Fritz Reuter Leiber: “Bread Overhead” (1958.)

As a blisteringly hot but guaranteed weather-controlled future summer day dawned on the Mississippi Valley, the walking mills of Puffy Products (”Spike to Loaf in One Operation!”) began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.

Henry Beam Piper: “The Answer” (1959.)

For a moment, after the screen door snapped and wakened him, Lee Richardson sat breathless and motionless, his eyes still closed, trying desperately to cling to the dream and print it upon his conscious memory before it faded.
“Are you there, Lee?” he heard Alexis Pitov’s voice.
“Yes, I’m here. What time is it?” he asked, and then added, “I fell asleep. I was dreaming.”

Harry Harrison: “The Misplaced Battleship” (1960.)

When it comes to picking locks and cracking safes I admit to no master. The door to Inskipp’s private quarters had an old-fashioned tumbler drum that was easier to pick than my teeth. I must have gone through that door without breaking step. Quiet as I was though, Inskipp still heard me. The light came on and there he was sitting up in bed pointing a .75 caliber recoilless at my sternum.

Harry Harrison: “The K-Factor” (1960.)

“We’re losing a planet, Neel. I’m afraid that I can’t … understand it.”
The bald and wrinkled head wobbled a bit on the thin neck, and his eyes were moist. Abravanel was a very old man. Looking at him, Neel realized for the first time just how old and close to death he was. It was a profoundly shocking thought.