Search Results for: closed-worlds,-the

When Morgan Chane and his comrades of John Dilullo’s interstellar mercenaries invaded the Close World of Arkuu in search of a lost Terran expedition, they found a planet of strange menace. Incredibly powerful monsters prowled though Arkuu’s dense jungles, and the ghosts of the planet’s past haunted its ancient deserted cities. The Arkuuns themselves fought grimly to drive the Terrans away. But at last Chane discovered the Free-Faring, the terrible alien secret of Arkuu..and suddenly he knew why no Terran had left the Closed Worlds alive.

Through the means of what he calls “speculative fiction”, Michael Bishop examines the various links between man and the supernatural by exploring the relationships and conflicts between mortals and deities of other worlds, in other times and within other cultures. His scope isn’t limited to alien environments, however. Bishop’s talent for transforming the commonplace into the fantastic often reaches into our own backyards, and the results are astounding:

– A father’s love for his son and the influence of the evangelist’s strange teachings prompt a desperate and violent act.
– In a surreal world of unceasing movies where the inhabitants serve constantly as an audience, one man seeks to confront he ultimate power which controls their lives.
– A young boy’s talent for ventriloquism results in an irresistible summons from an all-powerful source.
– A Midwestern farmer’s compelling visions draw him to the oceanic god of an unusual cult.
– Mysterious airborne hieroglyphics become a young scientist’s obsession.

With these and other stories, Michael Bishop weaves a colourful tapestry of character, theme and circumstance which attests to his position as on of the best in the field.

Two monstrous armies stand opposed: Vormulac Unsleep’s undead legions out of Turgosheim, and Wratha the Risen’s Renegades, masters of the last great aerie of the Wamphyri. The spoils of war will be revenge, territory, and human flesh! And blood, of course – the sweet blood of Sunside’s Szgany. For the blood is the life, and when life or land are threatened there’s only one course of action for a vampire: battle to the death!

Trapped in the middle: Nathan Keogh, Necroscope. And the espers of Earth’s E-Branch, Trask and Zek, Goodly and Chung: Guardians of the Gate against a vampire invasion of Earth! The Necroscope holds the keys; he is the only one who can close the Gates to end the crimson carnage of the Bloodwars!

But the past holds many a secret, and the future was ever a devious thing!

These were the last weeks and days before the end of the world, before total destruction overwhelmed Earth and every living thing on the surface of the planet. No one knew exactly how long they had before the sun turned nova and destroyed not only Earth but all of the other planets in the Solar System. For mankind, the only excape lay in flight to the stars, to Alpha Centauri, more than four light years distant.

The hyperdrive, capable of carrying them there at close to the speed of light had been developed, but as yet had not been perfected. In a world without a future, the starships were the only salvation of mankind and they could save only a minute fraction of the population of Earth.

Panic is there, but temporarily forgotten by most, as the plans for a mass exodus are speeded up, as the long hours of mounting tension draw to a close and Judgement Day, when the world shall be destroyed by fire, is mo longer a hazy time in the far future, but something very close and very terrible. For those who remained behind, there could be no escape; death would come suddenly, eight minutes after the nova explosion. For those who fled the Solar System in the starships, untried and working on principles only partially understood, there was only the long, terrible journey through the endless night, not knowing what lay at the end of it.

There were nine major planets in the Solar System, and it was within their boundaries that man first set up interplanetary commerce and began trading with the ancient Martian civilization. And then they discovered a tenth planet – a maverick!
This tenth world, if it had an orbit, had a strange one, for it was heading inwards from interstellar space, heading close to the Earth-Mars spaceways, upsetting astronautic calculations and raising turmoil on the two inhabited worlds.
But even so none suspected then just how much trouble this new world would make. For it was WANDL THE INVADER and it was no barren planetoid. It was a manned world, manned by minds and monsters and travelling into our system with a purpose beyond that of astronomical accident!

Death and Disorder 104.

Institute courses told a grim story about the Network – that savage world beyond the closely guarded Institute gates. But they wanted to see for themselves. They had to know.

Were they really females there? Would their training as mercenaries prepare them for the wild bands of grisly subhumans?

They set out on a journey of discovery only to become the unwitting agents of forces that threatened to destroy the only world they’d ever known.

After journeying across the multiverse with other manifestations of the Eternal Champion,Dorian Hawkmoon is stunned to discover that he has returned to a version of his world in which it was his friend and ally, Count Brass, who survived the Battle of Londra, rather than Brass’s daughter – and Hawkmoon’s beloved wife – Yisselda. Driven close to madness by the loss of his wife and children (who never existed in this world), he locks himself away in Castle Brass, painstakingly recreating the battle of Londra, in an attempt to discover a version in which Yisselda also survives. But the paths through the multiverse are treacherous…

To leave the earth in a vessel designed to ride the emptiness of outer space would certainly demand of its crew the very highest qualities of courage and determination. But if the journey was to be a one-way trip with the objective of establishing an offshoot of humanity on a distant world, then every mortal quality would have to be considerably strengthened. Such was the project launched by Doctor Helenus Smith. He selected his crew with apparently small regard for the obvious essentials, his motivations for doing so kept close to his chest. The trouble began when a nameless world interposed itself on their course, appearing from nowhere, and upon which they were unexpectedly forced to land . . .

The year is 1998, and the nightmare is close at hand.

The world economy has gone into a mega-crash. Most of the population has been plunged into abject poverty. Anarchy and violence stalk the streets. All power is in the hands of Dryco, headed by paranoid tycoon Thatcher Dryden, and his monstrous wife, Susie.

But on the desperate streets of the Lower East Side miracles are happening. A Messiah seems to have risen from the people and is healing the sick, teaching children, raising the dead.

Dryco’s New Projects Manager, Joanna, is sent to check him out. Thatcher’s got a plan for world domination, and a genuine Messiah could be the key he’s looking for. And even if he’s fake, he may have his uses.

But soon, Joanna finds herself trapped in a crisis of conscience, between the relative security of a Dryco job and the dream of healing a sick world.

At the end of the 22nd century, following a nuclear accident, the birth rate is falling.

Faced with a rapidly shrinking human race, governments come up with a solution: new people from old. Cloning.

But these Reborn people are kept closely monitored, in controlled scenarios. Will they really fit into futuristic society? What other secrets are being hidden outside of the worlds in which they are contained?

What happened on Judgement Day? Do we have Martian ancestors? Will we blow up the world? In this collection of his best SF stories, Edmund Cooper gives his own inimitably entertaining answers to these and other such intriguing questions. From The Death Watch to The Brain Child, Cooper ‘considers possible scenarios’. Sometimes he is serious, sometimes satirical. Sometimes he is uncomfortably close to the truth.

The Dragon, an enormous comet, is on a trajectory that will bring it perilously close to an Earth that is still suffering from the scars of a nuclear incident, and from the problems of the Greenhouse Effect. For the optimists – those that remain – it is a sign of change for the better; for others, the comet foreshadows humanity’s final doom.

But to Francis Reese and the hard-pressed astronauts of the depleted space programme, the Dragon presents a third outrageous, yet irresistible possibility – the transformation of a barren world into a new home for the beleaguered peoples of Earth.

Earl Dumarest continues his desperate search for his birthplace, and seems to be coming close to the mythical planet Earth.

But his attention is temporarily diverted, as he is unexpectedly involved in a hunt for a nebulous ghost world in another galaxy.

It is rumoured that in this fabulous land lies the mysterious Castle of Heart’s Desire, where every wish is fulfilled. If Dumarest can find it, then maybe – just maybe – he will be able to return to the planet of his birth.




(First published 1976)

The alien spaceship landed in a cornfield. Its crew died rapidly, leaving only one survivor – a baby, conceived on an unknown world, carried in its mother’s womb across space and delivered even as the mother died on a hostile Earth.

But the alien woman had given birth to more than a child. With her last act she had bequeathed to the Earth that hated her and her kind decades of turmoil and strife that would come close to tearing the whole planet apart.

In the darkness of World War Two, a murderer strikes…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

‘No author is more skilled at making a good story seem brilliant’ Sunday Express

‘He stood very still for a moment. He said he had a sixth sense that warned him of danger. The fact that more murderous attempts had been made on his life did not affect his belief in his instinct. He said that in his profession a man had to harden himself to take risks. That was what his clients paid him for, “and,” he would add, “they pay damn well.” ‘

Death in the Blackout takes place in the heart of World War II and opens as a bomb drops uncomfortably close to detective Arthur Crook’s London flat, setting off a mysterious chain of events.

This stunning collection showcases 11 of Haldeman’s best stories. They range through time and space from planets beyond our wildest dreams to a nightmare future Earth all too close to home.

Lindsay and the Red City Blues: A story of revenge – with a heart-stopping twist in the tail.

Blood Brothers: A ‘Thieves World’ story.

You Can Never Go Back: A self-contained story from the original version of ‘The Forever War’, never before published in book form.

And ten more sharp and startling visions of tomorrow.

A priceless da Vinci painting, supposedly destroyed during World War II, miraculously appeared in Mexico. The Agency sent art expert Tony Hawkin to find out what the hell was going on down there.

But what started as a holiday jaunt, soon became a deadly mad escapade that was as hilarious as it was deadly. In a nightmare comedy of errors, professional agents from Israel, Italy, and Germany, closed in on poor, bumbling Hawkin.

it was a death trap for the timid art investigator and only an illogical amateur could home to survive the murderously inept MEXICAN CONNECTION.

The Gone-Away gods were real, once, and taller than towers. But they’re long dead now, buried in the catacombs beneath the city of Eth, where their calcified organs radiate an eldritch power that calls out to anyone hardy enough to live in this cut-throat, war-torn land. Some survivors are human, while others are close enough, but all are struggling to carve out their lives in a world both unforgiving and wondrous.

Darkly comic and viciously original, Viscera is an unforgettable journey through swords-and-sorcery fantasy where strangeness gleams from every nook and cranny.

Travel at light speeds is common, and Earth – the first in the universe to discover it – now reigns over many worlds.

But in order to rule effectively, Captain Robin Weinbaum, head of Security, needs an extremely advanced communications system. He gets it with the Dirac transmitter, the first machine capable of sending instantaneous messages anywhere in the universe. The only problem is that someone called J. Shelby Stevens has a machine that can do the impossible – tap the transmissions before they are even made! It is Weinbaum’s job to find Stevens. And unless he does, time will be abolished and the universe closed to Earth forever . . .

The concert draws to a close for the rulers of rock, Fiorinda, Ax and Sage, as they face the darkness spreading across the world despite their best efforts.

They’ve fought against collapsed economies, environmental meltdowns, energy crises, dark magic cults, and the complexities and struggles of their relationship. They’ve explored alternate states of being, embraced parenthood, raged against the machine, and then taken over running it. But has this been enough? Or was Earth and humanity always doomed to fall apart? Will this modern-day Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot see a brighter tomorrow?

This is book five in Gwyneth Jones’ critically-acclaimed BOLD AS LOVE series.

‘Earth is real,’ Dumarest insisted. ‘A world old and scarred by ancient wars. The stars are few and there is a great single moon which hangs like a pale sun in the night sky.’

In the quest for his legendary birthplace, Earl Dumarest has traversed galaxies. Now, at least, he reaches Ourelle, a planet close to Earth – out along a far arm of the Milky Way. There he finds Jondelle, a boy who may hold the key to Earl’s search.

But then Jondelle is kidnapped. And Dumarest’s pursuit of the imperilled boy leads him to a city of paranoiac killers – madmen whose terrible violence is always on a hair-trigger!



(First published 1973)

The chariots came on at great speed and there was no mistaking their purpose. Tulley wondered if they were using this place as a base . . . Then an arrow plunked into the parapet of his chariot. Oolou lashed the reins. The nageres sprang forward. With suicidal speed the two chariot groups closed on each other.

Tulley swallowed down, feeling the dryness in his throat, loosed a shaft at the oncoming mass. There must be twenty chariots out there . . .

He glanced at Oolou, shouting. She stared back at him with a ghastly grin, the blood pouring from her neck above the corselet where an arrow stood, stark and brutal.


The Chariots of Ra is a parallel worlds adventure novel, set in Kenneth Bulmer’s ‘Keys to the Dimensions’ series.

Mervyn, wizard and Fluxlord, leader of the Nine Who Guard, faces the ultimate threat of the opposing Seven Who Wait: the opening of the Hellgates to World. Closed more than two thousand years ago, they are portals to unknowable danger and, perhaps, great power.

Mervyn must gather the shattered forces of guardianship, dispersed and reeling after the battle with Coydt:

Cassie, once the powerful saint and crusader, now the brainwashed slave of an oppressive male dictatorship.

Spirit, her daughter, controlled by her mysterious Soul Raider.

Jeff, Spirit’s son

Matson: he will lead the entire force of the Stringers Guild to war, if need be.

But all of them are doomed to death unless they can become Masters of Flux and Anchor.

The year is 2000. America is swept up in the tide of fundamentalism that is overwhelming the world. Suicide cults and paranoid militias are on the rise and mobs of hooded men drive young women from the streets, as the right-wing American Alliance marshals it forces to close an iron grip on the United States.

Yet even as a power-hungry Alliance candidate makes his first move in a game that will land him the presidency, one woman prepares to stand against him. At Carolyn Crespin’s side are five women friends, the oddly present spirit of another friend who had been reported dead, and an even more surprising ally, mysterious and powerful – one who hands Carolyn the key to the future of humanity, for good or ill.