Search Results for: crisis

Lieutenant Commander Shaila Jain has been given the assignment of her dreams: the first manned mission to Saturn. But there’s competition and complications when she arrives aboard the survey ship Armstrong. The Chinese are vying for control of the critical moon Titan, and the moon Enceladus may harbor secrets deep under its icy crust. And back on Earth, Project DAEDALUS now seeks to defend against other dimensional incursions. But there are other players interested in opening the door between worlds . . . and they’re getting impatient.

For Thomas Weatherby, it’s been nineteen years since he was second lieutenant aboard HMS Daedalus. Now captain of the seventy-four-gun Fortitude, Weatherby helps destroy the French fleet at the Nile and must chase an escaped French ship from Egypt to Saturn, home of the enigmatic and increasingly unstable aliens who call themselves the Xan. Meanwhile, in Egypt, alchemist Andrew Finch has ingratiated himself with Napoleon’s forces . . . and finds the true, horrible reason why the French invaded Egypt in the first place.

The Translator tells of the relationship between an exiled Russian poet and his American translator during the Cuban missile crisis, a time when a writer’s words – especially forbidden ones – could be powerful enough to change the course of history.

Eight short stories by the author of Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang. The title piece plus The Encounter; Planet Story; Mrs Bagley Goes to Mars; Symbiosis; Ladies and Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis; The Hounds; and State of Grace.

‘Valentine looked downward. Everything was black, a pool of night rising from the floor. That blackness seemed to be beckoning to him. Come, a quiet voice was saying, here is your path, here is your destiny: night, darkness, doom. Yield. Yield, Lord Valentine, Coronal that was, Pontifex that will never be. Yield . . .’

Valentine is now established as Coronal of Majipoor, about to undertake the grand processional, but filled with inexplicable despond, still shadowed by the dark cloud that had passed across his soul in Labyrinth.

His foreboding proves to be not without foundation as soon he faces a planetary crisis – the shapeshifting Metamorphs are sabotaging the crops upon which Majipoor’s billions depend – and a conflict, about how the suddenly turbulent planet should be ruled, with his protégé and heir-apparent, Hissune.

Only after this crisis has been overcome and the conflict with Hissune resolved can Valentine fulfil his proper destiny and succeed to the title of Pontifex.

Jonathan Herovit is a science fiction writer in a state of deep personal and professional crisis. Whilst struggling to deal with his wife’s post-partum depression, his own alcoholism and a long-overdue novel that he has no motivation to write, the pseudonym under which he writes begins talking to him…

Benny Rice is not what he seems to be. His tests for rebirth reveal all the necessary traits – compassion, health, energy, potential for creativity – but with the intelligence of a moron, which disqualifies him. But Benny’s test scores must be re-examined in a crisis that endangers the existence of rebirth – and threatens more than Benny’s life!

Change the Sky is a collection in which you will find:

– A man who has spent his life searching for the world of his dreams and got exactly what he wanted
– A women who found the people around her so boring she changed them
– A righteous minister who preached an old-fashioned Christmas and started an energy crisis – 2000 years in the future

Earth is faced with annihilation by the Purple Dawn – effect of the cosmic fall-out from the swirling planet-in-the-making Polarthanus.

Kemlo and his Space Scouts are out in the void, towing a crippled space ship with their scooters, when suddenly the crisis is upon them. The space-born boys have to make a decision: if they take drastic action will it avert the danger – or will they blow up Earth, the Satellite Belts and themselves?

It was not altogether surprising that Ambrose Brenthurst was found brutally murdered outside Fountain Court the night he had presided over the diner meeting of the ‘Hernshaw Thirteen Club’.

Many were the potential murderers – some of them guests at the diner. But when a second murder takes place it precipitates a crisis in which investigator Sir Clinton Driffield must penetrate a maze of conflicting evidence to spot the murderer.

Ron Bronston was sworn to protect the United Planets’ dream – the pursuit of freedom and progress on all of the 3000 human-inhabited planets of the galaxy.
As an operative of the secret section of the United Planets’ Bureau of Investigation, Bronston was called upon for some very unusual missions. But the present crisis was without precedent.
Man’s sovereignty in his galaxy was challenged by a single madman and the super-weapons of the Dawnmen, the mysterious aliens from the unexplored vastness of the galaxy’s center. Bronston, alone, had to find a way to stop them.

When Tabitha stole the Starship Plenty, she had no idea what it would come to mean. Its alien nature began to burrow into her affections. Now the rules are changing and with them come war and treachery. Tabitha is facing a crisis and this time round, Plenty might not be the saviour.

A winner of the Arthur C. Clarke and British Science Fiction Awards, the series featuring intergalactic pilot Captain Tabitha Jute concludes with her daring flight into a dying star system to avert a plot against the human race.

When Ivan Wright stepped out of his mountain cabin, rifle in hand, to investigate the sound of a strange helicopter, he stepped right into the middle of a galactic crisis.

For the crew of that odd aircraft were not men such as he’d ever seen before – and when he tried to oppose them, he found himself hurled uncontrollably into oblivion.

He awoke to find himself considered as a kidnapped barbarian from a backward planet in a galaxy of advanced civilizations – yet one who somehow held in his own hands the key to all their futures!

Bill Waltham has a sneaking suspicion that a few important details were purposely withheld from him when he receives his assignment to the planet Dilbia. At first, the project – to teach the planet’s bear-like inhabitants basic agricultural skills – seems a straightforward, though boring, undertaking for a young engineer on the rise.

But Bill immediately senses a very keen hostility from the Dilbians toward interfering humans. And in trying to solve a major crisis on the planet, he finds himself involved in a knock-down, drag-out brawl that has all the undertones of a David-and-Goliath battle revisited.

The small Hebridean island of Alsaig is facing a crisis. It is famous for its only export, a particularly fine malt whisky, upon which most of the islanders depend for their livelihood. But the distillery is threatened with a takeover by an American firm, which would not only make many of the workforce redundant but also adulterate the product.

But owner Alisdair Matheson is refusing to sell, despite threats of sabotage and an attempt on his life. The situation is complicated further by an actual murder on the island, which the locals believe to have been committed by American Mike MacDonald. Tension mounts as storms lash the island, isolating it from the outside world and locking the killer in with the islanders.

It is 1936 – the year of the Abdication Crisis – and gangland capo Sonny Tarrant’s money-laundering operation is being threatened by three small-time thieves thinking big.

Would-be gangsters Sandboy, McGouran and Gillis have carried out a violent raid on the premises of furrier Pelly Pender. But Pender insists to the police that no attack took place, for he knows the trio will face a different justice in which the law plays no part. And Sandboy soon finds himself caught in a nightmare world in which Tarrant manipulates his victims with the deftness of a flick-knife.

His last hope is Yvonne Manders, once the stage-dancer ‘Lady Blue’ . . .

The golden planet of Astrobe, made in the image of Utopia, now faced a crisis which could destroy it forever; and yet, no one could understand it: In a world where wealth & comfort were free to everyone, why did so many desert the golden cities for the slums of Cathead and the Barrio? Why did they turn away from the Astrobe dream and seek lives of bone-crushing work, squalor and disease?

The rulers of Astrobe didn’t know, so they sought in humankind’s past for a leader who could give them the answers. They brought to life the one man out of history who would most want to destroy Astrobe!

David Fox, fast approaching his fortieth birthday, is in the throes of a mid-life crisis. That is until he finds a message in a bottle whilst walking on the beach. The message, written in 1953, is from a boy called John Marshall who claims his father his trying to kill him. And with a new, invigorating purpose to his life David is compelled to find out what happened all those years ago.

The truth is more bizarre and horrific than he could ever have imagined. At the heart of his investigations is a secret society called the Flux and each of its members possesses unique and formidable supernatural powers. And they want the bottle…

On an ecologically seared Earth, James Konteau is a veteran krono, a professional time traveler. His job is to ease the overpopulation crisis by establishing new colonies in Earth’s prehistory, long before human beings evolved. But his job has lost all meaning, for Konteau is a lone and troubled man haunted by his own past.

Now, suddenly, his future is also in turmoil: a timequake has reportedly ripped through distant eons, destroying one of Konteau’s colonies. Framed for the disaster, Konteau is hunted by authorities, defying all the powers of technology and politics to escape back through the misty ages on a complex mission of death, justice, love – and incredible destiny . . .

CHART (Cartography Headquarters, Astro Research Trust) is Earth’s galactic takeover bid. Knowledge is power, and the human race means to go on using painfully acquired knowledge of other worlds to remain top dog in the galaxy. But pioneers are not normal men.

Blake is not a normal man; and Rachel, a lovely redhead, is not a lovely sexy redhead.

In timeshift the CHART men drift off into a fantasy world; except Blake, who is condemned to repeat over and over again, agonisingly, the great trauma of his life. He doesn’t know it, but this serves to prepare him for the second great crisis of his life – the weird, terrifying, sickening drama of his meeting with the Men of Crock.

THE COMING OF THE BLIGHT
It seemed as though the world was eroding right under everyone’s feet. Stories disappeared from magazines; the baron’s silver coat of arms, polished in the morning, was pitted with corrosion by afternoon; toadstools were springing up from every corner. And these were but the first signs of the coming plague, a cancerous orgy of patternless vitality seeking to engulf the world…

TO STEM THE TIDE
Carefree Johnny Curlon, indelicately plucked from his fishing boat one evening, is bluntly informed by high powers that he is a man destined for a role in great affairs: only his unique powers can prevent the coming probability crisis that threatens to turn the world into bubbling chaos…

Why is the government deliberately destroying all trace of Man’s past?

Why are the laws of gravity and momentum strangely altered?

Why has the world’s population continually increased without the predicted eco-crisis taking place?

Why is there an international conspiracy to conceal the future of the human race?

These are just some of the reality-shattering questions that face Manalone, a brilliant computer scientist, when he tries to find out exactly what has happened to humanity. Manalone, outcast from society, must fight the entire machinery of a ruthless police state to discover the truth. And the truth is an awful, chilling one, that sounds only too real in today’s world.

It should have been her sanctuary – until things got murderous…

‘Few authors are better than Margaret Yorke in generating a real sense of fear’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘The mistress of unease’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

Ruth Castle – alone, proud, defiant – is determined to rescue some personal happiness from the wreckage of her life. In Haverbury village, she makes friends with Marjorie and Robert Bretherton, and is soon involved in the affairs of other relatives who come to stay for Christmas.

Family conflicts emerge, and one night, turning to Ruth for support in a sudden crisis, Marjorie realises that things are not as straightforward as she thought – and that her very life is threatened …

By the CWA Gold Dagger award-winning author of Other Paths to Glory

When ex-Major Ed Parker of the US Army is pushed over a cliff at Pointe du Hoc following the D-Day anniversary, a crisis is sparked off in British Intelligence. The cream of the Secret Service gather: Dr Audley, Oliver St John Latimer, Commander Cable, Dr Paul Mitchell. But none will take on the case.

Why is the investigation left to inexperienced Elizabeth Loftus? Is there any truth in the old rumour that Parker was a KGB double agent?

Elizabeth must ponder these and many other questions as she prises the lid off a can of worms forty years old – and suspicion begins to fall on her most respected colleagues.

It’s 1949, and the Cold War is heating up across the world. Operating in the shadows, the Variants – once ordinary US citizens, but now imbued with strange paranormal abilities and corralled into covert service by the government’s top secret MAJESTIC-12 program – find themselves on the front lines of an international crisis.

In Syria, Variant agents have been sent to support a coup by a pro-American army officer. In Washington, a shocking suicide has them fighting for their very freedom. And at Area 51, the operation’s headquarters, the strange interspatial phenomenon which originally granted Variants their abilities has yielded disturbing discoveries.

All the while, dangerous figures flit among the shadows, and it’s unclear whether they are threatening to expose the Variants for what they are . . . or completely destroy them. Are they working for the Soviet Union, or something far worse?