Often, the themes Harrison explores are familiar ones: stories of robots bound by internal laws (“The Velvet Glove,” “Arm of the Law”), societal changes as a science (“The K-Factor”), and parallel universes (“Down to Earth”). But it’s his protagonists who, with their quick thinking and non-conformist moralities, take center stage.
Collected here are Harrison’s short stories that are currently known to have passed into the U.S. public domain, arranged in order of publication, with the exception of “The Stainless Steel Rat” and “The Misplaced Battleship” which were later combined to form the basis of the novel The Stainless Steel Rat.
This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.