title: The Practical Astronomer
author: DK Publishing
description: Will Gater is an astronomy journalist and author. He has written for several of the UK's top astronomy and science magazines and promotes both these subjects with frequent appearances on television and radio. Will's blog and website can be found at www.willgater.com.<br>Anton Vamplew is a freelance astronomer. In addition to writing about astronomy in books and magazine articles, he has worked at the planetarium at England's Royal Greenwich Observatory and made regular broadcasts on television and radio.
zlib_text: THE BEST FROM FANTASY 
  AND SCIENCE FICTION 
   
  Eleventh Series 
   
  Edited by ROBERT P. MILLS 
   
   
  When I heard the learn'd astronomer, 
  When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, 
  When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, 
  When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the 
  lecture-room, 
  How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, 
  Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself, 
  In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 
  Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. 
  —Walt Whitman 
   
   
   
  For ISAAC ASIMOV, 
  the Good Doctor of F&SF, 
  without whose nobly lucid explanations of scientific matters, 
  and inhumanly faithful observance of deadlines, 
  this book would have been put together just as easily, 
  but far less pleasantly 
  
  CONTENTS 
   
  THE SOURCES OF THE NILE by Avram Davidson 
  SOMEBODY TO PLAY WITH by Jay Williams 
  SOFTLY WHILE YOU'RE SLEEPING by  Evelyn  E. Smith 
  THE MACHINE TH