Search Results for: hell-planet

Between the frozen wastes of the night side and the searing inferno of the dayside, the Twilight Belt held all that was Human on the tiny world of Mercury, Hell Planet of the Solar System. A strange world, airless, subject to the alien distortions of Einsteinian mathematics, Mercury was both a promise and a challenge, for here could be found torrents of cheap power essential to the ships and men in space. Lee Correy, Commander of the Station, plunges into the frigid wastes in a desperate race against time to find and rescue both his brother and the essential component of the beam control. Fighting impossible conditions and incredible alien life he is up against the enigmatic mystery of the sand devils; a dead man who walked, and a machine that could not fail-but did.

Here is a story of the future, of the planets and the men who will colonise them, of the way they will live and the problems they will face. With mystery, adventure, exciting action and scientifically correct detail. A story of what might well be in the days to come . . .

Ace Lieutenant Dominic Flandry was not a man easily swayed from his duty to the Empire; not, that is, until galactic vice king Leon Ammon offered him a million-credit bribe, a voluptuous woman called Djana, and a chance to explore a dark and treasure-laden moon.

Yet within the desolate peaks and valleys of that strange world of ice and shadows, Flandry found more than he had bargained for. Supposedly barren, the planet swarmed with a hideous race of strange, inhuman creatures, infernally controlled by a deranged and brilliant computer brain. Each, like a piece in a bizarre and vicious chess game, was programmed to kill. And although Flandry did not know it – so was the woman he loved.

Fenris isn’t a hell planet, but it’s nobody’s bargain. With 2,000-hour days and an 8,000-hour year, it alternates blazing heat with killing cold. A planet like that tends to breed a special kind of person: tough enough to stay alive and smart enough to make the best of it. When that kind of person discovers he’s being cheated of wealth he’s risked his life for, that kind of planet is ripe for revolution.

BARWORLD! For all the years that BILL had served in the Troopers, with all the hard beds, hard heads and no creds, any booze on offer was probably embalming fluid, or worse.



BARWORLD! An assignment there promised bubbly, brandy and beer galore – enough to give BILL’s right arms (both of them) at last some idea of just what they were for.



But that was before Uncle Nancy’s Cross-Dressing Emporium. And the Time/Space Resonation Nexus. And the Hippy from Hell.



They were enough to completely alter a person’s perceptions of reality.



And, like, totally bum him out.

John Grimes is stranded on a Hell Planet! Another adventure with the pipe-smoking, action-loving spaceship commander Lieutenant John Grimes.

Earl Dumarest still seeks the mythical planet Earth . . . still roams alien and violent worlds. With him goes Mayenne, whose songs create joy and passion – or forgetfulness.

Together they are cast up on Tormyle, a planet from another galaxy; a planet unique throughout the Universe. For Tormyle is sentient – the most powerful intelligence in the Cosmos, constantly recreating itself.

Tormyle can be Paradise or Hell. Tormyle can manifest as a dragon or a knight on horseback, faceless behind the helmet. Tormyle understands nothing of humanity, of men and women, of emotion. And Tormyle will let no-one escape who cannot answer the unanswerable.




(First published 1973)

Bart Fraden came looking for a planet to conquer – and found the hell-hole of the galaxy: Sangre – the killer planet. For three centuries Sangre had been dominated by the sadistic Brotherhood of Pain, a priesthood dedicated to torture, slavery and cannibalism. Bart sensed the kind of revolutionary potential that he could manipulate to make himself ultimate ruler. But he hadn’t counted on the apathy of a people bred as meat animals and the dreadful power wielded by the Brotherhood. Sangre might cost him more than his life – it might destroy his soul . . .

A journey to the Rim Worlds takes you straight to the edge of the unknown or right to the gaping void of the abyss. Out there you’re beyond the borders, hovering between the warped contours of troubled space and time…

Captain Clavering bought his ship on a lottery win. Now he’s holed up on the dismal planet of Lorn filling in the time on a chemical-blasted airstrip waiting for a contract. Somewhere there must be a newly colonized planet needing charters or some threatened world that needs evacuating. He’d risk anything for money in the bank – even a dodgy landing on the gas-blasted plains of Eblis, if the Rim Runners fancy paying hard cash for an expedition to hell…

It seemed like a good idea; even a noble experiment. But the outcome was sheer hell.

When the Balduin brothers escaped from the tedium of the human hive of Atlanta, Georgia, they had a mission. They were to voyage to the planet Trope, contact a tribe there known as the Ouemartsee, and transport it to Glaparca for a useful purpose.

But suddenly the Balduin brothers discovered that they were in the slave trade, and that the Ouemartsee had made one of them a God . . .

THE EARTH’S REAL LANDLORDS ARE SURFACING. HERE. NOW…From the darkly fantastic worlds of H P Lovecraft’s world-famous Cthulhu Mythos comes a grimly compelling novel of the Ultimate War, between men – and monsters spawned in Hell!For millennia, men have strutted in puny pride over the fragile surface of the Earth, arrogantly proclaiming themselves masters of creation. But now their feeble investigations have disturbed the planet’s original rulers far beneath the globe’s crust. And mankind’s placid dreams are about to be wrenched into shattering nightmare.’They were here before man evolved. They are older than our oldest legends, predating the very dinosaurs. They call to use in our dreams and make us… do things!’They are THE BURROWERS BENEATH. And they’re surfacing right now. Right here…

The world of the future is in a lot of trouble. Pollution, overpopulation, and ecological disasters have left the rich nations still rich, and the poor nations dying. Still, for international businesses it is business as usual. It is better to be rich. But is it all coming to a terrible end? A scientist has predicted Condition Venus, the sudden greenhouse end of the planet – but she can’t say when. So the attention of the world is on a UN conference in Paris, where all hell is about to break loose.

In The Gardens of Delight Ian Watson boldly lands a starship within the hallucinatory terrain of Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, a medieval masterpiece which enchants and horrifies all who see it, for the picture shows what looks to be a paradise of pleasure yet it also displays a terrible hell of torments. And so the ship’s psychologist, Sean Athlone, and two women companions explore the luxurious landscape of giant fruits and birds and strange towers and naked celebrating people, in quest of the godlike alien intelligence that has transformed a planet according to Bosch’s vision, populating it with the colonists from a previous starship.

BILL – the army’s made him what he is today – the perfect Starship Trooper, proud possess of two right arms and a lockerful of feet suitable for every occasion.



BILL – this time he’s really put his foot (the Swiss-Army one with the special attachments, secret compartments, collapsible mess-kit and condom dispenser) right in it.



BILL’s been volunteered to join a suicide squad run by Captain Cadaver to the well-known hell-hole planet of Eyerack. The orders are DEATH OR GLORY – and GLORY made a point of never returning the invitation to the war. So. Can this really be IT? The Long Goodbye? Zero Hour? Harmonicas at dawn? The end of a brilliantly undistinguished career of military mishaps? What can I tell you?



This IS BILL’s final incoherent adventure!

Born was a child of the rain forest that covered Midworld, part of the primitive society that the peaceful jungle planet had sustained for hundreds of years. He was wise in the ways of his world, and he knew well the precarious natural balance that governed all things.Then one day the aliens came. Giants. They knew nothing of the Upper or Lower Hell ? and they cared less. Born had risked his life to save them, to guide them through the myriad tangled boughs, past unseen, unsuspected dangers lurking in the underbrush. But worse than their ignorance of how to survive, the aliens had plans for Midworld, plans that could utterly destroy the globe-spanning forest that his people called home.As the days passed, Born realized his mistake. And as he had once hunted only to live, he knew now that he would be forced to live only to kill…

Hugo and Nebula award winner Anderson incorporates two stories he wrote for the Asimov’s Universe series into this absorbing posthumous novel, a fast-paced space opera that never lets the reader forget that aliens are alien. At a time when nearly immortal humans have colonized the galaxy, various space-faring species commingle freely and the residents of Earth have become as alien to other humans as true ETs, an astronomical event that may affect all existence is about to take place. Unfortunately, only one set of aliens knows what that event is and their ruling dictatorship is hell-bent on keeping it that way. Lissa Windholm, an Earth woman with a spirit of adventure men find attractive, is determined to uncover the mystery and share the knowledge with everyone. Lissa and her partner Karl, a tyrannosaurus-like scientist, make some startling archaeological discoveries on the planet Jonna about beings known as the Forerunners, but a psychologically scarred starship captain and an impressively ancient and profit-minded human rogue have other plans for the relics.

From The SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal sample introduction to one of the giants of 20th century science fiction: Frank Herbert. Although best known for his award-winning Dune, Herbert’s other work is equally ambitious and accomplished. This omnibus contains three novels spanning some 20 years of Herbert’s career: The Dragon in the Sea, The Santaroga Barrier and The Dosadi Experiment.


THE DRAGON IN THE SEA
In the endless war between East and West, oil has become the ultimate prize. Nuclear-powered subtugs brave enemy waters to tap into hidden oil reserves. Psychologist John Ramsay has gone undercover aboard a Hell Diver subtug where, hunted relentlessly by the enemy, the crew find themselves isolated in a claustrophobic undersea prison, struggling for survival against the elements . . . and themselves.

THE SANTAROGA BARRIER
Santaroga seemed to be nothing more than a prosperous farm community. But there was something . . . different . . . about Santaroga. Maybe Santaroga was the last outpost of American individualism. Maybe they were just a bunch of religious kooks . . . Or maybe there was something extraordinary at work in Santaroga. Something far more disturbing than anyone could imagine.

THE DOSADI EXPERIMENT
Generations of a tormented human-alien people, caged on a toxic planet, conditioned by constant hunger and war – this is the Dosadi Experiment, and it has succeeded too well. For the Dosadi have bred for Vengeance as well as cunning, and they have learned how to pass through the shimmering God Wall to exact their dreadful revenge on the Universe that created them . . .