Search Results for: worlds-for-the-taking

Why is the government deliberately destroying all trace of Man’s past?

Why are the laws of gravity and momentum strangely altered?

Why has the world’s population continually increased without the predicted eco-crisis taking place?

Why is there an international conspiracy to conceal the future of the human race?

These are just some of the reality-shattering questions that face Manalone, a brilliant computer scientist, when he tries to find out exactly what has happened to humanity. Manalone, outcast from society, must fight the entire machinery of a ruthless police state to discover the truth. And the truth is an awful, chilling one, that sounds only too real in today’s world.

While attempting to repel an intergalactic invasion, mankind resorts to a weapon of such awesome destructive power that it undermines the Well World computer’s control of time and space – and threatens the very existence of the Universe.

It is up to Mavra Chang – victim and veteran of the Wars of the Well – and Obie, her sophisticated computer companion, to find the only being capable of travelling to the desolate Well World to repair the damage at source.

The infamous and near-mythical Nathan Brazil does not want to be found. But Mavra and Obie have never been ones to take no for an answer…

AN ACCIDENT IN TIME…

Duncan Reid was snatched out of the twentieth century from a cruise liner in the mid-Pacific. Oleg Vladimirovitch came from Novgorod in medieval Russia. Udin was a Hun barbarian who lived by cunning and the axe. Erissa had been a sacred priestess in a lost continent. And a mistake in a time-experiment by a race from the far future had thrown these four unlikely comrades together, pulling them through a warp in the fabric of space and time to a world which was ancient history.

The strange alliance that Duncan and his comrades formed in that unfamiliar world was to take on a significance that none of them could have foreseen. For not only their own future, but they very future of the world they had found was at stake…

‘One citizen of your planet shall go to the capital of the Federation of Worlds. He shall live there for thirty days. If your representative can survive and demonstrate his ability to exist in a civilized society with creatures whose outward appearance and manner of thinking differ from his own, you will pass the test. You will be permitted to send your starships to other planets of the galaxy.

‘If he fails the test, if prejudice, fear, intolerance or stupidity trip him up, then you world will be sealed of from the stars for ever!’

This was the ultimatum from space. The task before the world then was – who shall go? What man or woman could be found to take this frightening test for the whole of humanity and be certain not to fail?




(First published 1961)

Deep in the sounds, scents and shifting rhythms of the Amazon forest, a family have lost their seven-year-old child, stolen by the mysterious ‘Invisible People’, the tribe which has never been seen.
Through ten years their agonised search for him takes them beyond the world’s last great natural frontier into the cruel beauty of the Brazilian jungle.
When at last father and son do meet – in a dramatic and terrifying encounter – it is in the emerald forest, a place where the mythical and magical powers of primal existence must clash with the cold-hearted greed of modern man.

Gene Anderson was born in Oregon, in the twilight post-war years, into the most ordinary circumstances imaginable.

Gene is endowed with powers. He can look into the other worlds that are all around him. He can make things happen. He can hurt and he can heal.

His life changes dramatically when another boy is killed in a tragic accident, and Gene runs away. He is only nine. As he grows to 8’6″ tall, his wanderings take him round the world in search of a remarkable destiny.

NEVER FOLLOW A FALLING STAR!

The humanoid worlds of the galaxy were alarmed! Somehow, somewhere the mind-destroying hypnojewels were being trafficked in.

An uneasy Earth, newcomer to the ranks of the civilized planets, sent Lloyd Catton to the Interworld Crime Commission on Morilar to investigate. Although the Commission had made little progress until then, after his arrival things started to happen fast.

For it didn’t take Catton long to realize that the hypnojewels were but the thin edge of a murderous wedge that was calculated to shove the Earth back again into the helpless isolation of a world returned to savagery.

At the world’s end, all love is timeless, and all age-old disputes irrelevant . . .

Jherek Carnelian, however, is in danger of taking reality too seriously, and grows tired of his pleasures. Perhaps a hunt for aliens could lift his spirits? Or better yet, a journey through time? Ah, yes! The past! So complicated and strange – especially with its scarcity of time machines for a return trip! But regardless of the dangers, the past does hold one irresistible lure: Mrs Amelia Underwood, for whom the Hero at the End of Time risks all.

“Mankind will cease to exist at 6pm GMT on 28th March 3256”. A computer prediction which threw the world into panic. What to do? Build a starship and take the chosen few to a new home in the stars. Or search for an alternative timestream where mankind goes on forever.

Matt Helm is to captain the last space shuttle carrying passengers to the starship, but his irrepressible desire for Fern Angelus corrupts his sense of duty. He agrees to take part in her time experiments.

Set against a background of passion and longing, Matt’s uncanny success with mind projection meets unforseen complications. He projects his mind to a future Earth: a world of shallow, extensive seas, mutated trees growing in layers on each other’s branches, and strangely evolved animals like snappersnouts, humpers and energy creatures.

Matt’s strange visions eventually meet reality when he discovers that the last load of passengers for the starship has been left behind; and he is one of them.

Takes the story of the mammoths back into prehistory; 16,000 B.C.

It is a time when the mammoths face the vicious intrusions into their world of the Lost – mankind. And it is up to Longtusk, the only Bull to feature in the great story cycle of the mammoths to lead them away to a new land, safe from the lost.

BEYOND THE SEA OF DREAMS

Life had not been kind to Joe and Marge. Now, according to the strangers who met them on a road that wasn’t there, they were due to die in nineteen minutes, eighteen seconds. But the ferryboat that waited to take them across the Sea of Dreams could bring them to a new and perhaps better life.

There lay a world where fairies still danced by moonlight and sorcery became real. Joe could become a mighty-thewed barbarian warrior. Marge could be beautiful and find her magical self.

But there was much more than they realised to this strange land.

This was a world where Hell still strove to win its ancient war and demon princes sent men into battles of dark magic. It was a world where Joe and Marge must somehow prevent the coming of Armageddon.

‘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.

The Taking of AT1: Before AT1 had ground down the slipway unchristened – rightly, said seamen, for it would be a ship with no soul – it had been dubbed ‘Zombie’. That sinister name would stick and prove its accuracy.

AT1 was a robot-ship, a ship with no crew, only a tiny security force of three men & a woman. ‘Invulnerable,’ said its inventors, ‘foolproof’. But it was neither – not if one of the four security guards was an insane, ruthless killer. And if the greatest, most powerful self-contained nuclear reactor in the world fell into the hands of such a person, the whole world was in peril!

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!

Astronomy professor Aurora ‘Rory’ Bell gets a message from space that seems to portend the arrival of extraterrestrial visitors. According to her calculations, whoever is coming will arrive in three months – on New Year’s Day to be exact.

A crowded and poisoned Earth is moving toward the brink of the last world war – and is certainly unprepared to face invasion of any kind. Rory’s continuing investigation leads her to wonder if it could be some kind of hoax, but the impending ‘visit’ takes on a media life of its own. And so the world waits. But the question still remains as to what, exactly, everyone is waiting for…

The son of a Civil War veteran, Edgar Rice Burroughs was a prolific writer for the early pulp magazines. Famous the world over as the creator of Tarzan – and in SF circles for his Martian tales featuring John Carter – Burroughs is a household name. But John Carter wasn’t the only Earthman to champion another world. This omnibus collects PIRATES OF VENUS, LOST ON VENUS and CARSON OF VENUS – the first three of Burroughs’ classic pulp tales of Carson Napier on the waterworld of Amtor – better known to us as Venus.

PIRATES OF VENUS: The shimmering, cloud-covered planet of Venus conceals a wondrous secret: the strikingly beautiful yet deadly world of Amtor. In Amtor, cities of immortal beings flourish in giant trees reaching thousands of feet into the sky; ferocious beasts stalk the wilderness below; rare flashes of sunlight precipitate devastating storms; and the inhabitants believe their world is saucer-shaped with a fiery center and icy rim. Stranded on Amtor after his spaceship crashes, astronaut Carson Napier is swept into a world where revolution is ripe, the love of a princess comes at a dear price, and death can come as easily from the blade of a sword as from the ray of a futuristic gun.

LOST ON VENUS: Napier’s adventures continue in this pulse-pounding sequel to PIRATES OF VENUS. Here the intrepid and wry explorer takes on a savage world in order to rescue the princess from her sworn enemies. Napier’s epic quest for Duare takes him through the streets of the City of the Dead, into the terrifying Room of the Seven Doors, and face to face with fantastic and perilous creatures. LOST ON VENUS brims with the action, suspense and wit unique to the Master of Adventure.

CARSON OF VENUS: Carson Napier, first Earthman to reach Venus, had to keep alert every instant of his stay on that world of mist and mystery. For its lands were unmapped, its inhabitants many, varied and strange, and he had taken an obligation to restore a native princess to her lost homeland. On terrible oceans where dreaded sea-monsters dwelled, in deep forests where terror haunted every branch, and behind the walls of eerie cities where power-mad chieftains plotted uncanny schemes, CARSON OF VENUS is fast-paced science fiction adventure.

The ship was to be seven miles long, a third of a mile in diameter and have a wing-spread of three and a half miles. It would take two and a half centuries to construct. Its announced purpose: to carry humanity away from its ruined world, from the world that had become a perpetual purgatory.

To build this vast ship would require the undivided activity of an entire nation and would mean carrying out a ruthless program of war and conquest, of annihilation and reconstruction, and of education and rediscovery.

But was this starship really what it was claimed to be? Or was there a greater secret behind its incredible cost – a secret so strange that no man dared reveal it?

Into a world armed to the teeth there suddenly comes a strange gospel of disarmament. Briefed to investigate the intrigue is Sidney Boyd of MI5, and from a murdered diplomat his adventures take him to the fantastic Earth Two, an exact duplicate of our own planet in so far as living beings are con­cerned, and it falls to him-with the help of Orwena Exburg of Earth Two-to try and smash the deadly plan which is being matured against the peaceful nations of the world. Boyd and Orwena solve the mystery of Earth Two after making a landing on the moon and discovering something about it never before suspected by Earth scientists…

Parallel Worlds! Earth, cerated out of universal chaos, and the Dreamlands, spawned of the dreams of men. But where dreams turn to nightmares, Death is the only crossing-point…
Ex-waking worlders David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer are now sellswords in that ephemeral dimension called Deramland. Once a talented artist of the fantastic, now Hero’s art is the wizardry of his swordplay. Once a lecturing professor, now Eldin professes a knowledge of the dark, mysterious Dream Realms second to none. A formidable pair! But face to face with Yibb-Tstll and the Gaunts of Night, the Eidolon Lathi and her brood, and the mad, alien First One who plots to set free dreaming Cthulu from eon-old imprisonment…what can mere men do?
Take up arms with the Heroes of Dreams and laugh in the face of the world’s worst nightmare!

When Major Dam Stormdragon was chosen to serve as part of Castilia’s military tithe to the Mother World he had no choice but to go – much as he loathed Terra and everything she stood for. He knew that given the combination of arrogance and paranoia that Terrans displayed towards all Colonials he was at best in for a miserable year – and that at worst he would find himself taking part in a military action against his fellow Colonials. He also knew that the increasing ferocity with which the Terrans responded to the slightest balking of the Imperial Will meant that one day soon the Hub Worlds would have to fight, or that Terra’s madness would destroy them all.

What Stormdragon could not know was that the Mother World was already set on obliterating her children, and that he himself would be Terra’s secret weapon in the most dreadful conflict in the history of Man.

The Attrition. It was a bloodless, bureaucratic word, chosen to hide the appalling reality of the plague that had changed the face of civilisation.

Now Dr Harriet Ryder-Kahn, born four years into the Attrition, thinks she may have an answer. But in a world convulsed by trauma she finds there are those who do not want a solution.

And they are prepared to go as far as it takes to silence her . . .

‘Behold these annals from the Discovery and on through the World-Taking.
This is the tale as told by Terrans, who walk the earth.
Then read.’

THE EARTH BOOK OF STORMGATE POUL ANDERSON’S MIGHTY EPIC OF FUTURE HISTORY

The full length story forming the core of the chronicle of the expansion of earthmen into the inhabited galaxy . . . from the Earth Book kept in the Stormgate archive of the great winged race of Ythri.

When a young British couple, who make jigsaw puzzles, are hired by an ageing Norwegian to take nude photos of themselves in a sculpture park in Oslo, they are drawn into a web of occult Nazi horror. Even more horrifying will be the fate of the whole world some years later if alien visitors achieve their secret aims.

However, the aftermath of events in that Oslo park will provide Anna Sharman with a key to unlock those aims.

Anna is a rebel within Britain’s intelligence service at a time when most of the world appeases the aliens because of the gifts they bring – and if she must lose her own body in order to discover the truth, she will do so.

To escape war and suffering, humanity had allowed itself to take a drug that killed all emotion. But a small number of insurgents – including the returning astronauts from a mission to Mars – had refused to take the drug, and waged an armed rebellion. The last survivors of the Freedom Army were holed up in a besieged bunker when one of their number, the physicist Burges, constructed a gateway to another dimension-an alternate existence. Ex space-pilot Lanson leads the remnants of his Freedom Army in escaping through the gateway-only to find themselves in an alternate world were humanity has been enslaved for the last 30 years by a toad-like alien race, the Zytlen!