Collected Public Domain Works of Stanley G. Weinbaum

Stanley G. Weinbaum wrote for only eighteen months before cancer killed him at thirty-three. In that brief span, he fundamentally changed science fiction. His legendary story "A Martian Odyssey" introduced Tweel, an alien whose intelligence rivals humanity's but whose thought processes are genuinely alien - not humans in costume, but a mind that reasons, feels, and befriends in ways no Earthling could predict. In 1934, this was revolutionary. Most science fiction aliens were either monsters or Europeans in makeup. Weinbaum imagined something stranger: consciousness itself, transformed. This collection gathers his finest work, including that iconic Martian tale and its sequel, along with the satirical adventures of Haskel van Manderpootz - an irascible, egomaniacal physicist - and his former student, the wandering playboy Dixon Wells. These time-travel and adventure stories crackle with witty dialogue and pointed social commentary. Weinbaum's death at the height of his powers makes this volume feel like a tragedy: a writer who had already invented the future of his genre, then vanished.