Jack Sharkey
1) Minor Detail
Science fiction master Jack Sharkey spent several formative years working at the technology-oriented Sandia Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which at the time was the United States' top repository for nuclear weapons and research. The high level of secrecy and euphemistic double-talk influenced Sharkey's wryly dystopic vision of the military future, which is on full display in the short story Minor Detail.
In this classic short story from the golden age of science fiction, a down-on-his-luck writer is sent to Mars to get the inside scoop on the Red Planet. In the diary he keeps to document his first impressions, it becomes clear that interplanetary travel is not all it's cracked up to be. Fans of the genre will love this quirky, irreverent and imaginative tale.
The classic science-fiction short stories of Jack Sharkey are set apart by their quirky, irreverent tone. In the amusing tale Double or Nothing, wacky inventor Archie and his long-suffering investor Burt stumble across a technology that they're sure will be the next big thing. Needless to say, things don't go exactly as planned.
Humankind's excursion to the moon in the mid-twentieth century was hailed as a major technological achievement. In the version of events that unfolds in Jack Sharkey's tale Old Friends Are the Best, a souvenir of that renowned moonwalk is brought back to Earth—with dire and far-reaching consequences that no one could have predicted.