The Galaxy Project Series

A statistician attempts to make sense of a world gone mad in an apocalyptic sci-fi scenario from the Hugo Award–winning author of Starship Troopers.   Multiple Hugo Award winner Robert Heinlein earned countless fans, accolades, and honors with groundbreaking novels such as Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land. But it was shorter works like his brilliant novella, The Year of the Jackpot, that solidified Heinlein’s position among sci-fi’s greatest.   Potiphar Breen puts his trust in numbers to make sense of the world. An unassuming, middle-aged bachelor, he has been carefully noting a rise in odd behaviors all around him in order to determine some pattern or meaning in these bizarre recent events. Then one day, he comes upon a beautiful young woman at a bus stop who is taking off all her clothes.   Meade Barstow has no idea what compelled her to disrobe in public, and she is grateful when Potiphar comes along to save her from herself. Needing some time and a place to recuperate, she accompanies him home. Soon, a relationship develops that is warm, mutually supportive, and sane—in dramatic contrast to the growing madness of the world outside.   But “Potty’s” house won’t be a refuge forever. Because once Breen clearly identifies the cycle that humanity is undergoing, he and his newfound friend will have to run for their lives.   Originally published in the early 1950s, Heinlein’s The Year of the Jackpot is a story of love, trust, and volatile human nature that still retains its wonder and unique philosophical edge.

A groundbreaking science fiction novelette from the early days of Galaxy magazine—plus a new foreword by Paul Di Filippo.   Appearing in the second issue of Galaxy dated November 1950, Honeymoon in Hell showcased the magazine’s distinctive identity as opposed to other publications of its time—darker, more socially aware, sometimes sexually frank in ways that were shocking for the era. Dealing with copulation and its desired consequences, Honeymoon in Hell avoided euphemisms—and used a satirical attack that parodied magazine taboos.   The covers of pulp magazines depicted monsters putting near-naked females in peril, but the narratives under the cover offered no equivalent. Brown’s hastily married couple, sent to the moon to see if they can breed a male child—all births on Earth over recent months having been female—encounter problems emotional as well as practical. This book includes both the landmark novelette and a new foreword by Paul Di Filippo.   About the series:   Debuting in 1950, Galaxy was science fiction’s most admired, widely circulated, and influential magazine, known for publication of full-length novels, novellas, and novelettes by giants in the field. The Galaxy Project is a selection of the best of Galaxy, with new forewords by some of today’s top writers. Initial selections include work by Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Damon Knight, C. M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Robert Sheckley, Robert Silverberg, William Tenn (Philip Klass), and Kurt Vonnegut. Foreword contributors include Paul Di Filippo, David Drake, John Lutz, Barry N. Malzberg, and Robert Silverberg. The Galaxy Project is committed to publishing new work in the spirit of Galaxy magazine and its founding editor, H. L. Gold  

In this short science fiction story by the acclaimed author of Fahrenheit 451, an elderly woman in search of enlightenment buys a ticket on a rocket. “A Little Journey” (August 1951) marks Bradbury’s final contribution to the editorial decade of Horace Gold, the editor of Galaxy magazine. Like The Martian Chronicles and “The Fireman,” the story demonstrates Bradbury’s characteristic blending so early in his career of the sentimental and the transcendent, the homely and the mystical.  Bradbury’s old women in space and their strange outcome are reminiscent of his more famous story “Kaleidoscope” (published in The Illustrated Man) and its conclusion shows unusual if understated power. Bradbury’s “The Fireman” (the short-form version of Fahrenheit 451 which was doubled in length for its book publication in 1953) appeared in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy and further solidified Galaxy’s reputation, as a magazine of unprecedented originality and ambition. Gold’s commitment to the highly ambitious “The Fireman” was, then, courageous for its time and gave publicity to the editor’s insistence that Galaxy was an entirely new kind of science fiction magazine, one which was far more oriented toward style and controversial social extrapolation than the other markets ever had been. Although “The Fireman” and The Martian Chronicles had been published earlier to significant attention, Bradbury in 1951 was by no means a writer of substantial reputation, and his work was regarded by most science fiction editors and readers as marginal to the genre.

A robot controls a family’s diet with disturbing exactitude in this 1958 novella by the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author—with a new forward. Celebrated author Robert Silverberg was twenty-two years old when he wrote The Iron Chancellor, his second contribution to the pioneering science fiction magazine Galexy. It tells the story of a man who purchases a robot to help himself and his family lose weight. The scheme goes awry as the robot assumes totalitarian control over the household. This early work demonstrates Silverberg’s prodigious talent as well as his influences, such as Henry Kuttner’s Gallegher stories and Robert Sheckley’s AAA Ace Series. Fans of Silverberg’s renowned novels, such as Sailing to Byzantium and Gilgamesh in the Outback, will enjoy this early work by the SFWA Grand Master.