A Martian Odyssey: A Collection of Science Fiction Short Stories by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Stanley Grauman Weinbaum (April 4, 1902 - December 14, 1935) was an American author with a short, but influential, career in science fiction writing. His first science fiction story, "A Martian Odyssey", was published in 1934 to large (and continuing) praise. Sadly, Weinbaum died eighteen months after that from lung cancer. Weinbaum is still best known for his pioneering science fiction short story, "A Martian Odyssey", which introduces a sympathetic alien, Tweel. Weinbaum's interplanetary stories are set in a consistent solar system that was scientifically accurate by 1930s standards. Other science fiction short stories by Weinbaum deal with Dixon Wells, a playboy who runs afoul of the inventions of his friend and erstwhile tutor in "Newer Physics", Professor Haskel van Manderpootz, a boastful genius who rates Einstein as his intellectual equal (or even a bit inferior). In "The Worlds of If", Wells experiments with an invention that exposes what might have been; in "The Ideal", Manderpootz constructs a device that can show the image of someone's ideal (in Wells' case, his idea of a perfect woman); Manderpootz's invention in "The Point of View" allows one to see the world from someone else's perspective.