The Short Fiction of Walter M. Miller Jr.
Walter M. Miller Jr. wrote most of these stories in the early 1950s, a few years before the novel that made his name, A Canticle for Leibowitz. The collection gathers the short science fiction he published in the pulp magazines of that decade, work preoccupied with conscience, guilt, and what people owe the things they create. In “Conditionally Human,” a man whose job is to destroy surplus genetically engineered pets is forced to ask where humanity really begins. Other stories reach toward faith, machinery gone strange, and lives remade by technology. Miller writes with a moral seriousness unusual for the genre in his day, and these pieces show the imagination that would soon produce a lasting classic. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.
