Search Results for: to-live-again

Paul Kaufmann is dead – but his mind lives on.

And the mind of a financial genius is always in demand.

Mark Kaufmann, the old man’s nephew and heir, wants it, to ensure the future of the Kaufmann empire.

The ruthless and self-made John Roditis, Mark’s great rival, wants it, to give him the social status he has always lacked.

And Risa, Mark’s self-willed and sensual daughter, wants what a mind like Paul’s can give, for reasons all her own.

What if there were an Afterworld? Not Heaven or Hell in the conventional sense, but a place where everyone who has ever lived reawakens when they die, to live again and die again and live again, seemingly forever. This is the premise of Robert Silverberg’s brilliantly inventive new fantasy novel. The central character is the legendary warrior-king Gilgamesh, who has been in the Afterworld longer than almost anyone else save the Hairy Men from before the Flood, and who in recent centuries (insofar as you can count time) has seen it change beyond recognition, as the newly dead from industrial times import their machinery, their weaponry and their attitudes. Gilgamesh’s adventures in the course of the novel take him to the Afterworld realms of other quasi-mythical figures like Prester John and Simon Magus, bring him into contact with such figures from more recent history as Walter Ralegh and Pablo Ruiz (known to some as Picasso), and eventually send him in search of a gateway which is rumoured to exist somewhere in the land of the dead – a gateway which leads back to the land of the living.

More even than space travel, the Stileman Process had altered twenty-first century life. The most complex of medical miracles, it ensured that every ten years or so, the ailing aging body could be restored to youthful vigour and health.

There was a catch of course. The cost. Every ten years or so you have to come up with £1,000,000 minimum or die.

For Dallas Barr, one of the oldest men on earth, it was that time again. It was while he was casting around for that vital next million that he came across Maria, a woman from – literally – a previous life. And made two major discoveries.

Not all Stileman ‘immortals’ were born – or created – the same. And someone is trying to kill them. All of them.

Seven very special people blending to create a higher form of humanity…

A laughing man living alone on a mountain top, guarding the world…

The returnees, men who live again and again, century after century…

A dog-ape plappergeist who can be seen only from the corner of the eye…

And a young man named Foley, very much like you or me, who begins to find out about these people and these things, and how they are shaping the destiny of the world…

A gunman on the run, a seventeen-year-old girl on a family vacation, a jaded working girl, a guilt-stricken widower, an abandoned mistress. All heading fast down a route to sudden death. Then for one horrifying instant their lives are frozen in time, when a Cadillac drives at speed into oncoming traffic.

Lives are lost, and those that survive must endure a violent sequence of events that ensure life will never be the same again – for any of them.

Legends of the living dead have filled the pages of mythology since time immemorial. If ninety-nine point nine percent of the stories can be explained as hallucinations, tricks of the light, moving shadows or sheer imagination, a hard core of disquieting fact remains.

The vampire lives in the minds of men. When was it born? Perhaps in the dim distance of the remote past when the racial subconscious was being moulded. What keeps the vampire tradition alive in the mind of modern man? The two tiny words of “what if…?”

Leroy Thompson met a girl in a dark country lane. He offered her a lift. He met her again and again, but always by night. Then he looked in the driving mirror and saw only his own reflection… She cast no shadow in the headlights… She screamed and leapt from the car before he reached a bridge that crossed a moonlit stream… What if?

It all began when someone tried to push Creed into the flesh pool to be ingested. The assassination failed, but Creed was never the same again. Because it launched the new cliff-dwellers of Creed’s colony onto a new course of life – which could lead to humanity’s re-emergence as Earth’s masters.

In those far future days, Earth’s masters were two trees. Not trees as we know them, but two Everest-high growths, whose sentient roots and fast-growing branches dominated every living thing on the world. Men lived between their arboreal combat.

It has been one hundred years since the Archangel Alleluia and the mortal Caleb discovered the truth about the god of Samaria. Legend says they left a record of that truth, though no document has ever been found. In time, an underground cult arose, seeking to find again what Alleluia found. But the reigning Archangel Bael called down the wrath of Jovah upon the cult, and hundreds died in a hail of thunderbolts.

Yet some survived.

Among them is Tamar, child of cultists, raised in captivity among the angels. Tamar believes that the Alleluia Files exist. She is determined to find them, and to free the people of Samaria from their fear of Jovah. In her search, she encounters the angel Jared, one of the members of his own kind who have come to question the wisdom of Bael. Together, these two uneasy allies will journey the length and breadth of Samaria, risking their lives and the lives of their comrades, seeking a truth that will alter the face of Samaria forever…

When Charles is given just twelve months to live, his doctor sister takes him to a small Cornish village to end his days. They are joined by other friends including Tuesday, the young author of an unexpectedly sensational novel that brings her nothing but trouble.

Combining doomed love, a beautifully groomed and immaculately behaved psychopath, an escaped circus leopard and a fortune hidden in the pages of a library of books Joan Aiken once again serves up all the ingredients for an explosive finale.

‘Unusual, enthralling, full of wry fun’ Sunday Times

When a tycoon and reality TV star improbably wins his party’s nomination for the presidency, pundits and analysts are as baffled as they are certain that he will never win the general election. What can a man who already lives at the top of a golden skyscraper with a supermodel wife still want?

Absent entirely from their prognostications is the possibility that it could be to gorge upon the brains of the living! That he dreams of building a border wall to better keep delicious humans in! That he seeks to make American great again. . . for zombies!

Only an unlikely journalistic partnership between a reporter fresh from J-school and a blogger who is derided and dismissed as “fake news” seems to have any chance of derailing the tycoon’s plans and exposing him as a member of the walking dead.

Yet a terrifying question still remains. . . In a nation divided along political lines as never before, will such a revelation change anything? Or will a candidate revealed to be a proud “Zombie American” simply be another stepping stone on a historic (and not-so-above-board) journey to the presidency?

The Lexman Spacedrive gave man the stars – but at a fantastic price.

Interstellar exploration, colonisation, and trade became things of reality. The benefits to Earth were enormous but, because of the Fitzgerald Contraction, a man who shipped out to space could never live a normal life on Earth again. Travelling at speeds close to that of light, spacemen lived at an accelerated pace. A nine-year trip to Alpha Centauri and back seemed to take only six weeks to men on a spaceship. When they returned, their friends and relatives had aged enormously in comparison, old customs had changed, even the language was different.

Alan was a spacer, just like his whole family – until, suddenly and without intending to, he in turn jumped ship and remained on Earth. There were times he regretted that. Earth was a bewildering and utterly hostile place. To stay alive, he had to play a ruthless game – and he couldn’t even find anyone to tell him the rules. . . .


First published in 1958.

The world lay frozen under a thousand feet of ice. Only in the Eight Cities of the Matto Grosso did men still live, hunting the wary ice whales for meat and oil, and following the creed of the Ice Mother which foretold the end of all life in ultimate cold.
But legend told of a city far to the north – fabled New York – whose towers rose above the ice, whose crypts held the forgotten lore that might bring warmth to Earth once again. In the best ice ship in the Eight Cities, Konrad Arflane embarked on the impossible voyable to New York – an odyssey of incredible peril and adventure with a shattering discovery at the journey’s end…

Once there was a Hero who confronted the dreaded Daggertooth and slew it. Unfortunately he was also slain by it – but the legend persisted. If it could be done once, then another Hero could be raised to do it again. Because the Daggertooth was dangerous to hibernating humanity. All people – all that anyone knew of – lived far underground in tunnels built for safety and hibernation. The Daggertooth was a mass killer – more so even than the hideous Oddlies, the outcasts of the darker tunnels.

So this is the story of John-A, the “vatkid” who was trained to be a second Hero. And the story of “trukid” Shirl who taught John-A what to do. And Threesum, the Oddlies’ leader, who scoffed at heroes. And the Elders who frowned at all the risky goings-on. This is the story of a mighty strange world and a mighty strange future…

From the Garlowe Clusters in the north to the Veils of Darkness in the south, the Star Kingdom sprawled over roughly a fifth of the galaxy. So huge was this realm that those who tussled for power over it seemed unable to appreciate that it faced annihilation by the Patch, a roving region of peculiar pseudo-energy a light-year across which drained the life-force from any living thing it encountered.

The Patch had moved into the Kingdom and was systematically feeding on system after system. Cynically unperturbed by the appalling loss of life, the royal houses merely tried to involve the Patch in their machinations, to the extent that civil war broke out all over again. But in the event, the Patch was to provide the crucial factor in the struggle for absolute power. The Annihilation Factor!

This classic of Gothic horror follows Laura, a woman haunted by a girlhood dream of a beautiful visitor to her bedroom. Now, a decade later, Laura finds Carmilla, who appears to be her own age, on the side of the road after a carriage accident. The two recognize each other from the same childhood dream and become fast friends. Soon after, Laura begins to experience mysterious feelings and is once again haunted by nightmares. She finds Carmilla strangely irresistible and longs to be with her.

But as the two friends grow closer, Laura’s health begins to fail. It becomes apparent that her enchanting companion is harboring a sinister secret. To free herself from Carmilla’s grasp, Laura and her family must fight for their lives.

Before 12:01 and After is a collection of science fiction, fantasy, mystery and horror stories by Richard A. Lupoff, collecting the best of his short fiction from his long writing career. It contains the following stories:

“Mr. Greene and the Monster”
“BOOM!”
“Incident in the 14th St. BMT”
“After the Dreamtime”
“12:01 P.M.”
“Venus-Ah, Venus!”
“With the Evening News”
“Saltzman’s Madness”
“God of the Naked Unicorn”
“Nebogipfel at the End of Time”
“Mort in Bed”
“Stroka Prospekt”
“Two Sort-Of Adventures”
“Blinky Henderson Again”
“The Digital Wristwatch of Philip K. Dick”
“Snow Ghosts”
“Triptych”
“The House on Rue Chartres”
“The Doom That Came to Dunwich”
“The Woodstock West Killer”
“Easy Living”
“Dogwalker”
“A Funny Thing Happened…”

In the late twentieth century, Admiral Julian 3rd can get no rest, for he knows his future. He will be reborn as his grandson in the next century to journey through space and make an ominous discovery inside the moon; he will live again in the dark years of the twenty-second century as Julian 9th, who refuses to bow down to the victorious Moon Men; and as Julian 20th, the fierce Red Hawk, he will lead humanity’s final battle against the alien invaders in the twenty-fifth century. The Moon Maid is Edgar Rice Burroughs’s stunning epic of a world conquered by alien invaders from the moon and of the hero Julian, who champions the earth’s struggle for freedom, peace, and dignity.

Where once the mighty Kane has passed, no one who lives forgets. Now, down the trail of past battles, Kane travels again. To the ruins of a devastated city peopled only with half-men and the waif they call their queen. To the half-burnt tavern where a woman Kane wronged long ago holds his child in keeping for the Devil. To the cave kingdom of the giants where glory and its aftermath await discovery. To the house of death itself where Kane retrieves a woman in love.

The past, the future, the present – all these are one for Kane as he travels through the centuries.

Contents:
“Undertow”
“Two Suns Setting”
“The Dark Muse”
“Raven’s Eyrie”
“Lynortis Reprise”
“Sing a Last Song of Valdese”

The classic first Dragonriders of Pern novel from New York Times bestseller Anne McCaffrey.

The Dragons of Pern are the world’s only defence against an ancient threat – Thread, an evil rain that devours everything it touches. Paired with their riders from the moment they hatch, they risk their lives burning the scourge of the Red Star from the sky. But the dragons are in decline – the Red Star hasn’t posed a threat for generations, and the people of Pern have forgotten what they owe the Dragonriders. Only one Weyr remains, and the only dragon Queen is dying…

F’lar knows that the Red Star is rising again, and that the ancient threat will return. His only hope is the last Queen egg, and finding a woman strong enough to be the new Queen’s rider. But the villainous Lord Fax has other plans…

New York PI Mike Hammer has traced his lost love and secretary, Velda, who went missing seven years ago. In a race against time, Mike has to move her to another location, but she is sheltering a young woman who fears for her life.

Finally safe once again, Hammer devotes his time to helping the young woman, who is being threatened by her stepfather. But as Hammer investigates some leads on the seedier side of town, he finds himself caught up in a three-decades-old mystery involving a great deal of money that’s gone missing.

And just who is The Snake?

Mike is going to have to figure that one out, or three lives – his, Velda’s and the girl’s – are in danger.

His name was Jose Gasparilla, and he was the self-proclaimed King of Pirates. He terrorized the waters around Florida, demanding tribute from every merchant ship he encountered. Riches flowed into his tiny island kingdom . . . and yet he longed for a life he could never have, for he had left his beloved Isabel behind in Spain. One day he would return to claim her for his bride, he knew, and she had vowed to wait for him.

When he captures a ship and discovers Isabel and her elderly husband aboard, he strikes a deal with the man who stole his bride. For Jose Gasparilla, it means a chance to regain the lost years of his life . . . to live his childhood again and pick a new path, in the Land Without Shadows…

Time was running out for Bob Kinnaird. Without much warning, the Hunter – the green protoplasmic alien that lived inside him and cured all his ills – had suddenly become his destroyer. Day by day Bob grew weaker and weaker, but only specialists from the Hunter’s distant world would know what was wrong with him and, more importantly, how to save him.

But the only way searchers from his planet could find him was to locate his missing spaceship . . . a spaceship that had crashed beneath the ocean years before, its location still very much a mystery. Once again leading an investigation against time – as he had done so many years before – the Hunter knew he had to find comrades and find them fast . . . before someone murdered his best friend.

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?

All those who ever lived on Earth have found themselves resurrected – healthy, young, and naked as newborns – on the grassy banks of a mighty river, in a world unknown. Miraculously provided with food, but with no clues to the meaning of their strange new afterlife, billions of people from every period of Earth’s history – and prehistory – must start again.

Sir Richard Francis Burton would be the first to glimpse the incredible way-station, a link between worlds. This forbidden sight would spur the renowned 19th-century explorer to uncover the truth. Along with a remarkable group of compatriots, including Alice Liddell Hargreaves (the Victorian girl who was the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland), an English-speaking Neanderthal, a WWII Holocaust survivor, and a wise extraterrestrial, Burton sets sail on the magnificent river. His mission: to confront humankind’s mysterious benefactors, and learn the true purpose – innocent or evil – of the Riverworld . . .

Winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, 1972