THE BLACK STAR PASSES
THE BLACK STAR PASSES
Copyright, 1953, by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Copyright, 1930, by Experimenter Publications, Inc.
An Ace Book, by arrangement with the author.
Cover art by Jerome Podwil.
Printed in U.S.A.
THREE AGAINST THE STARS
A sky pirate armed with superior weapons of his own invention....
First contact with an alien race dangerous enough to threaten thesafety of two planets....
The arrival of an unseen dark sun whose attendant marauders aimed atthe very end of civilization in this Solar System....
These were the three challenges that tested the skill and minds ofthe brilliant team of scientist-astronauts Arcot, Wade, and Morey. Theirinitial adventures are a classic of science-fiction which first broughtthe name of their author, John W. Campbell, into prominence as a masterof the inventive imagination.
JOHN W. CAMPBELL first started writing in 1930 when his firstshort story, When the Atoms Failed, was accepted by ascience-fiction magazine. At that time he was twenty years old and stilla student at college. As the title of the story indicates, he was evenat that time occupied with the significance of atomic energy and nuclearphysics.
For the next seven years, Campbell, bolstered by a scientificbackground that ran from childhood experiments, to study at DukeUniversity and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote and soldscience-fiction, achieving for himself an enviable reputation in thefield.
In 1937 he became the editor of Astounding Stories magazineand applied himself at once to the task of bettering the magazine andthe field of s-f writing in general. His influence on science-fictionsince then cannot be underestimated. Today he still remains as theeditor of that magazine's evolved and redesignedsuccessor, Analog.
Contents
- Introduction 7
- BOOK ONE
- Piracy Preferred 11
- BOOK TWO
- Solarite 71
- BOOK THREE
- The Black Star Passes 145
[Pg. 7]
INTRODUCTION
These stories were written nearly a quarter of a century ago, for theold Amazing Stories magazine. The essence of any magazine is notits name, but its philosophy, its purpose. That old AmazingStories is long since gone; the magazine of the same name today isas different as the times today are different from the world of1930.
Science-fiction was new, in 1930; atomic energy was a dream webelieved in, and space-travel was something we tried to understandbetter. Today, science-fiction has become a broad field, atomicenergy—despite the feelings of many present adults!—is nodream. (Nor is it a nightmare; it is simply a fact, and calling it anightmare is another form of effort to push it out of reality.)
In 1930, the only audience for science-ficti