Search Results for: kaleidoscope

Thirteen dazzling tales by a master of science fiction and fantasy, including:
THE WEATHER’S FINE – In our world, time is money, but in Harry Turtledove’s alternate world, weather is time. And for Tom and Donna, happiness requires a temperature of 1968.
THE LAST ARTICLE – The Nazis had conquered the British Empire. But what use were Panzers and storm troopers against the Empire’s most troublesome subject – Mahatma Gandhi?
THE CASTLE OF THE SPARROWHAWK – Prince Rupen accepted the faeries’ challenge to win his heart’s desire. And though they told him the price of failure, they did not mention the penalty of success!
GENTLEMEN OF THE SHADE – If Jack the Ripper was a vampire, who better to stop him than Victorian London’s other vampires? And who else but they could arrive at so sublimely fitting a punishment?

The second collection of short stories from the prize-winning author of Orbitsville.

Nine stories demonstrate Shaw’s superb imaginative range and cynically humorous approach to the world of the future.

Skirmish on a Summer Morning
Unreasonable Facsimile
A Full Member of the Club
The Silent Partners
The Giaconda Caper
An Uncomic Book Horror Story
The Brink
Waltz of the Bodysnatchers
A Little Night Flying

A hundred thousand years from now, it was discovered that a star was approaching the world on a collision course. Its discoverer, Creohan, figured there might be time to save the world if he could arouse everyone to the danger.
But the Earth had become a strange and kaleidoscopic place in that distant era. Too many empires had risen and fallen, too many cultures had spread their shattered fragments across a planet whose very maps had long since been forgotten. People were too busy with their own private dreams to pay attention to one more new alarm.
The story Creohan’s effort to Catch a Falling Star is one of John Brunner’s most colourful science-fiction concepts.

For Mark Carodyne, all of life was a gamble. For money, for sport, for knowledge, for danger. That’s why he had come to Krait for the skimming races he knew would make him rich. Or broke.

Or dead.

Krait. It was dominated by the pulsing quivering kaleidoscopic Omphalos that filled the sky above. An unmeasurable mass that was said to have the power to swallow whole planets – even galaxies. Indeed, seven ships had been sent to explore its mysteries and none had returned.

Now there were those who believed that Krait was about to come into its path. And Mark Carodyne had agreed to gamble his life to obtain the scientific data that might save the planet from destruction. One man. In a single ship. Skimming the edge of the unknown . . .

British Science Fiction award winner Ian Watson graces us here with a brilliant new collection of short stories and essays.

Though he dazzles the reader with his footwork in the kaleidoscope intensity of his vision, each piece is plainly the work of a master craftsman. Whether he is dealing with a future culture where whales control us (“The Culling”) or taking a hilarious poke at the matter of government funding (“The President’s Not for Turning”), his concepts are clear and undeniably logical.

True to the highest ideal of science fiction, Watson carries present tendencies of our society to possible conclusions in “Roof Gardens under Saturn,” and points a warning finger at the consequences of alienation from the environment.

In an innovative style which borders on the experimental, Watson explores in “The Pharaoh and the Mademoiselle” the horrors of fascism.

Ian Watson’s writing stays with us. He entertains and he makes us think. If in some future and better world politicians were to take advice form writers, Watson should be one of them.

During the day a blazing and merciless sun beat down on “the boy” and at night a friendless and cold darkness enveloped him. It was a bleak and lonely countryside over which he had been wandering for ten years. A rare tree, bird or wild animal was the only life he encountered during his desolate trek through his young years of roaming. Infrequently, he was fortunate enough to find shelter and food in the shops of deserted villages; otherwise he foraged what he could from the nearly barren land. Contact with other humans was his innermost and greatest fear.

But the day came when his curiosity overcame his sensibilities of self-preservation and he was drawn to the sound of a great wailing not far from a place where he had come to rest.

Form that moment on his whole existence took on a radical change. His wanderings became a kaleidoscope of adventures, emotions, and responsibilities – never static, forever mobile, and potentially dangerous. There were moments when it would have been easier to turn his back, return to old ways, but somehow he knew this was an impossibility. He accepted his new fate, but still feared the greatest of all commitments until it was too late for him.

This fantasy adventure will not fail to excite and stir in every reader memories and emotions of seemingly forgotten times and moments.