Showing results by narrator "Edward Miller" in All Categories

"The Thing in the Attic" is a sci-fi story by James B. Blish, published in 1954. "Honath and his fellow arch-doubters did not believe in the Giants, and for this they were cast into Hell. And when survival depended upon unwavering faith in their beliefs, they saw that there were Giants, after all..." A classic and exotic tale of survival against all odds and amongst - yes - real space giants!

"A Spaceship Named McGuire" is a sci-fi short story by Randall Garrett, published in 1961. This tale is kind of a mix between detective, sci-fi and thriller; as detective Daniel Oak investigates the possibly sabotaged "brain" of a spaceship (!) amongst spaceship big shots, criminals and ladies... Fun and exciting.

"The Knights of Arthur" by Frederik Pohl, published in 1958, is a humorous sci-fi tale. The sum total population of the entire U.S. is now less than 10,000(!) as the listener is taken on a wildly funny ride, an Arthurian quest, actually; but of a very eccentric nature indeed, as Arthur is an entity with very strong and particular opinions... without body and limbs, by the way.

"The Man Who Found Out (A Nightmare)" is a chilling horror short story. A researcher embarks upon an expedition to find "The Tablet of the Gods", which have haunted his dreams since his childhood. Our hero discovers more than he bargained for. A lot more.

This chilling masterpiece by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1841, has been recognized as the world's first modern detective story(!). C. Auguste Dupin is a man in Paris who tries to solve the mystery of the brutal murder of two women. Numerous witnesses heard a suspect, though no one agrees on what language was spoken. At the murder scene, Dupin finds a hair that does not appear to be human.

The Emperor's New Clothes is a story about two weavers who promise an emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent... The Emperor's ministers cannot see the clothes themselves, but pretend that they can for fear of appearing unfit for their positions and the Emperor does the same. Andersen altered the source tale to direct the focus on courtly pride and intellectual vanity. The tale has been translated into over 100 languages.

"The Happy Prince and Other Tales" (sometimes called "The Happy Prince and Other Stories") is a collection of stories for children by Oscar Wilde, first published in May 1888. It contains five stories: The Happy Prince, The Nightingale and the Rose, The Selfish Giant, The Devoted Friend, and The Remarkable Rocket... All of them are suffused with the author's world famous humor and intelligence; but also with fantastical elements such as a princely statue who can see, a heroic swallow and an actual giant!

"Sentiment, Inc." is a sci-fi short story by Poul William Anderson, published in 1957. The work chillingly explores themes of thought-manipulation in interpersonal relationships. What if you could control and alter associations and viewpoints of the human mind? What about the eventual consequences?

A spaceship is attacked by a mysterious sphere, a defense mechanism belonging to the planet that the spaceship has been surveying. The spaceship wins the battle with the sphere but is badly damaged, as well as the crew. They land on the strange planet for repairs and encounter humanoid life forms with advanced telepathic abilities. The humanoids seem friendly, but are they to be trusted ultimately...?

"I Was A Teen-Age Secret Weapon" is a very funny sci-fi story by Richard Sabia. A 1950's American teenager gets care-taking work at a psychological laboratory. In there, one scientist discovers that the teenager is the first human capable of causing others to be accident-prone, but that this is only possible in cases of crisis. The scientist sends our hero Dolliver Wims straight to War... recipe for hilarious disaster?

"The Jungle Book" is a wonderful collection of stories by world famous English author Rudyard Kipling. The original publications contain illustrations, some by the author's father, John Lockwood Kipling. The tales in the book are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The best-known of them are the three stories revolving around the adventures of Mowgli, an abandoned "man cub" who is raised by wolves in the Indian jungle.

"Tedric" is a sci-fi & fantasy novel by E. E. Smith, published in 1953. Tedric, our hero, is a smith (both blacksmith and whitesmith) residing in a small town near a castle in a situation approximately equivalent to England of the 1200s. He received instruction in advanced metallurgy from a time-traveler that wanted to change the situation in his own time by modifying certain events of the past. From this instruction he was able to build better suits of armor and help defeat the villains of the piece.

Mr. Spaceship is set in the distant future, where humanity is at war with "Yuks", an alien life form which does not use mechanical spaceships nor constructions. Instead, it relies on life forms. The war has been going on for a long time, and humanity has not been able to come up with a solution against the life form-based ships and mines that the Yuks use. One day, a team of researchers led by our hero Philip Kramer decides to build a spaceship which is powered by a human brain!

A sci-fi/war classic by the master Murray Leinster, published in 1930. Great sci-fi in the way Leinster guesses (or predicts) what will be a large part of future warfare... "The persistent, oily smell of fog-gas was everywhere, even in the little pill-box. Outside, all the world was blotted out by the thick gray mist that went rolling slowly across country with the breeze. The noises that came through it were curiously muted - fog-gas mutes all noises somewhat - but somewhere to the right artillery was pounding something with H E shell.

"A Slave Is a Slave" is a story by sci-fi master H. Beam Piper, published in 1962. A slave based society is overtaken by a bigger power that outlaws slavery... "Something everybody owns, nobody owns, Mykhyl Eschkhaffar objected. 'Oh, no, Mykhyl; it will belong to everybody,' KhreggorChmidd told him earnestly. 'But somebody will have to take care of it for everybody. That,' he added complacently, 'will be you and me and the rest of us here'." Thought provoking and exciting all at once!

"The K-Factor" is a sci-fi story by author Harry Harrison, published in 1960. A K-factor is a so called "war factor", more precisely a name of an atomic file that can be used in two ways, as with an atomic bomb. Neel Sidorak, our hero, and his team has to constantly guard Earth's safety, as Earth had settled quite a few planets... Thought provoking and entertaining in equal measure!

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is among the earliest examples of American fiction with enduring popularity, especially during the Halloween season. Very understandable indeed, with its amazingly chilling and atmospheric ambience. The story is set in 1790 in the countryside around the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town (New York), in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is renowned for its ghosts and the haunting atmosphere that pervades the imaginations of its inhabitants and visitors.

Two sci-fi stories by respected sci-fi author Robert Silverberg, "The Happy Unfortunate", published in 1957, and "The Hunted Heroes", published in 1956. Both stories pit humanity against severe odds for survival; both in space ("The Happy Unfortunate") and on ravaged Earth ("The Hunted Heroes").

"The Red Headed League" is one of the "Sherlock Holmes short stories" written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes faces here what on the surface is a harmless little puzzle: a mysterious league is helping and setting out to benefit men in London with unusually vivid red hair. Below the surface, though, lies something more sinister and complex.

Arnold Bennett offers practical advice on how one might live (as opposed to just existing) within the confines of 24 hours a day. "Which of us lives on twenty-four hours a day? And when I say 'lives,' I do not mean exists, nor 'muddles through.' Which of us is free from that uneasy feeling that the 'great spending departments' of his daily life are not managed as they ought to be? [...] Which of us is not saying to himself - which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: 'I shall alter that when I have a little more time'?