Search Results for: demons,-the

The 20 short stories in this collection explore the forests of the imagination and the creatures that dwell there – the wolves and vampires; tigers and unicorns; dwarves, demons and enchanters.

In The Devil is Dead, Lafferty tells of an astonishing band of adventurers seeking the Devil himself. It is a tale of demons and changelings, monsters and mermaids – and of how it is not always serious to die, the first time it happens…

A washed-up actor, a mysterious motel and a Malaysian “woman of power” form the central elements in a riveting account of a rootless man forced to confront the impossible – but very real- demons of his past.

Book four in the series which relate the story of Kirth Gersen as he exacts his revenge on five notorious criminals, collectively known as the Demon Princes, who carried his village off into slavery during his childhood.

For centuries, the legendary demons captured the imaginations of three alien races. Now, these all too real creatures are after their souls-ninety trillion souls in all. Ninety trillion Fausts to corrupt. Ninety trillion lives to be saved… or destroyed.

14 science fiction shorts covering topics such as the rebuilding of Manhattan in the heart of Leicestershire, seeking help from an angel, enlivening Utopia by taking a demon lover, changing rivals into animals. A fascinating collection from one of the leading lights of feminist SF.

Rachaela worked in a bookstore, a conventional young woman, living a conventional life. Then they beckoned, using a variety of ruses to lure her to the house by the sea. Now she is a prisoner, part of a family of creatures she cannot escape, lover to a demon who thirsts for her blood.

New readers will be amazed at Jane Saint’s bizarre adventures on her journey through the sticky Quagmire of patriarchal ideas, and those who followed her in earlier travails will be delighted to meet up again with Mr Rochester the cat, the loyal demon Zip and Agatha Hardcastle the witch of Hepstonhall.

Kirth Gersen, having brought arch-villain Malagate the Woe to justice, sets his sights on Kokor Hekkus, another of the Demon Princes. The name Kokor Hekkus, which means “killing machine” in the language of the planet Thamber, does not refer to Hekkus’s own predilection for homicide, but to his fondness for horrific and murderous devices, including the giant robotic executioner that first gained him his nickname.

As a boy, Kirth Gersen survived a raid on his home planet masterminded by five interstellar crime lords known as the Demon Princes. This five-novel sequence recounts his carefully-planned and implacable revenge. In this, the second volume, his target is Kokor Hekkus, better known as the Killing Machine.

All Jack Vance titles in the SFGateway use the author’s preferred texts, as restored for the Vance Integral Edition (VIE), an extensive project masterminded by an international online community of Vance’s admirers. In general, we also use the VIE titles, and have adopted the arrangement of short story collections to eliminate overlaps.

Steve Matuckek Book 1

In a war waged against Black Magic, the fact that Steve is a werewolf and his wife is a highly skilled witch is not unusual. But their adventures prove very unusual, even for their world, when they are given the task of neutralizing an enemy’s ultimate weapon – the world’s most powerful demon.

He wears the guise of a Necromancer: the black cloak, the broad-rimmed hat, the gauze mask painted with a death’s head. But raising the dead is the least of his Talents. He is a wild card that threatens the True Game itself. Demon, Doyen, Dragon and Tragamor, Sorcerer, Seer, Armiger and King – take your places. Let the Game begin.

Out of their minds and the force of their imagination, men have created countless beings, from demons and monsters of legend to comic-strip characters. What if their world were real – if dragons, devils and Don Quixote hobnobbed with Dagwood Bumstead and Charlie Brown? Such a world would have its fascinations . . . and its dreadful perils – if it existed. Horton Smith found out that it did – and that he was right in the middle of it!

She woke from a sleep of countless years, reborn from the heart of a raging volcano. Her body was a masterpiece all men desired, her face a monstrosity that must go masked. Warrior, witch, goddess and slave, she was doomed to travel through a world of barbaric splendour, helped and betrayed by her lovers, searching for escape from the taint of her forgotten race, and the malice of the demon that haunted her.

In the midpoint novel of the “Demon Princes” series, Kirth Gersen sets his sights upon the mysterious Viole Falushe. Vance describes this murderous creature as a “sybarite.” “Sadistic pervert” would probably be a more apropos phrase. After several false leads, Gersen backtracks the villain to his point of origin – Earth, of all places! Then the trail moves outward again, to the starworlds and a place back of beyond where there is actually a physical Palace of Love.

Behold the horned demon of the snows…
Who calls himself Klittichorn and schemes o destroy all Akahlar. With the power of the changewinds he can control the mighty storms that alter man and creature alike.

Beware his evil minions…
Who seek the beautiful Storm Princess in the Kudaan Wastes – lands that teem with frightful monsters and Storm Riders from the Inner Hells.

Run like the wind…
Or stand to fight with magic. For the fate not just of this but of all worlds is in the balance.

Best known for his Hugo Award-winning classic A Case of Conscience, Blish was one of the first serious SF writers to involve themselves with tie-in novels, writing eleven Star Trek adaptations as well as the first original adult Star Trek novel, Spock Must Die. This omnibus contains three of his long out-of-print works: Black Easter, The Day After Judgement and The Seedling Stars.
BLACK EASTER: A gripping story about primal evil: a sinister intermingling of power, politics, modern theology, the dark forces of necromancy, and what proves, all too terribly, not to be superstition.

THE DAY AFTER JUDGEMENT: Develops and extends the characters from BLACK EASTER. It suggests that God may not be dead, or that demons may not be inherently self-destructive, as something appears to be restraining the actions of the demons upon Earth.

THE SEEDLING STARS: You didn’t make an Adapted Man with just a wave of the wand. It involved an elaborate constellation of techniques, known collectively as pantropy, that changed the human pattern in a man’s shape and chemistry before he was born. And the pantropists didn’t stop there. Education, thoughts, ancestors and the world itself were changed, because the Adapted Men were produced to live and thrive in the alien environments found only in space. They were crucial to a daring plan to colonize the universe.

Etjole Ehomba and his companions brave the Kraken haunted waters of the impassable Semordria. Then they must cross yet another continent in their search for the kidnapped Visioness – past berserk giants, skeleton armies, a desert prospected by Hell’s demon and at the end of the world waits Hymneth the Possessed: the sadistic necromancer of unspeakable horror.

But Ehomba already knows the prophecy: His quest is doomed to failure, and Hymneth will kill him. Unless somehow, the simple herdsman can ask the questions that even Death must answer…

The magic of the Changewinds…
They could alter the shape of every man and beast in Akahlar and now the threat of their coming is about to be made manifest.

The evil of the Inner Hells…
That can snatch away all control over the winds from the Storm Princess and deliver it into the all-destroying hands of the horned demon Klittichorn.
The savagery of final war…
May be the only hope of the latter days before the Changewinds blow not just the world Akahlar but all the worlds scattered through all the dimensions of time and space into the chaos of oblivion.

The Dreamlands! Created from the dreams of men, haunt of gods and demons, the other side of Death’s portal…

Professor Leonard E. Dingle, lecturer on the subconscious mind of man. Deceased.

David Allenby Hero, fantastic artist of the macabre and supernatural. Also deceased.

Or should we simply say they have undergone…a transition?

A transition indeed – for under the aliases of Eldin the Wanderer and Hero of Dreams, their present occupations include keep-climbing, wizard-slaying, swordmastery and amazing adventuring in the land of Earth’s dreams!

The Perfect Servant (NOT!)

He looked like a cross between a dragon and a catfish, and he could bend iron bands into pretzels with a flick of his hand. But what Zdim the mild-mannered demon really was, was a scholar of logic and philosophy. That’s why when Zdim was drafter for a year’s servitude on the mortal plane he felt that a monumental administrative error had been made.

And even though Zdim resolved to be absolutely obedient and to do exactly what he was told, the wizard who employed him soon agreed.

In the northern reaches of the Empire of Elabon, Gerin, called the Fox, battled to save his domain from destruction by the warlike Trokmoi and their wizard-leader, Balamung.Assisted by the giant Van of the Strong Arm, Gerin prepared to make the hazardous journey to the city of Elabon, there to enlist the aid of a sorcerer more powerful than the Tokmoi masge.Pursued by demons, beset by bloodthirsty nobles, and encumbered by the presence of the beautiful Elise whom Gerin had sworn to protect, the comrades encountered greater dangers than either had ever known.

Tossed out from the heart of Surtsey, a volcano risen from the sea off Iceland, a ball of weird glass contains the last relics of a world long vanished when Atlantis was young. Translated from the glyphs out of time, now at last the stories and histories of the Primal Land can be told. Tales of sorcery: of demons, heroes, and perilous quests. And of a doomed wizard’s search for immortality.



Enter the House of Cthulhu if you dare – and leave your prints in the drifted dust of those who dared before you!

Humanity played with fire once too often. It was atomic fire and its ravages produced an almost complete annihilation, but there were survivors. The radiations had not been entirely malevolent in their influence. Genes and chromosomes danced like dervishes in the gamma bombardments, and settled back into fantastic new patterns. God-like beings strode proudly athwart the devastation. Half-human demons lurked in the shadowy ruins. The twilight of humanity faded into a new heroic epoch, behind which the forbidden secrets of the ancient atom gods bided their time…

Far, far Upriver, where knowledge failed and fable ruled, in a frozen land of demons and monsters, the City of the Dead stood guard over a great treasure.

Now the Mai, Delta-dwellers of the planet Horseye, as befitted a race of busy traders and merchants, had a great respect and love for wealth. But, a prudent species, they knew also that danger was, well, dangerous. So their thoughts turned to the Humanx couple, Lyra and Etienne Redowl, impatiently waiting permission to explore the planet.

Suddenly bureaucracy was benign, permits permitted and their epic voyage up the most spectacular river chasm in the whole Humanx Commonwealth was underway…