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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.

In this, the second book of the epic trilogy begun in The Forging of the Shadows, the once-glorious city of Thrull has become a place of death and despair. Seven years before, Lord Faran Groton, High Priest of the God of Darkness, overthrew Thrull and set loose his army of vampires to plague the city, waiting for the day the sun would rise no more…But the God of Light has his champions as well. A motley trio of survivors searches for the three ancient artifacts which can defeat the darkness. Traveling far beyond their own lands, they will encounter nightmares and disasters before facing their most dangerous enemies — the Dark-born Nations of the Night!

All his life Manvar has had a dream. One day, he will escape the harshly primitive, blizzard-torn lands of the north. He will follow the paths of the Ancients and see for himself the fabled lands of the south: lands without ice and snow and perpetual night; lands of warmth and light, where life is easy and comfortable within walled cities of incredible beauty. Manvar follows his dream, but finds it hollow. Life in the wondrous city of Delphos is not the paradise it seemed.

Bright the sun burning,
Night will come turning,
Mothwings go spinning,
End and beginning,
Eye of the star,
Where Old Gods are.

Players, take your places!
The Land itself calls Game!

The firebird came at night – a magnificent creature whose magical cry seemed to transform objects at random. Gifted with powers of her own, Meguet tried to reach out to the bird. But at moonrise, the firebird became human, a prince cursed by dark magic. Meguet bowed to help him. But then the mystery carried her away, on alien winds, to a land far from her home…

At the edge of the world, the Luxor Desert awaits – a barren land where a sorcerer’s war rages. Where invisible dragons cast shadows over ruined castles. And where Meguet’s own fate depends upon a secret locked away in a tower for centuries…

The valley was isolated in time and space, a land of barbarous science and human sacrifice.

Coatlice the Dreadful stalked the night, her twin serpent heads dealing death to taboo-breakers.

Citallatonac the First Priest sacrificed anyone believed to be possessed by the gods.

Chimal rebelled: he wanted to escape the atavistic confines of his lost civilisation, to venture into the unknown world beyond the valley, a world of hope, and nightmare, too.

Orphan-slave Claidi has fought for freedom and won. Now she looks forward to a life of happiness with the wandering Hulta people.
But once again for Claidi, nothing and no-one is as it seems. Secrets menace her; a bewildering land of giant flowers and savage animals; the awesome Rise, a great cliff topped by a mansion ruled by a strange, arrogant, enigmatic Prince. At dusk each night, the rising of the flaming Wolf Star.

Jay Seward remembered a former life in a land of magic, gods, and goddesses…a time when he was Jason of Iolcus, sailing in the enchanted ship Argo to steal the Golden Fleece from the serpent-temples of Apollo. But one night the memories became startlingly real, as the Argo itself sailed out of the spectral mists and a hauntingly beautiful voice called: “Jason…come to me!” And suddenly he was on the deck of the Argo, sailing into danger and magic…

It’s just a fantasy role-playing game. Until the game becomes reality . . .

Friday night is games night. But one special Friday, Paul and his four friends are transported into the heart of their own game, to the strange, bleak land of Xhandarre . . .

Where reality vanishes, and the five players assume new and exciting identities – with new and exciting power.

Where hostile tree dwellers, predatory birds, and flesh-eating werewolves lash out from darkened shadows.

And where the evil sorcerer Avron Kromar holds the key to freedom.

Can Paul and his friends survive their strange, new world? Can they escape its treacherous dangers? And if they can escape, do they really want to return to reality?




(First published in 1985 as by Christopher Carpenter)

All the magic and mystery of fabled India is woven into these marvel tales of seven strange nights. For that vast land which many have conquered and none have subdued is the home of ten thousand gods and a hundred thousand demons – and the teeming races that dwell on its shrouded plains and marbled cities have kept their mystic secrets. Here are hidden gods and demonic possession, here are were-beasts and subterranean terrors, here are beings transformed and souls reborn, here is Terror and Wonder.

A Star Above It and Other Stories is volume 1 of a collection of Chad Oliver’s SF, containing the following:

Blood’s a Rover
The Land of Lost Content
The Ant and the Eye
Artifact
Any More At Home Like You?
Rewrite Man
The Edge of Forever
The Boy Next Door
A Star Above It
The Mother of Necessity
Night
Technical Advisor
Between the Thunder and the Sun
The One That Got Away
Transfusion
Guardian Spirit
The Gift
To Whom It May Concern
A Stick for Harry Eddington
Old Four-Eyes

Lafferty’s Nine Hundred Grandmothers collects the following stories:

Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Land of the Great Horses
Ginny Wrapped in the Sun
The Six Fingers of Time
Frog on the Mountain
All the People
Primary Education of the Camiroi
Slow Tuesday Night
Snuffles
Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne
Name of the Snake
Narrow Valley
Polity and Custom of the Camiroi
In Our Block
Hog-Belly Honey
Seven Day Terror
The Hole on the Corner
What’s the Name of that Town
Through Other Eyes
One at a Time
Guesting Time

THE FARTHEST FUTURE AS SEEN BY THE MASTER OF SWORD AND SORCERY…

“I see Gondwane as it shall be in the untold ages of dim futurity, near the time when the Earth shall be man’s habitation no more, and the great night shall enfold all, and naught but the cold stars shall reign. The first sign of the end ye shall see in the heavens, for Lo! the moon is falling, falling. And there shall come a man into the lands, a man not like other men, but sent from Galendil . . .”The name of the man is Ganelon Silverman-and this is the first of the classic science fantasy adventure series by Lin Carter!

Back under the thumb of the Terran Empire after leading their planetary sector in an almost successful war against Imperial rule, Commissioner Desai saw real trouble brewing this time. A strange, fanatical movement was spreading like wildfire: there were rumours of the return of the fabled Elder Race: the Firstling, leader-elect of the planet, was on the run and hiding from Imperialist retribution. And off-planet agents from the Ythrian Domain and Mersia, Terra’s ancient foe, were abroad in the land. Unless Commissioner Desai could damp the fuse of rebellion, the universe would begin its terrifying descent into the Long Night . . .

The fifth title in the popular Harpur and Iles series.

Sarah Iles’ latest young lover, Ian Aston, and the seedy gangland club he frequents both possess the intense attraction of the forbidden. When one night at the Monty they witness a fatal knifing, they unwittingly learn far too much for their own good of a deadly plot that could, if successfully executed, rearrange the city’s criminal power structure.

Immediately, the unfaithful wife and petty criminal become targets of both police and underworld observation. In Come Clean Bill James once again explores that no-man’s-land of law enforcement, where human concern and naked expediency stand perennially at odds with each other.

In this chronicle of a long-ago land on civilization’s brink, Gorgik the Liberator’s campaign to end slavery has been successful. But in the novel and two novellas comprising this fourth, final, and eponymous volume in Delany’s series, slavery is both a political memory and a sado-masochistic sexual fantasy…


The Game of Time and Pain: In this novel, stopping in a deserted castle for the night, Gorgik reflected on his campaign to a barbarian boy.


The Tale of Rumor and Desire: From the gutters of port Kohari to the mountain gorge of Neveryon, the novella gives a moving account of the life of a Neveryon bandit and outlaw in the time of Gorgik the Liberator.


The Tale of Gorgik: With this story of Gorgik’s youth, we begin our real return to Neveryon…

At first it was just another hoax, another UFO story, but the sightings went on increasing.
It couldn’t be an alien, there had been so many false alarms, dramatic news-columnists had shouted ‘wolf’ so many times, that John Citizen shrugged his shoulders and said ‘nuts’ at the very mention of the word space-ship. Then one of them landed…
The things they did were not exactly friendly. In fact by the time they’d finished, they had made an old-time Viking raid seem like a social call from the vicar…
Many other attacks followed. Day after day and night after night the alien ships screamed in on their mission of death. The earth struck back. But no one could track the aliens to their lair.
They seemed to come from Nowhere. They weren’t Martians. They weren’t Venusians, and they weren’t from another system.
That left only one place where they could have originated… yet the truth was so fantastic that none of the earth governments would take it seriously until it was almost too late.
The enemy came from within! From the gigantic caverns at the earth’s core.

Blood was what they called that mountain town and the forbidding land around it – and the name was significant. Folks there knew a secret that would have shocked the world…but nobody was ever going to get out of Blood to tell. Not even when Portia Clark arrived, hot on a news story for a national magazine. Especially not her…

Clint Breen, who had been in the outside world, tried to save her. But he had to fight a tradition that drove men and women to unspeakable lusts and that ruled secretly the lives and afterlives of everything being in the county. Blood was the place where more men and women walked the night than were ever seen by day. Horror was their heritage, for they were the people that the census dared not count!

Nathan is the new Necroscope!

But in the Vampire World the dead won’t talk to him. And in the world of men beyond the Hell-lands Gate, there are even worse terrors than the vampires of Starside. Yet that is Nathan’s lot: to venture into the world of his father, Earth, there to seek the source of Harry Keogh’s awesome talents with which to return to Sunside/Starside, defeat the Wamphyri, and destroy –

THE LAST AERIE!

Nathan is not alone; Ben Trask and the espers of E-Branch will befriend him even as they befriended his father twenty years ago. But against natural and supernatural forces alike, will even their metaphysical skills suffice to send him home again? And if they do, what then? For in Starside a new vampire walks the night: Lord Nestor Lichloathe of the Wamphyri…

Nathan’s brother!

After his father’s interference in Irish politics ends with a band of killers arriving on Christmas night to assassinate him, young Charles Peridore finds himself master of the estate. During idyllic school holidays, Charles enjoys riding to hounds and hunting geese and snipe while his friend Tommy Marlin tells stories of Tir-nan-Og, the land of eternal youth that lies just beyond the bog. But when Progress arrives in the form of an English corporation determined to convert the landscape into factories and housing, it appears that an entire way of life is destined to vanish. Only one thing stands in the way: the sorcery of an old witch, whose curses the English workers do not even believe in. In the novel’s unforgettable conclusion, the ancient powers of the wise woman will be pitted against the machinery of modern corporate greed, with surprising and thrilling results.

When 14 year old Matt lands a job with his hero – world-famous monster maker, Chancey Balogh – he can’t believe his luck! Chancey has made lifesize mechanical monsters for Hollywood blockbusters and his reputation for scaring the living daylights out of audiences is legendary. But as soon as he starts work, Matt is plagued by bad luck. First some local boys get wind of his new job and his new money and decide to launch a full-on bullying campaign and then one night they break into the studios, determined to sabotage years of skilled craftsmanship. In a terrifying ordeal, where Matt suffers severe hallucinations, he sees the monsters come to life. But when he recovers from his concussion he cannot tell whether this actually happened or not. And neither can we . . .

‘The explosion was painfully bright against the dark backdrop of the moonless New Mexico sky. To those who looked up at that precise moment – and there were many who happened to look up – it was as though a new star had momentarily blossomed in blue-white incandescence.’

Only three human beings would ever know that the blinding flash in the sky on that night in 1982 was an exploding flying saucer. Only they would learn the truth about THOSE WHO WATCH – about the alien observers who came into this world in a crash landing from the stars. THOSE WHO WATCH is the strange, seductive story of three accidental colonists from outer space whose chance encounter with Earth brought revelation to three earthly counterparts – and triggered interplanetary conflict. It is a remarkable story by one of science fiction’s most remarkable writers.

‘The wolf Meshiska gave birth to five cubs on the night before full moon. Outside the den a storm was lashing the spruce trees. The sky and the land had become part of each other: a scatterwind night swirling with fragments of black and white. Snow became darkness and darkness snow, and any creature lost between the two found a rock or a tree and lay down beside it, to wait until the world had formed again.’

Into this bleak landscape, Athaba is born, a young wolf destined for great adventure. Exiled from his pack for breaking its rigid codes of behaviour and showing too much imagination, Athaba becomes a ‘raven wolf’, a lonely scavenger living on scraps and his wits.

Survival in the icy wastes is hard and dangerous without the comfort and protection of the pack. Injured, and stranded far from home, Athaba is forced to strike up an uneasy alliance with his natural enemy: a man. Together, but ever wary of each other, the wolf and the solitary hunter start their long walk home across the wilderness.

It soon becomes clear that the man must learn to be a wolf if he is to survive in the wolf’s world. And Athaba has to use all his imagination to learn new skills and strategies to fend for himself and his new pack member: for he discovers that men are frail, and often very ignorant!

He has been known by countless names and terrifying deeds throughout the lands of mankind-thief, magic wielder, swordsman, assassin, adventurer. But chief among those names and perhaps the most dangerous of his personae is that of Nightfall, a man-or perhaps the legendary demon himself-gifted with unique powers which any sorcerer would kill to possess.

Yet though Nightfall has always escaped his pursuers by moving on to new realms, new identities, and new enterprises, even the cleverest of beings must occasionally slip. And when this master of the night finally falls prey to a royal trap, he finds the consequences beyond even his ability to evade. Bound by sorcery and oath to guard and guide a young prince on his quest, Nightfall will need every trick and talent at his command to keep both himself and his idealistic young charge from death at the hands of unknown betrayers.