At The World’s End: Six Classic Sci-Fi Short Stories - E-book - ePub

Empathy - A man with psychic and empathetic powers decides that the fragile and topsy-turvy state of the union is about to collapse, so he devises a plan to fix it. This is a thought-provoking, near future science fiction short story. Raymond The Automatic House - A surviving government official after a worldwide upheaval manages to escape a ravaging mob and then stumbles across a self-contained automatic house set in a remote area of woods.
What he didn't expect was its lone inhabitant. Help Wanted - A large mall springs up seemingly overnight in place of an apple orchard and suddenly; the number of stores inside intrigues the townspeople. Most advertise for Help Wanted and several of the locals apply. The startling thing is that that all of the shopkeepers seem to know about the applicants even before they open their mouths. This is a classic Sci-Fi story suitable for any age, in the vein of the Old Masters of Sci-Fi.
Many of the townspeople will reunite here after losing track of each other. Two Idiots From Earth - A government official on a planet currently at war with earth, finds two supposed spies at a bar and suspects they are Terran agents. They are pretty 'dense' and after grilling them for a period of time, he follows up on a couple of tips they give him and their supposedly real reason for being on the planet.
However, things change suddenly for the official and his planet as the situation heats up. The Pied Piper of Spring - A galactic tinkerer is called to a small settlement on the planet known as Wesson, to take care of the rat population, which has exploded in the Spring. The inhabitants are pacifist vegetarians and when the tinkerer finds out how they have previously taken care of the problem, he is horrified.
Weather Modification Sucks - A man with a restaurant on top of a hill worries about what will happen when local officials try to control the weather. He finds out much sooner than expected.