Search Results for: last-man-on-earth

Alex was a pioneer. Like all pioneers he had problems. He had more problems than most; when things start to go wrong in space they go wrong in a big way. One by one the perils of the void took their toll of his companions. Alex was alone, alone with a vision, the vision of a town, home.

Only thoughts of home kept him alive. He remembered trees, houses, shops, churches, peoples…above all people. At last he reached earth…or perhaps it wasn’t earth? Things had changed unbelievably. Perhaps he had changed. How long had he been away? How far had he drifted? There was a sinister possibility that this wasn’t home at all. If the things that looked like people weren’t people but aliens, what was he to do?

Alex was a realist. He knew what space could do to a man’s mind. He was disinclined to trust the evidence of his own senses. A mine that has had far more than it can take can produce from very peculiar perceptions…

The Earth lies in ruins in the aftermath of an invasion, the land devastated by an intergalactic war where neither side won. The seas are drying up while the atmosphere corrodes and slowly cooks all remaining life on the now desolate rock.

Few survivors remain, but one of them is Lucas, an ordinary man hardened by the last few years after the world’s end. He’s fought off bandits, murderers, and stranded creatures on his long trek across the country in search of his family. What he finds instead is hope, something thought lost in the world.

There’s a ship buried in a crater wall. One of theirs. One that works. To fly it, Lucas must join forces with a traitorous alien scientist and a captured, merciless raider named Asha. Their perilous journey fighting savage men and creatures alike takes them across the remains of the planet and far out into the stars to…where exactly? Lucas has to live long enough to find out.

With Earth teetering on the brink of extinction, only one man dares to defy the legacy of the Spaceraiders – Clovis Marca, the twilight man.

Long ago Earth, now fixed on her axis, with eternal day on one side, eternal night on the other and a ribbon of twilight in between, was ravaged by galactic raiders. Earthlings recovered, grew stronger. But now, unable to reproduce, the last humans are frenzied with final decadence. And fear.

Only Clovis Marca, the last man born on Earth, dares to brave infected space to seek the impossible solution. His dark quest leads him to face Orlando Sharvis, the scientist whose insane experiments on his own mind and body might just save the human race… but would that race then be more, or less, human?

How Kemlo won his spurs in the first and last great Battle of Space. For, yes, even to Space, that final goal of all Man’s earthly dreams, enmity and war eventually came. But in Space, as always in the end on Earth, good was to triumph over evil – though not until a hideous and terrifying danger had been averted.

Earth had been destroyed, but man had built his colonies on Mars and Venus and the far-flung moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Mutation and forced breeding had changed these people so they were no longer human. Clyde Lester, the last man on Earth, had a special problem. From somewhere in space there originated strange radio signals which could only come from beyond the orbit of Pluto, the outermost planet.

Life on Earth was intolerable – and yet Man had stayed there, his dreams and potential suffocating under the dead weight of bureaucracy.

The stars were attainable – thanks to the Infall Drive – but only a few heard the call of deep space. Some had already gone to colonise a new world. The second ship was ready at last. Ready to escape the Earth’s prison; ready to seek refuge in deepest space. But it wasn’t only freedom that awaited it…

They had conquered Mars! Earth was next.

And in the council chambers at Washington, Earth’s leaders gathered to face the peril.

Mars had gone down to defeat in one hour and thirty-four minutes. And now a fleet of creatures from outer space was headed towards Earth.

All eyes turned to Eldin Raigmore, President of the United States – the one man to be trusted above all others. One by one the elite were dispatched on missions of last-minute strategy. They went with confidence, inspired by the swift, sure mind of Raigmore.

Civilization rested in his hands. And he was a secret member of the invader race!

Three Mind-Jarring Space Operas

Marooned:
Four giant ships made of the wonder element synthium crash the asteroid belt and brave the cold of Jupiter’s moons in mans last reckless dash to adventure.

All:
The Chinese have brutally conquered the Earth and out of their ruthless tyranny evolves the last great religious war, and the first God of Nuclear Divinity.

The Space Beyond:
When you wake up 75 billion miles from Earth in a crippled ship hurtling towards a blistering Mega-Sun, with a crew of insane gangsters and a Texan, what you don’t need to run into is a galactic war. Or was that their only chance of survival?

Brilliant invention, a rich sense of humour, an equal facility for describing ideas and technologies – these are the ingredients of Knight’s extraordinary talent as an SF writer. This collection of stories takes the reader from the death bed of the last man on earth to the unlikely demise of a vegetable vampire – and proves that Knight was at the top of his form.

Telling the story of a dying Earth, The Night Land begins with a man from the 17th century who, mourning the death of his true love, is given a vision through the eyes his future incarnation. In that distant time Earth is only dimly lit by the remaining glow of the dead Sun. The last millions of the human race cluster together inside the Last Redoubt, a huge metal pyramid, and are set upon by mysterious forces from the dark outside. Leaving the protection of their refuge means certain death, but our narrator makes mind contact with a survivor in a forgotten Lesser Redoubt. He must journey alone through the evil darkness to find her, knowing that she is the reincarnation of his past precious love.

Earth had changed since the days when her proud space fleets spanned the void of Space. Now her people were packed and packaged tight on Earth, their freedoms exchanged for a promise of stability by a multi-armed autocratic government. Then one small band of people led by a fanatic saw there was one last chance for Man to make his place in the Universe. But to take that chance they had to fight, not only the mighty grip of the government, but the terrible, generation-long voyage fraught with risk. And then, the new planet – strange, challenging, alien…

An expedition to Mars is decided on and Chris, Serge, Morrey and Tony are chosen to man it. Unlike their expedition to Venus, this is not a desperate last-minute venture; it is a sober, carefully planned affair. Chris and his friends have no reason to expect anything beyond the normal risks of space travel – except for the experiences of the Dutchman Van der Veen. He is the only man who has ever penetrated beyond the Le Prince layer, which blots out radio communication with the earth – and he returned in a state of mental collapse. When he hears of the new expedition he has another breakdown, and when at last he is able to describe his experiences he speaks of strange and terrifying voices that assailed him in outer space.

Will Chris and his friends also here these voices, and what will they find on Mars?

The Earth was in shambles after the final quake had leveled the cities.

For Mal Irish the last hold on reality was the embossed gold coin he had taken from the pocket of the dead man – the man who with his last breath had told him of mastodons buried in ice and men who weren’t human.

Once in possession of the coin, Mal found himself on a mysterious quest which led him to discover even stranger things – the girl who spoke the language of another world, the city under the ocean floor, and the deadly little men who followed him. He was in the power of something beyond his understanding, and he meant to find out its source before it put him to its own unfathomable uses.

Science fiction begins, wrote Algis J. Budrys, where unreality leaves off. In these unforgettable stories Budrys creates an alien but familiar world stripped of the lies of everyday life: a world where cannibalism is a medical, not an ethical problem; where “not-dying” is the alternative to both life and death; where the last man on Earth dances in hideous and exquisite joy.

It’s 2026, and the Alpha Centauri supernova has risen like a second sun, rushing Earth toward its last summer. Floods, fires, starvation and disease paralyze the planet. A flash of gamma rays has destroyed all microchips worldwide, leaving an already devastated Earth without communications, transportation, weaponry or medicine.

The disaster sets three groups of survivors on separate quests. A militant cult seizes the opportunity to free their leader from her long court-mandated coma. Three cancer patients also search for a man in judicial sleep: the brilliant scientist – and monstrous criminal – who alone can continue the experimental treatment that keeps them alive. From a far greater distance come the survivors of the first manned Mars expedition, struggling homeward to a world that has changed far beyond their darkest fears. And standing at the crossroads is one man, U.S. President Saul Steinmetz, who faces a crucial decision that will affect the fate of his own people… and the world.

Secretive, enigmatic beings, they came to Earth to live among humanity in quiet, aristocratic isolation. But now, after years of silence, the “gods” have decided to share their art.

Across the vast galactic void come great ships bearing the fruits of an incomprehensible alien culture – paintings and sculpture of such raw, visceral power that their unveiling plunges the Earth into violent chaos, and sends the visitors fleeing from their adopted planet. But some remain behind – to face death at the hands of rampaging mobs, to witness the outcome of the grand cosmic game, and to assist in the creation of one last, potentially universe-shattering masterpiece that will illuminate the awesome, final destinies of god and man.

They came out of the star-strewn wilderness around Sol, these alien creatures. And their object was the vicious, total destruction of the Federation of Worlds.

Earth was one of the last pf the planets to be attacked and here they were opposed by the Earth Council: six men who held the destinies of a hundred billion people in their hands.

But in the end, there remained only one man out of the six to fight. Velga Dorne, Earth Councillor and Member of the Triumvirate of Worlds. And he himself was a hunted man. Death and terrible destruction followed him across the wastes of space in the search for the crazy, nightmare planet that had spawned these creatures. Fear and terror were his only companions.

Until he reached the nameless planet of a still more insignificant sun and learned that there were others to join him in the struggle against the black, inhuman monsters. These were the Hheroni, scientists whose achievements had progressed along a slightly different path of research to humanity. And Astraea, the girl who went with him on the suicidal mission to where the Aliens originated: on a world that no one in their wildest dreams had thought possible to exist, one which even science said was impossible.

The final chapter of humanity’s future has begun and one man, Nigel Walmsley, has been alive through it all. An ancient scientist from the distant past, Walmsley had been marooned inside an anomaly of time and space. From here he recalls Earth’s desperate struggle against the mechs, a violent artificial intelligence dedicated to total annihilation.


In a strange space-time continuum called the Esty, the last few survivors from humanity’s ravaged planets have taken refuge, readying themselves for a final stand against their ruthless executioners.


Three generations of men stand between the mechs and total oblivion for the human race: Toby Bishop, a young warrior-in-training; Killeen Bishop, Toby’s father and leader of the last remnants of humanity; and Killeen’s own father, long believed dead, but now mysteriously returned to his family.


As the mechs continue to carve their swathe of destruction through the galaxy, these three men hold the sole hope for the survival of the human race.

It came from outer space . . .

The Medusa, the intergalactic conqueror, a hive-like being with a consuming appetite to absorb all life in the universe.

Now the Medusa had reached Earth. It had taken control of its first human being. Through him it would possess all his fellows.

But there was one thing the Medusa had not reckoned on. One tiny factor in the complex human equation. A desperate last chance for the stubborn and independent creature known as Man to save himself . . .

If wishes would only come true; how often has every human being thought that? How wonderful life would be if only we could have everything we ever dreamed of?

But the man who invented the dream-machine turned out to be the worst enemy humanity ever encountered! The dream became as real as the reality – and yet remained a figment of the imagination. And thereby the very foundations of civilization were undermined. Why strive – when you could get it all without effort?

Reality Forbidden is the unusual novel of what came afterwards. Of the world in which only the most rigid of terror kept cities standing, and of the man who dared to escape that world, to find the last place on Earth where dreaming was not prohibited, and where one could not only have one’s cake, but eat it as well!

To see the stars.

This was the great and paradoxical dream. To stand and look upward into space, at the myriad pin-points of light, forever out of reach, just as their forebears on Earth had in the long gone days before the building of the planetary shells.

Mars, Jupiter, Saturn… Shell had succeeded shell, each studded with its captive caged worlds, each progressively populated by men who could look up only into a sky of artificial luminaries and space debris.

Always Zeus, man-created prime mover, was at work beyond them, the giant space machines forming and working the next shell.

Uranus, Neptune, Pluto…The last shell.

Again they journeyed: Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry and Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotic, to reach the outer shell, to return to the past when Man could see the stars.

The engines died first, then the ship. Hope died. Men lived on. Then men died one by one… Accidents… quarrels… illness… age. One man remained. One man sat in the quietness of the drifting ship and wondered why Death didn’t want him.
The Others found the incredible derelict and approached her cautiously. The last spaceman watched them come and went to greet them. He was too old and tired to have any emotions left. Then they went to work on him. One by one his feelings came to life again. He took an interest in the New World on which he found himself. There was something strangely worrying about the planet. Things looked vaguely reminiscent of other things from long ago… A mountain range reminded him of Earth. A vast stretch of water looked like an ocean he had once crossed. Could the impossible have happened?
Could the incredible be reality?

The 22nd century, 150 years after the Dust War destroyed America’s Mid-West, and much else besides. California is a last outpost for survival and reclamation during a long epidemic of all-purpose despair.

The extraordinary cult of ‘Tumbonde,’ a former taxi driver its prophet and leader, predicts the imminent arrival on earth of ‘Gods’ from the stars. The movement grows daily.

Tom O’Bedlam, an apparent madman, prey since childhood to visions which seem to confirm ‘Tumbonde,’ goes even further. He can, he will, help others to make the Crossing. If the world doesn’t go too man too soon. If well-meaning ‘rationalists’ don’t lock him away . . .

In a distant future, on an Earth populated by a scant few hundred thousand humans, the Atkins’s Thomas performs without question the duties for which he was genetically bred. Called “Soldier” by one and all, he is a man of honor and ability, responsible for keeping the peace, for maintaining the status quo . . . and, most important, for guarding the great Book House on the hill – a vast repository of Last Culture knowledge presided over by Libary, Soldier’s mentor, the most senior of the mystic Celibate scholars.

Such is Thomas’s life in the serene, semi-primitive world without nations and cities and governments – until the night the starship comes home. Having fled a dangerously overcrowded Earth years before the Collapse and the Twilight that followed, for seven centuries the men and women of the space-going vessel Search have been combing the galaxy for inhabitable planets – their aging processes dramatically slowed by the relative magic of light speed travel and cryogenic sleep. And now, lonely and frustrated, the weary voyagers have returned to a homeworld unrecognizably altered by the relentless tides of time – a world that does not want them back.

A bitter welcome awaits the Searchers, as old Libary gathers Earth’s Ordinands and Elders together to tap the terrifying power of the collective unconscious – in preparation of the Carnival night when they will sweep the helpless intruders back to their lonely sky in the name of Holy Science. And it is Soldier who stands in the middle, silent and alone – bound by duty to evict the homesick star-travelers . . . yet cursed by a preordained genetic destiny that has decreed their eviction will mean Soldier’s death.