we have mistaken for barren stone.
The Altar at Midnight
C. M. (Cyril M.) Kornbluth
A young spacer whose body is ruined by the drive that makes space travel possible seeks human warmth in a Skid Row dive bar, accompanied by an older drunk who shares a secret connection to his plight.
The assistant self
F. L. (Floyd L.) Wallace
An empathetic man’s curse of feeling exactly what others feel becomes a life-altering weapon when he is forced to assume the identity of a dying executive to solve a corporate murder.
Divvy up
Stephen Marlowe
HOOK In a ruined city where betrayal is a currency, a scavenger plays a lethal game of survival that inevitably turns against him.
The Man Who Killed the World
Ray Cummings
A reclusive billionaire, driven by a pathological hatred of humanity, unleashes a global biological apocalypse. He soon discovers that absolute power is a hollow victory when there is no one left to fear him.
The Stuff
Henry Slesar
A man facing a terminal diagnosis is offered a mysterious, life-altering drug that promises to change his reality forever. This story explores the fine line between a life well-lived and the perfect illusion of one.
The Toy
Kris Neville
The inhabitants of a primitive world struggle against the lethal intrusions of invaders, only to discover that their fate lies in the hands of a forgotten, slumbering relic.
In the Jag-Whiffing Service
David R. Bunch
The inhabitants of a distant, stressed planet rely on a strange, addictive commodity imported from Earth to find happiness. As supplies dwindle and tensions rise, they prepare to abandon their clandestine commerce for a full-scale invasion.
Preferred Position
Dave Dryfoos
In a world where technology has eliminated hardship, a couple finds that the only thing more dangerous than a life of total ease is the crushing boredom that comes with it.
A Matter of Order
Fox B. Holden
The inhabitants of a distant colony realize that maintaining their own internal harmony requires them to occasionally manipulate the chaotic, war-torn civilization they left behind.
A Tourist Named Death
Christopher Anvil
An operative sent to an undeveloped planet discovers a rigid society governed by literal justice, where a hidden corporate conspiracy threatens to manipulate an interplanetary referendum.
An Eel by the Tail
Allen Kim Lang
A routine physics class turns absurd when an ambitious teacher's botched experiment summons a telepathic, shape-shifting alien from another galaxy into his high school classroom.
And there was light
Lester Del Rey
The world is divided between two rival superpowers, and scientist Johann Volcek has invented a bloodless, sterilizing weapon to ensure his side's ultimate victory through patience rather than wholesale destruction.
One touch of Terra
Hannes Bok
When a smooth-talking Martian lures a mining camp's beloved matriarch away with stolen Terrestrial dandelions, eccentric prospectors launch a chaotic, machinery-fueled rescue mission across the hazardous Venusian flats.
The Eyes Have It
James McKimmey
The arrogance of a colonial oppressor meets its match in a quiet, chilling reversal of fortune. Darkness reveals what daylight obscures, proving that the hunter is often merely the target in waiting.
The Stowaway
Alvin Heiner
The dream of immortality often blinds the dreamer to the reality of the vessel they have chosen. A desperate stowaway finds that reaching for the stars requires more than just guts—it requires the right ship.
The Troubadour
Robert A. W. (Robert Augustine Ward) Lowndes
A mysterious musician arrives at a crowded intellectual gathering, performing songs that capture the haunting despair of a civilization nearing its final, inevitable extinction.
They Twinkled Like Jewels
Philip José Farmer
In a near-future world where the line between sanity and delusion is enforced by state-sanctioned violence, a drifter discovers that his lifelong search for a lost paradise is actually a terminal biological trap.
Crossroads of Destiny
H. Beam Piper
Late at night in a train's club car, five strangers casually discuss alternate timelines, completely unaware that a quiet passenger beside them has slipped across the boundary from a vastly different reality.
Four-billion dollar door
Michael Shaara
A brilliant, lifelong scientist spends four billion dollars to become the first man to reach the Moon, only to be defeated by a frozen mechanical door.
Manners of the Age
H. B. (Horace Bowne) Fyfe
On a nearly deserted Earth where robots cater to every whim, two isolated individuals discover that sharing a world with another person is wildly inconvenient.
The Little Man Who Wasn't Quite
William W. Stuart
On the desolate fringes of skid row, a forgotten outcast discovers a horrifying gateway to another reality, threatening to unleash unimaginable nightmares upon the waking world.
1,492,633 Marlon Brandos
Vance Aandahl
Awakening at three in the morning, ordinary men across a slumbering city transform into swaggering, leather-clad rebels answering a mysterious, collective call to riot under the stars.
Control Group
Roger D. Aycock
A three-man reclamation crew stumbles upon an isolated human settlement on Alphard Six, only to discover it was engineered centuries ago as an alien laboratory test.
Cube Root of Conquest
Rog Phillips
A ruthless dictator plots global conquest using a revolutionary time-and-space bridge, unaware that a brilliant scientist has engineered a trap written in the mathematics of imaginary numbers.
Gentlemen: please note
Randall Garrett
A young Isaac Newton applies his genius to military ballistics and wine barrels, unintentionally baffling his colleagues and the King.
Jupiter found
Robert F. Young
Two former humans reborn as towering machines on storm-wracked Jupiter forge an independent destiny, defying corporate control to birth a new era of life.
Replace the horse
Laurence M. Janifer
An unscrupulous inventor and an unsuspecting trainer try to outsmart the racetrack using secret antigravity saddles, proving that no scientific trick can outrun human error.
Sequel
Ben Smith
Washed out of the Academy and cast out into the vacuum by mutineers, a disgraced engineer faces his final hours on a lonely asteroid.
Sonny
Rick Raphael
A humble, rifle-toting mountain boy joins the Army, only to discover his deep-woods telepathic connection with his mother can shut down the entire world’s electrical grid with a single thought.
The band played on
Lester Del Rey
The unheralded garbage man of a space station proves his worth when violent hurricanes trap everyone on Earth, threatening the livestock and livelihoods he holds dear.