Martin Gardner

A simplified version of the story of the little girl carried by a tornado to Oz, where she is befriended by three unusual creatures.

Introduction - essay by Martin H. Greenberg Don't Look Now - short story by Henry Kuttner He Walked Around the Horses - novelette by H. Beam Piper The Strange Case of John Kingman - short story by Murray Leinster That Only a Mother - short story by Judith Merril The Monster - short story by A. E. van Vogt Dreams Are Sacred - novelette by Peter Phillips Mars Is Heaven! - short story by Ray Bradbury Thang - short story by Martin Gardner Brooklyn Project - short story by William Tenn Ring Around the Redhead - short story by John D. MacDonald Period Piece - short story by John R. Pierce [as by J. J. Coupling] Dormant - short story by A. E. van Vogt In Hiding - novelette by Wilmar H. Shiras Knock - short story by Fredric Brown A Child Is Crying - short story by John D. MacDonald Late Night Final - novelette by Eric Frank Russell

General rules of behavior are prescribed in twenty poems on such topics as sharing toys, being neat, and saying "please."

The seven-decade-long sweep of Martin Gardner's career is one of the most extraordinary in the history of twentieth-century thought. A gentle muse, Gardner began publishing articles on philosophy, literature, science, and mathematics in the late 1930s, while at the University of Chicago. He has since become one of America's most prolific and accomplished writers, tackling seemingly unanswerable questions from quantum physics to the existence of God. The fourty-seven essays in The Night Is Large have been culled by Gardner from the broad scope of his career, and form the most ambitious collection he has ever attempted. Ranging from philosophy to religion, mathematics to pseudoscience, these challenging, coruscating musings - each with a new introduction - represent Gardner at his skeptical best. His crowning achievement and a work of profound significance, The Night Is Large places Martin Gardner at the heart of American intellectual culture.

A collection of sequels, parodies, and imitations of Clement Moore's immortal ballad about Santa Claus.

"Solving these riddles is not simply a matter of logic and calculation, though these play a role. Luck and inspiration are factors as well, so beginners and experts alike may profitably exercise their wits on Gardner's problems, whose subjects range from geometry to word play to questions relating to physics and geology. We guarantee that you will solve some of these riddles, be stumped by others, and be amused by almost all of the stories and settings that Gardner has devised to raise these questions."--Back cover.

From where does the difference between left and right come? Is it a fundamental property of the universe, or is it arbitrary?