Книги жанра «Фантастика» на букву «T»
Stanislaw Lem, Pole, Jahrgang 1921, ist heute einer der beliebtesten Autoren im Ostblock. Nach einem Debüt mit Lyrik, Kurzgeschichten und einem preisgekrönten Roman führte ihn sein Interesse an der Kybernetik in ein neues literarisches Genre: das der Science-fiction. Für Lem ist die Utopie mehr als ein Spiel der Phantasie. Sie wird für ihn zu einem Spiegel der gegenwärtigen Gesellschaft, in dem die Chancen künftiger Entwicklungen mitreflektiert werden, und damit zum Medium der Kritik an den bestehenden Verhältnissen. Nicht immer finden die skurrilen Einfälle des überzeugten, dabei von Parteiideologie freien Marxisten den Beifall orthodoxer offizieller Stellen. Aber allein in der Sowjetunion beträgt die Gesamtauflage seiner Bücher weit über drei Millionen.
Die Geschichten sind im 21. bis 22. Jahrhundert in der westlichen Welt angesiedelt, in der die Menschheit das komplette Sonnensystem und umliegende Systeme zu besiedeln beginnt und bereits einige Kolonien auf Mond und Mars gegründet hat.
In den Geschichten geht es um den Piloten Pirx, der im Weltall oder auf extraterrestrischen Stationen beschäftigt ist. Er wird dabei eher als Antiheld dargestellt, an dem wenig Heroisches der „klassischen“ Weltraumhelden zu finden ist. Die immer wieder auftretenden Extremsituationen löst er durch gesunden Menschenverstand und etwas Glück. Der Gegenpart zu Pirx ist häufig ein Roboter oder eine andere Maschine (z. B. sein Raumschiff).
Die vorliegende Sammlung utopischer Geschichten zeigt die reiche Skala Lem’scher Phantasie. Geht es hier um die oft gespenstischen Abenteuer, die Weltraumnavigator Pirx mit detektivischem Verstand zu meistern hat, so entwikkeln dort überperfektionierte Küchenmaschinen eine beunruhigende Eigenaktivität. In Unterschmudorf schließlich scheitern ehrgeizige Pläne der Aldebaraner, und in Kybera entdeckt ein von der Kybernetik faszinierter König das Parkinsonsche Gesetz der Kriegsmaschinerie und läßt von da an das Kriegführen lieber sein.
An alternative history story about a world where the Creation has sound scientific proof.
The year is 1893, and the workaday life of a young commercial traveller is enlivened by his ladyfriend, and she takes him to the laboratory of Sir William Reynolds building a Time Machine. It is but a small step into futurity, the beginning of a series of adventures that culminate in a violent confrontation with the most ruthless intellect in the Universe.
The novel effectively binds the storylines of the H.G. Wells novels The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine into the same reality. Action takes place both in Victorian England and on Mars, as the time machine displaces the protagonists through space in addition to time.
Jeremy Bremen has a secret. All his life he's been cursed with the ability to read minds. He knows the secret thoughts, fears, and desires of others as if they were his own. For years, his wife, Gail, has served as a shield between Jeremy and the burden of this terrible knowledge. But Gail is dying, her mind ebbing slowly away, leaving him vulnerable to the chaotic flood of thought that threatens to sweep away his sanity. Now Jeremy is on the run—from his mind, from his past, from himself—hoping to find peace in isolation. Instead he witnesses an act of brutality that propels him on a treacherous trek across a dark and dangerous America. From a fantasy theme park to the lair of a killer to a sterile hospital room in St. Louis, he follows a voice that is calling him to witness the stunning mystery at the heart of mortality.
We have said that there are many and strange shadows, memories surviving from dim pasts, in this FANTASTIC UNIVERSE of ours. Poul Anderson turns to a legend from the Northern countries, countries where even today the pagan past seems only like yesterday, and tells the story of Cappen Varra, who came to Norren a long, long time ago.
The shattering sequel to the acclaimed Scorpion Shards.
For five young people born with extraordinary powers, a climatic battle against Evil seemingly brought an end to their nightmare. But as they will discover, the nightmare has only began.
Imprisoned for thousands of years, an ancient, malevolent force—The Bringer—awaits the moment when it can break free and wreak its revenge upon the world. Only one force can stop it: the power of the five.
— “Neal Shusterman dazzles you with action and excites you with ideas, but underneath it all, his stories are unforgettable because his characters have souls.” — Orson Scott Card
Действие происходит во времена ламповых компьютеров. Молодой физик, безуспешно решая сложное уравнение, натыкается на объявление в газете о создании вычислительного центра в его городишке. Чрезвычайно удивлённый, он заказывает решение своей задачи, а затем, поражённый результатом, пытается выяснить способ его получения, не подозревая об угрозе своему рассудку и самой жизни.
Вот уже сорок лет государства и народы Тамриэля оправляются от небывалых разрушений, причиненных вторжением из Обливиона армий принцев-дейдра. Император Титус Мид собирает по кусочку расколотые войной земли. Неожиданно у берегов континента появляется летающий остров, уничтожающий все живое на своем пути.
Противостоять ему и спасти мир решаются немногие. В их числе принц Аттребус Мид, чье имя окутано романтическими легендами. Данмер Сул, волшебник и воин, разыскивающий давнего врага. Сыщик Колин, который потянул за ниточку опаснейшего заговора. Юная девушка по имени Аннаиг, чьи способности к алхимии оценили даже обитатели Адского города - Умбриэля.
In his electrifying debut, The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams created a dark futuristic world grounded in the military rivalries, terror tactics, and political wrangling of our own time. Now he takes his masterful blend of military SF, espionage thriller, and dystopian cyberpunk one step further - to the edge of annihilation ….
Life as U.S. counterintelligence agent Claire Haskell once knew it is in tatters - her mission betrayed, her lover dead, and her memories of the past suspect. Worse, the defeat of the mysterious insurgent group known as Autumn Rain was not as complete as many believed. It is quickly becoming clear that the group's ultimate goal is not simply to destroy the tenuous global alliances of the 22nd century - but to rule all of humanity. And they're starting with the violent destruction of the Net and the assassination of the U.S. president. Now it's up to Claire, with her ability to jack her brain into the systems of the enemy, to win this impossible war.
Battling ferociously across the Earth-Moon system, and navigating a complex world filled with both steadfast loyalists and ruthless traitors, Claire must be ready for the Rain's next move. But the true enemy may already be one step ahead of her.
In his electrifying debut, The Mirrored Heavens, David J. Williams created a dark futuristic world grounded in the military rivalries, terror tactics, and political wrangling of our own time. Now he takes his masterful blend of military SF, espionage thriller, and dystopian cyberpunk one step further - to the edge of annihilation ….
Life as U.S. counterintelligence agent Claire Haskell once knew it is in tatters - her mission betrayed, her lover dead, and her memories of the past suspect. Worse, the defeat of the mysterious insurgent group known as Autumn Rain was not as complete as many believed. It is quickly becoming clear that the group's ultimate goal is not simply to destroy the tenuous global alliances of the 22nd century - but to rule all of humanity. And they're starting with the violent destruction of the Net and the assassination of the U.S. president. Now it's up to Claire, with her ability to jack her brain into the systems of the enemy, to win this impossible war.
Battling ferociously across the Earth-Moon system, and navigating a complex world filled with both steadfast loyalists and ruthless traitors, Claire must be ready for the Rain's next move. But the true enemy may already be one step ahead of her.
With The Machinery of Light, David J. Williams completes his furiously paced, stunningly imagined trilogy - a work of vision, beauty, and pulse-pounding futuristic action.
September 26, 2110. 10:22 GMT. Following the assassination of the American president, the generals who have seized power initiate World War Three, launching a surprise attack against the Eurasian Coalition's forces throughout the Earth-Moon system. Across the orbits, tens of thousands of particle beams and lasers blast away at one another. The goal: crush the other side's weaponry, paving the way for nuclear bombardment of the cities.
As inferno becomes Armageddon, the rogue commando unit Autumn Rain embarks on one last run. Matthew Sinclair, an imprisoned spymaster, plots his escape. And his former protégé Claire Haskell, capable of hacking into both nets and minds, is realizing that all her powers may merely be playing into Sinclair's plans. For even as Claire evades the soldiers of East and West amid carnage in the lunar tunnels, the surviving members of the Rain converge upon the Moon, one step ahead of the Eurasian fleets but one step behind the mastermind who created Autumn Rain - and his terrible final secret.
Chosen by fate to become the Dragon Reborn-savior and destroyer of his world-young Rand al'Thor attempts to outrun his destiny by joining in a mad search for the lost Horn of Valere. Continuing the story begun in The Eye of the World (LJ 2/15/90), Jordan creates a lush, sprawling tapestry of a novel in the tradition of Tolkien and Eddings.
Max Frei's novels have been a literary sensation in Russia since their debut in 1996, and have swept the fantasy world over. Presented here in English for the first time, The Stranger will strike a chord with readers of all stripes. Part fantasy, part horror, part philosophy, part dark comedy, the writing is united by a sharp wit and a web of clues that will open up the imagination of every reader.
Max Frei was a twenty-something loser-a big sleeper (that is, during the day; at night he can't sleep a wink, a hardened smoker, and an uncomplicated glutton and loafer. But then he got lucky. He contacts a parallel world in his dreams, where magic is a daily practice. Once a social outcast, he's now known in his new world as the "unequalled Sir Max." He's a member of the Department of Absolute Order, formed by a species of enchanted secret agents; his job is to solve cases more extravagant and unreal than one could imagine-a journey that will take Max down the winding paths of this strange and unhinged universe.
Contents:
Debut in Echo
Juba Chebobargo and other nice folks
Cell No. 5-OW-NOX
The Stranger
King Banjee
Victims of Circumstance
Journey to Kettary
Lanius is the only son of King Mergus of Avornis. But he is the son of the king’s seventh wife—and therefore illegitimate in the eyes of church and state. After the king’s death, the council of regents takes advantage of the irregular succession to use young Lanius as their figurehead while they rule behind the scenes.
Grus is a captain in the king’s navy, a man of common origins, as well as common sense. He is charged with guarding Avornis’ border against her enemies—including those who live in thrall of the Banished One. He’s watched his homeland weaken under careless rulers—and fears for the future as disturbing visions torment his dreams.
Now both Lanius and Grus must decide what’s best for the kingdom—before the influence of the Banished One spreads to their people as well.
While young King Lanius dreams of being more than a mere figurehead, his fellow sovereign, the usurper King Grus, is defending Avornis against the shadowy plots of the Banished One—the dark god cast from heaven, who seeks now to dominate the mortal world.
With the barbarous, nomadic Menteshe in the south holding the Scepter of Mercy—and civil war raging among the Chernagor city-states in the north—Avornis finds itself threatened on two fronts. King Grus and his army are in the land of the Chernagors, hoping to quell the trouble—without becoming bogged down in a protracted war. Grus may be able to form an alliance against the Menteshe…Then again, it could be an inescapable trap.
But the longer the kings go without acting on their dream of retaking the Scepter of Mercy, the greater the advantage the Banished One gains. However, sending soldiers against the Menteshe risks having the army turned into half-mindless thralls. But sooner or later, King Grus will have to strike—before his people realize just how formidable an enemy the Banished One truly is…
The dynamic new President of the United States, James J. Halliday, seems determined to singlehandedly turn an embittered nation around from economic, political, and social ruin. No one could be prouder than his devoted press secretary Meric Albano. But is the President accomplishing this monumental task alone? After one of the President’s rare public appearances, a derelict is found dead nearby. A derelict who not only looks like the President, but whose blood, retinas, even fingerprints match those of the man in charge. Is the real President, the man Albano swore loyalty to, still in office? Is this part of a plot to topple American democracy? That’s what Albano has to find out—if he doesn’t, his life, as well as his country, will be destroyed…
In the good old days, magic was powerful, unregulated by government, and even the largest spell could be woven without filling in magic release form B1-7g. Then the magic started fading away. Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange runs Kazam, an employment agency for soothsayers and sorcerers. But work is drying up. Drain cleaner is cheaper than a spell, and even magic carpets are reduced to pizza delivery. So it's a surprise when the visions start. Not only do they predict the death of the Last Dragon at the hands of a dragonslayer, they also point to Jennifer, and say something is coming. Big Magic...
When corporations go to war, standard business practice goes out the window. Astro Corporation is led by indomitable Texan Pancho Lane, Humphries Space Systems by the rich and ruthless Martin Humphries, and their fight is over nothing less than resources of the Asteroid Belt itself. As fighting escalates, the lines between commerce and politics, boardroom and bedroom, blur—and the keys to victory will include physics, nanotechnology, and cold, hard cash.
As they fight it out, the lives of thousands of innocents hang in the balance, including the rock rats, who make their living off the asteroids, and the inhabitants of Selene City on Earth’s moon. As if matters weren’t complicated enough, the shadowy Yamagata corporation sets its sights on taking advantage of other people’s quarrels, and space pirate Lars Fuchs decides it’s time to make good on his own personal vendetta…
It’s a breakneck finale that can end only in earth’s salvation—or the annihilation of all that humankind has ever accomplished in space.
Pink scented smog, 3-D TV and earthquake-proof aluminium skyscrapers capable of hurtling themselves and their occupants to a safe Pacific splashdown should tremors exceed desired tolerances. This is the twenty-first century of Ben Bova’s hilarious novel, where the Vitaform Process grants nubile new bodies to the aged and a new 3-D TV series offering the illusion of almost live entertainment in the home is all that Bernard Finger, the cigar-chewing loudmouth mogul of Titanic Productions needs to save his company from the brink of financial disaster.
Enter one Bill Oxnard, inventor of the 3-D holographic system, Brenda Impanema, Finger’s sexy lady assistant, Ron Gabriel, hot-tempered hot-shot script writer who hates Finger nearly as much as Finger hates him, and you’ve got the winning formula for a smashing new family series guaranteed to bring 3-D to the heart of the viewing public and make a fortune for Titanic.
Or will it?
Stay tuned as the whole sick crew of Titanic Productions struggles to bring you the greatest intergalactic show on earth… THE STARCROSSED.
The authenticity of background detail, the lilting prose rhythms and the appealing conceptual audacity that won many fans for The Clan of the Cave Bear and The Valley of the Horses continue to work their spell in this third installment of Auel's projected six-volume Earth's Children saga set in Ice Age Europe. The heroine, 18-year-old Ayla, cursed and pronounced dead by the "flathead" clan that reared her, now takes her chances with the mammoth-hunting Mamutoi, attended by her faithful lover, Jondalar. Gradually overcoming the prejudice aroused by her flathead connection, Ayla wins acceptance into the new clan through her powers as a healer, her shamanistic potential, her skill with spear and slingshot and her way with animals (she rides a horse, domesticates a wolf cub, both "firsts," it would seem, and even rides a lion). She also wins the heart of a bone-carving artist of "sparkling wit" (not much in evidence), which forces her to make a painful choice between the curiously complaisant Jondalar, her first instructor in love's delights, and this more charismatic fellow. The story is lyric rather than dramatic, and Ayla and her lovers are projections of a romantic rather than a historical imagination, but readers caught up in the charm of Auel's story probably won't care. 750,000 first printing; $300,000 ad/promo; paperback rights to Bantam; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club dual main selections; author tour.
Tinker, girl genius and inventor, lives in a near-future Pittsburgh which exists mostly in the land of the elves, where she tries to keep the local ambient level of magic down with her gadgets. When a pack of wargs chase an Elven noble into her scrapyard, life as she knows it takes a detour.
An Air Force Loadmaster is menaced by strange sounds within his cargo; a man is asked to track down a childhood friend… who died years earlier; doomed pioneers forge a path westward as a young mother discovers her true nature; an alcoholic strikes a dangerous bargain with a gregarious stranger; urban explorers delve into a ruined book depository, finding more than they anticipated; residents of a rural Wisconsin town defend against a legendary monster; a woman wracked by survivor's guilt is haunted by the ghosts of a tragic crash; a detective strives to solve the mystery of a dismembered girl; an orphan returns to a wicked witch's candy house; a group of smugglers find themselves buried to the necks in sand; an unanticipated guest brings doom to a high-class party; a teacher attempts to lead his students to safety as the world comes to an end around them…
What frightens us, what unnerves us? What causes that delicious shiver of fear to travel the lengths of our spines? It seems the answer changes every year. Every year the bar is raised; the screw is tightened. Ellen Datlow knows what scares us; the twenty-one stories and poems included in this anthology were chosen from magazines, webzines, anthologies, literary journals, and single author collections to represent the best horror of the year.
Legendary editor Ellen Datlow (Poe: New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe), winner of multiple Hugo, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy awards, joins Night Shade Books in presenting The Best Horror of the Year, Volume One.
There’s no ancient evil to defeat, no orphan destined for greatness, just two guys in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Royce Melborn, a skilled thief, and his mercenary partner, Hadrian Blackwater make a profitable living carrying out dangerous assignments for conspiring nobles until they become the unwitting scapegoats in a plot to murder the king. Sentenced to death, they have only one way out…and so begins this epic tale of treachery
and adventure, sword fighting and magic, myth and legend.
Las huestes de los fugaces reyes de Poniente, descompuestas en hordas, asolan y esquilman una tierra castigada por la guerra e indefensa ante un invierno que se anuncia inusitadamente crudo. Las alianzas nacen y se desvanecen como volutas de humo bajo el viento helado del Norte. Ajena a las intrigas palaciegas, e ignorante del auténtico peligro en ciernes, la Guardia de la Noche se ve desbordada por los salvajes. Y al otro lado del mundo, Daenerys Targaryen intenta reclutar en las Ciudades Libres un ejército con el que desembarcar en su tierra.
Berren has lived in the city all his life. He has made his way as a thief, paying a little of what he earns to the Fagin like master of their band. But there is a twist to this tale of a thief. One day Berren goes to watch an execution of three thieves. He watches as the thief-taker takes his reward and decides to try and steal the prize. He fails. The young thief is taken. But the thief-taker spots something in Berren. And the boy reminds him of someone as well. Berren becomes his apprentice. And is introduced to a world of shadows, deceit and corruption behind the streets he thought he knew. Full of richly observed life in a teeming fantasy city, a hectic progression of fights, flights and fancies and charting the fall of a boy into the dark world of political plotting and murder this marks the beginning of a new fantasy series for all lovers of fantasy - from fans of Kristin Cashore to Brent Weeks.
Thrall, wise shaman and the warchief of the Horde, has sensed a disturbing change…
Long ago, Azeroth's destructive native elementals raged across the world until the benevolent titans imprisoned them within the Elemental Plane. Despite the titans' intervention, many elementals have ended up back on Azeroth. Over the ages, shaman like Thrall have communed with these spirits and, through patience and dedication, learned to soothe roaring infernos, bring rain to sun-scorched lands, and otherwise temper the elementals' ruinous influence on the world of Azeroth.
Now Thrall has discovered that the elementals no longer heed the shaman's call. The link shared with these spirits has grown thin and frayed, as if Azeroth itself were under great duress. While Thrall seeks answers to what ails the confused elements, he also wrestles with the orcs' precarious future as his people face dwindling supplies and growing hostility with their night elf neighbors.
Meanwhile, Varian Wrynn of Stormwind is considering violent action in response to mounting tensions between the Alliance and the Horde, a hard-line approach that threatens to alienate those closest to him, including his son, Anduin. The conflicted young prince has set out to find his own path, but in doing so, he risks becoming entangled in political instability that is setting the world on edge.
The fate of Azeroth's great races is shrouded in a fog of uncertainty, and the erratic behavior of the elemental spirits, troubling though it is, may only be the first ominous warning sign of the cataclysm to come.
Haviland Tuf is an honest space-trader who likes cats. So how is it that, in competition with the worst villains the universe has to offer, he’s become the proud owner of the last seedship of Earth’s legendary Ecological Engineering Corps? Never mind, just be thankful that the most powerful weapon in human space is in good hands-hands which now control cellular material for thousands of outlandish creatures.
With his unique equipment, Tuf is set to tackle the problems human settlers have created in colonizing far-flung worlds: hosts of hostile monsters, a population hooked on procreation, a dictator who unleashes plagues to get his own way…and in every case the only thing that stands between the colonists and disaster is Tuf’s ingenuity-and his reputation as an honest dealer in a universe of rogues…
From Robert Silverberg’s “Earthmen and Strangers” anthology, 1966:
Randall Garrett’s story examined, from the viewpoint of the Earthmen, a possible encounter between our species and hostile aliens. In the story that follows, Isaac Asimov handles the same theme from the viewpoint of the aliens themselves. Suppose, he says, strangers from afar have been watching us for years. Suppose, too, that they are the overlords of a galactic empire, eager to add us to their dominion. How will they react, though, when they learn what sort of creatures we Earthmen really are? To them, we are the aliens—and we are terribly, frighteningly alien.
Isaac Asimov, one of the science fiction’s ablest practitioners, rarely deals with galactic matters these days. The Boston-based Dr. Asimov, who taught biochemistry while writing such famed s-f novels as The Currents of Space and The Caves of Steel, now devotes himself to science fact with equal success. Though jovial and even boisterous in the flesh, Asimov is scholarly behind the typewriter, and he’s won acclaim for such standard reference items as The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science and Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology.
Originally published in Galaxy Magazine in Sep 1958 as Lastborn. Published under the present title in Nine Tomorrows short story collection in Feb 1959.
An anthology of stories edited by Jonathan Strahan
An anthology of stories edited by Jonathan Strahan
Тервиллиджер — режиссер нового фильма о динозаврах — пытается создать подходящий образ Tyrannosaurus Rex, который угодил бы продюсеру. В итоге в чертах динозавра появляется все больше от лица продюсера. Что из этого вышло — читайте.
18th Century Europe: It is an age when superstition is beginning to give way to the force of human reason, and no man so fully embodies the spirit of the times as Dr. Erasmus Darwin. Thinker, healer, and explorer of the bizarre and the seemingly supernatural, no mystery can stand for long against Darwin’s enlightened analysis. And there are far more mysteries than history knows…
For Erasmus Darwin’s world is filled with oddities that most cannot believe: from unknown beings lurking just outside the boundaries of civilization, to anomalies that even the greatest natural philosophers will be hard-pressed to explain, to mysterious deaths that give rise to fears of malevolent sorcery.
And when the renowned Dr. Darwin is called upon to heal a man dying of an ailment that seems impossible, he has no idea that it is the beginning of a quest that will lead him to the darkest corners of Europe, and a stunning encounter with the most famous inhabitant of a certain Scottish loch…
A “what if” story that deals with a group of time-traveling South African white supremacists who supply Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia with AK-47s and small amounts of other supplies (including nitroglycerine tablets for treating Lee’s heart condition), leading to a Southern victory in the American Civil War war.
A novelization of a 1990 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone, in its turn based on Philip K. Dick 1966 novelette “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.”
Frustrated with his life, Duglas Quail decides to purchase a memory of a two-week adventure on Mars because he can’t afford the real thing. However, while under heavy sedation preparatory to the installation of the memory, Quail remembers that he actually was on Mars as an intelligence agent and killer. Now that he has recovered the memory which had been suppressed by his employers, his life is in jeopardy. Here the novel deviates from Dick’s philosophical original, becoming a more pedestrian if exciting slam-bang chase thriller. Judged on its own terms, the book works and it’s fun.
La joven Maia, una descastada nacida en verano, debe abandonar el clan de sus privilegiadas medio hermanas clones nacidas en invierno. Su difícil y peligroso viaje iniciático arranca en los muelles de Puerto Sanger y prosigue a bordo de uno de los barcos tripulados por los escasos hombres (menos de un veinte por ciento) que forman la población de Stratos, un mundo creado por y para las mujeres. Sólo el difícil y lejano éxito le permitirá ser la fundadora de un nuevo clan. Las manipulaciones genéticas de la Madre Fundadora Lysos han creado en Stratos un mundo nuevo y distinto, dominado por mujeres que se reproducen por clonación. Una nueva opción sociopolítica, tecnológica, ecológica y, sobre todo, en el ámbito de la relación entre ambos sexos. En la senda de la literatura que denuncia las relaciones entre los sexos o propone establecer nuevos vínculos, Tiempos de gloria se une a obras ya clasicas como La mano izquierda de la oscuridad de Ursula K. Le Guin.
A scientist invents a time machine and uses it to travel hundreds of thousands of years into the future, where he discovers the childlike Eloi and the hideous underground Morlocks.
It's Easter in Reading — a bad time for eggs — and no one can remember the last sunny day. Ovoid D-class nursery celebrity Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III, minor baronet, ex-convict, and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered to death beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. All the evidence points to his ex-wife, who has conveniently shot herself.
But Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant Mary Mary remain unconvinced, a sentiment not shared with their superiors at the Reading Police Department, who are still smarting over their failure to convict the Three Pigs of murdering Mr. Wolff. Before long Jack and Mary find themselves grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, bullion smuggling, problems with beanstalks, titans seeking asylum, and the cut and thrust world of international chiropody.
And on top of all that, the JellyMan is coming to town...
Magiere the dhampir thinks that her nights of hunting vampires are over. After settling down in her newly adopted village of Miiska-now vampire-free thanks to her and her half-elf partner, Leesil-she looks forward to quiet days tending to her tavern.
But far away in the capital city of Bela, a prominent councilman's daughter has been found dead on her own doorstep… and all signs point to a vampire. Knowing that the battered and burned village of Miiska could use an infusion of cash, Bela's town council offers a generous bounty to the dhampir if she will slay their vampire. Magiere resists, wanting nothing more than to forget her past and ignore her half-vampire nature. Only Leesil can persuade Magiere to follow her destiny-before more innocents are claimed by darkness.
Born a half-breed to an elven mother and human father, Leesil was raised in the Warlands as assassin, spy, and slave to Lord Darmouth, ruler to one of its independent provinces. But Leesil's mother trained him too well, and he used his skills to escape, leaving his parents to suffer Darmouth's wrath for all such traitors and their kin. Now, with newfound purpose in the company of his beloved Magiere, Leesil returns to confront the sins of his past and uncover his parents' fate.
Unable to turn him from this dangerous course, Magiere follows Leesil into the darkness of his past in the Warlands. Knowing what may happen should Darmouth learn of Leesil's return, she is prepared to slaughter any who may try to take him from her. But Magiere's own past may well pose a more deadly threat. Two creatures of unfathomable power continue to stalk her-one who believes she's the key to his salvation, and one who seeks to destroy her...and all those she loves.
Four women living in parallel worlds, each with a different gender landscape. When they begin to travel to each other’s worlds each woman’s preconceptions on gender and what it means to be a woman are challenged. Acclaimed as one of the essential works of science fiction and an influence on William Gibson, THE FEMALE MAN takes a look at gender roles in society and remains a work of great power.
Review
Four women living in parallel worlds, each with a different gender landscape. When they begin to travel to each other’s worlds each woman’s preconceptions on gender and what it means to be a woman are challenged.
Acclaimed as one of the essential works of science fiction and an influence on William Gibson, THE FEMALE MAN takes a look at gender roles in society and remains a work of great power.
About the Author
Nebula and Hugo Award winner Joanna Russ is the author of The Adventures of Alyx, Extra(Ordinary) People, and To Write Like a Woman, among many other books.
‘Her finest novel.’
Washington Post
‘An explosion of witty and savage writing.’
New Statesman
‘A writer of energetic clarity. The power of her writing is always complexly vivid… Ms Russ is a major writer.’
New York Times Book Review
VLADIMIRS MIHAILOVS
TREŠĀ PAKĀPE
Fantastisks stāsts
RlGA «LIESMA» 1987
No krievu valodas tulkojis PĒTERIS ZIRNĪTIS Māksliniece INĀRA JēGERE
© Žurnāls «Daugava» Ws I, 2, 3, 4; 1984 © Tulkojums latviešu 4702010200—55 valodā, izdevnieciba «Liesma», 1987
TUVU KRITISKAJAM
HALS KLEMENTS
RĪGA «ZINĀTNE» 1980
Mūsdienu amerikāņu rakstnieks Hals Klements savos darbos popularizē zinātnes atziņas un tehniskās domas sasnie« gurnus. Savdabīgais viņa daiļradē ir tas, ka fantastiskais, notikumiem un piedzīvojumiem bagātais sižets parasti risinās tadas pasaulēs, par kuru esamību mūsdienu astronomijai nekas nav zināms. Viss pārējais stingri atbilst loģikai un zinātnes likumiem. H. Klements aizstāv dažādu pa« sauļu saprātīgu butņu brālības ideju, cildina cilvēces neizsīkstošo zinātgribu.
No angļu valodas tulkojusi M. JĀKOBSONE Priekšvārda autori A. un B. STRUGACKI Mākslinieks A. GALEVIUSS
Izdota saskaņā ar Latvijas PSR Zinātņu akadēmijas Redakciju un izdevumu padomes lēmumu
©Tulkojums latviešu valodā Izdevniecība «Zinātne», 1980
Krājuma otrajā romānā — «Tuvu kritiskajam» — Klements rāda lasītājam ne mazāk dīvainu pasauli — par Zemi trīs reizes lielāko Tenebru, vienu no Altaira sistēmas planētām, uz kuras virsmas smaguma spēks apmēram trīs reizes pārsniedz smaguma spēku uz Zemes. Uz šīs .planētas valdošo apstākļu savdabību pilnīgi nosaka tās neparastā atmosfēra. Tā sastāv galvenokārt no ūdens tvaikiem, kuri dienā ir kritiskā stāvoklī — tas ir, nav atšķirības starp vielu šķidrā un gāzveida stāvokli. Tam, protams, nepieciešams simtiem atmosfēru liels spiediens un simtiem grādu augsta temperatūra. Naktis temperatūra pazeminās, daļa Tenebras atmosfēras «nolīst» uz tās virsmas milzīgu kondensēta tvaika «lāšu» veidā, tās savukārt pārvēršas par šķidrumu, no kura veidojas upes, ezeri un okeāni. Tiesa, ezeri un okeāni uz planētas ir ari dienā, taču daudz mazāki un sastāv no oleuma — koncentrētas, ar metālu joniem bagātas sērskābes, bet naktis viss šķidrums uz planētas ir sērskābes šķīdums, kas nelabvēlīgi ietekmē pat planētas pamatiedzīvotāju organismu. Jā, uz planētas mīt dzīvas būtnes, turklāt saprātīgas — šausminoši, egļu čiekuriem līdzīgi zvīņaini radījumi ar četriem pāriem ekstremitāšu.
Un tomēr sekas, kas izriet no šīs pasaules fantastiskuma, atkal stingri atbilst loģikai un zinātnei un apliecina autora zinātnes popularizētāja talantu. Tiesa, romānā «Tuvu kritiskajam» galvenā uzmanība pievērsta tehniskai problēmai, kas nav tieši saistīta ar autora radīto hipotētisko pasauli, tomēr kritisko stāvokļu ķīmijas un fizikas ir gana.
Won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1969.
What would happen if, through a genetic experiment gone awry, fungi-mushrooms, toadstools, molds and yeasts — were to go out of control and grow with unprecedented vigor and speed and tenacity, and in places formerly inimicable to them? Knight has pulled out the stops to produce an imaginative and fast-paced sci-fi horror tale set in the British Isles. The protagonist is Barry Wilson, a semi-successful author of spy novels and a former mycologist. Barry's wife Jane, from whom he is separated, is the scientist whose experiment has lead to the disaster, and the British government has called upon Barry to help find Jane and her lab notes. Crossing London in an armored tank, Barry and two other volunteers observe all sorts of grotesqueries: people and animals covered with multicolored fungi, some still alive, some now quite insane; farms and buildings and forests draped in spongy shrouds; mushrooms tall as skyscrapers. Barry survives a series of hair-raising adventures and eventually locates his wife, who has gone mad and has become the high priestness of a cult of fungi-loving female separatists. But he gets the research notes. A first-rate and vivid thriller.
What would happen if, through a genetic experiment gone awry, fungi-mushrooms, toadstools, molds and yeasts — were to go out of control and grow with unprecedented vigor and speed and tenacity, and in places formerly inimicable to them? Knight has pulled out the stops to produce an imaginative and fast-paced sci-fi horror tale set in the British Isles. The protagonist is Barry Wilson, a semi-successful author of spy novels and a former mycologist. Barry's wife Jane, from whom he is separated, is the scientist whose experiment has lead to the disaster, and the British government has called upon Barry to help find Jane and her lab notes. Crossing London in an armored tank, Barry and two other volunteers observe all sorts of grotesqueries: people and animals covered with multicolored fungi, some still alive, some now quite insane; farms and buildings and forests draped in spongy shrouds; mushrooms tall as skyscrapers. Barry survives a series of hair-raising adventures and eventually locates his wife, who has gone mad and has become the high priestness of a cult of fungi-loving female separatists. But he gets the research notes. A first-rate and vivid thriller.
Ce roman d’Isaac Asimov, inédit en français, appartient au cycle de Trantor.
Dans l’Empire galactique déclinant, les despotes de la planète Tyrann contrôlent de nombreux mondes, dont la Terre. Biron Farrill, le fils d’un de leurs principaux opposants qu’ils ont assassiné, échappe de peu à un attentat et réussit à quitter la Terre. Il y est aidé par son vieux maître, Sander Jonti et, en compagnie de la jolie Artémisia, gagne alors Lingane, une planète où s’organise la résistance contre Tyrann. Là, il découvre que le chef des opposants et l’auteur de l’attentat qui faillit lui coûter la vie sont un seul et même homme : Sander Jonti.
Comment parviendra-t-il à distinguer ses amis véritables de ses ennemis ? Lui reste-t-il une chance de sauver sa vie et d’anéantir les maîtres de Tyrann pour venger son père ?
A Houston college student, McKenzie Lewis can track fae by reading the shadows they leave behind. For years she has been working for the fae King, tracking rebels who would claim the Realm. Her job isn't her only secret. She's in love with Kyol, the King's sword-master—but human and fae relationships are forbidden. When McKenzie is captured by Aren, the fierce rebel leader, she learns that not everything is as she thought. And McKenzie must decide who to trust and where she stands in the face of a cataclysmic civil war.
For centuries the women of Aronsdale have lived freely among the green and misted valleys. Creatures of exotic beauty and sensuality, they possess powerful skills of enchantment.and young Allegro is no different. But her life - and Aronsdale's independence - is threatened when Jazid nomads invade, carrying Allegro into the desert as a prized trophy or worse.
Until an unexpected ally falls under her spell. From the moment feared Jazid warrior Markus Onyx sees the alluring beauty, he knows he has found his queen.
But even the promise of love cannot quell Allegro's determination to save her homeland. Summoning her powers, she casts herself north - out of passion's grip - and into the dark heart of conflict..
A collection of contemporary and classic horror stories by authors such as Pete Johnson, Robert Westall, Roald Dahl and Stephen King.
Hannis Arc, working on the tapestry of lines linking constellations of elements that constituted the language of Creation recorded on the ancient Cerulean scroll spread out among the clutter on his desk, was not surprised to see the seven etherial forms billow into the room like acrid smoke driven on a breath of bitter breeze. Like an otherworldly collection of spectral shapes seemingly carried on random eddies of air, they wandered in a loose clutch among the still and silent mounted bears and beasts rising up on their stands, the small forest of stone pedestals holding massive books of recorded prophecy, and the evenly spaced display cases of oddities, their glass reflecting the firelight from the massive hearth at the side of the room.
Since the seven rarely used doors, the shutters on the windows down on the ground level several stories below stood open as a fearless show of invitation. Though they frequently chose to use windows, they didn’t actually need the windows any more than they needed the doors. They could seep through any opening, any crack, like vapor rising in the early morning from the stretches of stagnant water that lay in dark swaths through the peat barrens.
The open shutters were meant to be a declaration for all to see, including the seven, that Hannis Arc feared nothing.
On the red moon will come the firestorm . . .
Wielding the Sword of Truth, Richard Rahl has battled death itself and come to the defense of the D’Haran people. But now the power-mad Emperor Jagang confronts Richard with a swift and inexorable foe: a mystical plague cutting a deadly swath across the land and slaying thousands of innocent victims.
To quench the inferno, he must seek remedy in the wind . . .
To fight it Richard and his beloved Kahlan Amnell will risk everything to uncover the source of the terrible plague—the magic sealed away for three millennia in the Temple of the Winds.
Lightning will find him on that path . . .
But when prophecy throws the shadow of betrayal across their mission and threatens to destroy them, Richard must accept the Truth and find a way to pay the price the winds demand . . . or he and his world will perish.
Terry Goodkind, author of the brilliant bestsellers Wizard’s First Rule and Stone of Tears, has created his most masterful epic yet, a sumptuous feast of magic and excitement replete with the wonders of his unique fantasy vision.
Sequel to the New York Times bestselling Faith of the Fallen
New York Times bestselling author Terry Goodkind has created his most lavish adventure yet. Tormented her entire life by inhuman voices, a young woman named Jennsen seeks to end her intolerable agony. She at last discovers a way to silence the voices. For everyone else, the torment is about to begin.
With winter descending and the paralyzing dread of an army of annihilation occupying their homeland, Richard Rahl and his wife Kahlan must venture deep into a strange and desolate land. Their quest turns to terror when they find themselves the helpless prey of a tireless hunter.
Meanwhile, Jennsen finds herself drawn into the center of a struggle for conquest and revenge. Worse yet, she finds her will seized by forces more abhorrent than anything she ever envisioned. Only then does she come to realize that the voices were real.
Staggered by loss and increasingly isolated, Richard and Kahlan must stop the relentless, unearthly threat which has come out of the darkest night of the human soul. To do so, Richard will be called upon to face the demons stalking among the Pillars of Creation.
Discover breathtaking adventure and true nobility of spirit. Find out why millions of readers the world over have elevated Terry Goodkind to the ranks of legend.
The Barnes & Noble Review
When metanormals (humans with supernatural powers) first showed themselves in public, they were dressed like comic book icons and had names like Nightshift and Quadrupleman. They saved lives and stopped crimes and averted natural disasters. They were true superheroes. But there were also super villains. Like Thrill Kill and the Giggler and Hatchetman. They kidnapped the pope and held the U.N. General Assembly hostage. After a genetically mutated criminal mastermind destroyed most of San Francisco and killed more than 600,000 people, all metanormals were outlawed and given an ultimatum: Leave the United States or be killed.
Soledad O'Roark is a rookie in the M-Tac (Metanormal Tactical) unit in Los Angeles, an elite group of law enforcers trained to hunt down and exterminate rogue metanormals. Soledad makes a name for herself on her very first call by killing a metanormal with a non-regulation gun she developed. The kill gets her a hero's praise, but when the police brass get wind of the non-reg weapon, Soledad is promptly stuck behind a desk, awaiting an internal investigation. But when she finally gets another chance in the field, she takes full advantage….
Although Those Who Walk in Darkness reads like a graphic novel — with larger-than-life characters, richly stylized urban landscapes, and breakneck pacing — it's so much more than an action-packed science fiction thriller. There are elements of hard-boiled mystery, horror, and even a little romance. And the character of Soledad O'Roark isn't just another run-of-the-mill antihero. Ridley creates a realistic, flawed character that readers will not only pull for but also will ultimately want to know much more about when the novel ends. Paul Goat Allen
The human was an expert sniper — and a psychopath. He had never failed in the past when he stalked human prey. But now he is on an enemy planet, and his prey is anything but human. The Darhel are a race with a highly developed empathic sense. Long ago, they learned that they cannot deal death to another intelligent being without being destroyed by the death agonies of their victim. Even though they have been manipulating other species behind the scenes for millennia, including the humans of planet Earth, they cannot bear to kill another being, and depend on other, less sensitive beings to do their dirty work. But now one of the Darhel must kill or be killed. And the fate, not only of his own race, but all of humanity, is riding on his survival. The course of the next thousand years will be determined by whether or not he can learn to fight back. If he cannot, it will be too late… for the entire galaxy.
In the midst of an ongoing interplanetary war between human-colonized worlds and the hostile alien species known as the Deng, one planet chooses to rebel against the sentient BOLO war machines that serve as the primary line of defense against the Deng. Ringo and Evans contribute another tale of military sf to the series of novels featuring the BOLOs originated by sf author Keith Laumer. Despite the general hawkish politics lacing the plot’s subtext, the authors provide a wealth of military action along with a cast of well-developed characters, including a sympathetic BOLO named Sonny. A good choice for series fans and readers of military SF.
In the future there is no want, no war, no disease or ill-timed death. The world is a paradise — and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net fragments and goes to war, leaving people who have never known a moment of want or pain wondering how to survive.
In the future there is no want, no war, no disease or ill-timed death. The world is a paradise — and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net fragments and goes to war, leaving people who have never known a moment of want or pain wondering how to survive.
In the future there is no want, no war, no disease or ill-timed death. The world is a paradise — and then, in a moment, it ends. The council that controls the Net fragments and goes to war, leaving people who have never known a moment of want or pain wondering how to survive.
Elena is the school beauty, but she’s bored. Until a new boy turns up in her class. Stefan is dark and mysterious — and she’s determined to get to know him better. But Elena reminds Stefan of someone from his tragic past, and he’s just as determined to resist her. Until a series of attacks in the area terrify the school and town and Stefan, the outsider, is held responsible. Elena is the only one who offers to help and, falling in love with her, Stefan tells her his terrible story. He is a vampire, on the run from his evil brother, Damon, who is also a vampire, but doesn’t share Stefan’s qualms about drinking human blood. And Damon is the one Stefan suspects of really being behind the recent attacks… Can Elena help prove his innocence — without revealing his secret?
Peril Points
With voluptuous Pamela Thrushwell at his side, Remo punched out 242 on the machine, and saw the numbers replaced by letters "PLEASE TELL ME HOW WELL YOU DID." "We killed the man and the woman," said Remo. "YOU LIE. I CAN SEE YOU. YOU AND THE BIG-BREASTED BRIT TROUBLEMAKER," said the machine. "Take a hike," Remo said.
Suddenly the machine's cash drawer opened. A stack of hundred dollar bills appeared. "What's this for?" "FOR YOU. WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT?" "To destroy you," Remo said. " I am coming to kill you." The machine blinked as if in some sort of insane joy. Then it flashed out:
"CONGRATULATIONS, WHOEVER YOU ARE. YOU ARE WORTH 50,000 POINTS."
The game was on-until death turned it off...
THE END OF THE GAME.
Damon, the evil vampire brother is determined to make school beauty Elena his queen of darkness. Even if it means killing his own brother to possess her. Stefan, Damon’s brother and Elena’s boyfriend, is desperate for the power to destroy Damon — but knows that means succumbing to his thirst for human blood. Elena, irresistibly drawn to both brothers, knows her choice will decide their fate. But who will she choose…?
It's always darkest before the end
Things weren't exactly looking bright for Remo and Chiun. Not to mention for the entire world. From an evil inferno the ancient almighty god of destruction had risen to possess the Destroyer's body and soul. Meanwhile Remo's Oriental master, Chiun had been betrayed by the U.S. President himself, and was now a weapon of the U.S.S.R. Smith, their unflappable superior in C.U.R.E., planned to take the easy way out-commit suicide. But for Remo and Chiun, the solution wasn't going to be quite so simple and not nearly as painless..
Urban Monad 116: A lofty spire a thousand stories high, where over 880,000 souls live out their perfectly regulated lives in peace and plenty.
But inside their glorious world are a few who dare to doubt and dream:
Aurea Holston — a beautiful young bride who fears leaving the only world she’s ever known.
Dillon Chrimes — cosmos group pop star, who becomes one of the urbmon in an orgiastic, mind-shattering trip.
Jason Quevedo — historian, who gets his kicks from the perverse savagery of an earlier age.
Siegmund Kluver — virile young man-on-the-way-up, who sees the nightmare behind the urbmon’s shining facade.
And Michael Statler — who dares to escape...
The deadliest stone of all
A bigger chill than snow. Harder to kick than heroin.
The Destroyer was stoned on star lust. Remo was losing it...and loving it...in the highly-trained arms of Kim Kiley, Hollywood sex specialist...and the hottest weapon in the Wo family arsenal.
Okay, the House of Wo was steamed. But two thousand years was a long time to hold a grudge against the Destroyer. The Wos were like that, though. Give those guys a revenge motive, and it was carved in stone. The family stone. Where Prince Wo the Nearly Great had preprogrammed the Destroyer to self-destruct...unless Chiun could get his mind off sex and back onto violence where it belonged...
The Murderous Money Machine
It was hotter than sex. It packed a bigger punch than the H-bomb. And best of all, it was worth a sky-high pile of blue chips for the company that could make and market the machine that could tap the full energy of the sun.
Chemical Concepts was the lucky firm, and its gorgeous VP Kathleen O'Donnell wasn't going to let a few glitches like maybe burning the earth to cinders or sparking a thermonuclear war keep her from milking the machine for all the billions of bucks she thought it was worth.
Only Remo and Chiun cold stop this sexplosive lady executive from making the ultimate corporate killing - unless the dynamite O'Donnell used the burning power of the sun and the heavenly heat of her body to stop them first.
The Philosopher's Stone. The key to turning base metals into gold. Everyone knew it didn't exist. Except it did. And now the last of the alchemists, Harrison Caldwell, had his hands on it and was reaching out to grab the nuclear power that would fuel his dream for bottomless wealth-and create a golden age of hell on earth.
Only Remo and Chiun could stop him..if they could get past the army of the highest-paid killers on the globe..if they could survive the attacks of Francisco Braun, the golden-hairdo murderer, whose reputation for being the #1 assassin in his deadly trade was well earned..and if they could break the power of the magic metal that reduced governments to servants and turned even Remo Williams into its slave...
Wynn journeys to the mountain stronghold of the dwarves in search of the "Stonewalkers," an unknown sect supposedly in possession of important ancient texts. But in her obsession to understand these writings, she will find more puzzles and questions buried in secrets old and new-along with an enemy she thought destroyed…
Eldon Sluggard, the TV evangelist whose god was greed, had converted Remo to his renegade religion and enlisted him in his unholy war of conquest. Victoria Hoar, the curvaceous creature who made the minister her puppet by pulling his sexual strings, was out to turn Remo into a plaything of perpetual pleasure. The Destroyer was in the hands of this terrifying twosome body and soul, and unless his Oriental mentor Chiun could loosen their diabolical hold, Remo was going to hell in a hand basket-and taking the world with him...
Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy – from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to steal their thoughts, to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of the Moving Cities of Mars. Except that Jean made one mistake. Now he is condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons – the Dilemma Prison – against countless copies of himself. Jean's routine of death, defection and cooperation is upset by the arrival of Mieli and her spidership, Perhonen. She offers him a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self – in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed… The Quantum Thief is a dazzling hard SF novel set in the solar system of the far future – a heist novel peopled by bizarre post-humans but powered by very human motives of betrayal, revenge and jealousy. It is a stunning debut.
Lost Souls
It's an ungodly crime. Someone's been leading a stream of kids to their final reward, and the police haven't got a prayer of catching the culprit. Remo and Chiun move in to collar the angel of death, but their revelations are straight out of hell. Someone's running a drug scam, using juveniles as the principals, then sending them to the Pearly Gates when things get too hot.
All paths lead to an oddball church and the quirky clergyman who leads the flock. Is the strange preacher a saintly man or a holy terror? Remo and Chiun are just acting on faith, but this much is certain: The CURE for multiple murder is bound to be a religious experience.
Death was in the air
All over America the airline travelers were dying, seduced by lovely young women and strangled by silken scarves in savage hands. The security of the nation hung over an open grave - and Remo Williams, the Destroyer, and his oriental master and mentor Chiun, were ordered to slay the slayers and save the free world.
Little did Remo and Chiun suspect that their enemy was an ancient goddess who had a fifteen-hundred-year-old score to settle with Chiun. She commanded an army of youthful devotees and had the power to turn even Remo into her helpless slave. Now the Destroyer was being used for evil rather than good in an ultimate struggle between light and darkness that even Chiun feared he might not win...
As people begin dropping dead after consuming Chicken King poultry, the Destroyer and his omnipotent Asian mentor begin to suspect that a vegetarian vigilante is on the loose.
Warning: Death is bad for your health
The great health-food movement in America was a victim of fowl play. Folks who had switched from prime beef to pure poultry were winding up dead meat. The country's Chicken King was squaking at the top of his lungs, the flesh-starved citizenry was yelling blur murder, and Remo and Chiun were the only one to know that a vegetarian vampire was on the loose. But even the indefatigable Destroyer and his omnipotent Oriental mentor did not know how to stop this friend feasting on cold vengeance and warm blood...
Remo races against time to locate the huge dinosaur reportedly living in the jungles of Africa before a fast-food king can turn it into hamburger meat.
When Captain Audion holds America hostage by jamming all television transmission and star news anchor Cheeta Ching is kidnapped, Remo must save the country by defeating Captain Audion and rescuing Cheeta.
Free Agent
Remo is set to teach a few lessons in hospitality at Florida's top tourist attraction, but his mind is made up. He is a free agent. No more CURE, no more trying to solve America's problems.
But the nation goes into a state of shock when a Lee Harvey Oswald look-alike is nailed trying to shoot the President, and Remo can't ignore a sense of deja vu. Soon, a meddling television anchorwoman and strange transformations at the White House leave him feeling that he has landed in a role in a bizarre Hollywood Thriller
With the direct line to the President still dead, and Chiun trying to give away the secret of CURE, Remo and Smith are hard-pressed to protect the Man who threatened to shut down CURE for good...
Red Alert
When a diabolical superfoe acquires a superlaser that uses hypercolor to control emotion, he throws the world into a kaleidoscope of deadly mood swings. CURE goes on red alert.
And if things aren't black enough, a rival nation has seen the mind-blowing potential of beaming mood-altering color from satellites...and rendering entire nations defenseless.
Color them crazy, but Remo and Chiun know they've got to thwart this bizarre color scheme. More than ever before they must rely on their sensory skills honed to a razor sharpness - because the Destroyer is going to catch the enemy blindfolded.
Paranormal private eye. Grim reaper extraordinaire. Whatever. Charley Davidson is back! And she's drinking copious amounts of caffeine to stay awake because every time she closes her eyes she sees him: Reyes Farrow, the part-human, part-supermodel son of Satan.
Granted she did imprison Reyes for all eternity, but how is she supposed to solve a missing-persons case, deal with an ego-driven doctor, calm her curmudgeonly dad, and take on a motorcycle gang hell-bent on murder when the devil's son just won't give up on his plan of seduction….. and revenge?
Owen Todtsteltzer wurde nach seiner Rebellion gegen die Tyrannei der Kaiserin Löwenstein XIV zum Helden, zu einer Legende. Doch er und seine Freunde haben nicht lange Zeit, sich über ihren Sieg zu freuen. Erneut werden sie in einen erbitterten Konflikt verwickelt - diesmal um die Nachfolge der entthronten Herrscherin. Owen und Hazel versuchen sich aus dem politischen Intrigenspiel herauszuhalten, doch bald entdecken sie, daß der Menschheit sehr viel ernstere Probleme drohen, ja, daß der Krieg noch lange nicht vorbei ist, sondern im Gegenteil gerade erst begonnen hat …
David Fisher is an EPA agent, assigned to investigate possible leaking from the Devonshire dump site, in part because of an increase of birth defects in the surrounding area. The most devastating birth defect is aphysica, being born without a soul. In this world the Other Side is very real and all the religions have their actual spiritual counterpart. The gods and whatnot need adoration to survive, so sometimes religions that lose adherents became endangered, and artificial temples and worshippers are made to save the entity. Fisher gets deeper and deeper into what turns into a plot to revive one of the most evil spirits in both Worlds.
Here is a brace of vignettes by the Old Vignette Master ... short and sharp ... like a hypodermic!
"You'll be drawn in by the love story – and kept up all night by the suspense." – Claudia Gray
***
Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability. While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her "power" to sense dead bodies – or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes the dead leave behind in the world… and the imprints that attach to their killers.
Violet has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just led her to find dead birds her cat left for her. But now that a serial killer is terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he's claimed haunt her daily, Violet realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.
Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet find the murderer – and Violet is unnerved by her hope that Jay's intentions are much more than friendly. But even as she's falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer and closer to discovering a killer… and becoming his prey herself.
Rob Merlin was the best engineer who had ever lived. That was why "The King of Space" had to have him for the most spectacular construction project ever — even though Rob was a potentially fatal threat to his power…
Thus begins a breakthrough novel by the former President of the American Astronautical Society, about an idea whose time has come: a shimmering bridge between Earth and space that mankind will climb to the stars!
Sound like fantasy? The concept has been in the literature of physics for over three decades, but only a writer with the scientific background of a Sheffield or a Clarke could bring the idea to life.
The book depicts a manned mission to Titan — the enigmatic moon of Saturn — which has a thick atmosphere and a chemical makeup that some think may contain the building blocks of life.
Paula Benacerraf is appointed to oversee the dismantling of the Shuttle fleet after another disaster. Instead, she listens to the scientist, Rosenberg, who wants to explore the life Cassini discovers on Titan. Humans are hurled to the edge of the Solar System. To the edge, also, of sanity.
Nominated for Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1998.
The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura?s story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.
Concluding "The Fionavar Tapestry", this book carries the heroes from our world to the final battle for Fionavar against the evil of Rakoth Maugrim. On a ghost-ship the legendary warrior, Arthur Pendragon, and Pwyll Twiceborn, Lord of the Summer Tree, sail to confront the Unraveller.
Five young people find themselves flung into the magic land of Fionavar, First of All Worlds, to play their part in the vast battle against the forces of evil led by the fallen god Rakoth Maugrim and his dark hordes. This is the first book in a fantasy trilogy in the "Lords of the Ring" tradition.
This is the second book in the Fionavar trilogy. It finds the evil Rakoth threatening the existence of Fionavar. To stop him, Kimberly Ford and her companions from Earth must summon the Warrior. But desperate measures can have desperate consequences when curses and prophecies are involved.
From award-winning author Guy Gavriel Kay, who "stands among the world's finest fantasy authors" (Montreal Gazette), comes a sweeping tale evocative of the Celtic and Norse cultures of the ninth and tenth centuries, filled with the human passion and epic adventure he is noted for.
"Tigana" is a land under the spell of the evil wizard Brandin, who has cast the spell to avenge the death of his son. Dianora has been sent to get close to the King of Tigana so that she may kill him and avenge the death of the wizard's son. However the King and Dianora fall in love.
Drizzt is back in this exciting new trilogy from R.A. Salvatore!
An uneasy peace between the dwarves of Mithral Hall and the orcs of the newly established Kingdom of Many-Arrows can't last long. The orc tribes united under Obould begin to fight each other, and Bruenor is determined to finish the war that nearly killed him and almost destroyed everything he's worked to build. But it will take more than swords and axes to bring a lasting peace to the Spine of the World. Powerful individuals on both sides may have to change the way they see each other. They may have to start to talk. But it won't be easy.
Don't miss the gripping conclusion to Salvatore's New York Times best-selling Transitions trilogy!
When the Spellplague ravages Faerûn, Drizzt and his companions are caught in the chaos. Seeking out the help of the priest Cadderly-the hero of the recently reissued series The Cleric Quintet-Drizzt finds himself facing his most powerful and elusive foe, the twisted Crenshinibon, the demonic crystal shard he believed had been destroyed years ago.
Drizzt returns to Luskan, and the Realms will never be the same!
The Arcane Brotherhood has long held the city of Luskan in their power, but when corruption eats away at their ranks, Captain Deudermont comes to the rescue of a city that has become a safe haven for the Sword Coast's most dangerous pirates. But rescuing a city from itself may not be as easy as Deudermont thinks, and when Drizzt can't talk him out of it, he'll be forced to help.
Drizzt is back in action again, and bringing more changes to the Forgotten Realms setting. This all new hardcover adventure will keep Drizzt fans guessing the whole way, with edge-of-your-seat action and plot twists that even the most casual reader of the Forgotten Realms novel line can't afford to miss!
The literary event of Halloween: a book of otherworldly power from Russia 's preeminent contemporary fiction writer
Vanishings and aparitions, nightmares and twists of fate, mysterious ailments and supernatural interventions haunt these stories by the Russian master Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, heir to the spellbinding tradition of Gogol and Poe. Blending the miraculous with the macabre, and leavened by a mischievous gallows humor, these bewitching tales are like nothing being written in Russia – or anywhere else in the world – today.
Upon moving to Bixby, Oklahoma, fifteen-year-old Jessica Day learns that she is one of a group of people who have special abilities that help them fight ancient creatures living in an hour hidden at midnight; creatures that seem determined to destroy Jess.
"Fast paced and spooky — a good read for the dark hours."
Ursula K Le Guin
The Midnighters of Bixby, Oklahoma, know that their town is full of secrets. These five teenagers are the only ones who know about the mysterious hour at midnight when the world freezes, except for them and the creatures that inhabit the darkness.
But they do not know why earlier generations of Midnighters all disappeared, or why they are now the only Midnighters in town. As they learn more about the secret hour's twists and turns, they uncover terrifying mysteries woven into the very fabric of Bixby's history, and a conspiracy that touches both the midnight hour and the world of daylight.
At the same time, the Midnighters' own secrets start to emerge, including some that were never meant to come to light, changing the fragile dynamics among the five.
This time Jessica Day is not the only Midnighter in mortal danger, and if the group can't find a way to come together, they could lose one of their own — forever.
A tale of betrayal, horrifying revelations, and powerful alliances, touching darkness is the second volume of the riveting Midnighters trilogy by acclaimed author Scott Westerfeld.
Strange things are happening: old friends disappearing, angels (or devils) clambering on the fire escapes of New York City. But for Pearl, Moz, and Zahler, all that matters is the band. As the city reels under a mysterious epidemic, the three combine their talents with a vampire lead singer and a drummer whose fractured mind can glimpse the coming darkness. Will their music stave off the end? Or summon it?
Set against the gritty apocalypse that began in Peeps, The Last Days is about five teenagers who find themselves creating the soundtrack for the end of the world.
Come visit a world where you cannot draw breath… should its horrifying wildlife allow you.
Outlink station Miranda has been destroyed by a nanomycelium, and the very nature of this sabotage suggests that the alien bioconstruct Dragon — a creature as untrustworthy as it is gigantic — is somehow involved. Sent out on a titanic Polity dreadnought, the Occam Razor, agent Cormac must investigate the disaster, and also resolve the question of Masada, a world about to be subsumed as the Line of Polity is drawn across it. But the rogue biophysicist Skellor has not yet been captured, and he now controls something so potent that Polity AIs will hunt him down forever to prevent him using it.
Meanwhile on Masada, the long-term rebellion can never rise above-ground, as the slave population is subjugated by orbital laser arrays controlled by the Theocracy in their cylinder worlds, and by the fact that they cannot safely leave their labour compounds. For the wilderness of Masada lacks breathable air…and out there roam monstrous predators called hooders and siluroynes, not to mention the weird and terrible gabbleducks.
Welcome to Spatterjay…where sudden death is the normal way of life;
To the remote planet Spatterjay come three travellers with very different missions. Janer is directed there by the hornet Hive-mind; Erlin comes to find the sea captain who can teach her to live; and Keech — dead for seven hundred years — has unfinished business with a notorious criminal.
Spatterjay is a watery world where the human population inhabits the safety of the Dome and only the quasi-immortal hoopers are safe outside amidst a fearful range of voracious life-forms. Somewhere out there is Spatterjay Hoop himself, and monitor Keech cannot rest until he can bring this legendary renegade to justice for atrocious crimes committed centuries ago during the Prador Wars. Keech does not realise that Hoop's body is running free on an island wilderness, while his living head is confined in a box on an Old Captain's ships. Nor does he know that the most brutal Prador of all is about to pay a visit, intent on wiping out all evidence of his wartime atrocities. Which means major hell is about to erupt in this chaotic waterscape.
Sable Keech is a walking dead man, and the only one to have been resurrected by nanochanger. Did he succeed because he was infected by the Spatterjay virus, or because he came late to resurrection in a tank of seawater? Tracing the man's last-known seaborne journey, Taylor Bloc wants to know the truth. He also wants so much else — adulation, power, control — and will go to any lengths to achieve them. An ancient hive mind, almost incomprehensible to the human race, has sent an agent to this uncertain world. Does it simply want to obtain the poison 'sprine' that is crucial to immortality — and, if so, maybe Janer must find it and stop it.
Meanwhile, still faced with the ennui of immortality, Erlin has her solitude rudely interrupted by a very angry whelkus titanicus, and begins the strangest of journeys. Deep in the ocean the Spatterjay virus has wrought a terrible change that will affect them all. Something dormant for ten years is breaking free, and once again the aftershocks of an ancient war will focus on this watery world. And Sniper, for ten years the Warden of Spatterjay, finally takes delivery of his new drone shell. It's much better than his old one: powerful engines, more lethal weapons, thicker armour. He's going to need them.
This is the third in the novel-sequence Canopus in Argos: Archives. The first was Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta. The second, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five. The fourth will be The Making of the Representative for Planet 8.
In the embattled kingdom of Qualinesti, a realm firmly in the power of the green dragon Beryl and the dragon's Dark Knights, a mysterious Kagonesti woman warrior know as The Lioness leads a loyal band of resistance fighters against the forces of evil. Original.
Sixteen-year-old Nick and his brother, Alan, are always ready to run. Their father is dead, and their mother is crazy—she screams if Nick gets near her. She’s no help in protecting any of them from the deadly magicians who use demons to work their magic. The magicians want a charm that Nick’s mother stole—and they want it badly enough to kill. Alan is Nick’s partner in demon slaying and the only person he trusts in the world. So things get very scary and very complicated when Nick begins to suspect that everything Alan has told him about their father, their mother, their past, and what they are doing is a complete lie…
In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow, blurring the line between life and art. Now, in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world. This venerable collection brings together short stories from award winning authors and masters of the field such as Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Damien Broderick, Elizabeth Bear, Paul McAuley and John Barnes. And with an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.
In this collection of thirty-five science fiction stories from 2011, Gardner Dozois once again identifies the best stories of the year.
FLAWED UTOPIA
When Ivan Zhilin, interplanetary engineer, returned after years of space work, he wanted a quiet vacation on some sunny restful spot on Earth. At first it seemed he had found the place—a charming seaside city in a “liberated” country.
But somehow, since his long sojourn in far orbits, things had subtly gone wrong. He got disquieting hints of irrational actions, of secret societies of a destructive nature, of events of mass madness… and a constant reference to a mysterious product available only through the “right” connections.
When he pursued the enigmas, he found himself projected into THE FINAL CIRCLE OF PARADISE—the ultimate electronic “high”.
It’s unusual and thought-provoking novel by the talented authors of HARD TO BE GOD. Never before translated, this is truly a DAW international event!
— DAW DISCOVERY—
For the inspiration for this novel, Guy Gavriel Kay has drawn on the conflicts in medieval Spain, including King Ferdinand's expulsion of the Jews and forced conversion of those who remained during the Inquisiton, and the fall of Granada to the Christians. In this tale, there are two moons looking over a planet which is home to the country of Esperana. The rulers are the Asharites, who worship the stars and who hail from the neighboring land of Al-Rassan. The Kindath, a dispersed people with no country of their own, worship the moons. The Horsemen of Jad are worshippers of the sun. Zealots from the Asharites and Jaddites are bent on taking advantage of the political turmoil in Esperana, and the central characters of the book do their best to keep civilization going.
Stephen King is the undisputed master of horror; but The Colorado Kid is a dramatic departure for the iconic author of innumerable bloodcurdling classics like The Shining, Carrie, Cujo, and Pet Sematary. A pulpstyle mystery about two salty newspapermen and their investigation into the unresolved death of a man found on an island off the coast of Maine, The Colorado Kid will have readers speculating until the very last page — and long afterward.
Hugo and Nebula award-winning Fritz Leiber is a science-fiction grand master with an unparalleled ability to discern the stranger side of the universe. The Green Millennium is set in a futuristic human society based on our own. The regimented, regulated and bureaucratized life style led by the misanthropic Phil Gish leaves him feeling vaguely dissatisfied and emotionally cut off from other people. He is surprised when a pure green cat appears in his room, a cat who makes him feel happier and more alive than he has ever felt. Phil decides to call the cat Lucky, hoping his life will take a turn for the better. If you consider different as change for the better, then Gish really has got something in Lucky-something that everyone else wants-including the Mob, the FBI, some nude aliens, and a gorgeous mystery woman. When Lucky seems to vanish into thin air, Phil will do anything to get him back, even if it means challenging the very powers that rule his world.
Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can't seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. And lately, being away at boarding school is only getting worse — Percy could have sworn his pre-algebra teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill him. When Percy's mom finds out, she knows it's time that he knew the truth about where he came from, and that he go to the one place he'll be safe. She sends Percy to Camp Half Blood, a summer camp for demigods (on Long Island), where he learns that the father he never knew is Poseidon, God of the Sea. Soon a mystery unfolds and together with his friends — one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena — Percy sets out on a quest across the United States to reach the gates of the Underworld (located in a recording studio in Hollywood) and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods.
After a summer spent trying to prevent a catastrophic war between the Greek gods, Percy Jackson's seventh grade school year seems unnervingly quiet. His biggest problem is dealing with his new friend, Tyson — a six-foot-three, mentally challenged homeless kid who follows Percy everywhere, making it hard for Percy to have any «normal» friends.
But things don't stay quiet for long. Percy soon discovers there is trouble at Camp Half Blood: the magical borders that protect Half-Blood Hill have been poisoned by a mysterious enemy, and the only safe haven for demigods is on the verge of being overrun by mythological monsters. To save the camp, Percy needs the help of his best friend, Grover, who has been taken prisoner on an island somewhere in the Sea of Monsters, the dangerous waters Greek heroes have sailed for millennia. Only today, the Sea of Monsters goes by a new name... The Bermuda Triangle.
Percy must retrieve the Golden Fleece from the Island of the Cyclopes by the end of the summer or Camp Half Blood will be destroyed. But first, Percy will learn a stunning new secret about his family — one that makes him question whether being claimed as Poseidon's son is an honor or simply a cruel joke.
When the goddess Artemis goes missing, she is believed to have been kidnapped.And now it's up to Percy and his friends to find out what happened. Who is powerful enough to kidnap a goddess? They must find Artemis before the winter solstice, when her influence on the Olympian Council could swing an important vote on the war with the titans. Not only that, but first Percy will have to solve the mystery of a rare monster that Artemis was hunting when she disappeared — a monster rumored to be so powerful it could destroy Olympus forever.
The prophecy surrounding Percy's 16th birthday will be revealed in this final book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series...
My name is Raine Benares. I'm a seeker. People hire me when they need something found. I'm not usually the one being sought. But that all changed when I found the Saghred, a soul-stealing stone of unlimited power — and the bane of my existence. Now mages and madmen have me in their sights, not to mention demons…
An opened Hellgate leads to a demon infestation on the Isle of Mid, and while there's never an ideal time to face down demon hordes, it's hard to imagine a worse one. Already fighting the influence of the Saghred, Raine discovers she is also magically bonded to a dark mage and a white knight, two dangerous and powerful men on opposing sides — and Raine's stuck in the middle.But with demons pouring through the Hellgate, Raine can't afford to be distracted. Turns out, the demons want the key to unlock the Saghred. As a seeker, Raine should be able to find it first. As the axis of light and dark powers, she's a magical cataclysm waiting to happen…
"A definite star on the rise." Linnea Sinclair
Fans of John Scalzi's "Old Man" universe, prepare yourselves: there's a long new story in that universe, told from the point of view of one of the series' most intriguing characters. Subterranean Press is proud to publish The Sagan Diary, a long novelette that for the first time looks at the worlds of the Hugo-nominated Old Man's War and its sequel The Ghost Brigades from the point of view of Lieutenant Jane Sagan, who in a series of diary entries gives her views on some of the events included in the series... and sheds new light into some previously unexplored corners. If you thought you knew Jane Sagan before, prepare to be surprised.
The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF's toughest operations. They're young, they're fast and strong, and they're totally without normal human qualms.
The universe is a dangerous place for humanity—and it's about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion into space. Their linchpin: the turncoat military scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDF's biggest military secrets. To prevail, the CDF must find out why Boutin did what he did.
Jared Dirac is the only human who can provide answers -- a superhuman hybrid, created from Boutin's DNA, Jared's brain should be able to access Boutin's electronic memories. But when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given to the Ghost Brigades.
At first, Jared is a perfect soldier, but as Boutin's memories slowly surface, Jared begins to intuit the reason's for Boutin's betrayal. As Jared desperately hunts for his "father," he must also come to grips with his own choices. Time is running out: The alliance is preparing its offensive, and some of them plan worse things than humanity's mere military defeat…
A human diplomat creates an interstellar incident when he kills an alien diplomat in a most…unusual…way. To avoid war, Earth's government must find an equally unusual object: A type of sheep ("The Android's Dream"), used in the alien race's coronation ceremony.
To find the sheep, the government turns to Harry Creek, ex-cop, war hero and hacker extraordinare, who with the help of Brian Javna, a childhood friend turned artificial intelligence, scours the earth looking for the rare creature. And they find it, in the unknowing form of Robin Baker, pet store owner, whose genes contain traces of the sheep DNA.
But there are others with plans for the sheep as well: Mercenaries employed by the military. Adherents of a secret religion based on the writings of a 21st century science fiction author. And alien races, eager to start a revolution on their home world and a war on Earth.
To keep our planet from being enslaved, Harry will have to pull off the greatest diplomatic coup in history, a grand gambit that will take him from the halls of power to the lava-strewn battlefields of alien worlds. There's only one chance to get it right, to save the life of Robin Baker—and to protect the future of humanity.
v1.1: Fully spellchecked by reb, 2003-12-30
– corrected a few spelling mistakes; in particular, have fully proofread all poems
– file seems completely error-free and perfectly formatted – congrats to original proofreader
Flyleaf:
_A Fine and Private Place_, Peter Beagle's first book, was written before he was twenty. "A most unusual novel," Virgilia Peterson said in her review, "by a young man who seems to be a genuine nonconformist… armed already with the wryness of experience but brave enough still to venture where many of his elders might well fear to tread." In his second novel this inventive, original writer – still under thirty – ventures still further, into the literally fantastic, literally fabulous world of fairy tale, myth, dream, nightmare.
True to tradition, _The Last Unicorn_ is the story of a quest, the search by the unicorn – immortal, infinitely beautiful – for her lost fellows. Early on, she is joined by Schmendrick the Magician – a name pointing to the low comedy that surprisingly (though also traditionally) coexists here with terror, pathos, tenderness, paradox, and wit, and frequent passages where the prose bursts into song and into poetry itself. A kind of upside-down Merlin, Schmendrick is looking for something for himself too, his life perhaps. Molly Grue, the third of the travelers, seems simply to embody every womanly trait. After a richly entertaining variety of adventures – with splendid, quirky characters – the search reaches its climax at the castle of evil King Haggard, where the terrifying Red Bull is encountered and where the handsome Prince Lнr plays his predestined role.
Like Tolkien's _The Lord of the Rings_, this odd, evocative, and brilliant book utilizes an imaginary world to connect profoundly with the real questions and aspirations of thoughtful and sensitive readers. _The Last Unicorn_ may well join that widely read masterpiece as a book that speaks with a mysterious but tangible resonance to a receptive audience.
Copyright 1968 by Peter S. Beagle. All rights reserved. First published in 1968 by The Viking Press, Inc. 625 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022 Published simultaneously in Canada by The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited Library of Congress catalog card number: 68-16075
After moving with her mother to the English countryside, Jenny, a young American girl, begins to unravel a mystery on the grounds and uncovers evidence of another, hidden occupant of her new home -- a 300-year-old ghost named Tamsin.
They were playing at time and magic, but time is tricky and magic is dangerous!
When Farrell returned to Avicenna after years away, he found his oldest friend Ben living with an unattractive older woman named Sia. Ben and Farrell’s girlfriend, Julie, were also mixed up with the League for Archaic Pleasures—a group that playacted the events and manners of medieval chivalry, sometimes too seriously.
Nothing was quite as it seemed. Sia’s ancient house developed rooms that impossibly appeared and disappeared. Apparently helpless, Sia still had enormous powers that no human could defy when she chose to exert her will. And some members of the League were not playacting—they were the medieval characters they portrayed. Even mild-mannered Ben was sometimes possessed by a Ninth Century viking, driven to madness by the modern world he could not understand.
Attending a League revel with Julie, Farrell was amused by the claim of fifteen-year-old Aiffe that she was a witch. But later he saw her, attempting to summon a demon, conjure out of air the form of Nicholas Bonner, who had been sent to limbo five centuries before!
With Bonner’s skills added to Aiffe’s talents, the pair soon made chaos of the League’s annual mock war. But Bonner’s real goal was the defeat of Sia, with whom he seemed to have a mysterious connection.
Gradually, Farrell realized that Bonner represented a growing evil such as the Twentieth Century had never known. Only Sia’s powers stood against it. But Sia had retreated into a room that could not exist, hiding in illusion.
Here in his first fantasy novel since The Last Unicorn was published in 1968, Peter Beagle again proves his mastery in a tale of magic, illusion, and delusion, mixed with a cast of human characters only he could create.
The Human-Covenant War, a desperate struggle for humankind’s very survival, has reached its boiling point on the mysterious, ring world called Halo. But the fierce Covenant warriors, the mightiest alien military force known, are not the only peril lying in wait.
As the fortress world of Reach and its brave defenders were bombarded to rubble, a single cruiser fled the carnage with the battle’s only human survivors – Captain Keyes, his crew of a few hundred Marines, and the last remaining SPARTAN super-soldier, the Master Chief.
With the cruiser’s artificial intelligence, Cortana, concealed in his battle armor, the Master Chief crash lands on Halo in the midst of a massive Covenant occupation. Curiously, the alien soldiers appear to be searching for something hidden on the ring. Built by a long-dead race, Halo harbors many deadly secrets, but one overshadows them all. Now the Master Chief must lead the scattered troops in a brutal race to unravel Halo’s darkest mystery – and unleash its greatest source of power...
Richard Morgan’s groundbreaking new fantasy!
Ringil, the hero of the bloody slaughter at Gallows Gap is a legend to all who don’t know him and a twisted degenerate to those that do. A veteren of the wars against the lizards he makes a living from telling credulous travellers of his exploits. Until one day he is pulled away from his life and into the depths of the Empire’s slave trade. Where he will discover a secret infinitely more frightening than the trade in lives . . .
Archeth — pragmatist, cynic and engineer, the last of her race — is called from her work at the whim of the most powerful man in the Empire and sent to its farthest reaches to investigate a demonic incursion against the Empire’s borders.
Egar Dragonbane, steppe-nomad, one-time fighter for the Empire finds himself entangled in a small-town battle between common sense and religious fervour. But out in the wider world there is something on the move far more alien than any of his tribe’s petty gods.
Anti-social, anti-heroic, and decidedly irritated, all three of them are about to be sent unwillingly forth into a vicious, vigorous and thoroughly unsuspecting fantasy world. Called upon by an Empire that owes them everything and gave them nothing.
Richard Morgan’s groundbreaking new fantasy!
Ringil, the hero of the bloody slaughter at Gallows Gap is a legend to all who don’t know him and a twisted degenerate to those that do. A veteren of the wars against the lizards he makes a living from telling credulous travellers of his exploits. Until one day he is pulled away from his life and into the depths of the Empire’s slave trade. Where he will discover a secret infinitely more frightening than the trade in lives . . .
Archeth — pragmatist, cynic and engineer, the last of her race — is called from her work at the whim of the most powerful man in the Empire and sent to its farthest reaches to investigate a demonic incursion against the Empire’s borders.
Egar Dragonbane, steppe-nomad, one-time fighter for the Empire finds himself entangled in a small-town battle between common sense and religious fervour. But out in the wider world there is something on the move far more alien than any of his tribe’s petty gods.
Anti-social, anti-heroic, and decidedly irritated, all three of them are about to be sent unwillingly forth into a vicious, vigorous and thoroughly unsuspecting fantasy world. Called upon by an Empire that owes them everything and gave them nothing.
Young hero or anti-hero Gary Cheese grows up in a warped 1950s Brentford with two main interests: death, and the Lazlo Woodbine private-eye novels (see Waiting for Godalming) by PP Penrose. When this revered author dies, it's only logical that Gary and his bestest friend Dave should plan to crash the wake and reanimate him with voodoo.
Somewhere over the rainbow and just off the Yellow Brick Road stands Toy City, formerly known as Toy Town. And things are not going well for the citys inhabitants. There have been outbreaks of STC - Spontaneous Toy Combustion - and there are strange signs and portents in the Heavens. Preachers of Toy Citys many religions are predicting that the End Times are approaching and that a Toy City Apocalypse will soon come to pass. But can this possibly be true, or is there a simple explanation - an alien invasion, for instance. With the body count rising and the forces of law and order baffled, it is the time for a hero to step forward and attempt to save the day. Well, two heroes actually, Eddie Bear, Toy City Private Eye and his loyal sidekick, Jack: our courageous twosome are about to face their biggest challenge yet, to save not only toykind, but the world of mankind too. Which should keep them out of the pub for a while.
Henry Ford wasn't wrong when he said that, "history is bunk". He could still remember the days when the wireless transmission of energy had powered motorcars, mighty airships and space cruisers. And when Britannia ruled not only the waves, but all of the Earth and much of the cosmos besides. Have you ever wondered how Victorians such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells managed to dream up all that fantastic futuristic fiction? Did it ever occur to you that it might just have been based upon fact? That War Of The Worlds was a true account of real events? That Captain Nemo's Nautilus even now lies rusting at the bottom of the North Sea? That there really was an invisible man? No? Then what about the other stuff?
The time is now, the place is just around the corner from reality and Magic is the new Rock 'n' Roll: 21st century high-tech designer magic. It's finely tuned, personalised and very exclusive. It will cost you an arm and a leg and possibly even your soul, but it's real and it works. Robert Rankin is Britain's second most popular writer of humorous fantasy after Terry Pratchett; BIG MAGIC is the first in a trilogy written in his unique and very funny style.
The fourth part of the "Brentford Trilogy". Amazing, but true, Brentford Town Council has agreed to host the next Olympic Games. However, something sinister is afoot in Brentford, and it is up to the regulars of The Flying Swan to save the world as we know it.
Welcome to the realm of very scary faeries!
Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces the sixteen-year-old back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms -- a struggle that could very well mean her death.
Newcomer Holly Black's enormously powerful voice weaves teen angst, riveting romance, and capriciously diabolical faerie folk into an enthralling, engaging, altogether original reading experience.
From the Sept. 94 issue of Magazine of Fantasy & Science
(r) copyright 1994, by David Gerrold. All rights reserved.
David Gerrold, CIS: 70307,544
Nebula and Hugo Awards winner
Mercenary. Galactic traveller. Survivor. Earl Dumarest is all those things? and more. For he claims to come from the mythical planet of Earth. And those claims have just attracted the attention of the sinister Cyclan . . . Stranded on Gath with no way off, Dumarest becomes embroiled in the schemes of a sadistic prince and a dying matriarch. Plots within plots unfold?and Dumarest is the key to their success. For amid the schemes of prince and matriarch alike, all have come to experience the legendary Winds of Gath. For when the star swarms come, when the music of the spheres rises over the the planet's valleys and mountains, the dead can speak to the living . . . and men go mad!
THE WINDS OF GATH is the first volume in the Dumarest of Terra saga!
The second in the thrilling new fantasy series, from the author of the bestselling Assassin trilogy.
Fitz has succeeded in rescuing Prince Dutiful from the clutches of the Piebald rebels, and has returned with him to Buckkeep castle. With Dutiful safe again, Queen Kettricken can proceed with plans to marry him to the Outislander princess, Elliania. However, with tensions building among the peoples of the Six Duchies over Kettricken's tolerance of the Wittted, even Buckkeep is no longer safe. A reluctant Fitz is assigned to protect the young prince, and also train him in the Skill, and in doing so he finally makes contact not only with his estranged daughter, Nettle, but with someone in Buckkeep who may possess a greater Skill talent even than Fitz. And who may represent a terrible threat to the Farseers.
Meanwhile, Elliania arrives and, before she will accept Prince Dutiful's betrothal, challenges him to undertake an impossible quest. He must kill a legendary Outislander dragon.
A fantasy masterpiece from a five-time Hugo Award winner!
A war-dragon of Babel crashes in the idyllic fields of a post-industrialized Faerie and, dragging himself into the nearest village, declares himself king and makes young Will his lieutenant. Nightly, he crawls inside the young fey's brain to get a measure of what his subjects think.
Forced out of his village, Will travels with female centaur soldiers, witnesses the violent clash of giants, and acquires a surrogate daughter, Esme, who has no knowledge of the past and may be immortal. Evacuated to the Tower of Babel -- infinitely high, infinitely vulgar, very much like New York City -- Will meets the confidence trickster Nat Whilk. Inside the Dread Tower, Will becomes a hero to the homeless living in the tunnels under the city, rises as an underling to a politician, and meets his one true love - a high-elven woman he dare not aspire to.
You've heard of hard SF: This is hard fantasy from a master of the form.
The changeling's decision to steal a dragon and escape was born, though she did not know it then, the night the children met to plot the death of their supervisor…
With these words, author Michael Swanwick ushers us into a remarkable realm of darkest fantasy, erotic dreams and industrial magicks—equaling the undiluted power and uniqueness of vision of his Nebula award-winning masterwork STATIONS OF THE TIDE.
Jane is a human changeling child coming of age in a world of violence and monsters. An abused outcast, she toils unceasingly alongside trolls, dwarves, shifters and feys in the dank, stygian bowels of a steam dragon plant—helping to construct the massive, black iron flying machines the elvan rulers use for waging war. Young Jane's days are bleak and her future seems hopeless—until a cold yet tantalizing inner voice whispers to her of high lakes, autumn stars…and freedom.
The voice leads her to a junkyard dragon—old and broken, kept alive by hatred and a still-unsatisfied thirst for blood. And he promises to help Jane escape, if she will, in turn, help him to fly again. But untold wonders and terrors both lie beyond the factory gates—where a true name is a weapon…and erotic temptations wait to corrupt a young girl already hardened by life's cruel inequities.
A quick mind and a taste and talent for thievery will sustain Jane, however, on her strange and arduous journey from slave to student, from alchemist to avenger—while drugs and dreams transport her Elsewhere, on fleeting trips to a stolen reality. And through it all, the dragon lurks in the shadows—filling her head with violent visions, drawing her into a web of unknown plots and unseen forces. And, ultimately, at his controls, the changeling will confront the powers that have always ruled her life—seeking impossible answers through the obliteration of history…and the end of all things.
World Fantasy (nominee)
Arthur C. Clarke Award (nominee)
Brandon Sanderson, fantasy's newest master tale spinner, author of the acclaimed debut Elantris, dares to turn a genre on its head by asking a simple question: What if the hero of prophecy fails? What kind of world results when the Dark Lord is in charge? The answer will be found in the Mistborn Trilogy, a saga of surprises and magical martial-arts action that begins in Mistborn.
For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the “Sliver of Infinity,” reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison. Kelsier “snapped” and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.
Kelsier recruited the underworld's elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Only then does he reveal his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.
But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets, and gotten it. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.
Readers of Elantris thought they'd discovered someone special in Brandon Sanderson. Mistborn proves they were right.
Who is the Hero of Ages?
To end the Final Empire and restore freedom, Vin killed the Lord Ruler. But as a result, the Deepness---the lethal form of the ubiquitous mists---is back, along with increasingly heavy ashfalls and ever more powerful earthquakes. Humanity appears to be doomed.
Having escaped death at the climax of The Well of Ascension only by becoming a Mistborn himself, Emperor Elend Venture hopes to find clues left behind by the Lord Ruler that will allow him to save the world. Vin is consumed with guilt at having been tricked into releasing the mystic force known as Ruin from the Well. Ruin wants to end the world, and its near omniscience and ability to warp reality make stopping it seem impossible. She can't even discuss it with Elend lest Ruin learn their plans!
The conclusion of the Mistborn trilogy fulfills all the promise of the first two books. Revelations abound, connections rooted in early chapters of the series click into place, and surprises, as satisfying as they are stunning, blossom like fireworks to dazzle and delight. It all leads up to a finale unmatched for originality and audacity that will leave readers rubbing their eyes in wonder, as if awaking from an amazing dream.
The impossible has been accomplished. The Lord Ruler - the man who claimed to be god incarnate and brutally ruled the world for a thousand years - has been vanquished. But Kelsier, the hero who masterminded that triumph, is dead too, and now the awesome task of building a new world has been left to his young protégé, Vin, the former street urchin who is now the most powerful Mistborn in the land, and to the idealistic young nobleman she loves. As Kelsier's protégé and slayer of the Lord Ruler she is now venerated by a budding new religion, a distinction that makes her intensely uncomfortable. Even more worrying, the mists have begun behaving strangely since the Lord Ruler died, and seem to harbor a strange vaporous entity that haunts her.
Stopping assassins may keep Vin's Mistborn skills sharp, but it's the least of her problems. Luthadel, the largest city of the former empire, doesn't run itself, and Vin and the other members of Kelsier's crew, who lead the revolution, must learn a whole new set of practical and political skills to help. It certainly won't get easier with three armies - one of them composed of ferocious giants - now vying to conquer the city, and no sign of the Lord Ruler's hidden cache of atium, the rarest and most powerful allomantic metal. As the siege of Luthadel tightens, an ancient legend seems to offer a glimmer of hope. But even if it really exists, no one knows where to find the Well of Ascension or what manner of power it bestows.
THE BURNING LEGION HAS COME.
Led by the mighty Archimonde, scores of demonic soldiers now march across the lands of Kalimdor, leaving a trail of death and devastation in their wake. At the heart of the fiery invasion stands the mystic Well of Eternity -- once the source of the Night Elves' arcane power. But now the Well's energies have been defiled and twisted, for Queen Azshara and her Highborne will stop at nothing to commune with their newfound god: the fiery Lord of the Burning Legion...Sargeras.
The night elf defenders, led by the young druid, Malfurion Stormrage, and the wizard, Krasus, fight a desperate battle to hold back the Legion's terrible onslaught. Though only embers of hope remain, an ancient power has risen to aid the world in its darkest hour. The dragons -- led by the powerful Aspect, Neltharion -- have forged a weapon of incalculable power: the Dragon Soul, an artifact capable of driving the Legion from the world forever. But its use may cost far more than any could have foreseen.
The second novel in an original trilogy of magic, warfare, and heroism based on the bestselling, award-winning electronic game series from Blizzard Entertainment.
Duncan Chalk is a monstrous media mogul with a vast appetite for other people’s pain. He feeds off it, and carefully nurtures it in order to feed it to the public. It is inevitable that Chalk should home in on Minner Burris, a space traveler whose body was taken apart by alien surgeons and then put back together again differently. Burris’ pain is constant. And so is that of Lona Kelvin, used by scientists to supply eggs for 100 children and then ruthlessly discarded. Only an emotional vampire like Chalk can see the huge audience eager to watch a relationship develop between these two damaged people. And only Chalk can make it happen.
Attention: the text lacks aithor’s italic.
An odyssey of discovery, from a shattered society through the solar system with a handful of men and women who ride a cold, hurtling ball of ice to the shaky promise of a distant, unknowable future.
The novel tells the story of an expedition beginning in the year 2061 to capture Comet Halley into a short period orbit so that its resources can be mined. The discovery of life on the comet and the subsequent survival struggle against the indigenous lifeforms and the illnesses and infections they cause leads to a breakdown of the expedition crew and the creation of factions based around political beliefs, nationality and genetic differences between the “percells”—genetically enhanced humans and the “orthos”—unmodified humans. As well as the fighting between these factions, Earth rejects the mission due to fear of contamination from the halleyform life and attempts to destroy the comet and those living upon it. Eventually the mission crew on Halley are forced to accept that they can never return to earth and create a new biosphere within the comet's core and in some cases evolve into symbiotic organisms with the halleyform life.
The novel concerns a trio of alien explorers, each one surgically altered so that they outwardly appear human, who find themselves separated, and permanently stranded on Earth, after their ship explodes while hovering in low orbit. Each of the aliens is injured during the accident, and all are taken in and nursed back to health by kindly human beings.
In a not-too-distant future, the assassination of an all-powerful New York City Mayor has plunged the five boroughs back into a dangerous cesspool of crime, drugs, and prostitution. Professional prognosticator Lew Nichols joins the campaign team of a fast-rising politico running for the city's top office, and is introduced to a man who privately admits to being able to view glimpses of the future. Lew becomes obsessed with capturing the man's gift and putting it to use for his candidate, but struggles to accept the strict terms he arranges with his mentor… and the unforgiving predetermination of the future.
Nominated for Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1975.
Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel, Locus Award for Best SF Novel, and John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1976.
Simeon Krug has a vision — and the vast wealth necessary to turn dream into reality. What he wishes is to communicate with the stars, to answer signals from deep space. The colossal tower he’s constructing for this purpose soars above the Arctic tundra, and the seemingly perfect androids building it view Krug as their god. But, Krug is only flesh-and-blood, and when his androids discover the truth, their anger knows no bounds... and it threatens much more than the tower.
Nominated for Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1970.
Nominated for Hugo and Locus Award in 1971.
The city is Beszel, a rundown metropolis on the eastern edge of Europe. The other city is Ul Qoma, a modern Eastern European boomtown, despite being a bit of an international pariah. What the two cities share, and what they don't, is the deliciously evocative conundrum at the heart of China Mieville's The City & The City. Mieville is well known as a modern fantasist (and urbanist), but from book to book he's tried on different genres, and here he's fully hard-boiled, stripping down to a seen-it-all detective's voice that's wonderfully appropriate for this story of seen and unseen. His detective is Inspector Tyador Borlu, a cop in Beszel whose investigation of the murder of a young foreign woman takes him back and forth across the highly policed border to Ul Qoma to uncover a crime that threatens the delicate balance between the cities and, perhaps more so, Borlu's own dissolving sense of identity. In his tale of two cities, Mieville creates a world both fantastic and unsettlingly familiar, whose mysteries don't end with the solution of a murder.
The death-stars had come, and they had kept on coming for hundreds of thousands of years, falling upon the Earth, swept upon it by a vagrant star that had passed through the outer reaches of the solar system. They brought with them a time of unending darkness and cold. It was a thing that happened every twenty-six million years, and there was no turning it aside. But all that was done with now. At last the death-stars had ceased to fall, the sky had cleared of dust and cinders, the sun’s warmth again was able to break through the clouds. The glaciers relinquished their hold on the land; the Long Winter ended; the New Springtime began. The world was born anew.
Now each year was warmer than the last. The fair seasons of spring and summer, long lost from the world, came again with increasing power. And the People, having survived the dark time in their sealed cocoons, were spreading rapidly across the fertile land.
But others were already there. The hjjks, the somber cold-eyed insect-folk, had never retreated, even at the time of greatest chill. The world had fallen to them by default, and they had been its sole masters for seven hundred thousand years. They were not likely to share it gladly now.
The Green Odyssey is a relatively straightforward adventure story, involving an astronaut named Alan Green stranded on a primitive planet, where he is claimed as a gigolo by a duchess and is married to a slave woman. Upon hearing of two other stranded astronauts, he escapes from the duchess, and sets sail to find them. However, because of the peculiar geography of the planet, there is a vast expansive plain, instead of an ocean to cross. Green uses a ship equipped with large rolling pin-like wheels along the bottom to traverse the plains of this world.
After his escape from the duchess he is followed by his slave woman wife and her children (one is his). There follow several fairly standard adventure plots with cannibals, pirates, floating islands (that turn out to be giant lawnmowers), and the deus ex machina, a female black cat named Lady Luck.
She sees dead people — and they see her.
Chloe Saunders used to have a pretty normal life. But that changed on the day she met her first ghost. Now she finds herself in the midst of some really strange situations. First, she gets locked up in Lyle House, a group home for troubled teens. Then she finds out that there's more to her housemates than meets the eye. Will Chloe be able to uncover the dangerous secrets of Lyle House . . . or will its skeletons come back to haunt her?
This thrilling first volume in the supernaturally charged trilogy Darkest Powers, by international bestselling author Kelley Armstrong, will keep readers awake well into the darkest time of night.
Book II in the Darkest Powers trilogy takes us deeper into a world where the supernatural intrudes on the everyday with riveting effect.
If you had met me a few weeks ago, you probably would have described me as an average teenage girl—someone normal. Now my life has changed forever and I'm as far away from normal as it gets. A living science experiment—not only can I see ghosts, but I was genetically altered by a sinister organization called the Edison Group. What does that mean? For starters, I'm a teenage necromancer whose powers are out of control; I raise the dead without even trying. Trust me, that is not a power you want to have. Ever.
Now I'm running for my life with three of my supernatural friends—a charming sorcerer, a cynical werewolf, and a disgruntled witch—and we have to find someone who can help us before the Edison Group finds us first. Or die trying.
The first and only vampire book to be declassified
by the federal government. .
Felix Gomez went to Iraq a soldier. He came back a vampire.
Now he finds himself pulled into a web of intrigue when an old friend prompts him to investigate an outbreak of nymphomania at the secret government facilities in Rocky Flats. He'll find out the cause of all these horny women or die trying! But first he must contend with shadowy government agents, Eastern European vampire hunters, and women who just want his body. .
Skewering sexual myths, conspiracy fables, and government bureaucracy, The Nymphos of Rocky Flats reveals the bizarre world of the undead with a humorous slant and a fresh twist.»
Felix Gomez returned from the war in Iraq a changed man—once a soldier, now forever a vampire. So the undead underworld put his skills to work as a private detective, specializing in the sordid, the sexy, and the supernatural.
After surviving aliens, nymphomaniacs, and x-rated bloodsuckers, it's high time for a vacation. Now the aliens are back in a fiendish conspiracy with the U.S. government, and only Felix stands between them and the Earth women they covet. But when an army hit man attacks Felix and the bodacious vampire sexpert, Carmen, not even the astonishing erotic powers of the Kama Sutra for the Undead may be able to save them.
This is a novella set in a post-apocalyptic version of London where the fauna of mirrors have rebelled against their imprisonment. It was originally published in 2002 as a limited edition book by PS Publishing.
The abbot of a humble monastery in the Valley of Sorrows calls upon Master Li and Number Ten Ox to investigate the killing of a monk and the theft of a seemingly inconsequential manuscript from its library. Suspicion soon lands on the infamous Laughing Prince Liu Sheng—who has been dead for about 750 years. To solve this mystery and others, the incongruous duo will have to travel across China, outwit a half-barbarian king, and saunter into (and out of) Hell itself.
When a slightly mad robot drunk on AC, wants you to join an experiment in optimum ecology—don't do it! After all, who wants to argue like Disraeli or live like Ivan the Terrible?
This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction May 1952.
When a slightly mad robot drunk on AC, wants you to join an experiment in optimum ecology—don't do it! After all, who wants to argue like Disraeli or live like Ivan the Terrible?
This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction May 1952.
A story of the shocking revelation that came to the twenty-first Baron Kralitz.
This etext was produced from Weird Tales October 1936.
Like a great, lethal snake, plague creeps through the galaxies. No conscious entity can halt its progress, and life is slowly draining from planet after planet.
Only one super-intelligence is capable of preventing cataclysm. To do it, he must penetrate far beyond infinity—to the formless, deathless creature out to kill the universe.
The story follows Fuwaad ibn Abbas, a fabric merchant in the ancient city of Baghdad. It begins when he is searching for a gift to give a business associate and happens to discover a new shop in the marketplace. The shop owner, who makes and sells a variety of very interesting items, invites Fuwaad into the back workshop to see a mysterious black stone arch which serves as a gateway into the future, which the shop owner has made by the use of alchemy. Fuwaad is intrigued, and the shop owner tells him three stories of others who have traveled through the gate to meet and have conversation with their future selves. When Fuwaad learns that the shop keeper has another gate in Cairo that will allow people to travel even into the past, he makes the journey there to try to rectify a mistake he made twenty years earlier.
The story follows a young miner from the town of Elam who ascends the tower of Babylon to help break through the vault of heaven. Along the way he sees many wonderous sights, uncovers mysteries of heaven and earth, and in the end finds them as inscrutable as ever.
Dr. Louise Banks is enlisted by the military to communicate with a race of radially-symmetrical aliens who initiated first contact with humanity. Woven through the story are remembrances of her daughter.
Мир сошел с ума. Выброшены мишленовские путеводители по Парижу. В Ватикане больше никому не интересны проповеди Папы. В Лондоне позабывшие о могиле принцессы Дианы туристы толпятся возле величественного надгробия сэра Исаака Ньютона. Десятки миллионов людей из более чем сорока стран мира ищут главное сокровище христианской цивилизации. Движет ими Книга.
A collection of stories
The classic military dilemma-preventing those who defend you from turning on you-is seemingly solved with the implementation of the Bolos, mechanical servants with artificial intelligence and state-of-the-art high-tech weaponry. But when the implacable alien Deng invade Earth, the Bolos leap to the offensive with a war plan that doesn't take humanity into account.
The Knight and Knave of Swords is a fantasy short story collection by Fritz Leiber featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It is chronologically the seventh and last volume in the complete seven volume edition.
The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In The Knight and Knave of Swords the duo has settled permanently on Rime Isle with their new wives, their bands of followers taking on the role of peaceful traders. The first two stories concentrate on this settling-in process, while the final two deal with various magical curses and afflictions suffered by the protagonists.
The Knight and Knave of Swords is a fantasy short story collection by Fritz Leiber featuring his sword and sorcery heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. It is chronologically the seventh and last volume in the complete seven volume edition.
The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories follow the lives of two larcenous but likable rogues as they adventure across the fantasy world of Nehwon. In The Knight and Knave of Swords the duo has settled permanently on Rime Isle with their new wives, their bands of followers taking on the role of peaceful traders. The first two stories concentrate on this settling-in process, while the final two deal with various magical curses and afflictions suffered by the protagonists.
Mokslinės fantastikos :
Kelionė į žemę
Likvidacijos tarnyba
Akademija
Lorėjaus šiukšlininkas
Dėl ko verta gyventi
Bandomasis pavyzdys
Zuikis
Minimalus žmogus
Forma
Specialistas
Demonai
Pieno furgono reisas
Ritualas
„Ieškotojų ypatingasis
Trys Beno Baksterio mirtys
Globa
Žmogaus našta
Orderis žmogžudystei
Šis tas veltui
Anu, la gigante roja, también llamada la Estrella Cruel, El Merodeador, el Sol Demonio, El Vagabundo...se estaba aproximando a Isthar. Como cada mil años, abrasaría la tierra, secaría los ríos, agostaría los cultivos, y mataría.
La parte norte del planeta siempre era la más afectada. Sus habitantes, los bárbaros tassui, habían decidido no volver a ser las víctimas del Tiempo de Fuego y en consecuencia se lanzaron a la conquista de mejores territorios, amenazando acabar con la civilización.
Los miembros de la Asociación y sus legiones pidieron ayuda a los habitantes terrestres de la ciudad de Primavera. Pero la Federación Terrestre tenía su propia guerra en otro lugar y les prohibió que actuarán.
Everything Aoife thought she knew about the world was a lie. There is no Necrovirus. And Aoife isn't going to succomb to madness because of a latent strain — she will lose her faculties because she is allergic to iron. Aoife isn't human. She is a changeling — half human and half from the land of Thorn. And time is running out for her.
When Aoife destroyed the Lovecraft engine she released the monsters from the Thorn Lands into the Iron Lands and now she must find a way to seal the gates and reverse the destruction she's ravaged on the world that's about to poison her.
The haunting new literary fantasy from the (actual) author of MEMOIRS OF A MASTER FORGER. A young couple are caught in an avalanche during a skiing holiday in the French Alps. They struggle back to the village and find it deserted. As the days go by they wait for rescue, then try to leave. But each time they find themselves back in the village. And, increasingly, they are plagued by visions and dreams and the realization that perhaps no-one could have survived the avalanche.
THE SILENT LAND is a brooding and tender look at love and whether it can survive the greatest challenge we will ever face.
A collection of fantasy and horror short stories by British author J. Ramsey Campbell, who dropped the initial from his name in subsequent publications. It was released in 1964 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,009 copies and was the author's first book. The stories are part of the Cthulhu Mythos. Campbell had originally written his introduction to be included in the book The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces under the title "Cthulhu in Britain". However, Arkham's editor, August Derleth, decided to use it here. The contents were reprinted with some of Campbell's later Lovecraftian work in his 1985 collection Cold Print.
A collection of fantasy and horror short stories by British author J. Ramsey Campbell, who dropped the initial from his name in subsequent publications. It was released in 1964 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,009 copies and was the author's first book. The stories are part of the Cthulhu Mythos. Campbell had originally written his introduction to be included in the book The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces under the title "Cthulhu in Britain". However, Arkham's editor, August Derleth, decided to use it here. The contents were reprinted with some of Campbell's later Lovecraftian work in his 1985 collection Cold Print.
Po pięciu latach walk z posleeńskim najeźdźcą z ludzkiej cywilizacji pozostała zaledwie garstka wysoko uprzemysłowionych dolin, których mieszkańcy prześcigają się w tworzeniu coraz to potężniejszych wojennych machin, mających stawić czoła znienawidzonemu wrogowi. Po pięciu latach walk z ludźmi Posleeni są zmęczeni. Ludzie nie walczą fair. Posleeni są gotowi na zmianę, dlatego nadchodzi Tulo'stenaloor. Raz pokonany, potrafi wyciągnąć wnioski ze swojej klęski. Teraz nadeszła pora konfrontacji. Dwaj dawni przeciwnicy mają zmierzyć się w bitwie, która rozstrzygnie o przyszłości galaktyki na następne tysiąclecia. A kiedy major Michael O'Neal, dowódca pierwszego batalionu 555 pułku piechoty mobilnej, staje naprzeciw Tulo'stenaloora. Czas zatańczyć z diabłem.
Habitat Goddard — kosmiczna arka z dziesięciotysieczną załogą na pokładzie — wchodzi na orbitę Saturna. Naukowcy wysyłają sondę na Tytana, ale zaraz po wylądowaniu przestaje ona wysyłać sygnały. Jednocześnie doktor Wunderly robi wszystko, żeby doszło do jeszcze jednego lotu przez pierścienie planety; podejrzewa, że żyją w nich mikroorganizmy.
Planeta Tiamat należy do konfederacji skolonizowanych przez ludzkość światów, zwanej Hegemonią. Faktyczną władzę dzierży technokracja z planety Kharemough. Tiamat jest cywilizacyjnie zacofana, pokryta w większości oceanem, z osadnictwem rozlokowanym na licznych archipelagach. Na Tiamat występuje jednak wielkie bogactwo — woda życia, wyciąg z krwi merów — morskich zwierząt. Jej zażywanie pozwala przedłużać życie.
Ze względów astronomicznych Tiamat ma tylko dwie pory roku, trwające po około 150 lat — Lato i Zimę. Podczas Lata rządzą Letniacy, lud zabobonny, odrzucający technikę, a Zimą Zimacy, lud współpracujący z Hegemonią i bezlitośnie eksploatujący swoją planetę. W czasie lata Tiamat, z powodu bliskości czarnej dziury, jest niedostępna dla statków kosmicznych i transport wody życia urywa się.
Nadchodzi czas zmiany warty. Ustępująca Królowa Zimy nie zamierza ustąpić i nie chce się pogodzić ze swoją rytualną śmiercią na zakończenie Zimy. Sprawia, że kilka kobiet Letniaków urodzi jej klony… Spisek ma doprowadzić do przedłużenia jej panowania.
Zdobyła nagrody Hugo i Locusa w 1981.
Nominowana do nagrodę Nebula w 1981.
Planeta Tiamat należy do konfederacji skolonizowanych przez ludzkość światów, zwanej Hegemonią. Faktyczną władzę dzierży technokracja z planety Kharemough. Tiamat jest cywilizacyjnie zacofana, pokryta w większości oceanem, z osadnictwem rozlokowanym na licznych archipelagach. Na Tiamat występuje jednak wielkie bogactwo — woda życia, wyciąg z krwi merów — morskich zwierząt. Jej zażywanie pozwala przedłużać życie.
Ze względów astronomicznych Tiamat ma tylko dwie pory roku, trwające po około 150 lat — Lato i Zimę. Podczas Lata rządzą Letniacy, lud zabobonny, odrzucający technikę, a Zimą Zimacy, lud współpracujący z Hegemonią i bezlitośnie eksploatujący swoją planetę. W czasie lata Tiamat, z powodu bliskości czarnej dziury, jest niedostępna dla statków kosmicznych i transport wody życia urywa się.
Nadchodzi czas zmiany warty. Ustępująca Królowa Zimy nie zamierza ustąpić i nie chce się pogodzić ze swoją rytualną śmiercią na zakończenie Zimy. Sprawia, że kilka kobiet Letniaków urodzi jej klony… Spisek ma doprowadzić do przedłużenia jej panowania.
Zdobyła nagrody Hugo i Locusa w 1981.
Nominowana do nagrodę Nebula w 1981.
Anthony Van Horne, the disgraced captain of an oil tanker that spilled its cargo, is approached by the angel Raphael at the Cloisters in New York to command his former ship on an important mission. It seems God has died, and his two-mile-long corpse has fallen into the ocean at 0° latitude, 0° longitude. The Vatican would like the captain to tow God to a remote Arctic cave for a quiet burial. Naturally, things don’t work out this simply, and the complications form the events of this splendid comic epic. As more and more folks with varying perspectives become aware of the covert mission, more hell, if you will, breaks loose. The author, an SF crossover, puts the weighty subject and its possible ramifications to clever use on many levels. He packs the story with sailing matters, cultural criticism, theology, physics, and more but still manages to keep the encounter bubbly and inviting.
Won World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1995.
Nominated for Nebula Award in 1994.
Nominated for Hugo, Clarke, and Locus awards in 1995.
Sometimes there is very good reason to be afraid of the dark...
Eleven-year-old Arlen lives with his parents on their small farmstead, half a day's ride away from the isolated hamlet of Tibbet's Brook.
As dusk falls upon Arlan's world, a strange mist rises from the ground, a mist carrying nightmares to the surface. A mist that promises a violent death to any foolish enough to brave the coming darkness, for hungry corelings - demons that cannot be harmed by mortal weapons - materialize from the vapours to feed on the living. As the sun sets, people have no choice but to take shelter behind magical wards and pray that their protection holds until the creatures dissolve with the first signs of dawn.
When Arlen's life is shattered by the demon plague, he is forced to see that it is fear, rather than the demons, which truly cripples humanity. Believing that there is more to his world than to live in constant fear, he must risk leaving the safety of his wards to discover a different path.
In the small town of Cutter's Hollow, Leesha's perfect future is destroyed by betrayal and a simple lie. Publicly shamed, she is reduced to gathering herbs and tending an old woman more fearsome than the corelings. Yet in her disgrace, she becomes the guardian of dangerous ancient knowledge.
Orphaned and crippled in a demon attack, young Rojer takes solace in mastering the musical arts of a Jongleur, only to learn that his unique talent gives him unexpected power over the night.
Together, these three young people will offer humanity a last, fleeting chance of survival.
Beginning with John Carter's return to Barsoom (Mars) after a ten year hiatus — separated from his wife Dejah Thoris, his unborn child, and the Red Martian people of the nation of Helium, whom he has adopted as his own — John Carter materializes in the one place on Barsoom from which nobody is allowed to depart: the Valley Dor, the Barsoomian heaven.
In the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in “Hyperion”, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. On the world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing—nothing anywhere in the universe—will ever be the same.
In the stunning continuation of the epic adventure begun in “Hyperion”, Simmons returns us to a far future resplendent with drama and invention. On the world of Hyperion, the mysterious Time Tombs are opening. And the secrets they contain mean that nothing—nothing anywhere in the universe—will ever be the same.
Book three of the Ki and Vandian Quartet.
After surviving the conflict between the Windsingers and the Wizard Dresh, life for Ki and her lover, Vandien, settles down. But although Ki’s bargain for the Relic bought their lives and their freedom, the wrath of the Hugh Windsinger council is not easily sated. They are deadly enemies, and even the protection of Rebeke, the most powerful of the Windsingers, is not enough to prevent Ki from being tricked through the Limbreth Gate.
In the darkness beyond lives a bored and arrogant local god whose only obsession is collecting minds to manipulate and amuse himself with. He reveals to Ki the secrets of her past. Vandien attempts to free her from the god’s enchantment. But Ki may be content to remain with the god forever…
Rise beyond adventure and confront destiny in book three of Megan Lindholm’s stunning Ki and Vandian Quartet.
The inevitable Long Night of Interstellar barbarism is approaching, and Dominic, who devoted his life to keeping the galactic peace decides that others must take up the challenge of courting danger on strange planets. Enter Diana—illegitmate—but the true daughter of Dominic.
Aeneas is the powder keg of the universe, a frontier planet where rebellion is a way of life—and death. Smarting under the thumb of the Terran Empire after an almost successful war against Imperial rule, the Aeneans are swept up in a fanatical religious movement that promises the return of the Elder Race.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.
From Sauron's fastness in the Dark Tower of Mordor, his power spread far and wide. Sauron gathered all the Great Rings to him, but always he searched for the One Ring that would complete his dominion.
When Bilbo reached his eleventy-first birthday he disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin Frodo the Ruling Ring and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom.
The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the Wizard; the hobbits Merry, Pippin, and Sam; Gimli the Dwarf; Legolas the Elf; Boromir of Gondor; and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider.
HORRORS GALORE!
“Wagner has done his work well, and DAW deserves the thanks of horror readers, and librarians catering to them, for keeping this anthology going, its price low, and its quality high”.
So comments the American Library Association’s Booklist about this series, and this latest volume will uphold their estimate. Once again Karl Edward Wagner has probed the horror tales of the past year and come up with a headsman’s basket of spine-chilling goodies.
Among the authors you will find: Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Michael Kube-McDowell, Manly Wade Wellman, M. John Harrison, Sheila Hodgson, and many more.
All sure to give you the willies! Don’t try reading them all at one sitting!
In a kingdom of merciless tyrants, Jebel Rum's family is honored as royalty because his father is the executioner. But Rashed Rum is near retirement. And when he goes, there will be a contest to determine his successor. It is a contest that thin, puny Jebel has no chance of winning.
Humiliated and ashamed, Jebel sets out on a quest to the faraway home of a legendary fire god to beg for inhuman powers so that he can become the most lethal of men. He must take with him a slave, named Tel Hesani, to be sacrificed to the god. It will be a dark and brutal journey filled with lynch mobs, suicide cults, terrible monsters, and worse, monstrous men. But to Jebel, the risk is worth it.
To retrieve his honor . . .
To wield unimaginable power . . .
To become . . .
The thin executioner
Inspired by the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, international bestselling master of horror Darren Shan takes readers on a thrilling, fast-paced journey into a nightmarish world where compassion and kindness are the greatest crimes of all.
How could Earth fight a war against an enemy whose base was unknown, who resources were unknown, and whose very physical appearance was unknown? Another thrilling episode of the Jacko War.
Won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 1969.
Nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1969.
Bob Jones is ordinary, from his appearance right down to his very name. No one seems to take notice of him, not his co-workers, his girlfriend, or even his own parents. But Bob learns he's not alone when he's taken in by a band of people that suffer similarly. Calling themselves "The Ignored", the deadly vengeance they intend to wreak is sure to make them more than just memorable.
On the surface, Genny's life seems ripple-free right now. Finn, her sexy boss and — well, Genny's not sure what else she wants him to be, but he's stopped pushing for a decision on their relationship. The seductive vampire Malik al-Khan has vanished back into the shadows. And the witches have declared her no longer a threat. But unless Genny can find a way to break the fertility curse afflicting London's fae, she knows this is just the lull before the magical storm. Then a faeling — a teenage girl — is fished out of the River Thames, dead and bound with magic, and Genny is called into investigate. As she digs through the clues, her search takes a sinister and dangerous turn, exposing age-old secrets that might be better left buried. Then another faeling disappears, and Genny finds herself in a race against time to save the faeling and stop the curse from claiming its next victim — herself!
A man who suffered brain damage can see the ancient past and hear the traffic of the stars—and the creature trapped under a mountain.
With this story, I’ve enter a future in which mankind has spread itself far out into the galaxy of which Earth’s sun — and Earth itself, of course — are such microscopically small bits of dust. In Anderson’s concept, most life forms encountered seem to be essentially humanoid. In this story, indeed, they are not only humanoid, but measurably “human” in their psychological reactions. If one wanted to draw some comparisons, one could, I suppose, compare Cundaloa in this tale with the islands of the Pacific, and Skontar with the Scandinavian countries. Sweden, for example, is Swedish through and through. Hawaii? Whatever Hawaii is, and it sounds wonderful for a vacation, it surely no longer belongs to the original Hawaiians… You will get the point of this analogy as you read on, of course.
Poul Anderson
El mal medra, y la magia se ha pervertido. En todas partes hay miedo e incertidumbre, y magos y reyes quieren que una mujer de Gont les muestre el camino. Tenar, sacerdotisa de Atuan, cuida de Therru, una muchacha que ha conocido el horror, y dedica toda su fuerza y sabiduría a proteger a la niña de sus perseguidores y llegar a entender un mundo que está cambiando de una manera misteriosa. A Tenar se le une Ged, en otro tiempo archimago de Terramar, y el hombre, la mujer y la niña descubren que se enfrentan a un enemigo que sólo podrá ser dominado con una nueva especie de poder…
Ganó el Premio Nébula como mejor novela en 1990, Premio Locus como mejor novela de fantasía en 1991.
Viola Hatherley was a writer of ghost stories in the 1890s whose work lies forgotten until her great-grandson, as a young boy in Mawson, Australia, learns how to open the secret drawer in his mother's room. There he finds a manuscript, and from the moment his mother catches him in the act, Gerard Freeman's life is irrevocably changed. What is the invisible, ever-present threat from which his mother strives so obsessively to protect him? And why should stories written a century ago entwine themselves ever more closely around events in his own life? Gerard's quest to unveil the mystery that shrouds his family, and his life, will lead him from Mawson to London, to a long-abandoned house and the terror of a ghost story come alive.
En el Hollywood del futuro, con el cine computerizado, las películas de acción real son cosa del pasado. Los actores han sido sustituidos por simulacros generados por ordenador. La manipulación informática permite, por ejemplo, que Humphrey Bogart y Marilyn Monroe protagonicen juntos el enésimo remake de Ha nacido una estrella. Pero, además, si al espectador no le gusta el final, puede alterarlo con sólo pulsar una tecla.
Un Hollywood futuro gobernado como hoy por el sexo (pero ahora simulado informáticamente…), las drogas y los efectos especiales. Un mundo donde todo es posible. Todo, excepto lo que Alis más desea: bailar realmente en las películas. Un sueño imposible incluso con la ayuda de Tom, un cínico experto de ese nuevo Hollywood del futuro, quien aprenderá que incluso en un mundo de milagros tecnológicos siguen existiendo algunas cosas que no pueden ser falsificadas ¿O sí…?
A powerful sublight interstellar space ship, a “class two cruiser” called Invincible, lands on the planet Regis III which seems uninhabited and bleak, to investigate the loss of sister ship, Condor. During the investigation, the crew finds evidence of a form of quasi-life, born through evolution of autonomous, self-replicating machines, apparently left behind by an alien civilization that visited the planet a very long time ago. The evolution was controlled by “robot wars”, and the only form that survived were swarms of minuscule, insect-like micromachines. Individually, or in small groups, they are quite harmless to humans and capable of only very simple behavior. However, when bothered, they can assemble into huge swarms displaying complex behavior arising from self-organization, and are able to defeat an intruder by a powerful surge of EMI. Some members of the spacecraft crew suffered a complete memory erasure as a consequence. Big clouds of “insects” are also able to travel at a high speed and even to climb to the top of troposphere. The angered crew attempts to fight the perceived enemy, but eventually recognizes the meaninglessness of their efforts in the most direct sense of the word. The robotic “fauna” has become part of the planets ecology, and would require a disruption on planetary scale (such as a nuclear winter) to be destroyed.
The novel turns into an analysis of the relationship between different life domains, and their place in the universe. In particular, it is an imaginary experiment to demonstrate that evolution may not necessarily lead to dominance by intellectually superior life forms. The plot also involves a Conrad-like dilemma, juxtaposing the values of humanity and the efficiency of mechanical insects. In the face of defeat and imminent withdrawal of The Invincible, Rohan, the spaceship's navigator, undertakes a trip into the 'enemy area' in search of 4 crew members who went missing in action — an attempt which he and captain Horpach see as probably futile, but necessary for moral reasons. Rohan struck into mountains covered by metallic “shrubs” and “insects” and found these crewmen dead. He gathers some evidence and returns to the ship unharmed because of successful operation of the anti-detection device they managed to create for that purpose.
En Borthan, un planeta colonizado cientos de años atrás, la humanidad vive en paz, sin embargo el precio pagado parece demasiado elevado: nada es considerado más obsceno que el compartir los propios sentimientos con otro humano, y se ha prohibido el uso de la palabra “yo”. Kinnall Darival es un hombre que lo tiene todo en la vida para ser feliz. Solo una cosa le perturba: las convenciones sociales le impiden expresar sus sentimientos a la persona amada. Cuando conoce a Scxhweiz, un comerciante de la Tierra, este le ofrece una sustancia mágica capaz de derribar los muros entre las almas de los hombres. El sistema de valores de Darival se trastoca y experimenta cada vez más dudas que le conducirán a ser un proscrito entre los suyos y a provocar el dolor entre aquellos a los que ama.
Silverberg, winner of four Hugos and five Nebulas, presents a riveting tale of an epic voyage of survival in a hostile environment. On the watery world of Hydros, humans live on artificial islands and keep an uneasy peace with the native race of amphibians. When a group of humans angers their alien hosts, they are exiled—set adrift on the planet's vast and violent sea.
Explosive and provocative battles fought across the boundaries of time and space—and on the frontiers of the human mind.
Science fiction's finest have yielded this definitive collection featuring stories of warfare, victory, conquest, heroism, and overwhelming odds. These are scenarios few have ever dared to contemplate, and they include:
-"Superiority": Arthur C. Clarke presents an intergalactic war in which one side's own advanced weaponry may actually lead to its ultimate defeat.
-"Dragonrider": A tale of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, in which magic tips the scales of survival.
-"Second Variety": Philip K. Dick, author of the short story that became the movie Blade Runner, reaches new heights of terror with his post apocalyptic vision of the future.
-"The Night of the Vampyres": A chilling ultimatum of atomic proportions begins a countdown to disaster in George R. R. Martin's gripping drama.
-"Hero": Joe Haldeman's short story that led to his classic of interstellar combat, The Forever War.
-"Ender's Game": The short story that gave birth to Orson Scott Card's masterpiece of military science fiction.
. . . as well as stories from Poul Anderson, Gregory Benford, C. J. Cherryh, David Drake, Cordwainer Smith, Harry Turtledove and Walter John Williams.
Guaranteed to spark the imagination and thrill the soul, these thirteen science fiction gems cast a stark light on our dreams and our darkest fears—truly among the finest tales of the 20th century.
Physician Matt Wheeler is one of the few who said no to eternity. As he watches his friends, his colleagues, even his beloved daughter transform into something more-and less-than human, Matt suddenly finds everything he once believed about good and evil, life and death, god and mortal called into question. And he finds himself forced to choose sides in an apocalyptic struggle—a struggle that very soon will change the face of the universe itself.
Detective Daniel Fox has just met with a grizzly end. The dawn of his afterlife is where our story begins.
To redeem his soul and earn a place in Heaven, Daniel must first venture to the 9th Fortress: Lucifer’s primary prison in the heart of hell-fire. There the worst of the worst are contained, and Daniel’s mission is to save one particular soul from its dungeon.
To help him achieve that almighty feat, the detective was given a defender-a samurai warrior called Kat-the most dangerous man who ever lived and the only one qualified, and capable of leading this perilous expedition.
Together, the Kat and Fox encounter the unnatural and supernatural on their decent to the pit, and all of it trying to stop them.
Why pay for costumes, scenery, props or actors when the most brilliant drama of all time is unfolding before your very eyes, in vivid color — in 1050 A.D.? Just the film crew of that stupendous motion picture saga Viking Columbus as they journey back in time to capture history in the making.
First published as The Time-Machined Saga.
All eyes were watching the eclipse of the Moon when the Wanderer — a huge, garishly colored artificial world — emerged. Only a few scientists even suspected its presence, and then, suddenly and silently, it arrived, dwarfing and threatening the Moon and wreaking havoc on Earth’s tides and weather. Though the Wanderer is stopping in the solar system only to refuel, its mere presence is catastrophic. A tense, thrilling, and towering achievement.
Won Hugo Award for the Best Novel in 1964.
The Sea and Little Fishes is a short story by Terry Pratchett, written in 1998. It is set in his Discworld universe, and features Lancre witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg. It was originally published in a sampler alongside a story called "The Wood Boy" by Raymond E. Feist, and later in a collection called Legends.
The story established a basis for various elements of the novel A Hat Full of Sky, but is not required to understand that novel.
In The Light Fantastic only one individual can save the world from a disastrous collision. Unfortunately, the hero happens to be the singularly inept wizard Rincewind, who was last seen falling off the edge of the world…
First Published in Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1956. From the collection The High Ones and Other Stories by Poul Anderson published in 2010 by Wonder Publishing Group.
Alexia Tarabotti, Lady Maccon, has settled into domestic bliss. Of course, being Alexia, such bliss involves integrating werewolves into London High society, living in a vampire's second best closet, and coping with a precocious toddler who is prone to turning supernatural willy-nilly. Even Ivy Tunstell's acting troupe's latest play, disastrous to say the least, cannot put a damper on Alexia's enjoyment of her new London lifestyle.
Until, that is, she receives a summons from Alexandria that cannot be ignored. With husband, child, and Tunstells in tow, Alexia boards a steamer to cross the Mediterranean. But Egypt may hold more mysteries than even the indomitable Lady Maccon can handle. What does the vampire Queen of the Alexandria Hive really want from her? Why is the God-Breaker Plague suddenly expanding? And how has Ivy Tunstell suddenly become the most popular actress in all the British Empire?
New York Times bestselling author Kim Harrison has won legions of fans with her sexy supernatural novels featuring bounty-hunting witch Rachel Morgan. And now comes a unique look inside her beloved Hollows series that no fan should miss. . . . The Hollows Insider
In the Hollows, the supernatural Inderlanders rule, and humanity must abide by their conventions, or else.
To survive among vampires, witches, Weres, gargoyles, trolls, fairies, and banshees--to say nothing of demons--humanity needs a guide. And now, written by Kim Harrison herself, here is an insider's look at the supernatural world of the Hollows, from an overarching new story to character profiles, maps, spell guides, charm recipes, secret correspondence from the elusive Trent Kalamack, and much more.
Novelization of a 1999 film starring Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron.
In this relentlessly gripping psychological thriller, Johnny Depp plays Spencer Armacost, an astronaut sent on a space shuttle mission with his partner, Captain Alex Streck. While in space, an accident occurs that cuts all contact between the men and earth for two minutes. Both men return from the trip with no memory of those crucial minutes, and soon thereafter Streck mysteriously dies. Little by little, Spencer’s wife Jillian, pregnant with twins, begins to suspect that something happened on the mission during those two minutes...something that changed Spencer into something other than the man she loves...something that might mean the end of us all...
Итак, всё началось, когда адепт третьего класса Паллант Равашоль, согласно приказу своего хозяина старшего адепта Уртзи Недоброго, поступил в распоряжение к старшему адепту Луке Хрому. Равашоль был одним из лучших разработчиков программ для сервиторов и, видимо, именно поэтому понадобился Хрому.
This three volume set presents for the first time the genre-defining Slammers series in a uniform hardcover set. This volume features all of the Hammer's Slammer short fiction, as well as all of the interstitial material from the original Slammers collection, as well as new artwork, new interstitial material and an original Slammers story, "A Death in Peacetime". The first volume will feature an introduction by Gene Wolfe, and cover art by Vincent Di Fate.
This three volume set presents for the first time the genre-defining Slammers series in a uniform hardcover set. This volume features the first four Hammer Novels: At Any Price (1985), Counting the Cost (1987), Rolling Hot (1989) and The Warrior (1991), as well as new artwork, and new interstitial material. Volume 2 will also feature an introduction by David Hartwell, and cover art by John Berkey. Also included is an original Slammers story, "A Day of Glory"
This three volume set presents for the first time the genre-defining Slammers series in a uniform hardcover set. This volume features the final two Slammers novels, The Sharp End and Paying the Piper, as well as an original novelette, The Darkness. This volume will feature an introduction by Barry Malzberg, and cover art by John Berkey.
While King Louis XIV of France believes that the sea monster he has obtained holds the key to immortality, Marie-Josèphe de la Croix finds herself challenging her most fundamental loyalties, in a story of alternate history.
Won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1997.
For more than two years, one book has taken over Germany’s hardcover and paperback bestseller lists, reaching number one in Der Spiegel and setting off a frenzy in bookstores: The Swarm.
Whales begin sinking ships. Toxic, eyeless crabs poison Long Island's water supply. The North Sea shelf collapses, killing thousands in Europe. Around the world, countries are beginning to feel the effects of the ocean's revenge as the seas and their inhabitants begin a violent revolution against mankind. In this riveting novel, full of twists, turns, and cliffhangers, a team of scientists discovers a strange, intelligent life force called the Yrr that takes form in marine animals, using them to wreak havoc on humanity for our ecological abuses. Soon a struggle between good and evil is in full swing, with both human and sub-oceanic forces battling for control of the waters. At stake is the survival of the Earth's fragile ecology-and ultimately, the survival of the human race itself.
The apocalyptic catastrophes of The Day After Tomorrow meet the watery menace of The Abyss in this gripping, scientifically realistic, and utterly imaginative thriller. With 1.5 million copies sold in Germany-where it has been on the bestseller list without fail since its debut-and the author's skillfully executed blend of compelling story, vivid characters, and eerie locales, Frank Schatzing's The Swarm will keep you in tense anticipation until the last suspenseful page is turned.
When she was sixteen, Joanna Archer was brutally assaulted and left to die in the Nevada desert.
By rights, she should be dead.
Now a photographer by day, she prowls a different Las Vegas after sunset—a grim, secret Sin City where Light battles Shadow—seeking answers to whom or what she really is ... and revenge for the horrors she was forced to endure.
But the nightmare is just beginning—for the demons are hunting Joanna, and the powerful shadows want her for their own ...
At first no one noticed when the flower was delivered to Julia Evans, owner of Event Horizon, but this flower has genes millions of years in advance of terrestrial DNA. Where did the plant come from? Greg Mandel, telepathic investigator, must find out-before the Nano Flower blooms.
Here's an absorbing and intricately plotted mystery set in a troubled future England, a story that expertly and effortlessly mixes two genres to produce a hybrid worthy of the best of either: a science fiction mystery full of surprises, where nothing is as it seems to be.
At the centre of the Intersolar Commonwealth universe is a massive black hole. This Void is not a natural artefact. Inside there is a strange universe where the laws of physics are very different to those we know. It is slowly consuming the other stars of the galactic core — one day it will have devoured the entire galaxy.
It's AD 4000, and a human has started to dream of the wonderful existence of the Void. He has a following of millions of believers. They now wish to Pilgrimage to the Void to live the life they have been shown. Other starfaring species fear their migration will cause the Void to expand again. They are prepared to stop the Pilgrimage fleet no matter what the cost. The Pilgrimage begins…
The Intersolar Commonwealth is in turmoil as the Living Dream's deadline for launching its Pilgrimage into the Void draws closer. Not only is the Ocisen Empire fleet fast approaching on a mission of genocide, but also an internecine war has broken out between the post-human factions over the destiny of humanity.
Countering the various and increasingly desperate agents and factions is Paula Myo, a ruthlessly single-minded investigator, beset by foes from her distant past and colleagues of dubious allegiance…but she is fast losing a race against time.
At the heart of all this is Edeard the Waterwalker, who once lived a long time ago deep inside the Void. He is the messiah of Living Dream, and visions of his life are shared by, and inspire billions of humans. It is his glorious, captivating story that is the driving force behind Living Dream's Pilgrimage, a force that is too strong to be thwarted. As Edeard nears his final victory the true nature of the Void is finally revealed.
“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.
The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.”
As this popularly acclaimed, internationally best-selling sequel to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy opens, the hapless Earthman Arthur Dent has just escaped certain death on the planet Magrathea. He now faces certain death from a Vogon spaceship, unless the ghost of ex-Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox’s grandfather can lend a spectral helping hand. As he must, because Zaphod must fulfill a mission he’s totally forgotten about—to search for the man who truly rules the universe. Naturally, there’s time for everyone to stop for a bite to eat at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe first… In general, these first two books—The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and this volume—are considered to be the definitive books in the Hitchhiker’s series. Part of the reason why this is so may be because these first two books follow to a significant degree the plotline of the BBC radio series that inspired them, although the events are somewhat rearranged and some additional incidents added. The subsequent books take the story in an entirely new direction, far past the timeline of the radio series.
Men had built cities before, but never such a city as Diaspar; for millennia its protective dome shutout the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that rules the stars. But then, as legend had it, the Invaders came, driving humanity into this last refuge. It takes one man, a Unique to break through Diaspar’s stifling inertia, to smash the legend and discover the true nature of the Invaders.
This collection includes all of the writer’s earliest short and medium-length fiction (including some previously unpublished stories) covering the years 1952-1955. These fascinating stories include “Beyond Lies the Wub”, “The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford”, “The Variable Man”, and 22 others.
Many thousands of readers consider Philip K. Dick the greatest science fiction mind on any planet. Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Dick’s works has continued to mount and his reputation has been further enhanced by a growing body of critical attention. The Philip K. Dick Award is now given annually to a distinguished work of science fiction, and the Philip K. Dick Society is devoted to the study and promulgation of his works.
This collection includes all of the writer’s earliest short and medium-length fiction (including some previously unpublished stories) covering the years 1954-1964. These fascinating stories include “Service Call”, “Stand By”, “The Days of Perky Pat”, and many others.
Since his untimely death in 1982, interest in Philip K. Dick’s works has continued to grow, and his reputation has been enhanced by an expanding body of critical appreciation. This fifth and final volume of Dick’s collected works includes 25 short stories, some previously unpublished.
The Hugo Award Winner-1963
It’s America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war—and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.
This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake.
In this wildly disorienting funhouse of a novel, populated by God-like—or perhaps Satanic—takeover artists and corporate psychics, Philip K. Dick explores mysteries that were once the property of St. Paul and Aquinas. His wit, compassion, and knife-edged irony make The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch moving as well as genuinely visionary.
An all original anthology from some of todays hottest supernatural writers, featuring stories of monsters from the monster's point of view.
In most stories we get the perspective of the hero, the ordinary, the everyman, but we are all the hero of our own tale, and so it must be true for legions of monsters, from Lucifer to Mordred, from child-thieving fairies to Frankenstein's monster and the Wicked Witch of the West. From our point of view, they may very well be horrible, terrifying monstrosities, but of course they won’t see themselves in the same light, and their point of view is what concerns us in these tales. Demons and goblins, dark gods and aliens, creatures of myth and legend, lurkers in darkness and beasts in human clothing… these are the subjects of The Monster’s Corner. With contributions by Lauren Groff, Chelsea Cain, Simon R. Green, Sharyn McCrumb, Kelley Armstrong, David Liss, Kevin J. Anderson, Jonathan Maberry, and many others.
An all original anthology from some of todays hottest supernatural writers, featuring stories of monsters from the monster's point of view.
In most stories we get the perspective of the hero, the ordinary, the everyman, but we are all the hero of our own tale, and so it must be true for legions of monsters, from Lucifer to Mordred, from child-thieving fairies to Frankenstein's monster and the Wicked Witch of the West. From our point of view, they may very well be horrible, terrifying monstrosities, but of course they won’t see themselves in the same light, and their point of view is what concerns us in these tales. Demons and goblins, dark gods and aliens, creatures of myth and legend, lurkers in darkness and beasts in human clothing… these are the subjects of The Monster’s Corner. With contributions by Lauren Groff, Chelsea Cain, Simon R. Green, Sharyn McCrumb, Kelley Armstrong, David Liss, Kevin J. Anderson, Jonathan Maberry, and many others.
Druhým tématem Clementa velmi zajímajícím je téma inteligentního života, který Clement umísťuje do nejrůznějšího exotického a nehostinného prostředí. To je příklad jeho v češtině jediného vyšlého románu „Těžká expedice“, který se odehrává na planetě Mesklin, která je 4.800 krát větší než Země a otočí se kolem své osy jednou za 18 minut — to ve svých důsledcích znamená, že zatímco na rovníku jsou pouhá 3 g, na pólech je 700 g.
Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) is best known as a fantasy writer, but his achievements and influence are also considerable in the horror and science fiction fields. One of his major SF works is the Change War series, about rival time-traveling armies locked in a bitter, age-old war for control of existence; the battles frequently alter the course of human history. The most important work of Leiber's Change War series is the Hugo Award-winning novel The Big Time, in which doctors, entertainers, and wounded soldiers find themselves treacherously trapped with an activated atomic bomb inside the Place, a room existing outside of space-time. It's not one of Leiber's strongest novels: the cutesy-girlish narrative voice is unconvincing, while the demands of describing time travel and time paradoxes inevitably strain the prose. But The Big Time is a tense, claustrophobic SF mystery, and possibly the ultimate locked-room whodunit.
Won Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1958.
John Truck was to outward appearances just another lowlife spaceship captain. But he was also the last of the Centaurans - or at least, half of him was - which meant that he was the only person who could operate the Centauri Device, a sentient bomb which might hold the key to settling a vicious space war. M. John Harrison's classic novel turns the conventions of space opera on their head, and is written with the precision and brilliance for which is famed.
In the distant future, a medieval system rises from the ruins of a technology that destroyed itself. Armored knights ride their horses across dunes of rust, battling for the honor of the Queen. But the knights find more to menace them than mere swords and lances. A brave quest leads them face to face with the awesome power of a complex, lethal technology that has been erased from the face of the Earth--but lives on, underground.
In this stunning debut, author Scott Lynch delivers the wonderfully thrilling tale of an audacious criminal and his band of confidence tricksters. Set in a fantastic city pulsing with the lives of decadent nobles and daring thieves, here is a story of adventure, loyalty, and survival that is one part “Robin Hood,” one part Ocean's Eleven, and entirely enthralling…
An orphan's life is harsh – and often short – in the island city of Camorr, built on the ruins of a mysterious alien race. But born with a quick wit and a gift for thieving, Locke Lamora has dodged both death and slavery, only to fall into the hands of an eyeless priest known as Chains – a man who is neither blind nor a priest. A con artist of extraordinary talent, Chains passes his skills on to his carefully selected “family” of orphans – a group known as the Gentlemen Bastards. Under his tutelage, Locke grows to lead the Bastards, delightedly pulling off one outrageous confidence game after another. Soon he is infamous as the Thorn of Camorr, and no wealthy noble is safe from his sting.
Passing themselves off as petty thieves, the brilliant Locke and his tightly knit band of light-fingered brothers have fooled even the criminal underworld's most feared ruler, Capa Barsavi. But there is someone in the shadows more powerful – and more ambitious – than Locke has yet imagined.
Known as the Gray King, he is slowly killing Capa Barsavi's most trusted men – and using Locke as a pawn in his plot to take control of Camorr's underworld. With a bloody coup under way threatening to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the Gray King at his own brutal game – or die trying…
When Britain intercepted a French ship and its precious cargo — an unhatched dragon’s egg — Capt. Will Laurence of HMS Reliant unexpectedly became master and commander of the noble dragon he named Temeraire. As new recruits in Britain’s Aerial Corps, man and dragon soon proved their mettle in daring combat against Bonaparte’s invading forces.
Now China has discovered that its rare gift, intended for Napoleon, has fallen into British hands — and an angry Chinese delegation vows to reclaim the remarkable beast. But Laurence refuses to cooperate. Facing the gallows for his defiance, Laurence has no choice but to accompany Temeraire back to the Far East — a long voyage fraught with peril, intrigue, and the untold terrors of the deep. Yet once the pair reaches the court of the Chinese emperor, even more shocking discoveries and darker dangers await.
Earthling Sutty has been living a solitary, well-protected life in Dovza City on the planet Aka as an official Observer for the interstellar Ekumen. Insisting on all citizens being pure "producer-consumers," the tightly controlled capitalist government of Aka — the Corporation — is systematically destroying all vestiges of the ancient ways: "The Time of Cleansing" is the chilling term used to describe this era. Books are burned, the old language and calligraphy are outlawed, and those caught trying to keep any part of the past alive are punished and then reeducated. Frustrated in her attempts to study the linguistics and literature of Aka's cultural past, Sutty is sent upriver to the backwoods town of Okzat-Ozkat. Here she is slowly charmed by the old-world mountain people, whose still waters, she gradually realizes, run very deep. But whether their ways constitute a religion, ancient traditions, philosophy, or passive, political resistance, Sutty is not sure. Delving ever deeper into her hosts' culture, Sutty finds herself on a parallel spiritual quest, as well.
The man in black is dead, and Roland is about to be hurled into 20th-centure America, occupuying the mind of a man running cocaine on the New York/Bermuda shuttle. A brilliant waork of dark fantasy inspired by Browning's romantic poem, "Child Roland to the Dark Tower Came."
Synopsis:
Part II an epic saga. Roland, the last gunslinger, encounters three mysterious doorways on the beach. Each one enters into a different person living in New York. Through these doorways, Roland draws the companions who will assist him on his quest to save the Dark Tower.
Something went wrong… and Ed Fletcher got mixed up in the biggest thing in his life.
Something went wrong… and Ed Fletcher got mixed up in the biggest thing in his life.
The peaceful villagers of Emond's Field pay little heed to rumors of war in the western lands until a savage attack by troll-like minions of the Dark One forces three young men to confront a destiny which has its origins in the time known as The Breaking of the World. This richly detailed fantasy presents a fully realized, complex adventure which will appeal to fans of classic quests.
Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Poul Anderson tells a breathtaking tale of Earth. Immortal humans take to the skies to travel to the stars and galaxies in a great space adventure.
Nominated for the Nebula Award in 1989.
Nominated for the Hugo Award in 1990.
It has been thirty-eight years since Zianno–known as Z–turned twelve. In appearance, he has not aged a day. Like all Meq, Z has become accustomed to a near immortal existence, possessing an uncanny ability to recuperate from injury and resist disease. Like only four others of his kind, he holds one of the fabled Stones, the Stone of Dreams. These bearers believe it is their destiny to guide the Meq toward and through the Remembering, where it is said that they will recall their long-forgotten origins and purpose.
But the rogue Meq assassin called the Fleur-du-Mal threatens their efforts and their lives. Pursuing rumors of a lost Sixth Stone, he is intent on finding the legendary talisman and eliminating anyone, Meq or human, who stands in the way.
Z and his allies–Opari, Sailor, Geaxi, Nova, Ray, Mowsel, Carolina, Jack, and others–embark on a desperate quest spanning decades and continents to track down the stone before their lethal adversary gets to it first. Along the way, every belief they have about themselves will be challenged and shaken–and a new, even deadlier enemy will arise.
It has been thirty-eight years since Zianno–known as Z–turned twelve. In appearance, he has not aged a day. Like all Meq, Z has become accustomed to a near immortal existence, possessing an uncanny ability to recuperate from injury and resist disease. Like only four others of his kind, he holds one of the fabled Stones, the Stone of Dreams. These bearers believe it is their destiny to guide the Meq toward and through the Remembering, where it is said that they will recall their long-forgotten origins and purpose.
But the rogue Meq assassin called the Fleur-du-Mal threatens their efforts and their lives. Pursuing rumors of a lost Sixth Stone, he is intent on finding the legendary talisman and eliminating anyone, Meq or human, who stands in the way.
Z and his allies–Opari, Sailor, Geaxi, Nova, Ray, Mowsel, Carolina, Jack, and others–embark on a desperate quest spanning decades and continents to track down the stone before their lethal adversary gets to it first. Along the way, every belief they have about themselves will be challenged and shaken–and a new, even deadlier enemy will arise.
THEIR ORIGINS ARE A MYSTERY.
THEIR FUTURE IS AT HAND.
For thousands of years the Meq have existed side by side with humanity — appearing as twelve-year-old children, unsusceptible to wounds and disease, dying only by extraordinary means. They have survived through the rise and fall of empires and emperors, through explorations, expansions, and war. Five sacred stones give a few of them mystical powers, but not the power to understand a long-destined event called the Remembering.
In the aftermath of the nuclear bombing of Japan in 1945, Zianno Zezen finds himself alone, while the fate of the other Meq and his beloved Opari, carrier of the Stone of Blood, is unknown. But Z’s archenemy, the Fleur-du-Mal, survives. In the next half century Z will reunite with far-flung friends both Meq and human, as American and Soviet spies vie to steal and harness the powers and mysteries of the timeless children. With the day of the Remembering rapidly approaching, Z must interpret the strange writing on an ancient etched stone sphere. In those markings, Z will discover messages within messages and begin a journey to the truth about his people and himself.
THEIR ORIGINS ARE A MYSTERY.
THEIR FUTURE IS AT HAND.
For thousands of years the Meq have existed side by side with humanity — appearing as twelve-year-old children, unsusceptible to wounds and disease, dying only by extraordinary means. They have survived through the rise and fall of empires and emperors, through explorations, expansions, and war. Five sacred stones give a few of them mystical powers, but not the power to understand a long-destined event called the Remembering.
In the aftermath of the nuclear bombing of Japan in 1945, Zianno Zezen finds himself alone, while the fate of the other Meq and his beloved Opari, carrier of the Stone of Blood, is unknown. But Z’s archenemy, the Fleur-du-Mal, survives. In the next half century Z will reunite with far-flung friends both Meq and human, as American and Soviet spies vie to steal and harness the powers and mysteries of the timeless children. With the day of the Remembering rapidly approaching, Z must interpret the strange writing on an ancient etched stone sphere. In those markings, Z will discover messages within messages and begin a journey to the truth about his people and himself.
The long awaited fifth novel in the Night Warriors series — When a thirteenth century monk was caught having a relationship with a married woman, his punishment was to have his arms and legs amputated. The Monk then turned against God and formed a sinister carnival of clowns and freaks, determined to corrupt everyone who saw them. However, when the pope goes after them, their only escape is into the world of the dreams. Eight hundred years later a serial killer finds a way to realize the carnival again. The Night Warriors are the world's only hope.
During his heroic first encounter with an alien race, Dick Muller was permanently altered, hideously transformed in a way that left him repulsive to the entire human race. Alone and embittered, he exiled himself to Lemnos, an abandoned planet famed for its labyrinthine horrors, both real and imagined. But now, Earth trembles on the brink of extinction, threatened by another alien species, and only Muller can rescue the planet. Men must enter the murderous maze of Lemnos, find Muller, and convince him to come back. But will the homeless alien, alone in the universe, risk his life to save his race, the race that has utterly rejected him?
Inspired by the artwork of Edward Gorey, Windblowne author Stephen Messer delivers a mock-Gothic tale about poor Yorick (alas!), son of the Gamekeeper at venerable Ravenby Manor, who meets an untimely demise—in chapter one! Worry not, dear reader, for Yorick returns in ghostly form, intent on revenge. In the course of his hauntings, however, ghostly Yorick discovers that all manner of otherworldy creatures inhabit the manor grounds, and that he has a part to play in saving not only his still-living orphan sister but also the manor and everyone in it.
For every young reader who enjoyed the dour dalliance of A Series of Unfortunate Events, here is Stephen Messer's playful homage to the poor orphans of Charles Dickens, the bleak poetry of Edgar Allen Poe, and the exaggerated characters of Roald Dahl.
Deep in the shadowy foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains lies a dying town…
My name is Amelia Gray. They call me The Graveyard Queen. I've been commissioned to restore an old cemetery in Asher Falls, South Carolina, but I'm coming to think I have another purpose here.
Why is there a cemetery at the bottom of Bell Lake? Why am I drawn time and again to a hidden grave I've discovered in the woods? Something is eating away at the soul of this town—this withering kingdom—and it will only be restored if I can uncover the truth.
Some are born with magic.
Some without.
Matteo, un-magical counselor to the mighty of Halruaa, has devoted his life to the truth — until he finds that he may have a hidden spark of magic after all. Now, with only a street waif for a companion, he's on the run from the mysterious Cabal. In the dismal Swamp of Akhlaur, Matteo will seek his own truth while battling a creature out of his nightmares.
But something even worse is on his trail: a relentless persecutor of magic. The Magehound.
Defeat breeds anger. Hatred breeds revenge.
Once again, the counselors of Halruaa have beaten back an attack by the wizard Akhlaur. Once more, the kingdom has been saved from its enemies.
But victory comes at a terrible price. The aged king is weakened, his powers diminished. His chief counselor Matteo is torn between his duty and his heart. Tzigone, the hero of the battle of Akhlaur's Swamp, has been hurled into a dark world from which she may never escape. And at the edge of time, Akhlaur and his ally, the Magehound, plot their final revenge.
Volume One of “The Hunted Earth” sequence. Science is toil and hard work—except when it verges on miracle. When Larry O’Shawnessy Chao manages to harness the giant Ring of Charon, orbiting Pluto’s only moon, to control a field of over one million gravities, he feels a touch of the miraculous.
The sequel to The Ring of Charon.
Humans face two enemies—the implacably powerful Charonians who kidnapped the Earth, and the mysterious Adversary, before whom the Charonians quake in fear. Can an unlikely combination of scientists, corpses, dictators, and professional troublemakers withstand both threats and return the Earth to its proper place in the Solar System?
Epic fantasy about a group of super-intelligent cats. Rhiow appears to be a pampered New York pet cat, but in reality she is a wizard, working alongside human beings and other animals to protect the world from the forces of darkness, which are attacking the city via the underground tunnels.
Akcja powieści osadzona jest kilka tysiącleci w przyszłość, kiedy to ludzie żyją w stworzonej przez siebie utopii. Pojęcia takie jak praca czy ubóstwo dawno zostały zapomniane, a dzięki niezwykle zaawansowanej technologii medycznej, ludzie żyją po kilkaset lat i dowolnie formują swoje ciała przyjmując postać zwierząt czy wyimaginowanych stworzeń. Ich jedynym zmartwieniem jest wyszukiwanie coraz to nowszych rozrywek, m.in. poprzez toczenie potyczek z orkami w wirtualnej rzeczywistości czy też uprawianie rekreacjonizmu, czyli odtwarzanie sposobu życia w wybranym okresie historycznym.
Akcja powieści osadzona jest kilka tysiącleci w przyszłość, kiedy to ludzie żyją w stworzonej przez siebie utopii. Pojęcia takie jak praca czy ubóstwo dawno zostały zapomniane, a dzięki niezwykle zaawansowanej technologii medycznej, ludzie żyją po kilkaset lat i dowolnie formują swoje ciała przyjmując postać zwierząt czy wyimaginowanych stworzeń. Ich jedynym zmartwieniem jest wyszukiwanie coraz to nowszych rozrywek, m.in. poprzez toczenie potyczek z orkami w wirtualnej rzeczywistości czy też uprawianie rekreacjonizmu, czyli odtwarzanie sposobu życia w wybranym okresie historycznym.
Akcja powieści osadzona jest kilka tysiącleci w przyszłość, kiedy to ludzie żyją w stworzonej przez siebie utopii. Pojęcia takie jak praca czy ubóstwo dawno zostały zapomniane, a dzięki niezwykle zaawansowanej technologii medycznej, ludzie żyją po kilkaset lat i dowolnie formują swoje ciała przyjmując postać zwierząt czy wyimaginowanych stworzeń. Ich jedynym zmartwieniem jest wyszukiwanie coraz to nowszych rozrywek, m.in. poprzez toczenie potyczek z orkami w wirtualnej rzeczywistości czy też uprawianie rekreacjonizmu, czyli odtwarzanie sposobu życia w wybranym okresie historycznym.
In a career spanning more than 50 years, Harlan Ellison has written or edited 75 books, more than 1700 stories, essays, articles and newspaper columns, two dozen teleplays, and a dozen movies.
Now, for the first time anywhere, Troublemakers presents a collection of Ellison's classic stories—chosen by the author—that will introduce new readers to a writer described by the New York Times as having "the spellbinding quality of a great nonstop talker, with a cultural warehouse for a mind."
Here’s one of the few Secret Truths I’ve learned for certain, having been “on the road” since I was thirteen and ran away. (Had nothing to do with my folks; they didn’t beat me; I was a restless kid, wanted to see the world.) The Truth is this: most of the reasons we give for having done something or other, usually something that got us yelled at or grounded or busted, most of the reasons we dream up are horse-puckey. (I’d use the B-word, but libraries are going to be stocking this book.) All those reasons and excuses are just lame rationalizations, and they only tick off the people yelling at you. So shine ‘em on. Forget them. The only reason that makes any sense is “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Lame though it may be, it’s the Truth. “Why did you bust that window?” It seemed like a good idea at the time. “Why did you get hung up on that guy/girl when you knew it was a destructive hookup?” It seemed like a good idea at the time. “Why did you do that lump of crack?” It seemed... well, you get it. Too bad the guy in this first story didn’t get it, because the True Answer to why you fell in love with someone who ranked & hurt you is...it seemed like...
I don’t know about you, but I hate it when the coming attractions trailers at the Cineplex give away the whole plot of the flick they want me to pay megabucks to see next week. Same for when they do it on television, or in a review of some book, and they print one of those idiot “spoiler warning” lines-as if we had the self-control to stop reading or watching. So I don’t want to give away the punchline of this next story, but I need to put in right here what the troublemaker “lesson” is. So let me be even more obscure than usual. Pay attention: not everything in life is what it seems to be. On the other hand, this psychologist named Sigmund Freud once said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” meaning not everything is necessarily a symbol for something else, in this case a phallic symbol (you could look it up). We are usually afraid of, or suspicious of, that which we don’t understand; that which is unfamiliar. So before you start seeing enemies under the bed, and thinking somebody who dresses or looks or sounds different from you is a threat, remember the old story about the mouse (or squirrel, or frog, whichever version you heard) who is out on this road at midnight in the wintertime, and he’s freezing his mouse, squirrel or frog butt off, and along comes this big horse, and he sees the creature is turning blue and about to die (or in the case of the frog, to croak), and he drops a big, fat, steaming, smelly road muffin on him. It may be foul in there, but at least he’s warm, and his life is saved. Until a fox comes along, sees him all nice and toasty, his head sticking out, and fox takes a bite and yanks out the itty-bitty critter, and eats him. The moral being: not everybody who dumps you in the sh-t is an enemy; not everybody who pulls you out of the sh-t is a friend. Sometimes things are simpler than they seem. Sometimes all you’re afraid of is your own ignorance.
If this next story seems a bit familiar, it’s only because an ego-drenched movie director ripped it off when I adapted it in 1965 for a segment of The Outer Limits. So I brought a lawsuit against the film company. If you perceive a striking similarity here to a movie called The Terminator, well, go rent a VHS or DVD and watch at the end, when they roll the credits, to see something interesting. So this story has two good troublemaker lessons to be learned. The first one is so obvious I’m embarrassed even to be laying it on you: violence becomes a way of life. If you think a punch in the mouth really solves any problems, pretty soon that’s the only way you can handle a problem, big or small. And finally, one day, you take a swing and someone puts out your lights for keeps. Smart is better than strong. Clever is better than clocking someone. Outthink the problem, don’t let it bench-press you into making it your problem. The other lesson is the one the Academy award-winning director should have learned (and maybe he hasn’t even learned it yet): don’t let your ego get so hungry that it leads you to act unethically because you think you’re such Hot Stuff and nobody can touch you. Don’t think the rest of the world is as stupid as you’d like it to be: somebody is always watching. Sunny Jim, know this: there is always a faster gun out there; and there are some people whom you just cannot scare, no matter how big and loud you come on.
I had this pal when I was about fifteen or so, I’ll call him Dandy, even though that wasn’t his name. He’s still around, and I see no reason to disrespect him, but I want to use him as the example of the troublemaker lesson embodied in the story that follows...an admittedly silly little story I wrote early in my career. Dandy was talented. He was whip-smart, and good-looking and could talk to girls and adults with ease. He was the front-man for our bunch of weird geekazoids, because he got along with the basketball team and the social slicks and the cops, even. But he was one of us, because he liked to read, and he had a talent for writing, and he understood science and math and all like that, sort of an all-around Renaissance High School kid. So we all thought he was going to be the one who became famous and rich and had the best-looking girls. (Remember, I was the one who was gonna wind up in the gutter or jail.) And soon after we all graduated high school, Dandy wrote this story that got published in one of the most prestigious magazines of the time, he got a book contract, he got a full scholarship to an atomic energy university, and he was courted and inducted into a top-line fraternity. And the book never got published, he bombed out of school, he drank too much, and he wound up writing copy for some mail order catalogue. Spent a decade or so wandering around, and last time I heard of him he’d managed to find a happy berth, and was enjoying life. But now he’s approaching seventy, and there was a lot of potential and grandeur that never got to show itself. He procrastinated. He put off till a decade later, that which he should’ve done today. Rain, rain, go away, come again...
The lesson in this “space opera” should be apparent. If you’re hired to do a job, DO THE DAMNED JOB! There are always punk-out reasons you can dream up why: “I’m not being paid enough” or “They work me too hard” or “How come s/he over there is doing the same job as I am, but s/he’s getting paid twice as much” or “They don’t respect me.” You’re supposed to enjoy the work you do, but if circumstances put you in the grease at a Mickey D’s, or under a leaking tranny on somebody’s Yugo, or working the stockroom at a K-Mart or Target, and you have to do it for the dough, and you hate the job, and you hate the hours, and you hate the fact that you can’t be out hanging with the posse, well tough sh-t, Joker; you signed on to do the job, and they pay you to do it, so DO THE DAMNED JOB! If you don’t like the gig, quit. Give ‘em notice promptly, don’t leave ‘em in the lurch suddenly, don’t trash the area out of baby-spite, and don’t start shoplifting. Just DO THE DAMN JOB! That’s how somebody with strength does it. Don’t whine, don’t piss’n’moan, don’t jerk ‘em around, just hang in there as long as it’s ethically necessary, and then get in the wind. But if you sign on to do the job, no matter how onerous the chore, DO THE DAMNED JOB, just do it.
Trying to inject a subtextual “moral” into a story as brief as this one puts me in mind of a great quotation by the author of Moby Dick, Mr. Herman Melville. He once said: “No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.” (And even though the wonderful Don Marquis did a whole book about a cockroach named archy, and his swinging friend, the slut cat Mehitabel, a cockroach is certainly higher on the evolutionary scale than a flea, so what that tells us, hey, I don’t have all the answers.) But though I’m writing this “troublemaker lesson” where it ain’t necessary, because this short-short story is essentially the product of a smartass who never grew up, it does, in fact, suggest a lesson you deadbeats ought to heed. Which is this: if all you’ve got to back up your wisecracks and stupid jokes-the kind you make in the movie audience that gets everyone cheesed-off at you-is more smartmouth, you are very quickly going to look to everyone around you, everyone you want to be impressed by you, as what you truly are: a horse’s patoot.
Since I was in trouble from the git-go (hell, I was taken to the Principal’s Office on my first day in kindergarten; not ten minutes after my mother let go of my hand and left me in that classroom full of babies and sandboxes) (I’ll tell you that tale another time, but I suspect Miss Whatever Her Name Was, the kindergarten teacher at Lathrop Grade School in 1939 or ‘40, whatever it was, in Painesville, Ohio, I’ll bet she still has the marks of my fangs in her right hand), I knew early on that I would have to pretend to be one of the crowd, as best I could fake it, or get the crap kicked out of me at recess and after-school every day. Well, like Alf Gunnderson in this next story, I managed to hide my true personality a little...but not very well, and not for very long times at a stretch. Folks, believe me on this one: if you are what we call a “green monkey,” the other apes are going to rip you a new one every time they smell you. Hiding out is an art. But don’t hide yourself so well that others like you can’t find you. And don’t follow the crowd so much that eventually you’re not playing at it. Don’t wind up doing it so well that the mask you’ve worn to perfection becomes your real face. Protect yourself, but don’t get assimilated. And never wage a land war in Asia. I just thought I’d throw that in. You never know.
So I’m watching the report on CNN about how little kids who’ve become enamoured of smackdown wrestling (which is so fulla crap bogus I can never figure how anybody can be dumb enough even to watch it, much less think of it as anything but staged stupidity, Three Stooges in ugly tights...but then I can also never understand why people who watch those weepy televangelists don’t spot them as the con men they truly are), and the kids are so impressionable...not to mention dumb as a paving stone...that they’re setting up these makeshift WWF play areas in their backyards. And they’re jumping on each other, and they’re hitting each other with chairs, and they’re throwing smaller kids against walls, and they’re dropping both knees into some other urchin’s solar plexus, and in general going way beyond the kind of silly horseplay you and I engaged in when we were their age. (And here’s a question: isn’t there an adult in that time zone who can see what’s going down, and maybe suggest that poking a garden hoe into another kid’s eye might impair his career as an air traffic controller in later life?) But the chilling capper to this report is the moment when one of these doofus children, who has been-are you ready for this-videotaping the massacre, isn’t satisfied with the “reality” of the scenario, and he takes a flippin’ cheese grater to the face of his “opponent,” slicing and dicing the kid for life, and he looks into the camera and grins and says, “See, now ya kin see the blood! Ain’t it kewl!” The troublemaker lesson to be learned from this story is: curiosity about things that you shouldn’t be curious about can get you scarred for life. Oh, and the other lesson: stay away from people dumber than you. If such creatures exist.
The lesson here is pretty much like the lesson in the previous story, except it’s stated differently. So don’t give me a hard time; sometimes I have to write a piece of philosophy half a dozen different ways, just till my weary brain gets the message. Let us not forget that I was getting into trouble even worse than yours, years before you came out of yo momma, squealin’ an’ pukin’, which makes me dumber than you, earlier than you. And it takes me a while to catch on. But one thing I know for certain: when I go to what my wife charmingly refers to as a “face-sucking alien” movie, and some actor we’ve come to like a lot ventures off by himself, or herself, into that dark room or down those basement stairs or, the way Harry Dean Stanton got offed in Alien, wandering into the storage bay with the water dripping down those clanking ceiling chains, and we just know the acid-drooling alien is out there somewhere, and he’s just wandering around like a doofus in a Pauly Shore flick...well, I don’t know about you, but I’m shouting at the top of my lungs in the theater, GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE!!! And even if he hadn’t read the script, he should know from the creepy music and the pro forma pre-butchery scare of a cat jumping out of nowhere that within two beats there’s going to be a blade at his throat, a fang at his ear, a power mower going for his wazoo. It’s a convention of scarey movies. So I got this idea for a story, in which the protagonist (I won’t call him a hero, because he’s a creep) is aware of this time-weathered convention, and will not, absolutely will not go into the equivalent of “the dark room.” Wherein lies the lesson to be learned here. Curiosity kills blah blah blah. More than that, though, the lesson is: what you do is gonna catch up with you, kid, no matter how far or fast your run, what you have done will always circle around behind you, get ahead of you, and power mow you in the wazoo.
Okay. So not everyone who puts you into the sh-t is an enemy; and not everyone who pulls you out of the sh-t is a friend. So, okay; you got that. Now let me give you the troublemaker lesson that has made me the Golden Icon you see before you. The point of the story you’re about to read is that even when they tell you “it can’t be fixed, you got to buy a new one, a more expensive one, the latest model,” they are jacking you around. Even when they tell you “it can’t be done, it’s never been done, nobody’s ever done it that way,” all they’re revealing about themselves is that they are limited, minimally-talented, inept, lazy to the point where they’ll let the job walk out the door then have to stretch their imagination to figure out a way the job can be done, and they are not people you should be dealing with, because they can’t solve their own problems, much less yours. The world is full of dullards. Sad, sorry little ribbon clerks who fear taking responsibility for their own lives, so how the hell can you expect them to be brave or smart enough to take on a problem that emanates from your life? They cannot pull you out of the sh-t. They can only put you further into it. They just aren’t very smart. The lesson here is the same lesson you find in all Art, whether book or story or movie or oil painting or classical symphony or great sculpture. (I cannot suggest that hip-hop or rap contain this message, because they’re too illiterate or loud or just bad street doggerel, but that’s my hang-up, so give it a pass, because I don’t suggest you should agree with me, or even like me, because I’m too smart to give a damn if you think I’m kewl or not, ‘cause we already got your money for this book.) What it is that all Art says is this: PAY ATTENTION. That’s it. Nothing more profound or hard to understand. Pay attention. And if you do, just like the guy in this story, you will discover that there are many ways to solve a problem that most other, timid ribbon clerks will never pull down. The lesson of this story-and this book entire-is that you can never know enough, you can never be too smart, and you need to figure out the way the world works without believing that every rule you’ve been told is immutable-it can’t be done, no one’s ever done it, etcetera-just because some limited potatobrain believes it. The world is yours, go get it.
Wrote this one a couple of times, made it better each time I went after it. Then turned it into a TV segment on Tales from the Darkside. You may have seen it. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played the Djinn. (Don’t lose your day-job Kareem.) And the lesson passim this little tale is a good one for those of you who, like me, lead lives determinedly singular and oftimes cutting trail with trouble. The lesson is the same one Nelson Algren included in his famous three rules for living, as they were codified in a terrific novel called The Man With the Golden Arm. He said, “Never eat at a diner called “Mom’s,’ never play cards with a guy named ‘Doc,’ and never get involved with a woman who’s got bigger troubles than you.” (It was a “guy” novel, so if you’re feeling foolishly Politically Correct, which is a pain in the patoot, you can substitute “never get involved with a “guy” for “woman.”) If you learn nothing else from me in the course of reading this little tome, kiddies, let it be this: bad companions can drag your snout down into the mud faster than dope or drink or deep religious\ fervor. The world is full of leaners. People who are bone-stick-stone stupid, but they’ve got a low ratlike cunning. They know how to side you and smooth you and get into your pocket, and then give you ‘tude about how you be hare-assing them when you call them and demand they repay you. They will involve you in idiot schemes, they will waste your time and your energy, they will mooch off you and eventually abandon you, step off when someone starts making static. They are the “bad companions” your momma and poppa warned you about. They are the yamps and shermheads, the biscuits and trife bums who will kill your waking hours and give you night fright when you lie down. The lesson is this: make your own way. Set your own pace. Do not get drawn into some non-productive Jay-up that will sap your strength and let the air out of your dreams. In this story, a pretty nice guy and a pretty nice woman, who probably shouldn’t have rolled on a duo, find themselves paying the price for each other’s bad company. Yeah, sure, it’s got a happy ending, but this is a story, gee, it’s a piece of fiction! It ain’t real.
Got to be careful about codifying the “lesson” in this one, because it is, in some ways, a statement about the way I live my life, and if you follow the trail too closely, you’ll get into more trouble than you deserve, which is the opposite of what this book is supposed to do...according to my publisher, who says this book is intended to make you better citizens and happier individuals, with an understanding that if you litter your Taco Bell and Burger King garbage in the streets I will seek you out no matter where you live, and I will nail your head to a coffee table. At least that’s what my publisher tells me this book is supposed to do. But I haven’t lied to you yet, not as far as I can tell; and I’m not about to start now. As if I gave a-Well, the point of the lesson in this story-which I’m told, by academics who teach it in literally hundreds of college English and Modern American Writing classes, is one of the most reprinted stories in the English Language-have you noticed, it’s only my charming humility that has held me back from true stardom-the lesson is that if they suck you into the System, extricating yourself may be damned near impossible. Letting your life be set to other people’s schedules may satisfy their needs, but you’ll be trading off bits and pieces of your own life to placate others who do not, in actuality, care much about you or your problems or desires or potentialities. They mumble “I know how tough it is for you” or “I understand” but when it comes right down to it, it is their production schedule or swing shift time or actuarial table that mesmerizes them. Their hearts bleed that you’re lying on an operating table having your stomach replaced with a vacuum cleaner or a bidet or somedamnthing, but that pulmonary drip-drip-drip only masks their annoyance that, like the mule you are, you’ve fallen to your knees under the yoke of their schedule. Yes, as I told you before, DO THE DAMN JOB, just do it; nonetheless, Life keeps getting in the way of Being On Time, and once in a great while you just have to say screwit! And bear this in mind, folks: if you work at their pace for twenty-seven years, do 1,444 jobs well, and do them to the deadline, if you ain’t got the juice and you mess up on the l,445th gig, you will catch the same amount of flak and the same amount of guilt and the same amount of badmouth and opprobrium you would snag if you’d been late every time. The lesson here is one that will get you clobbered if you follow it. Run your life at your own pace, not that of the Man.
Ah, yes, Grasshopper, the secret message here is a sly one. As Tuanmu Tz’u said, “We can be taught the external trappings of the Master; we cannot be taught the spirit of his words or his genius.” That’s according to Confucius. Mmmm. To be absolutely flat wit’chu, I got nothing here. Running on fumes. That is word up. Because there really isn’t anything deep or meaningful in this story from which I can draw Some penetrating insight. And maybe that is the lesson where there is no lesson, Grasshopper. Maybe the lesson for a troublemaker is to know when to can the crap, shut the mouth, stop trying to fake the funk and just fess, there is no great revealment in this little story. The lesson is what the artist Mark Rothko said: “Silence is So accurate.”
The lesson in this one is ridiculously obvious: be careful what you wish for...you might get it. Now that seems pretty slick when you first hear it, but at some point you’ve got to ask yourself, “Exactly what the hell does that mean?” What I’m saying, if you wished for it, what’s the downside? Well, from a lifetime of seeking after treasures and riches of all kinds and ages, most of which weren’t worth the hasssle, I am here to tell you incipient troublemakers that there are goodies we all are told to want, that are made of poison ivy and mist and tooth-rot when you get up next to them. Here’s one I’ll just run past you at a clip: my third wife. See, here’s how it was. It was during the year or so when I went through my “Hollywood phase.” I was writing movies and TV, and I was the hot writer wallowing in my fifteen minutes of fame, and one night I’m shooting pool at an exclusive Beverly Hills club called The Daisy with Leo Durocher and Peter Falk and Omar Sharif-well, you ought to know at least one of those-and I see this absolutely knockout looking female come into the place on the arm of an assistant director I had met once or twice, and I took one look, and it was like Michael Corleone in The Godfather...I got struck by the thunderbolt. So I says to Peter, I says, “I’m going to marry her,” and about a month or two later I did. I wished for that goodie, who in this instance was a human being (of sorts), and I got what I wished for. It was a marriage that lasted 45 days. Worst 45 days of my life, I think. With the exception of my two years in the Army, or Ranger basic training at Fort Benning, or this damned lawsuit against internet piracy against AOL and RemarQ, but those are different horror stories, for some other time. It was forty-five days of duplicity, mendacity, infidelity, violence. (I bought her a huge metal hairbrush, she spent a lot of time brushing her hair, and this thing must have weighed seven pounds, like that, and one night she blindsided me as we were getting ready to go out to dinner, and whacked me across the temple with it, a solid roundhouse wallop, and she opened me clean to the bone; and then she freaked out at the sight of blood spurting allover the bedroom, and ran shrieking into the guest bathroom where she tried to hide in the tub; and I crawled in, oozing red everywhere, and told her it was okay, not to worry about it, and she ran off into the night to see some other dude, and I collapsed and only came to when Huck Barkin came by to see me, and got me to the emergency ward where they took I don’t know, something like thirty stitches on the left side of my skull.) Be very careful what you wish for, wannabe troublemaker, because Bad Trouble sometimes comes in very attractive, wish-inducing packages.
Well, we’re nearing the end of our time together. Has this cheery little package of fantasies made you a better person? Are you kinder to little old ladies and people in wheelchairs?. Do you have respect for the environment and now crave a better class of music? Are your armpits kissing sweet, and has your flatulence abated? Listen up: in the history of the written word there are maybe only a hundred or so books that can truly be called “important.” That is to say, they changed peoples’ minds and habits, brought light and intelligence into otherwise dark and ignorant existences. The Analects of Confucius; Plato’s The Republic; the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas; Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes; Pascal, Descartes, Spinoza; Thoreau, Darwin, Hegel and Kant. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Nineteen Eight-Four. Maybe a hundred and fifty, tops. You won’t find thinking as significant as any of that in here. Mostly, these stories were written to entertain, to tell a tale and get a quick reaction. If there are life lessons to be learned, that wisdom can only be unearthed in stories like these by the sharp tool of your imagination. Take this next space adventure. It’s a hunt-and-seek action psychodrama about a guy so consumed with the need for revenge that he forgets the admonition in Shakespeare’s line, “heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that thee burn thyself.” So what this story says, I suppose, is that when the fire in your gut overpowers the rational coolness in your brain, you are primed to slip on that slippery slope of action/reaction without consideration of consequences. Blind and stupid, we slip and slide through most of our lives. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But only the thickest brick among you doesn’t already know that lesson. If there is magic in this-or any-book, it can only be conjured by wit and intelligence. When you are a creature of raw emotion, behaving on the moment like a dead frog-leg with a live wire in it, you must, I tell you honestly you must inevitably become somebody’s tool, somebody’s fool. Only by keeping alert-remember all Art has but one message: PAY ATTENTION-can you hope to be the one dong the tracking, rather than winding up being the fool tool who has been tracked and finally trapped. That’s as close to genuine wisdom as I get, this late in the day.
This next story, and the one after that are very dear to me. I suppose because there is just a whole lot of me in each of them. They come out of my own life, the last one straight out of my first big run-in with the law (and we’ll get to that in due measure), and this one because it stars the me who was once five and has never really outgrown that age, in some very major ways. I’m not going to get all dopey and chickflick about it, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Jeffty (with two “f”s, kindly note) because he’s such a sweet kid, and he embodies all my memories of the books and radio programs and movies and comics I loved as a kid. The secret lesson in this story, however, is a different matter. When I wrote this story the ending seemed very clear to me, seemed so obvious I never figured anyone would be confused by it. But damned if every college course that teaches this story wound up with the students and the prof arguing over what happens to Jeffty in the end. And if I tell you, if I explain it to you, well, that would be delivering the punchline before you hear the set-up. So, I can’t tell you what life lesson for troublemakers lies in wait for you at the end of this sad and maybe-a-little-complex tale about how the Present always eats up the Past and leaves you adrift. You cannot know, at your age, what it is like to not be able to run that fast, jump that high, hit a note that pure, work all night and boogie all day (or boogie all night and work all day). At your age you can only see the surface of someone my age, and try not to think about what it must be like to see the night coming on faster than you’d care to think about. Look: this story says some troubling stuff about how fast our world moves, how unfairly it treats innocence, and about what people sometimes have to do in the name of kindness. I am aching to explain the ending of this story to you, but I’m trapped, like a magician who cannot reveal the trick. Just remember this, because you’re probably too young to know about one giveaway telltale clue. It used to be, up until circuit breakers in the electrical panels of modern homes, that when a short occurred, all the lights in the house would flicker and dim for a moment. When they strapped a guy into the electric chair of some penitentiary, and they threw the switch on him, and the juice went through him, the lights would flicker and dim allover the joint. You can stick that in the back of your head and you’ll catch it when it comes up in the denouement. The other clue is this: pay attention to the palest creatures in this story, Jeffty’s mother and father, who are decent people. More than that, if I keep babbling, well, I’ll just be cheating you. And that I am forbidden by the Storyteller’s Creed to do.
Here’s where we part company. You’ve been extremely patient with me, and I know you understand that I’ve been a little loose and twitchy from the start, directing this at people your age for the first time. So I am in your debt, and I thank you. So by way of a proper gracious “bread ‘n’ butter” gift for your indulgence, I’m going to leave you with this last story. The thing of it is, there were only supposed to be 15 stories in this book, ending with what may be one of my best ones, “Jeffty is Five.” But after I sent the book in to my editor and publisher, I thought about it, and I knew I had to add “Free With This BOX!” to the collection because, well, it’s as close to a recounting of what trouble I’ve been in all my life as I have handy. Oh, hell, I’ve written whole books of essays and columns and commentaries and reviews, many of which include anecdotes about my weird span; but in this story, which I wrote a long time ago, I took something that had actually happened to me, when I was a little kid, and I only fictionalized it a little bit. It is a story, yeah, not a memoir, but it is clear and clarion me-speaking-to-you warning about what it means to live the kind of life I’ve lived, amazing and fulfilling as it has been. There is a line I remember from the journalist and madman Hunter S. Thompson, in which he speaks about “the dead end loneliness of a man who makes his own rules.” I recall it now, as I get ready to bid you fond farewell, because if there is a lesson above all others contained in this volume, it is this: be your own person. Be kind, be ethical, be honorable and courageous; respect your friends, keep your word, treat your enemies with honor if you can but spin ‘em if they won’t let you treat them that way; don’t believe the okeydoke that people who’re trying to sell you something lay on you, remember True Love only happens when you have no fear and can laugh about it, and you cannot possibly be too smart. Above all, be your own person. Never blame bad luck, or fate, or “the breaks,” or paranoid delusions about conspiracies for what your life has become. You are now, and you will always be, in charge of your destiny. What was that line out of Buckaroo Bonzai...oh yeah, I remember...”Never forget: no matter where you go, there you are.” Here I am, the product of what I’ve made of myself, in trouble from the git-go; and there you are, looking at me looking at you. Wherever you are, kid, remember, I’m there, too. Take care of yourself. Don’t step on no broken glass.
Eager to graduate from the school on the hill, Phelan Cle chose Bone Plain for his final paper because he thought it would be an easy topic. Immortalized by poets and debated by scholars, it was commonly accepted-even at a school steeped in bardic tradition-that Bone Plain, with its three trials, three terrors, and three treasures, was nothing more than a legend, a metaphor. But as his research leads him to the life of Nairn, the Wandering Bard, the Unforgiven, Phelan starts to wonder if there are any easy answers...
Sealey Head is a small town on the edge of the ocean, a sleepy place where everyone hears the ringing of a bell no one can see. On the outskirts of town is an impressive estate, Aislinn House, where the aged Lady Eglantyne lies dying, and where the doors sometimes open not to its own dusty rooms, but to the wild majesty of a castle full of knights and princesses…
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Science fiction author Goodkind takes a new approach to the modern-day thriller in this fantastic tale featuring Alex, a down-and-out artist set to inherit a fortune on his 27th birthday. The catch is that Alex is set to inherit his mother's insanity as well, which overcame her when she reached the same age. Mark Deakins proves a master storyteller; his strong performance shines with excellent stage presence from start to finish. Deakins speaks in a strong, commanding tone and is a virtuoso at accents and dialects — and Goodkind gives him plenty of each to play with. A Putnam hardcover (Reviews, June 22). (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Bestseller Goodkind (Confessor) ventures into thriller territory with results sure to please fans of his fantasy fiction. . Fantasy and thriller readers alike will find themselves swept along. . and looking forward to the next installment."
— Publishers Weekly
From the Hardcover edition.
Megan Lindholm (Wizard of the Pigeons) writes tightly constructed SF and fantasy with a distinctly contemporary feel. Robin Hobb (Assassin's Quest) writes sprawling, multi-volume fantasies set in imaginary realms. These two writers, apparently so different, are, of course, the same person, each reflecting an aspect of a single multifaceted imagination.
Inheritance gathers the best of Hobb and Lindholm's shorter fiction into one irreplaceable volume containing ten stories and novellas (seven by Lindholm, three by Hobb), together with a revealing introduction and extensive, highly readable story notes. The Lindholm section leads off with the Hugo and Nebula-nominated novella 'A Touch of Lavender,' a powerful account of love, music, poverty, and addiction set against an extended encounter between human and alien societies. Other memorable entries include 'Cut,' a reflection on the complex consequences of freedom, and the newly published 'Drum Machine,' an equally absorbing meditation on the chaotic nature of the creative impulse. Two of Robin Hobb's contributions revisit the world of her popular Live Traders series. 'Homecoming' enlarges the earlier history of those novels through the journal entries of Lady Carillion Carrock, while 'The Inheritance' concerns a disenfranchised young woman who comes to understand the true nature of her grandmother's legacy. And in 'Cat's Meat,' a long and wonderful story written expressly for this collection, an embattled single mother reclaims her life with the help of a gifted—and utterly ruthless—cat.
Megan Lindholm (Wizard of the Pigeons) writes tightly constructed SF and fantasy with a distinctly contemporary feel. Robin Hobb (Assassin's Quest) writes sprawling, multi-volume fantasies set in imaginary realms. These two writers, apparently so different, are, of course, the same person, each reflecting an aspect of a single multifaceted imagination.
Inheritance gathers the best of Hobb and Lindholm's shorter fiction into one irreplaceable volume containing ten stories and novellas (seven by Lindholm, three by Hobb), together with a revealing introduction and extensive, highly readable story notes. The Lindholm section leads off with the Hugo and Nebula-nominated novella 'A Touch of Lavender,' a powerful account of love, music, poverty, and addiction set against an extended encounter between human and alien societies. Other memorable entries include 'Cut,' a reflection on the complex consequences of freedom, and the newly published 'Drum Machine,' an equally absorbing meditation on the chaotic nature of the creative impulse. Two of Robin Hobb's contributions revisit the world of her popular Live Traders series. 'Homecoming' enlarges the earlier history of those novels through the journal entries of Lady Carillion Carrock, while 'The Inheritance' concerns a disenfranchised young woman who comes to understand the true nature of her grandmother's legacy. And in 'Cat's Meat,' a long and wonderful story written expressly for this collection, an embattled single mother reclaims her life with the help of a gifted—and utterly ruthless—cat.
New York Times bestseller Robin Hobb is one of the most popular writers in fantasy today, having sold more than one million copies of her work in paperback. She’s perhaps best known for her epic fantasy Farseer series, including Assassins Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassins Quest, as well as the two fantasy series related to it, the Liveship Traders series, consisting of Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, and Ship of Destiny, and the Tawny Man series, made up of Fool’s Errand, Golden Fool, and Fool’s Fate. Recently, she’s started a new fantasy series, the Soldier Son series, composed of Shaman’s Crossing, Forest Mage, and her most recently published novel, Renegade’s Magic. Her early novels, published under the name Megan Lindholm, include the fantasy novels Wizard of the Pigeons, Harpy’s Flight, The Windsingers, The Limbreth Gate, Luck of the Wheels, The Reindeer People, Wolf’s Brother, and Cloven Hooves, the science fiction novel Alien Earth, and, with Steven Brust, the collaborative novel The Gypsy.
Here she takes us to the edge of human endurance and considerably beyond, for a harrowing study of the ultimate meaning of loyalty, when everything else has been lost.
This stunning first novel from Nebula Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist Ted Kosmatka is a riveting tale of science cut loose from ethics. Set in an amoral future where genetically engineered monstrosities fight each other to the death in an Olympic event, The Games envisions a harrowing world that may arrive sooner than you think.
Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. Silas lives and breathes genetics; his designs have led the United States to the gold in every previous event. But the other countries are catching up. Now, desperate for an edge in the upcoming Games, Silas's boss engages an experimental supercomputer to design the genetic code for a gladiator that cannot be beaten.
The result is a highly specialized killing machine, its genome never before seen on earth. Not even Silas, with all his genius and experience, can understand the horror he had a hand in making. And no one, he fears, can anticipate the consequences of entrusting the act of creation to a computer's cold logic.
Now Silas races to understand what the computer has wrought, aided by a beautiful xenobiologist, Vidonia João. Yet as the fast-growing gladiator demonstrates preternatural strength, speed, and - most disquietingly - intelligence, Silas and Vidonia find their scientific curiosity giving way to a most unexpected emotion: sheer terror.
The only survivor of royal treachery that eliminates his entire family, Azzad al-Ma'aliq flees to the desert and dedicates himself to vengeance. With the help of the Shagara, a nomadic tribe of powerful magicians, he begins to take his revenge—but at a terrible cost to himself.
War casts its shadow over the lands that the dragons once ruled. Only the courage of a young woman with the mind of a gambler and loyalty to no one stands between hope and universal darkness.
The high and powerful will fall, the despised and broken shall rise up and everything will be remade.
And an old, broken-hearted warrior and an apostate priest will begin a terrible journey with an impossible goal: destroy a Goddess before she eats the world.
A voyage of discovery into the life of a remote aboriginal community in the Siberian Arctic, where the reindeer has been a part of daily life since Palaeolithic times.
The Reindeer People is set in the harsh wilderness of a prehistoric North America, and tells the story of a tribe of nomads and hunters as they try to survive, battling against enemy tribes, marauding packs of wolves and the very land itself.
Living on the outskirts of the tribe Tillu was happy spending her time tending her strange, slow dreamy child Kerlew and comunning with the spirits to heal the sick and bring blessing on new births.
However Carp, the Shaman, an ugly wizened old man whose magic smelled foul to Tillu desired both mother and child. Tillu knew Carp’s magic would steal her son and her soul. Death waited in the snows of the Tundra, but Tillu knew which she would prefer…
Experience is educational, especially when an alien culture is involved—but education isn’t always fun for the student!
Beyond the hideous Plain of darkness, past the terrifying secret city, deep within earth’s dank uncharted caverns, a monstrous hybrid race stood guard at the entrance to the great white space.
So it was that the Great Northern Expedition ventured into the horrors of a stupendously vast underground terrain, in search of the legendary opening to another universe, peopled by an unimaginable spawn of darkness…
Beyond the hideous Plain of darkness, past the terrifying secret city, deep within earth’s dank uncharted caverns, a monstrous hybrid race stood guard at the entrance to the great white space.
So it was that the Great Northern Expedition ventured into the horrors of a stupendously vast underground terrain, in search of the legendary opening to another universe, peopled by an unimaginable spawn of darkness…
Hell hath no fury… Fate has led Eden Riley to become a "psychic consultant" to the police, even though her abilities are unreliable at best. Those paranormal powers are about to get her into a jam she couldn't have predicted: After her hunky police detective partner guns down a serial killer in front of her, Eden realizes that she's quite literally no longer alone. A voice in her head introduces himself as Darrak. He's a demon. But not in a bad way!…Like a woman possessed. Darrak lost his original body three hundred years ago, thanks to a witch's curse. This is the first time he's been able to speak directly to a host, plus there's a bonus: Eden's psychic energy helps him to take form during daylight hours. He wants to use this chance to find a way to break his curse — finally. Otherwise, Eden's going to have to learn to live with this sexy demon… like it or not. But she thinks she might like it.
The UK's bestselling fantasy writer and a giant of British SF combine forces to write an astonishing, mind-bending new series… The Long Earth.
2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Junior cop Sally Jansson is called out to the house of Willis Lynsey, a reclusive scientist, for an animal-cruelty complaint: the man was seen forcing a horse in through the door of his home. Inside there is no horse. But Sally finds a kind of home-made utility belt. She straps this on – and 'steps' sideways into an America covered with virgin forest. Willis came here with equipment and animals, meaning to explore and colonise. And when Sally gets back, she finds Willis has put the secret of the belt on the internet. The great migration has begun…
The Long Earth: our Earth is but one of a chain of parallel worlds, lying side by side in a higher space of possibilities, each differing from its neighbours by a little (or a lot): an infinite landscape of infinite possibilities. And the further away you travel, the stranger the worlds get. The sun and moon always shine, the basic laws of physics are the same. However, the chance events which have shaped our particular version of Earth, such as the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, might not have happened and things may well have turned out rather differently. But only our Earth hosts mankind.
The UK's bestselling fantasy writer and a giant of British SF combine forces to write an astonishing, mind-bending new series… The Long Earth.
2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Junior cop Sally Jansson is called out to the house of Willis Lynsey, a reclusive scientist, for an animal-cruelty complaint: the man was seen forcing a horse in through the door of his home. Inside there is no horse. But Sally finds a kind of home-made utility belt. She straps this on – and 'steps' sideways into an America covered with virgin forest. Willis came here with equipment and animals, meaning to explore and colonise. And when Sally gets back, she finds Willis has put the secret of the belt on the internet. The great migration has begun…
The Long Earth: our Earth is but one of a chain of parallel worlds, lying side by side in a higher space of possibilities, each differing from its neighbours by a little (or a lot): an infinite landscape of infinite possibilities. And the further away you travel, the stranger the worlds get. The sun and moon always shine, the basic laws of physics are the same. However, the chance events which have shaped our particular version of Earth, such as the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, might not have happened and things may well have turned out rather differently. But only our Earth hosts mankind.
Humanity is obviously in danger of extinction from many causes, all of our own doing. If we do disappear from the world, what might an alien research team millennia from now think of us, as they discover what happened? Remember, alien beings aren’t likely to think just as we do—they might find something admirable, even esthetic, about our racial suicide.
En la tradición de Arthur C. Clarke (Cita con Rama) y Larry Niven (Mundo Anillo), John Varley no propone un escenario de enormes dimensiones: Gea, el Titán, en apariencia un satélite natural de Saturno, pero que para la capitana Ciroccon “Rocky” Jones puede ser un artefacto creado por una inteligencia extraterrestre. Aún antes de que la nave de Jones se ponga en órbita, Gea se apodera de los tripulantes y los aísla en un mundo calidoscopico de maravillas.
THE TWO-TIMERS is an unpredictable and fascinating novel of a man literally fighting himself… while the universe fell apart…
THE TWO-TIMERS is his third novel, but the first to achieve maior publication.
A futuristic story of tragic love and of the gradual extermination of the human race by plague, The Last Man is Mary Shelley’s most important novel after Frankenstein. With intriguing portraits of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, the novel offers a vision of the future that expresses a reaction against Romanticism, and demonstrates the failure of the imagination and of art to redeem the doomed characters.
From Publishers Weekly
Set in an apocalyptic future ending in the year 2100, Shelley’s 1826 novel concerns a plague that destroys almost all of humankind.
Billions of years ago, an alien race known as the Progenitors began the genetically engineered techniques by which non-intelligent creatures are given intelligence by one of the higher races in the galaxy. Once “Uplifted”, these creature must serve their patron race before they, in turn, can Uplift other races