13
Basic Right by Eric Frank Russell. Previously identified as the answer to Short story about alien invasion with a twist.
However you have misremembered the star. It is Sigma Octantis not Sigma Draconis. The bit of the story where the alien home system is identified is:
Zalumar still had an ace up his sleeve; without giving them time to speak, he played ...
12
The first of those is probably “Common Time” by James Blish.
Garrard travels around the speed of light to reach Alpha Centauri.
However, instead of experiencing the same relativistic time as his
ship, his own time passes about two hours for every second on the
ship. Movement is impossible.
The second is almost certainly “Stranger Station” by Damon ...
12
I suspect you're looking for "There is a Tide" by Brian Aldiss, as per Searching for an old SF short story that features a plot twist involving white genocide. As noted in that answer, it's available in the Internet Archive to read.
I seemed to know what was coming as I stood in the crowded room, knowing Jubal dead, knowing the nation of Africa to be ...
12
It's likely that you're thinking of "The Exiles" by Ray Bradbury, originally published in 1949 and appearing in some of his well-known collections like The Illustrated Man and R Is for Rocket.
In the story, astronauts are approaching Mars for the first time. They are under a kind of psychic attack from various creatures of myth and fiction, which were for ...
12
This is "A Song for Lya" by the famous science fiction writer George RR Martin :).
The initiates start out with a little blob of parasite on them and roam the planet ringing bells. The parasite grows and eventually they join a vast mass of it in underground caves.
Also referenced in this old question: Story about living planet linked to skin lesions
11
The story is Beachcomber (1952) by Damon Knight, available at the Internet Archive; publication history at ISFDB.
It is not the galaxy but the whole Universe, but I don't think there are many stories with a man endlessly searching on a beach for a miniature cosmic object he somehow lost.
The Beachcomber made an impatient gesture. "You don’t think we ...
10
This is almost certainly Eric Frank Russell's short story "Legwork", published in Astounding Science Fiction, April 1956.
Vanash was a twenty-four carat hypno, jeweled in every hole. Given a thinking mind to work upon at any range up to most of a mile, he could convince it in a split second that black was white, right was wrong, the sun had turned bright ...
10
"Flight to Forever", a novella by Poul Anderson, which was also my (unaccepted) answer to this old question. First published in Super Science Stories, November 1950 (available at the Internet Archive), it has been reprinted a number of times; does any of these covers ring a bell?
The story matches your description fairly well, except that the protagonist ...
8
The looks to be "The Day of the Dragon" (ISFDB) by Guy Endore and first published in 1934, as per the guy looking for it here:
Hi, all. I'm looking for a short story in which a mad scientist type believes that crocodiles (or possibly alligators) are descended from dragons, and that he can force individuals to regress back into being dragons by ...
8
This is the Christopher Anvil story "The Plateau", originally published in the March 1965 issue of Amazing Stories and available to read at the Internet Archive. The magic device was called a "hydrofuser":
"What's a hydrofuser?"
"The basic tool of Science."
"The what?"
"There is no Science without hydrofusers. Hydrofusers are the basic
...
8
This is "Quest" by Lee Harding. It was originally published in New Worlds Science Fiction, April 1963. You can read it at the Internet Archive. If you read it in an anthology, it may have been Lambda I and Other Stories (1964) (reprinted in 1977).
The protagonist, Harry Johnston, starts out the story asking the Divisional Controller where he can find ...
7
I think this is Griffin's Egg by Michael Swanwick, which is a novella rather than short story. The encounter you're thinking of is:
The lady is Ekatarina Izmailova and she has a chip embedded in her neck that:
Her eyes were grey and solemn. “It hooks into the pleasure centers. When I need to, I can turn on my orgasm at a thought. That way we can always ...
7
Based on Organic Marble's suggestion, I checked out Tales from Gavagan's Bar, a collection of stories by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. This review described "Beasts of Bourbon" (the name sounded very familiar) as follows:
"Beasts of Bourbon" - Asian metaphysics, despondency and bender don't mix, as a man finds his DT figments manifesting in the ...
6
"Window", a short story by Bob Leman, first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1980, available at the Internet Archive. This famous story has been the subject of several questions on this site.
Scientists or mathematicians find a way to peer into an alternate dimension.
Sort of. The interdimensional portal was the accidental ...
6
I found the answer... on this scifi question.
It is Four Short Novels by Joe Haldeman. There's also an audio version narrated by Harlan Ellison.
6
This is "Quest" by Lee Harding. It was originally published in New Worlds Science Fiction, April 1963. You can read it at the Internet Archive. If you read it in an anthology, it may have been Lambda I and Other Stories (1964).
The protagonist, Harry Johnston, starts out the story talking to the Divisional Controller:
"Something real," he said. "...
6
"The Common Goal of Nature" by Michael F. Flynn
I found the text on archive.org and here are some excerpts:
Winterman nodded and liked his lips. He returned his gaze to the
window. He did not look directly at the Hraani, but at their
reflections in the glass. There was no way of telling how his
arguments were being received. The body language was ...
5
I think you are (mis)remembering a scene from the 1967 novel These Savage Futurians by Philip E. High, though it's possible the novel was derived from a previous short story that I don't know about. Alternatively the anthology might have had an excerpt from the novel. Whatever the case, a scene from chapter six in the novel is almost identical to your ...
5
Almost certainly Van Vogt's "Enchanted Village"
At the end, Jenner (the hero) thinks the village has done all it can for him, and crawls into it to die and give his remains back to it in compensation for its efforts. He wakes to find that it has solved the problem by changing him rather than itself.
5
This would be "Ethical Quotient" by John T. Phillifent which first appeared in the October 1962 Analog. It was reprinted in Analog 2 and in the Analog Anthology.
Its a perfect match for your description. The human is picked as an "ethical absolute" by a sophisticated testing system, but the aliens who administer it are shocked that -- alone among ...
4
This is similar to "Pixie Ointment," from Tales of Enchantment, also published as The Kincaid's Book of Witches, Goblins, Ogres and Fantasy; it may or may not have been an adaptation of an earlier folktale.
In the story, a woman receives an ointment that she puts on her eyelids—to discover that it enables her to see that pixies up to all sorts of mischief, ...
3
Roachstompers by S. M. Stirling. Published in September 1989.
The aircraft are called Kestrels, though we don't get an exact description of them. The reference to Pons and Fleischmann is:
She swung up into the troop compartment of her Kestrel, giving a glance of automatic hatred to the black rectangles of the PFH units on either side of the ceiling. "...
1
Ghost V by R. Sheckley features "self-inflicted" monsters that vanish when defeated. They aren't generic though, they are personal childhood fears.
1
I think the correct answer is John Rennie's.
That said, similar elements may be found in other stories and novels:
psychochemical sabotage of space station: Lagrange Five by Mack Reynolds (1979). The space rage syndrome makes people of Lagrange Five kill each other.
planet initially uninhabitable due to psychoactive atmospheric component Longstead-42 in ...
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