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Krells never set out to be a hero. He was the first to admit he was a trader. “In it for the money; I leave thinking to the experts.” But the experts couldn’t solve the problem of Ralcor IX.

Professional fighters and scientific investigators vanished or were mysteriously destroyed. The robot might of an armoured Bellicose 35 was found shredded like tinsel. Krells still refused to think of himself as hero material – but he wouldn’t quit. Martia, his computer girl, and Galor, the despatch man, stayed with him. For some reason the power that had driven every other terrestrial humanoid off Ralcor IX couldn’t dislodge the traders. Krells groped desperately for a reason. Finding one meant the return of his own people and that meant money. Something he couldn’t understand was shielding him from the Unknown Menace. Suppose he accidentally stopped doing whatever it was that protected him…?

Most people would have become neurotic and quit – not Krells. He didn’t seem to have enough intelligence or imagination to know when to worry.

Winner of seven Nebula and eleven Hugo awards, Connie Willis is one of the most acclaimed and imaginative authors of our time. Her startling and powerful works have redefined the boundaries of contemporary science fiction.

Here in one volume are twelve of her greatest stories, including double award-winner “Fire Watch”, set in the universe of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, in which a time-travelling student learns one of history’s hardest lessons. In “A Letter from the Clearys”, a routine message from distant friends shatters the fragile world of a beleaguered family. In “The Sidon in the Mirror”, a mutant with the unconscious urge to become other people finds himself becoming both killer and victim.

Disturbing, revealing and provocative, this remarkable collection of short fiction brings together some of the best work of an incomparable writer whose ability to amaze, confound and enlighten never fails.

‘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.

When Sabina picks up Adrien battered and bleeding outside Zagreb station, she knows only that she is drawn to this stranger and to the sense of danger he represents. She has no idea that she is also touching the Watcher, a mysterious figure who can inhabit Adrien’s body using a brain implant.

What might have been a love affair is about to turn deadly, for as Sabina is drawn into Adrien’s world, she will become the object of the Watcher’s desire in a battle over a metamorphic new technology known as I.

With the eyes of the world upon them, four men leave the surface of the earth to conquer space. Only one person among the crowds who watch is endowed with an inward prescience of what will happen. To watch disaster is no one’s wish; to be helpless to avert it is worse. But to be caught up in its horrifying aftermath is something to be avoided at all cost…

Behind the walls of Terra lay a secret no man could be allowed to learn. But Kickaha – the Earth-born adventurer of the tiered worlds – had to uncover that secret, or watch his home world destroyed.

Kickaha was returning to Earth from the World of Tiers, the many-levelled universe of the god-like Lords, that he had entered many years ago as Paul Janus Finnegan. Now he had returned to a world he no longer knew, to find it ruled by Red Orc, a Lord jealous of his personal domain and hostile to intruders. Yet Kickaha had to stay alive in order to defeat the deadly enemy that threatened Earth and the other worlds of tiers – the ‘Beller’, the malignant creature that was the mind-essence of a rebel Lord.

As their armies watch, Marcus, a Roman centurion, and Viridovix, a Celt, begin a duel to the death until a strange spell transports them and a group of Roman legionaires to the mysterious world of Videssos, a land ruled by magic and dark sorcery.

From mighty Canopus, capital of the Federated Stars, to the outer fringes of our great galaxy, the Interstellar Patrol was on the watch. Rogue suns, marauding alien intelligences, man-made comets driven by their makers for the conquest of unsuspecting worlds, diabolical conspiracies hatched in the depths of unmapped nebulae – it was the business of the Patrol’s mighty spaceships to guard against such cosmic dangers.

Crashing Suns is the epic account of this future space legion, where volunteers from a thousand worlds man the mighty starcraft of a hundred thousand years to come.

‘A touch of Margaret Millar . . . worth watching’ Sunday Telegraph

San Francisco artist Roxanne Gautier’s startling paintings of male prostitutes has sent shock waves throughout the art world – and in her personal life. When Taylor Adams, her favourite model, commits suicide – or so it appears – her husband is frightened she may be connected with the death and asks ex-policeman Kevin Bryce to investigate.
Taylor’s fellow prostitutes, including the beautiful and dangerous Angel, and the revealing pages of Roxanne’s diary take Bryce into a psychosexual nightmare world of corruption, blackmail and moral decay.

Rex Morris belonged to the master class which ruled the entire world by brain power or brutality, depending on which was needed. He should have functioned perfectly in the rigid totalitarian society of the future where every thought, word, and action was controlled by the superstate, where everyone was watched night and day by the Great Eye of the internal security forces.

It was a strange world, but the rewards were great for those who belonged to the right caste. Morris had all the qualifications – yet he didn’t belong. Nonconformity could mean liquidation – but he was prepared to take the risk!

Out in the Rolls-Royce, Emmy Arkwright nearly collides with Nat Volck in Beverly Hills. Emmy and Nat are neighbours, yet belong to separate worlds: she is a wealthy, successful fashion designer; he is a doctor who trained during World War Two. But when Nat gets a call one night telling him Emmy has attempted suicide, they become inexorably linked.

Nat – bitter and uncomfortable in his California Cadillac practice – attends Emmy, and watches over her return to memory and to her old life, offering her the stability and security she badly needs.

But was it really attempted suicide – or is someone trying to kill Emmy?

When shy, psychic bookworm ‘Cookie’ Orbach watches television, she sees things. But not the things that you or I would see. Cookie sees The Grid – a strange, shifting landscape where human forces battle against an enemy they dare not kill. Her employer, the mysterious Dataplex Corporation, pays her well to watch this war, and asks only that she report her observations but take no direct action, which suits her passive demeanour just fine.
But Cookie’s quiet life is about to be shattered. Her two very different worlds are threatening to merge in a way that shouldn’t really be possible. Everything is about to change. And we do mean everything…

What happened on Judgement Day? Do we have Martian ancestors? Will we blow up the world? In this collection of his best SF stories, Edmund Cooper gives his own inimitably entertaining answers to these and other such intriguing questions. From The Death Watch to The Brain Child, Cooper ‘considers possible scenarios’. Sometimes he is serious, sometimes satirical. Sometimes he is uncomfortably close to the truth.

Bleys Ahrens is now a political power on the planet Association, home of the Friendlies. His people – his Others, not Dorsai or Friendly or Exotic, but hybrids – are in place in all the new worlds and are ready to take his message to the greater human public. But within his inner circle is Henry McLean, Soldier of God, and a True Faith-Holder.

Henry fears for the soul of his nephew Bleys, and while he guards, he also watches and judges. And beyond Bleys Ahrens’ control is Hal Mayne: the one man in all the human worlds who might successfully challenge Bleys in his bid for power.

For Hal Mayne is the true culmination of the Cycle’s grand design. Bleys would give anything to convert Hal Mayne to his cause – or failing that, to destroy him.

Among the six hundred thousand stars in the vast Arm of Stars, over six hundred planets had been seeded with human stock by the greatest feat of technology ever achieved, the Ship. And on each of these worlds, the memory of the Ship had faded into legend over the years.

The Ship, however, still endured, watching over the colonies on a cyclical and seemingly endless journey through time and space. But in its long odyssey, the Ship had somehow been damaged – it had become as conscious, and lonely, as any human being. And as it visited, again and again, each of the worlds it had seeded, it found tragedy in its wake. For the humans of the Arm of Stars were becoming more and more alien. Even worse, the Ship was beginning to change in ways its designers had never intended . . .

If the past is tampered with, the present might be totally transformed. So the whole fabric of reality depends on the watchful efforts of the Society of Time. Don Miguel Navarro is a junior officer in this force dedicated to defending the Spanish Empire and the mother church from the results of meddling in history by time-travellers.

But he begins to wonder just how dedicated the Society really is when he has to deal with a case of corruption involving fellow officers . . .

After he has to rescue the entire court from death at the hands of Amazon warriors brought through time, his greatest trial becomes unavoidable. Facing a threat to the most vulnerable event in his world’s history, can the young Don prevent catastrophe?

Or will the glorious triumph of the Spanish Armada never have occurred?




(First published 1969)

Many times, Dumarest’s dream of Earth has almost cost him his life. As he journeys from world to world, restlessly moving outwards towards the edge of the galaxy where his goal lies, Dumarest must be alert, watchful. For there are new dangers – forces more powerful than man – which threaten his dream.

On a planet where violence and superstition hold sway, Dumarest forges a bond with the prophetess Kalin. And now, more than ever, he needs her.

Kalin. The mutant girl whose mysterious talent for seeing into the future has already saved him from Bloodtime on Logis, from space-disaster, from slavery on desolate Chron.

Kalin. Who can foretell the terrors yet to come.



(First published 1969)

Diplomatic corps man Piers Hunt watches the glittering lights of Broadway from his Hotel Astor room. The German girl’s mocking voice returns to his mind yet again: ‘More melodrama, Piers?’ Yes: this time it’s ‘more melodrama’, but with a vengeance.

In New York incognito, only Piers knows that his superior, Samuel Anstruther, has been murdered, possibly to get him out of the way of a plan to withdraw a police force that governs post-Second World War Germany. Rumours abound that the Germans might be allowed free reign once again.

Piers is a man of peace, but he may have to get his hands dirty if he doesn’t want to be murdered – before telling the world what Anstruther knew . . .

Past worlds almost too strange to describe, three men hurtle into the dark uncharted mystery of space. Their task: to make contact with the Hegemony of Malis, the unknown force that has been watching the Solar System since before the beginning of recorded history. On their success or failure depends the future of the entire Earth.

Join them as they accelerate on Haertel drive towards the stunning core of the Hegemony itself in James Blish’s masterpiece of the time to come, Mission to the Heart Stars.

THE CALL OF THE WELL


For uncounted eons, the Well World had regulated and given order to the universe, and throughout the eternity, Nathan Brazil had been the guardian of the Well of Souls, where the universe’s master control lay. Forever wandering and alone, returning to the Well in times of Danger, Brazil had destroyed and re-created the cosmos several times over. But even he wearied of his endless watch, and had enlisted the aid of space pilot and high-tech thief Mavra Chang the last time the universal order required resetting.


But now the universe faced a threat more grave than mere destruction. An unnamed and utterly alien entity had somehow been released from its ancient prison and was bent on the corruption of the Well World itself. If successful, it would cause chaos beyond mortal understanding.


The Well World needed Brazil and Chang. But when it found them, would they once again answer the call? And though Brazil was immortal, could he even fight the force threatening the Well? For the force was not of this universe – and it had plans for Nathan Brazil…

According to legend, Zorn’s distant ancestors had vanquished fiery devils from the Demon Moon. Now, a thousand years later, that bloody red world looms closer every day.

But Zorn knows little of the past. For generations, his family have been Lords of Wolver Riding, flying their winged unicorns to protect the land from werewolves, wyverns and other deadly threats. As Zorn grows, he finds his world increasingly strange. Where did the werewolves come from? How did unicorns fly?

His questions end the day his evil uncle usurps the throne. Torn between ancient fears and modern science, wooed by a seductive temptress and plagued by a demonic priest, Zorn must unlock secrets shrouded in the mists of time – or watch everything he loves be consumed in the hellfire of the . . .

Jerry Stevens, an out-of-work bit-part movie actor, is offered a job at a thousand dollars a day to impersonate John Merrill Ferguson, one of the richest and most powerful men in the world.

Ferguson needs to finish a secret deal but hungry journalists are continually watching every move he makes. In order to complete it, Ferguson needs a ‘stand-in’. For Stevens, the money is beyond his wildest dreams.

But from the moment Steven’s steps into Ferguson’s shoes, he is thrown into a nightmare of intrigue, murder and stark terror.

Once, not so long ago, A warlock named Vond built an empire in the southern part of the Small Kingdoms. Vond is gone, but his empire survives under the rule of a seven-person Imperial Council and a young regent named Sterren. The Empire of Vond was hardly trouble-free after Vond’s departure. Its neighbors are understandably wary of further expansion, there are questions about how Vond’s magic became so potent, and so on. Most of the World, though, doesn’t care — Vond is off there in the southeastern corner of the World, far away from anywhere important.

But one day a dockworker named Emmis watches a Vondish ship arrive in Ethshar of the Spices and finds himself hired as native guide and aide to someone who claims to be Vond’s ambassador plenipotentiary to the overlords of the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars.

But who is the Vondish ambassador, really, and what is his true business in Ethshar? And who has followed him to the city?

Kirk Hammond was a man alone.

He had been chosen to ride in the first manned satellite to go out around the Moon and back to Earth. But when the satellite failed to orbit properly, it went on past the Moon into the vastness of outer space, and a whole world watched helplessly as he was borne toward an unthinkably lonely death.

Yet destiny decreed that Kirk Hammond should suffer, not death but a pseudo-death. And he awoke from it to find that a hundred centuries had passed and that the space age which had begun in the 20th Century had now grown into a vast galactic civilization that had carried the sons of Earth to countless stars and worlds. But, unexpectedly, the conquest of space had changed Man himself, and the human race had become not one but several species.

Hammond was plunged into the climactic struggle between the new races. And in his quest with a desperate band for the mysterious Star of Life that was the key to the struggle, in his relations with the strange and beautiful Thayn Marden who was not a human woman, in his odyssey through the mighty suns and earthly worlds of the galaxy, a man of the 20th Century found himself facing the dangers of the great space age which he himself helped pioneer.