The Martian Odyssey and Other SF by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Science Fiction, Adventure, Short Stories by Stanley G Weinbaum

The Martian Odyssey and Other SF by Stanley G. Weinbaum, Science Fiction, Adventure, Short Stories by Stanley G Weinbaum

A Martian Odyssey and Others is a collection of science fiction short stories by author Stanley G. Weinbaum. It was first published in 1949 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 3,158 copies. The stories originally appeared in the magazines Wonder Stories, Astounding and Thrilling Wonder Stories. The book you hold in your hands is a bit of that specialness.

Stanley G. Weinbaum is a figure who looms large in the history of SF: years before John W. Campbell began editing Astounding, he was writing stories that had much the same appeal. He came, in a real sense, out of nowhere -- not literally, but close to it. Most of the folks writing SF in the first years of the genre were folks who'd write any sort of pulp fiction for the pulps: westerns today, confessions tomorrow, mysteries on Thursdays, and oh, yes, scientificition on weekends. Weinbaum started out trying to be a writer of that stripe -- he managed to publish a women's serial called The Lady Dances through the King-Features newspaper syndicate in 1933, as Marge Stanley. A serial that's never been reprinted, much to universal regret.

But when the weekend came and he tried his hand at SF, something special happened. . . .

Stanley Grauman Weinbaum was an American science fiction author who lived from 1902 to 1935. His first story, A Martian Odyssey, was widely acclaimed when it was published in July 1934, but he died of lung disease less than a year later. He is best known for A Martian Odyssey, a landmark science fiction short story in which he introduced Tweel, a sympathetic but obviously non-human alien. This was also his first science fiction narrative (he had sold a romance book, The Lady Dances, to King Features Syndicate in 1933, and the story was syndicated in their newspapers in early 1934). Before John W. Campbell, Issac Asimov described A Martian Odyssey as a superb Campbellian science fiction narrative.