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The Far Traveler was hardly the sort of starship to use in the study of lost space colonies. Lost colonies were likely to be desperate, eccentric and otherwise unappreciative. And The Far Traveler was a rich woman’s toy, constructed of gold and directed by an omniscient, dictatorial and feminine computer known as Big Sister.

John Grimes had become that golden vessel’s captain. A captain in name only because nobody could talk back to Big Sister or the haughty beauty who owned everything aboard. But Grimes was a man of many resources and lost space colonies were placed that did not observe the civilized rules. You could be sure, therefore, that the man known as the Commodore Hornblower of Outer Space would be likely to come through okay, even if the ladies – mechanical and physical – never expected him to!

Dunne was a crystal miner among the stars until he discovered the biggest strike in space.

Drilling through the Rings of Thothmes with a mysterious lady stowaway, the lonely hunter soon realized that every miner in this golden mist was out to get him – and the treasure.

Even as bloodshed spreads across the sky, eyes both inhuman and unseen watched, waiting to close in…

Pip and Flinx: Book One.

So-named because of its beautiful “wings” – great golden clouds forever suspended in space. And like its namesake, the planet attracted unwary tourists, travellers, space-sailors, merchants – a teeming, constantly shifting horde that provided a comfortable income for certain quick-witted fellows like Flinx and his pet flying-snake, Pip. The pickings were easy enough so that you with care you didn’t even have to be dishonest.

In fact, you could hardly call it dishonest – stealing a starmap from a dead body that didn’t need it any more. But Flinx wasn’t quite smart enough. He should have wondered why the body was dead . . .

Assembled here are fourteen of Harrison’s best, spanning time and space from the England of old to empires millennia from now. Among the stories included are “The Golden Years of the Stainless Steel Rat,” in which the cops have finally caught up with an aging Slippery Jim DiGriz; “Roommates,” the original basis for the movie Soylent Green; and twelve more galaxy-spanning classics!

From the bestselling West of Eden trilogy to Bill, The Galactic Hero and its sequels, from the Deathworld series to the Stainless Steel Rat books, Harry Harrison’s career is a series of landmarks. Stainless Steel Visions is another: his first major collection of short fiction.

General Benjamin Shore was heading for the stars – under forged orders and in defiance of Presidential commands. He was leaving Earth in an untested ship with a crew chosen by necessity. And with nothing but faith to guide him. His only hope was to find habitable worlds in the uncharted regions of space ahead.

Thus began Man’s first mission to the unexplored universe. Shore knew that before him lay danger, probable disillusion – maybe even death. But nothing had prepared him for the nightmare he would face on the planet of the Grey-furs for the menace of the Golden People who had driven all other races from Galactic Centre or for what awaited him if he returned to the world he called home.

That a planetoid of solid gold might exist in the Solar System is not beyond scientific possibility, insofar that our own Earth is basic nickel-iron, so might another world – of smaller size perhaps – be of basic god. Such a world is ZK/70, a planetoid in the region of the Asteroidal Belt.

Why, when he discovered the golden planetoid, did not Professor Brailsford bring back with him enough of the precious metal or gold dust to make himself financial dictator of the Earth? Why? That is the question. Instead, he dies without explaining and leaves his space machine and the course to ZK/70 to his daughter, step-daughter and their respective partners.

Out to ZK/70 travel the intrepid quartet, each one quite sure what will be one with unlimited gold once they have their hands on it…