Collects eight of Kornbluth's classic science fiction stories.

"The United States is the only nation in the world in which political leaders, judges and soldiers all swear allegiance not to a king or a people but to a document, the Constitution. The Constitution today, however, is much revered but little read. . Readers of AMERICAN EPIC will never think of the Constitution in quite the same way again. Garrett Epps, a legal scholar who is also a journalist and writer of prize-winning fiction, takes readers on a literary tour of the Constitution, finding in it much that is interesting, puzzling, praiseworthy, and sometimes hilarious. Reading the Constitution like a literary work yields a host of meanings that shed new light on what it means to be an American"--

It is the 20th Century, an advertisement-drenched world in which the big ad agencies dominate governments and everything else. Now Schoken Associates, one of the big players, has a new challenge for star copywriter Mitch Courtenay. Volunteers are needed to colonise Venus. It's a hellhole, and nobody who knew anything about it would dream of signing up. But by the time Mitch has finished, they will be queuing to get on board the spaceships.

Cyril Kornbluth is a legendary figure in science fiction. As a teenager in the years before World War II, he wrote prolifically and brilliantly under multiple pennames. After military service he developed a voice distinctive for its commanding intelligence, passion, and wit, displaying it in a string of novels and short stories including his award-winning "The Little Black Bag." His sudden death in 1958, at the early age of 35, marked the end of an era--it was a time when his chosen literary field was contemplating its potential demise. This comprehensive biography tells the story of this remarkable writer and his works for the first time.

Each essay in the book seeks to answer the question "Why did America win the revolutionary war?"

“WE’RE GOING TO FIND OUT MORE, AND THEN WE’RE GOING TO FIGHT! It was enough to curdle the blood. Haendl was proposing to fight—against the invulnerable, the almost godlike Pyramids! Haendl stood up. “Tropile, that’s what this is all about!” He gestured around him. “Guns, tanks, airplanes—it’s going to be us against them. Never mind the Sheep; they don’t count. It’s going to be Pyramids and Wolves, and the Pyramids won’t win. And then—” He was glowing, and the fever was contagious. Tropile felt his own blood begin to pound. Haendl hadn’t finished his “and then—”, but he didn’t have to. It was obvious. And then the Earth would go back to its own solar system, and an end to the five-year cycle of frost and hunger. And then the Wolves would rule a world worth ruling. This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

"The Marching Morons" is a look at a far future in which the world's population consists of five billion idiots and a few million geniuses – the precarious minority of the "elite" working desperately to keep things running behind the scenes. "The Marching Morons" is a direct sequel to "The Little Black Bag": it is easy to miss this, as "Bag" is set in the contemporary present while "Morons" takes place several centuries from now, and there is no character that appears in both stories. The titular black bag in the first story is actually an artifact from the time period of "The Marching Morons": a medical kit filled with self-driven instruments enabling a far-future moron to "play doctor". A future Earth similar to "The Marching Morons" – a civilization of morons protected by a small minority of hidden geniuses – is used again in the final stages of "Search the Sky".

Professor Konrad Leuten, author of the bestselling bookFunctional Epistemology is on a dangerous mission to undo the work of one reader who has taken his theories a little too far. His defense? Stand on one leg and thumb his nose.

This will be the basic tool for researchers studying the 100-year history of science fiction, fantasy, and weird fiction magazines. Reference Books Bulletin