“They”
A story perhaps best described as “The Truman Show Matrix.” About a mental patient who thinks that an artificial world has been constructed just for him. The paranoid delusion is ultimately revealed as true to the reader, though the man is never able to prove it himself.
“Life-Line”
What’s the earth-shattering result of a man who has invented a way to determine in advance the date of anyone’s death? Probably not what you think: the insurance industry is tossed into a panic.
“The Green Hills of Earth”
In retrospect, it becomes almost obvious that this story—in comparison to those published before it—represents Heinlein’s success at making the break from the science fiction only pulp magazines into the mainstream afforded by the enormous readership of the Saturday Evening Post. It is notably atypical and offbeat, less a science fiction story than a story that has been integrated into the science fiction genre. The story tells of a space traveler named Rhysling notable for his ribald poetry who is blinded in an accident and ultimately denied passage aboard ships.
“Requiem”
A man who accumulates great wealth as an essential component in the creation of space travel, but has never been into space himself wants to take a trip to the moon before he dies.
“The Man who Sold the Moon”
A story published after “Requiem” which details the earlier days of the same character and how he grew rich taking advantage of space travel as a commercial enterprise rather than a nationalized agency controlled by governments.
“All You Zombies—”
A very strange story involving time travel, hermaphrodism, travestism, and becoming one’s parent.
“Columbus was a Dope”
A couple of guys sitting around a bar talking about exploration and whether Columbus was a dope or not…turn out to be in a bar on Mars.
“Space Jockey”
A space soap opera. A muted tale of domestic tension between a rocket pilot shuttling passengers between the earth and the moon and his wife. Another example of a story that is less SF than a story fit into an SF narrative
“Gentlemen, Be Seated!”
An accident involving a pressure seal puts three men in jeopardy while they are inside a tunnel on the moon. The solution to their pressing problem literally engages the title of the story.
“And He Built a Crooked House”
A noted architect builds a very strange house; a four-dimensional tesseract cube that is expressed in three dimensions. An earthquake, however, unfolds the structure into all four dimensions. Those trapped inside at the time of the quake face a multidimensional world with seemingly no easy way back into the safety and comfort of the three-dimensional world they know.
“The Year of the Jackpot”
One of those stories written by Heinlein in the 1950’s that seemed out of context at the time and now seems prescient in its narrative that would have been more appropriate in the following decade. Behavior considered deviant when it was written and standard operating procedure fifteen years later collide with chaos theory to create an apocalyptic love story between a statistician and a nudist.
