S. Buddingh' Bücher

Contents: 7 · The Alley Man · na F&SF Jun ’59 54 · The Captain’s Daughter [“Strange Compulsion”] · na Science Fiction Plus Oct ’53 112 · The God Business · na Beyond Fantasy Fiction Mar ’54

Imagine Aliens making first contact...and mankind going mad. Crazy like foxes in a well-stuffed henhouse. Alien technology to be had for nothing, technology that so outstrips ours that we don't understand what it means still less how it works.Enter Algernon Hebster, head of Hebster Securities and the only businessman to see the Aliens for the babes in the woods they are. Imagine trading permanently spotless, sanitary surface-making technology for blueprints of the Empire State Building and a hundred paperback copies of Moby-Dick! Who cares how it works? Who cares why they want what they want? Not Hebster when he can make a huge profit off the Aliens' trinkets.But Humanity First cares, and they care enough to mount a rebellion against Hebster and his uneasy allies in the world government United Mankind. What's a simple businessman to do when confronted by a lynch mob of zealots and a government inclined to watch while the mob does its worst?

The story takes place shortly after the invention of the matter transmitter. With this useful device, one can send anything and anyone from one place to another in no time, no matter where, as long as there is a receiver. It is, in a sense, radio transport. Of course, such a matter transmitter is very handy. But it is also very new... perhaps there are side effects. Who can say? In any case, not the people who suffer from it! They can no longer say anything at all. In their shadow realm, they are invisible, inaudible, intangible - completely imperceptible to the real world. Every transmission from the transmitter produces an echo, a shadow: a ghostly duplicate separates from everything that is sent. Thus, the shadow realm becomes increasingly crowded... To make matters worse, the shadow of Nathan Hansard makes the paralyzing discovery that Earth is threatened with total destruction from Mars. As a ghost, it will not be easy for him to avert the disaster!