Audiobooks Narrated by Scott Miller

Never Trust A Thief!

Never Trust A Thief! by Robert Silverberg - Kiley felt all-powerful with the alien guiding him in the looting of a world. Now the whole galaxy was his if he could remember to—Never Trust A Thief! Kiley took one last, fond look at the glittering heap of jewels in the back of the spaceship, nodded happily to himself, and began to set up a blastoff orbit. Somewhere down on the field far below, he could see dot-like figures—spaceport attendants, all firmly convinced that this was an authorized flight. He chuckled. This is the right way to pull a job, he thought contentedly. Hypnotize 'em silly and then walk in and take what you want. His fingers skipped lightly over the control panel as he readied the ship for blastoff. For the first time in his life he felt truly happy. Two million stellors of rare gems in the back of the ship, and even after cutting Thaklaru in for his share, that still left a million. A million stellors! Lord, that sounded good! Well, Kiley, are you going to spend all day dreaming? I'm waiting for you! The rolling thunder of Thaklaru's voice in Kiley's mind jolted him back to reality. 'I'm on my way,' he said out loud, knowing that the alien was listening. 'I've got the stuff, and I'll be there before you know it.' Good. I'm anxious to see those jewels. 'Don't worry about it, Thaklaru.'

Robert Silverberg (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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The Moon That Vanished

The Moon That Vanished by Leigh Brackett - A fallen satellite of the Planet Venus is the lure which leads three hunted beings to the mysterious island of smiling death! The stranger was talking about him—the tall stranger who was a long way from his native uplands, who wore plain leather and did not belong in this swamp-coast village. He was asking questions, talking, watching. David Heath knew that, in the same detached way in which he realized that he was in Kalruna's dingy Palace of All Possible Delights, that he was very drunk but not nearly drunk enough, that he would never be drunk enough and that presently, when he passed out, he would be tossed over the back railing into the mud, where he might drown or sleep it off as he pleased. Heath did not care. The dead and the mad do not care. He lay without moving on the native hide-frame cot, the leather mask covering the lower part of his face, and breathed the warm golden vapour that bubbled in a narghil-like bowl beside him. Breathed, and tried to sleep, and could not. He did not close his eyes. Only when he became unconscious would he do that. There would be a moment he could not avoid, just before his drugged brain slipped over the edge into oblivion, when he would no longer be able to see anything but the haunted darkness of his own mind, and that moment would seem like all eternity. But afterward, for a few hours, he would find peace. Until then he would watch, from his dark corner, the life that went on in the Palace of All Possible Delights. Heath rolled his head slightly. By his shoulder, clinging with its hooked claws to the cot frame, a little bright-scaled dragon crouched and met his glance with jewel-red eyes in which there were peculiar sympathy and intelligence. Heath smiled and settled back. A nervous spasm shook him but the drug had relaxed him so that it was not severe and passed off quickly.

Leigh Brackett (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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Everest

Everest by Isaac Asimov - Perhaps you’ve read how Everest has now been climbed? But have you heard of Planetary Survey? Here’s the real truth about it. (Everest has been climbed twice) In 1952 they were about ready to give up trying to climb Mt. Everest. It was the photographs that kept them going. As photographs go, they weren’t much; fuzzy, streaked and with just dark blobs against the white to be interested in. But those dark blobs were living creatures. The men swore to it. I said, “What the hell, they’ve been talking about creatures skidding along the Everest glaciers for forty years. It’s about time we did something about it.” Jimmy Robbons (pardon me, James Abram Robbons) was the one who pushed me into that position. He was always nuts on mountain climbing, you see. He was the one who knew all about how the Tibetans wouldn’t go near Everest because it was the mountain of the gods, he could quote me every mysterious manlike footprint ever reported in the ice 25,000 feet up, he knew by heart every tall story about the spindly white creatures, speeding along the crags just over the last heart-breaking camp which the climbers had managed to establish. It’s good to have one enthusiastic creature of the sort at Planetary Survey headquarters.

Isaac Asimov (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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Aliens and Nothing But Aliens 3

Aliens and Nothing But Aliens 3 - Sixteen Lost Sci-Fi Short Stories from the 1940s, 50s and 60s - Strange Eden by Philip K. Dick - From Outer Space by Robert Zacks - Planet of the Angry Giants by Robert Silverberg - The Guest Rites by Robert Silverberg - The Star Mouse by Fredric Brown - And Then—The Silence by Ray Bradbury - Duel on Syrtis by Poul Anderson - Earthmen Bearing Gifts by Fredric Brown - Welcome Martians by Evan Hunter - Guest Expert by Allen K. Lang - The Eater of Souls by Henry Kuttner - Message From Mars by Clifford D. Simak - The Pause by Isaac Asimov - The Call From Beyond by Clifford D. Simak - The World That Couldn't Be by Clifford D. Simak - The Sky Was Full of Ships by Theodore Sturgeon

Allen K. Lang, Clifford D. Simak, Evan Hunter, Fredric Brown, Henry Kuttner, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Robert Silverberg, Robert Zacks, Theodore Sturgeon (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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The Night Shift

The Night Shift by Frank M. Robinson - Werewolves are supposed to haunt lonely, back-country roads. That seems a little silly, when you consider that most beasts of prey go where the game is thickest. Now at night, in the larger cities… I sat there letting the smoke drift out of my nostrils and running my fingers idly over the typewriter keys. The ideas weren’t coming tonight; I couldn’t concentrate. I’d start to think and my mind would twist away, as if it was tired of working and wanted to relax and think about the movies or what was on TV or what I had for supper that night. The paper in my typewriter was discouragingly blank except for the heading: The Night Shift, by Nick Golata. There wasn’t anything underneath it and I didn’t have any idea of what should go there. I took another drag on my cigarette, opened the window a little, and flicked it out, watching the tiny red ember fall through the night to the empty streets twenty stories down. The column was usually a natural for ideas. What goes on in Chicago after dark, when all the eight-to-fivers have gone to bed and the rest of humanity congregates in small, neighborhood bars or the big movie palaces downtown or scrubs its lonely way down the miles of corridors in deserted office buildings. I filled my lungs with the cold, clean air and looked out over the city at night, a sea of blackness spotted here and there with the glare of neon and threaded with shining catwalks of strings of street-lamps. The city grows on you, like an old typewriter or a faithful automobile. You fall in love with the bright lights and the rumble of the ancient elevated and the characters who work the night shift downtown. It was mine, I thought, all mine. The darkness and the shadows and the few people on the deserted sidewalks. I took one last look and then closed the window. This was going to be one of those nights when I had to call Sammy Baxa for material.

Frank M. Robinson (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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The World That Couldn't Be

The World That Couldn't Be by Clifford D. Simak - Like every farmer on every planet, Duncan had to hunt down anything that damaged his crops—even though he was aware this was—The World That Couldn’t Be The tracks went up one row and down another, and in those rows the vua plants had been sheared off an inch or two above the ground. The raider had been methodical; it had not wandered about haphazardly, but had done an efficient job of harvesting the first ten rows on the west side of the field. Then, having eaten its fill, it had angled off into the bush—and that had not been long ago, for the soil still trickled down into the great pug marks, sunk deep into the finely cultivated loam. Somewhere a sawmill bird was whirring through a log, and down in one of the thorn-choked ravines, a choir of chatterers was clicking through a ghastly morning song. It was going to be a scorcher of a day. Already the smell of desiccated dust was rising from the ground and the glare of the newly risen sun was dancing off the bright leaves of the hula-trees, making it appear as if the bush were filled with a million flashing mirrors. Gavin Duncan hauled a red bandanna from his pocket and mopped his face. 'No, mister,' pleaded Zikkara, the native foreman of the farm. 'You cannot do it, mister. You do not hunt a Cytha.' 'The hell I don't,' said Duncan, but he spoke in English and not the native tongue. He stared out across the bush, a flat expanse of sun-cured grass interspersed with thickets of hula-scrub and thorn and occasional groves of trees, criss-crossed by treacherous ravines and spotted with infrequent waterholes. It would be murderous out there, he told himself, but it shouldn't take too long. The beast probably would lay up shortly after its pre-dawn feeding and he'd overhaul it in an hour or two. But if he failed to overhaul it, then he must keep on.

Clifford D. Simak (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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Living Space

Living Space by Isaac Asimov - Having mastered probability lanes, man found an indefinite number of Earths—and everyone could have a planet all to himself, if he wanted. But there was one joker in the deal... Clarence Rimbro had no objections to living in the only house on an uninhabited planet, any more than had any other of Earth’s even trillion of inhabitants. If someone had questioned him concerning possible objections, he would undoubtedly have stared blankly at the questioner. His house was much larger than any house could possibly be on Earthproper, and much more modern. It had its independent air-supply and water-supply; ample food in its freezing compartments. It was isolated from the lifeless planet on which it was located by a force-field, but the rooms were built about a five-acre farm (under glass, of course) which, in the planet’s beneficient sunlight, grew flowers for pleasure and vegetables for health. It even supported a few chickens. It gave Mrs. Rimbro something to do with herself afternoons, and a place for the two little Rimbros to play when they were tired of indoors. Furthermore, if one wanted to be on Earth-proper; if one insisted on it; if one had to have people around, and air one could breathe in the open, or water to swim in — one had only to go out of the front door of the house. So where was the difficulty?

Isaac Asimov (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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Before Eden

Before Eden by Arthur C. Clarke - Venus wasn't the virgin planet Mankind had always assumed. It was simply that we got there too soon. 'I guess,' said Jerry Garfield, cutting the engines, 'that this is the end of the line.' With a gentle sigh, the underjets faded out; deprived of its air-cushion, the scout-car Rambling Wreck settled down upon the twisted rocks of the Hesperian Plateau. There was no way forward; neither on its jets nor its tractors could S.5—to give the Wreck its official name—scale the escarpment that lay ahead. The South Pole of Venus was only thirty miles away, but it might have , been on another planet. They would have to turn back, and retrace their four-hundred-mile journey through this nightmare landscape. The weather was fantastically clear, with visibility of almost a thousand yards. There was no need of radar to show the cliffs ahead; for once, the naked eye was good enough. The green auroral light, filtering down through clouds that had rolled unbroken for a million years, gave the scene an underwater appearance, and the way in which all distant objects blurred into the haze added to the impression. Sometimes it was easy to believe that they were driving across a shallow sea-bed, and more than once Jerry had imagined that he had seen fish floating overhead. 'Shall I call the ship, and say we’re turning back?' he asked. 'Not yet,' said Dr. Hutchins. 'I want to think.' Jerry shot an appealing glance at the third member of the crew, but found no moral support there. Coleman was just as bad; although the two men argued furiously half the time, they were both scientists and therefore, in the opinion of a hard-headed engineer-navigator, not wholly responsible citizens. If Cole and Hutch had bright ideas about going forward, there was nothing he could do except register a protest.

Arthur C. Clarke (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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The Call From Beyond

The Call From Beyond by Clifford D. Simak - Alone, accursed, he set out on the long, dark voyage to the forbidden gateway to worlds beyond life itself—restless forever with an ultimate knowledge, possessing which no man could die! The pyramid was built of bottles, hundreds of bottles that flashed and glinted as if with living fire, picking up and breaking up the misty light that filtered from the distant sun and still more distant stars. Frederick West took a slow step forward, away from the open port of his tiny ship. He shook his head and shut his eyes and opened them again and the pyramid was still there. So it was no figment, as he had feared, of his imagination, born in the darkness and the loneliness of his flight from Earth. It was there and it was a crazy thing. Crazy because it should not be there, at all. There should be nothing here on this almost unknown slab of tumbling stone and metal. For no one lived on Pluto's moon. No one ever visited Pluto's moon. Even he, himself, hadn't intended to until, circling it to have a look before going on to Pluto, he had seen that brief flash of light, as if someone might be signaling. It had been the pyramid, of course. He knew that now. The stacked-up bottles catching and reflecting light. Behind the pyramid stood a space hut, squatted down among the jagged boulders. But there was no movement, no sign of life. No one was tumbling out of the entrance lock to welcome him. And that was strange, he thought. For visitors must be rare, if, indeed, they came at all. Perhaps the pyramid really was a signaling device, although it would be a clumsy way of signaling. More likely a madman's caprice. Come to think of it, anyone who was sufficiently deranged to live on Pluto's moon would be a fitting architect for a pyramid of bottles.

Clifford D. Simak (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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The Thing Behind Hell's Door

The Thing Behind Hell's Door by Robert Silverberg - It seemed to be human... but it was inside out, all its organs exposed... the heart beating, the lungs breathing, the stomach digesting... and now, the Thing began to come toward him... its mouth working hideously! The room was small and obviously hadn't seen a fresh coat of paint in last decade, but Robert Harris decided it wasn't bad for the price. And he needed a to stay. A place where he could study without being disturbed. The landlady stood behind him, a withered crone who, like the room, had a faintly musty odor. She grinned, showing the puckered redness of her toothless gums. Her teeth, Robert thought sourly, were probably downstairs in a glass of water. 'Like it?' she asked in her hoarse croak of a voice, eagerly. 'It's–very nice,' Robert said without enthusiasm. A twelve–by–fourteen room, a rickety bed, a dirty window whose g'ass was so warped he could hardly see through it, a single tiny closet–it wasn't much of a room at all. But he couldn't argue with a price of six bucks a week. Until he found work here in San Francisco, he was going to have to practice economies. Cheap eating-places, cheap movies, cheap hotel rooms. The landlady—Mrs. Garvey, that was her name—walked to the window. Dust was thick enough to draw pictures in on the pane. 'Lovely view you have from here,' she gabbled, indicating the fog-bound street with het twisted forefinger, Robert smiled and nodded. The view was of the other side of the street, a dozen close–packed old ramshackle houses just like this one, here in San Francisco's North Beach district. Some view. Robert shrugged. For six bucks a week, what did the view matter?

Robert Silverberg (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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The Voice In The Night

The Voice In The Night by William Hope Hodgson It was a dark, starless night. We were becalmed in the Northern Pacific. Our exact position I do not know; for the sun had been hidden during the course of a weary, breathless week, by a thin haze which had seemed to float above us, about the height of our mastheads, at whiles descending and shrouding the surrounding sea. With there being no wind, we had steadied the tiller, and I was the only man on deck. The crew, consisting of two men and a boy, were sleeping forward in their den, while Will-my friend, and the master of our little craft-was aft in his bunk on the port side of the little cabin. Suddenly, from out of the surrounding darkness, there came a hail: “Schooner, ahoy!” The cry was so unexpected that I gave no immediate answer, because of my surprise. It came again-a voice curiously throaty and inhuman, calling from somewhere upon the dark sea away on our port broadside: “Schooner, ahoy!” “Hullo!” I sung out, having gathered my wits somewhat. “What are you? What do you want?”

William Hope Hodgson (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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The Red Room

The Red Room by H. G. Wells - He was told the brightly colored red room in Lorraine Castle was haunted. Despite vague warnings from the three custodians who reside in the castle, he is not a believer in such things and ascends to 'the Red Room' to begin his night's vigil. “I can assure you,” said I, “that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me.” And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand. “It is your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm, and glanced at me askance. “Eight-and-twenty years,” said I, “I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet.” The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open. “Ay,” she broke in; “and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There’s a many things to see, when one’s still but eight-and-twenty.” She swayed her head slowly from side to side. “A many things to see and sorrow for.” I half suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual terrors of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my empty glass on the table and looked about the room, and caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness, in the queer old mirror at the end of the room. “Well,” I said, “if I see anything to-night, I shall be so much the wiser. For I come to the business with an open mind.” “It’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm once more. I heard the faint sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside. The door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself by the help of a crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth.

H.G. Wells (Author), Scott Miller (Narrator)

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