"The Curious Republic of Gondour" is a short story by Mark Twain. It concerns a visit by the unnamed narrator to a state in which all citizens are guaranteed at least one vote, but where up to eight further votes can be acquired through education - which is provided for free by the state - or by the acquisition of wealth (these votes being unlimited in number.) Furthermore, no one can rise to any public office without passing strenuous competitive examinations. Twain suggests that these measures will limit the political power of the lower classes, which he believes to be a desirable end.
Heinlein's Expanded Universe discusses the story, [1] though misspelling the toponym as "Gondor."
Nevil Shute proposed a similar multiple-vote scheme in his novel In the Wet ; however, he envisioned a maximum of seven votes per citizen, each tied to a particular personal attainment (military service, starting a business) except for the first and the seventh, the latter only granted as a special honor by the monarch.
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accuracy in his fiction, and was thus a pioneer of the subgenre of hard science fiction. His published works, both fiction and non-fiction, express admiration for competence and emphasize the value of critical thinking. His plots often posed provocative situations which challenged conventional social mores. His work continues to have an influence on the science-fiction genre, and on modern culture more generally.
Starship Troopers is a military science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. Written in a few weeks in reaction to the US suspending nuclear tests, the story was first published as a two-part serial in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction as Starship Soldier, and published as a book by G. P. Putnam's Sons on November 5, 1959.
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein about a lunar colony's revolt against absentee rule from Earth. The novel illustrates and discusses libertarian ideals. It is respected for its credible presentation of a comprehensively imagined future human society on both the Earth and the Moon.
"Blowups Happen" is a 1940 science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It is one of two stories in which Heinlein, using only public knowledge of nuclear fission, anticipated the actual development of nuclear technology a few years later. The other story is "Solution Unsatisfactory", which is concerned with a nuclear weapon, although it is only a radiological "dirty bomb", not a nuclear explosive device.
"Life-Line" is a short story by American author Robert A. Heinlein. Published in the August 1939 edition of Astounding, it was Heinlein's first published short story.
Spider Robinson is an American-born Canadian science fiction author. He has won a number of awards for his hard science fiction and humorous stories, including the Hugo Award 1977 and 1983, and another Hugo with his co-author and wife Jeanne Robinson in 1978.
The Lensman series is a series of science fiction novels by American author E. E. "Doc" Smith. It was a runner-up for the 1966 Hugo award for Best All-Time Series, losing to the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov.
A crossover is the placement of two or more otherwise discrete fictional characters, settings, or universes into the context of a single story. They can arise from legal agreements between the relevant copyright holders, common corporate ownership or unofficial efforts by fans.
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain. It was his first great success as a writer and brought him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley. The narrator describes him: "If he even seen a straddle bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to wherever he going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road."
Letters from the Earth is a posthumously published work of American author Mark Twain (1835–1910) collated by Bernard DeVoto. It comprises essays written during a difficult time in Twain's life (1904–1909), when he was deeply in debt and had recently lost his wife and one of his daughters. The content concerns morality and religion and strikes a tone that is sarcastic—Twain's own term throughout the book. Initially, Twain's sole surviving child, Clara Clemens, objected to its publication in March 1939, probably because of its controversial and iconoclastic views on religion, claiming it presented a "distorted" view of her father. Henry Nash Smith helped change her position in 1960. Clara explained her change of heart in 1962 saying that "Mark Twain belonged to the world" and that public opinion had become more tolerant. She was also influenced to release the papers by her annoyance with Soviet reports that her father's ideas were being suppressed in the United States. The papers were selected, edited and sequenced for the book in 1939 by Bernard DeVoto.
"Solution Unsatisfactory" is a 1941 science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. It describes the US effort to build a nuclear weapon in order to end the ongoing World War II, and its dystopian consequences to the nation and the world.
Sketches New and Old is a collection of short stories by Mark Twain. It was published in 1875. All the stories are fictional except for "The Case of George Fisher." It includes the short story "A Ghost Story", among others.
In the Wet is a novel by Nevil Shute that was first published in the United Kingdom in 1953. It contains many of the typical elements of a hearty and adventurous Shute yarn such as flying, the future, mystic states, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
Expanded Universe, The New Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein is a 1980 collection of stories and essays by American writer Robert A. Heinlein. The trade paperback 1981 edition lists the subtitle under other Heinlein books as More Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein because the contents subsume the 1966 Ace Books collection, The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein. The current volume is dedicated to William Targ.
The science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) was productive during a writing career that spanned the last 49 years of his life; the Robert A. Heinlein bibliography includes 32 novels, 59 short stories and 16 collections published during his life. Four films, two TV series, several episodes of a radio series, at least two songs and a board game derive more or less directly from his work. He wrote the screenplay for Destination Moon (1950). Heinlein also edited an anthology of other writers' science fiction short stories.
The Heinlein juveniles are the science-fiction novels written by Robert A. Heinlein for Scribner's young-adult line. Each features "a young male protagonist entering the adult world of conflict, decisions, and responsibilities." Together, they tell a loosely connected story of space exploration. Scribner's published the first 12 between 1947 and 1958, but rejected the 13th, Starship Troopers. That one was instead published by Putnam. A 14th novel, Podkayne of Mars, is sometimes listed as a "Heinlein juvenile", although Heinlein himself did not consider it to be one.
"Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon" is a science fiction short story by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in April and May 1949 in Boys' Life, a magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, who jointly hold copyright with Heinlein, dated 1976. The story is about a boy who tries to become an Eagle Scout on the Moon. It is approximately 30 pages long as collected in Expanded Universe (1980). The story was again collected in Off the Main Sequence (2005).
Luck is an 1886 short story by Mark Twain which was first published in 1891 in Harper's Magazine. It was subsequently reprinted in 1892 in the anthology Merry Tales; the first British publication was in 1900, in the collection The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg. It is one of Twain's more neglected stories, and received little critical attention upon its publication.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called the "Great American Novel," and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He also wrote poetry, short stories, essays, and non-fiction. His big break was "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1867).
A Robert Heinlein Omnibus was a second collection of Robert A Heinlein's stories to use the term "omnibus" the first being The Robert Heinlein Omnibus (1958), published in 1966. Containing fifteen of Heinlein's short stories and novellas, this second "Omnibus" represents a short chronological period, 1940 to 1950, of Heinlein's writings.