There has been a plethora of old SF/F published on Gutenberg this past week or so. Therefore, I am only going to publish a quicker bullet list with links rather than my usual pix + excerpts. Behold!

• The Pygmy Planet by Jack Williamson
• Foundling on Venus by Dorothy De Courcy and John De Courcy
• Mutineer by Robert Shea
• Dream Town by Henry Slesar
• Grove of the Unborn by Lyn Venable
• The Hammer of Thor by Charles Willard Diffin
• The Great Dome on Mercury by Arthur Leo Zagat
• The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Arm of the Law by Harry Harrison
• Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930
• Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930

@warrenellis tweeted earlier today:

Funny thing about Ray Bradbury: yes, he hates the internet, but he also hates tv, radio, and “New York intellectuals.” Liked Walt Disney.

Well, finally had an MRI last week to determine what is up with my right knee, and my doctor called yesterday to give me the news: small tear in the medial meniscus, a sprain in the medial collateral ligament (MCL), and a femoral bone bruise. Looking back, I’m almost positive it was from that fall on our stairs which I initially thought only hurt my back — but I twisted sideways as I landed and probably had my right leg planted.

Next will be a visit with an orthopedic doc to determine if I can just go do physical therapy rehab, or if I need surgery first. Knock on wood. From what I’ve read about it, I need to keep up the HI-RICE, do some exercise like walking and light cycling to keep up the healing blood flow, and just try to stay cognizant of how it’s feeling so I don’t overdo it and re-injure things.

Here’s a picture of the mother of all Wii accessories MRI machine, and then one of some unidentified internal portion of my knee, which may include an alien embryo.

“The Gun” by Philip K. Dick, from Planet Stories, September 1952.

Nothing moved or stirred. Everything was silent, dead. Only the gun showed signs of life … and the trespassers had wrecked that for all time. The return journey to pick up the treasure would be a cinch … they smiled.

“Shipwreck in the Sky” by Eando Binder, from Fantastic Universe, March 1954.

The flight was listed at GHQ as Project Songbird. It was sponsored by the Space Medicine Labs of the U.S. Air Force. And its pilot was Captain Dan Barstow.

A hand-picked man, Dan Barstow, chosen for the AF’s most important project of the year because he and his VX-3 had already broken all previous records set by hordes of V-2s, Navy Aerobees and anything else that flew the skyways.

Dan Barstow, first man to cross the sea of air and sight open, unlimited space. Pioneer flight to infinity. He grinned and hummed to himself as he settled down for the long jaunt. Too busy to be either thrilled or scared he considered the thirty-seven instruments he’d have to read, the twice that many records to keep, and the miles of camera film to run. He had been hand-picked and thoroughly conditioned to take it all without more than a ten percent increase in his pulse rate. So he worked as matter-of-factly as if he were down in the Gs Centrifuge of the Space Medicine Labs where he had been schooled for this trip for months.

“The Terror from the Depths” by Sewell Peaslee Wright, from Astounding Stories, November 1931.

“Good afternoon, sir,” nodded Correy as I entered the navigating room. He glanced down at the two glowing three-dimensional navigating charts, and drummed restlessly on the heavy frames.

“Afternoon, Mr. Correy. Anything of interest to report?”

“Not a thing, sir!” growled my fire-eating first officer. “I’m about ready to quit the Service and get a job on one of the passenger liners, just on the off chance that something exciting might eventually happen.”

“You were born a few centuries too late,” I chuckled. Correy loved a fight more than any man I ever knew. “The Universe has become pretty well quieted down.”

Bonus story

“Equation of Doom” by Gerald Vance, from Amazing Stories, February 1957.

They grounded Ramsey’s ship on a hostile planet hoping he would starve to death, so the first thing he did was give most of his money away and lose the rest gambling. Then he picked a fight with the Chief of Police and joined forces with a half-naked dream-chick who was seemingly bent on self-destruction. The stakes were big—a planet or two—but it all added up to an Equation of Doom.

Appropriately, having just finished reading 1984 for its 60th anniversary, comes this talk on how the net is tearing down social and political walls, and how the walls fight back.

While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.