Planet Killers

This trio of early short novels by Grand Master Robert Silverberg is straight-up pulp science fiction at its finest As a young man, Robert Silverberg was a science fiction prodigy, turning out top-flight stories in the blink of an eye. Though written quickly, Silverberg s early prose already showed evidence of the literary and imaginative qualities that would make him a giant in the field. Here are three of his best early works. In"The Planet Killers," after Earth s supercomputer calculates that the inhabitants of the planet Lurion will destroy Earth in sixty-seven years, Roy Gardner is sent to stop them by any means necessary. In"The Plot Against Earth," Special Investigator Lloyd Catton s efforts to crack a ring of hypnojewel traffickers uncovers a galaxy-wide conspiracy. And in"One of Our Asteroids Is Missing," when miner John Storm stakes claim to an asteroid with a king s ransom of rare minerals, he s set for life or would be, if his discovery didn t also mark him for death."