Scientists Do Science in Space (Ed Reads Short Sci-fi, vol. VII)

Six stories of strange minds, deadlier ambitions, and the price of reaching for the stars. Rog Phillips kicks things off with "The Cyberene," a diabolical brainscheme to rewrite history itself. George O. Smith's "Amateur in Chancery" sends a rescue team into linguistic nightmare, where the nature of language itself becomes the obstacle. Peter Schuyler Miller asks the question nobody wanted answered: what if plants could make love? Vaughn Shelton turns the design of interstellar travel into a murder mystery. Algis Budrys gives us a vendor of dreams who can imagine infinite worlds but cannot see his own truth. And Walt Sheldon's "The Shrine" slips characters free from time's grip, if only they dare stay. These are pulp-era tales written when science fiction still felt dangerous, when writers dared to ask what consciousness really is, what language costs us, and whether humanity deserves the stars it's fighting to reach.