Book detail for The Third Galaxy Reader

Cover tagline

Fifteen soaring, exciting, unpredictable stories about the world of outer space

Back cover text

Davis said, "You saw that, too, didn't you?"

"I'm scared," whimpered Oldbury.

"You saw it. You saw the hidden side of the Moon as we went past and you saw there wasn't any! Good Lord, just sticks, just big beams holding up six million square miles of canvas, I swear it, canvas!"

He laughed wildly until he choked into breathlessness. Then he said hoarsely, "For a million years mankind has been looking at the biggest false front ever dreamed of.

"But if we go back to Earth and say that the Moon is canvas propped up by wood, they'll kill us. Or maybe lock us up in a madhouse for life, if they feel kindhearted. That's why we mustn't say a word about this!"

What did they really see on the other side of the moon?

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Interior text

Will the conjectures in this anthology come about?

MAYBE — and maybe not.

But they haven't yet been proved untrue, and perhaps the best definitions ever devised for science fiction is: fiction based on scientific speculation that has not been proved untrue.

The stuff science fiction deals with has often come true in the past. Perhaps that is because science fiction deals with the impractical solutions. The writers of this fascinating stuff know the problems and know what won't work. So they try to image the untried techniques, the impossible hypotheses. Their stock in trade is premature ideas.

Increasingly, with the advance of science and the application of time and work and money, the impossible becomes reality. Yesterday, the horse and buggy. Tomorrow, a vehicle to take men to the moon. The day after, travel in interstellar space, hundreds of thousands of light-years away.

So maybe the conjectures in this fascinating anthology, originally published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., at $3.95, will come true. In any event, you will have a very stimulating brain message.