Search Worlds Without End

After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home.

They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.

Contents of Tor Double:

• 1 - Introduction: Beauty, Stupidity, Injustice, and Science Fiction - essay by Damon Knight (variant of Beauty, Stupidity, Injustice, and Science Fiction 1990)
• 19 - Rule Golden - (1954) - novella by Damon Knight
• 103 - Double Meaning - (1953) - novella by Damon Knight Note: An expanded version of this story was published under the title "The Rithian Terror" by Ace Books(1965).

Rule Golden:

As a newspaper publisher, Robert James Dahls found the news disconcerting; in fact, inexplicable. News items like two boxers simultaneously knocking each other out, prison guards sick and unable to guard the prisoners, policemen shooting fleeing culprits and collapsing themselves, battered wives with husbands suffering the same injuries that they inflicted.

Dahl catches wind of a large experimental facility that is being led by the U.S. Department of Defense. His suspicions coincide with the strange, beyond-coincidental behavior that he's been observing. For what's on the grounds of the facility is much more radical than anything that was claimed to be found in Roswell. Not just an alien but one that has a strange effect on the human race. Where the Golden Rule in reversed: Be done by as you do to others. How can we get along without conflict? What will happen to the human race? Dahl soon finds himself a fugitive helping a bizarre alien save or destroy the Earth!

Double Meaning:

A psychological thriller that follows an Earth security officer in the future who is racing against time to locate an alien spy.

First published in 1953, this is probably the first sci-fi book to feature a surveillance drone.