C.L. Moore
No Woman Born (1944): In this novella, a famed dancer’s brain is transferred to a cybernetic body in this exploration of identity and consciousness.
Vintage Season (1946): A landlord grows suspicious of the three strangers renting his house. They turn out to be time travelers who visit past disasters for entertainment. A collaboration with husband Henry Kuttner published under the pseudonym Lawrence O’Donnell.
Shambleau (1933): A roguish space smuggler saves the life of a cat-like woman. But the damsel-in-seeming-distress hides a dark secret in this short tale of cosmic horror written by Moore when she was only 22.
Judgment Night (1943): The title novella of this collection is a military space opera that sees an emperor’s daughter fight to stave off a revolution that threatens a galactic empire.
Cordwainer Smith
“Scanners Live in Vain” (1950): His debut masterpiece and considered one of the most influential sci-fi stories ever written, this foray into existential dread and body horror introduces the Scanners – humans who have had their nervous systems severed from their bodies in order to survive “The Great Pain of Space”.
Nostrilia (1975): His only novel tells the tale of a 16-year-old farm boy who uses a computer to manipulate the galactic futures market to buy Earth. At turns satirical, thought-provoking, and very weird.
“The Ballad of Lost C’Mell” (1962): A Hugo Award nominated story about the struggle of the Underpeople (animals genetically modified into human form) against their cold rulers, The Lords of Instrumentality.
“A Planet Named Shayol” (1961): Set on a penal colony where prisoners are subjected to regenerative parasites in order to harvest their organs, this one is a nightmarish exploration of punishment, systemic exploitation, and redemption.
C.M. Kornbluth
The Space Merchants (1953): Co-written with the great Frederik Pohl, this satire on advertising, consumerism and corporate power depicts a future dystopia run by ad agencies. A star copywriter is tasked with selling the colonization of Venus to the public.
The Marching Morons (1951): This novelette is a dystopian satire on overpopulation, elite manipulation, and the general decline in intelligence. Its dark and arguably dated premise was a precursor to the film Idiocracy.
The Little Black Bag (1950): A medical bag from the future ends up in the hands of a washed-up alcoholic doctor. The ending is devastating. Another novelette in the shared universe of The Marching Morons.
“The Altar at Midnight” (1952): An atypically melancholic, character-driven short story about the human cost of spaceflight and technological progress as glimpsed through an encounter between a haunted older man and a young spacer at a skid-row bar.
Leave a Reply