Space Travel is Serious Business

"british scientists are seriously engaged in a five-point program to develop a rocket that will carry men to the moon."
from The Mystery of Other Worlds Revealed, 1952

The Past Through Tomorrow

The Past Through Tomorrow
by Robert A. Heinlein
A collection of his Future History stories

• "Life-Line", 1939; a month before "Misfit"
• "Misfit", 1939
• "The Roads Must Roll", 1940
• "Requiem", 1940
• "'If This Goes On—'", 1940
• "Coventry", 1940
• "Blowups Happen", 1940
• "Universe", 1941
• "Methuselah's Children", 1941; extended and published as a novel, 1958
• "Logic of Empire", 1941
• "'—We Also Walk Dogs'", 1941
• "Space Jockey", 1947
• "'It's Great to Be Back!'", 1947
• "The Green Hills of Earth", 1947
• "Ordeal in Space", 1948
• "The Long Watch", 1948
• "Gentlemen, Be Seated!", 1948
• "The Black Pits of Luna", 1948
• "Delilah and the Space Rigger", 1949
• "The Man Who Sold the Moon", 1950
• "The Menace From Earth", 1957
• "Searchlight", 1962

The Foundation Trilogy

The Foundation Trilogy
by Isaac Asimov
1951

Three classics of science fiction:

• Foundation
• Foundation and Empire
• Second Foundation

"When the Galactic Empire began to die, when the ends of the Galaxy reverted to Barbarism and dropped away, Hari Seldon and his band of psychologists planted a colony—the Foundation—to incubate art, science, and technology, and form the nucleus of the Second Empire.

The course of the Foundation's growth was plotted according to the science of psychohistory—conditions were arranged to bring about a series of crises forcing it to move rapidly along the route to future Empire . . ."

Mr. Asimov

Music of the Spheres

Music of the Spheres
by Guy Murchie
1961
illustrated by the author

A book about space, time and matter — the great adventure of our age.

Contents:

• Out From the Breathing Earth
• Into the Stomach of Space
• Invitation to the Moon
• Our Sister Planets
• Gadflies of the Void
• Introduction to the Sun
• The Cousin Stars
• The Foreign Galaxies
• Stuff of the Worlds
• The Netherrealm of the Atom
• Of Waves and Music
• Of Light and Color
• Of Space, Of Time
• The Sinews of Reality

Of All Possible Worlds

Of All Possible Worlds
by William Tenn
1955

Contains the following Tenn classics:

• Introduction: On the Fiction in Science Fiction
  
• Down Among the Dead Men (Galaxy 1954)
  
• Me, Myself and I (Planet, Winter 1947)
  
• The Liberation of Earth (Future, May 1953)
  
• Everybody Loves Irving Bommer (Fantastic Adventures, Aug 1951)
  
• Flirgleflip (Fantastic Adventures, May 1950)
  
• The Tenants (F&SF, 1954)
  
• The Custodian (IF, Nov 1953)

William Tenn is the pseudonym for the science fiction work of Philip Klass. Born May 9, 1920, in London, England, he moved to New York where he grew up in Brooklyn. Since 1945, he has written academic articles, essays, two novels and more than 60 short stories.

The Science Fiction Encyclopedia ranked Tenn as "one of the genre's very few genuinely comic, genuinely incisive writers of short fiction."

Bibliography

• Children of Wonder (1953)
• Of All Possible Worlds (1955)
• The Human Angle (1956)
• Time in Advance (1958)
• A Lamp for Medusa (novella published as a double with The Players of Hell by Dave Van Arnam) (1968)
• Of Men and Monsters (1968) (novel)
• Once Against the Law (1968) (anthology of crime fiction edited by Tenn and Donald E. Westlake)
• The Seven Sexes (1968)
• The Square Root of Man (1968)
• The Wooden Star (1968)
• Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Volume I (omnibus) (2000)
• Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Volume II (ominbus) (2001)
• Dancing Naked, the Unexpurgated William Tenn (nonfiction omnibus) (2004) [Hugo Nominee, Best Related Book, 2005]

External Links:

• William Tenn official site

The Collier's Space Flight Series

For the early part of the decade a series of stories featured in eight issues of Colliers, penned by the brightest rocket scientists of the day and brilliantly illustrated by Chesley Bonestell, sparked the imagination of the American public. For a summary of the Colliers series of articles concerning the possibilities of manned spaceflight, launch: The Ugly Spaceship.

Man Will Conquer Space Soon (March 22, 1952)

Man on the Moon/The Journey/Inside the Moon Ship (Oct 18, 1952)

(not featured on cover)
Man on the Moon/Inside the Lunar Base (Oct 25, 1952)

World's First Space Suit (Feb 28, 1953)

(not featured on cover)
Testing the Men in Space (March 7, 1953)

How Man Will Meet Emergency In Space Travel (March 14, 1953)

Baby Space Station (June 27, 1953)

Can We Get to Mars?/Is There Life on Mars? (April 30, 1954)