50 in 50 : Fifty Stories for Fifty Years! - A Collection and Celebration

by Harrison, Harry

• ISBN13: 9780312877903
• ISBN10: 0312877900
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-16
• Publisher: Tor Books

Summary

Since his first sale in 1950, Harry Harrison has been one of the science fiction worlds creative dynamos, working in every subgenre of the field, always bursting with provocative ideas. Parodic one moment, serious the next, Harrison has been called by Brian Aldiss one of the few authors capable of carrying the old vigor of earlier days forward into a new epoch.On the occasion of his fiftieth anniversary as a professional writer, Harrison gathered fifty of his best storiesone for each yearalong with notes and introductory material. 50 in 50 is a memoir, a compendium of an engaging body of work, and a look at the history of science fiction in the second half of the 20th century.

Author Biography

Harry Harrison is the author of Deathworld, Make Room! Make Room! (filmed as Soylent Green), the popular Stainless Steel Rat books, and many other famous works of SF.

Table of Contents

Introduction	11	(23)
Alien Shores
The Streets of Ashkelon	23	(13)
Rescue Operation	36	(13)
The Repairman	49	(12)
Pressure	61	(15)
Welcoming Committee	76	(5)
Heavy Duty	81	(18)
Make Room! Make Room!
A Criminal Act	99	(12)
Roommates	111	(20)
The Pliable Animal	131	(20)
After the Storm	151	(16)
Miraculous Inuentions
Down to Earth	167	(17)
Final Encounter	184	(18)
Speed of the Cheetah, Roar of the Lion	202	(3)
The Greatest Car in the World	205	(9)
Rock Diver	214	(9)
Toy Shop	223	(5)
I Always Do What Teddy Says	228	(8)
From Fanaticism, or For Reward	236	(10)
I See You	246	(21)
Laugh--I Thought I Would Cry
The Greening of the Green	267	(15)
The Day After the End of the World	282	(11)
The Man from P.I.G.	293	(34)
Space Rats of the CCC	327	(11)
Captain Honario Harpplayer, R.N.	338	(11)
Other Worlds
Simulated Trainer	349	(13)
Survival Planet	362	(12)
How the Old World Died	374	(4)
The K-Factor	378	(23)
R.U.R.
Arm of the Law	401	(14)
The Robot Who Wanted to Know	415	(6)
I Have My Vigil	421	(3)
The Velvet Glove	424	(19)
One for the Shrinks
Not Me, Not Amos Cabot!	443	(7)
The Gods Themselves Throw Incense	450	(13)
You Men of Violence	463	(9)
A Civil Service Servant	472	(8)
Captain Bedlam	480	(11)
The Light Fantastic
At Last, the True Story of Frankenstein	491	(5)
Incident in the IND	496	(9)
Square Pegs in Round Holes
Portrait of the Artist	505	(8)
Mute Milton	513	(7)
An Artist's Life	520	(14)
The Ever-Branching Tree	534	(9)
By the Falls	543	(7)
American Dead	550	(13)
Dawn of the Endless Night	563	(13)
An Honest Day's Work	576	(8)
If	584	(6)
Brave Newer World	590	(31)
The Road to the Year 3000	621

Excerpts

The Streets of Ashkelon Somewhere above, hidden by the eternal clouds of Wesker's World, a thunder rumbled and grew. Trader Garth stopped suddenly when he heard it, his boots sinking slowly into the muck, and cupped his good ear to catch the sound. It swelled and waned in the thick atmosphere, growing louder. "That noise is the same as the noise of your sky-ship," Itin said, with stolid Wesker logicality, slowly pulverizing the idea in his mind and turning over the bits one by one for closer examination. "But your ship is still sitting where you landed it. It must be, even though we cannot see it, because you are the only one who can operate it. And even if anyone else could operate it we would have heard it rising into the sky. Since we did not, and if this sound is a sky-ship sound, then it must mean" "Yes, another ship," Garth said, too absorbed in his own thoughts to wait for the laborious Weskerian chains of logic to clank their way through to the end. Of course it was another spacer, it had been only a matter of time before one appeared, and undoubtedly this one was homing on the S.S radar reflector as he had done. His own ship would show up clearly on the newcomer's screen and they would probably set down as close to it as they could. "You better go ahead, Itin," he said. "Use the water so you can get to the village quickly. Tell everyone to get back into the swamps, well clear of the hard ground. That ship is landing on instruments and anyone underneath at touchdown is going to be cooked." This immediate threat was clear enough to the little Wesker amphibian. Before Garth had finished speaking Itin's ribbed ears had folded like a bat's wings and he slipped silently into the nearby canal. Garth squelched on through the mud, making as good time as he could over the clinging surface. He had just reached the fringes of the village clearing when the rumbling grew to a head-splitting roar and the spacer broke through the low-hanging layer of clouds above. Garth shielded his eyes from the down-reaching tongue of flame and examined the growing form of the gray-black ship with mixed feelings. After almost a standard year on Wesker's World he had to fight down a longing for human companionship of any kind. While this buried fragment of herd-spirit chattered for the rest of the monkey tribe, his trader's mind was busily drawing a line under a column of figures and adding up the total. This could very well be another trader's ship, and if it was his monopoly of the Wesker's trade was at an end. Then again, this might not be a trader at all, which was the reason he stayed in the shelter of the giant fern and loosened his gun in its holster. The ship baked dry a hundred square meters of mud, the roaring blast died, and the landing feet crunched down through the crackling crust. Metal creaked and settled into place while the cloud of smoke and steam slowly drifted lower in the humid air. "Garthyou native-cheating extortionistwhere are you?" the ship's speaker boomed. The lines of the spacer had looked only slightly familiar, but there was no mistaking the rasping tones of that voice. Garth had a twisted smile when he stepped out into the open and whistled shrilly through two fingers. A directional microphone ground out of its casing on the ship's fin and turned in his direction. "What are you doing here, Singh?" he shouted towards the mike. "Too crooked to find a planet of your own and have to come here to steal an honest trader's profits?" "Honest!" the amplified voice roared. "This from the man who has been in more jails than cathouses