Search Results for: Alan Dean Foster

For over 100 years, the machine called Colligatarch had ruled the Earth. Its predictions of the future have proved so accurate that humans accepted its recommendations as the best course of action – until a young engineer in Phoenix begins to travel without authorization, enter secret places, assume aliases, and display super-human feats of strength. Is it because he has fallen in love? Or has he instead fallen into an interplanetary plot?

Old Jake Pickett is a strange one.

He can turn bullets to dust or collapse skyscrapers with his mind. But all he really wants to do with his “magic” is entertain the poor kids who live, like him, near the chemical dump. Or talk telepathically with his crippled niece, Amanda.

Then a giant company decides that the only way to cover up their mess is to eliminate the people who have been affected, for better or worse, by the seeping industrial wastes.

Now Jake and Amanda are running for their lives. And ours.

Marcus Walker, a former hotshot commodities broker, and a wisecracking dog named George, who has been speech-enhanced to increase his market value, have escaped their alien Vilenjji captors, who saw the two as cuddly extra-terrestrial “pets” to be sold for a hefty sum. But Walker hasn’t a clue which way will lead him back home to Chicago. With the Vilenjji hot on his trail, Walker must pull off the impossible and pinpoint his needle of a solar system in the universal haystack. Will the unrelenting Vilenjji get to him before he reaches Wrigley Field? Yep, it’s a wide-open universe out there, bursting with possibilities – and Walker’s going to get hit with all of them.

Abducted by aliens to be sold as pets in a more civilized part of the galaxy, earthlings Marcus Walker and a scruffy dog named George (speech-enhanced to increase his market value) have managed to escape their captors. Walker loves being humankind’s first galactic traveller – until he remembers he hasn’t a clue where his home is or how to get there. So the erstwhile commodities broker becomes a chef, whipping up delicacies for demanding alien palates. Of course he never imagined that the way back to Chicago would involve swapping his easy-living adopted planet for an all-out, age-old war many parsecs away. But hey, it’s all for a good cause, h has George and their two fellow escapees for company, and what else is there to do, besides avoid nasty aliens? Plenty, it turns out.

Not so long ago Marcus Walker was just another young commodities trader in Chicago, working hard and playing harder. But that’s all in the past, part of a life half forgotten – a reality that vanished when he was attacked while camping and tossed aboard a starship bound for deep space.

Desperately, Walker searches for explanations, only to realise he’s trapped in a horrifying nightmare that is all too real. Instead of being a rich hotshot at the top of the food chain, Walker discovers he’s just another amusing novelty, part of a cargo of “cute” aliens from primitive planets – destined to be sold as pets to highly advanced populations in “civilized” regions of the galaxy.

Even if he weren’t constantly watched by his captors, Walker has few options. After all, there is no escape from a speeding starship. Another man might resign himself to the inevitable and hope to be sold to a kindly owner, but not Walker. This former college football star has plenty of American ingenuity and no intention of admitting defeat, now or ever. In fact, he’s only just begun to fight.

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…

Aejole Ehomba has led his companions through jungle, veldt, and desert. Now to reach the fabled port of Hamacassar, the simple herdsman must trek through deadly “civilized” lands where flowers wage war, dogs herd lightning, demons govern the darkness, and Time itself can be held captive.

In this new world, the tribesman must rely upon his friends, wondrous weapons, and the magic of memories so potent they can raise the dead or bring the sea to dry land. But no matter where he goes, every seer and sage Ehomba mets offes the same prophecy: his quest will end in failure …and death.

It advanced not in the manner of a living creature but in the manner of sand. It had no arms and then a hundred, no feet but one as wide as the base of the advancing dune itself.
Everywhere and all of it was dark red, like all the rust that had ever afflicted the metals of the world squeezed into a swiftly shifting pyramid rage.
The dune howled and moaned and bellowed like some sky-scraping banshee unwillingly fastened to the Earth.
And in the midst of all that geologic fury, two thirds up the face of the oncoming mountain were two eyes…

Inspector Angel Cardenas has seen plenty of corpses like the one in the Quetzal inburb – just another Juan Doe robbed of his cash, cards, internal organs, and then dumped in a gutter. However Cardenas soon learns this murder is anything but ordinary…

First, the infallible DNA-ID database insists the cadaver is that of two people – local executive George Anderson and a mysterious Texas businessman. Then Anderson’s wife and daughter, Surtsey Mockerkin and Katla, turn up missing, their posh suburban home has been retrofitted into a huge time bomb… and at least three mob syndicates from as many continents are competing to capture or kill twelve-year-old-Katla.

Who is the dead man, and why is his daughter being hunted? Relying on his training as a nearly telepathic intuit, Inspector Cardenas embarks on a search that leads him from sex parlours and stimstick clubs of the Strip – where kids are deadly and even the music kills – to an undersea control room where computer crimes are committed by criminal by criminal computers.

Finding Katla Anderson is the key to unravelling the deadly mystery, but what Angel Cardenas doesn’t know is that the closer he gets to the girl, the closer the assassins are getting to them…

The ultimate maquiladora. Montezuma Strip: First World tech and Third World wages, sprawling from L.A. to East Elpaso Juarez, Guyamas to Phoenix; a thousand gangs, a million locos; and a few wealthy beyond the dreams of gods…


And Federale Angel Cardenas, a living lie detector, is a top cop on the blistering streets of virtual reality scams and cryogenic kidnaps, where talking animals are programmed to kill, computer screens can spit murder, and even the Holy Blessed Virgin’s ghost runs extortion rackets.


Once Angel Cardenas was blind. But now he sees…straight into the heart of darkness that rules…


MONTEZUMA STRIP

For millennia, the alien union called the Weave had been at war with the Amplitur. But only in the handful of centuries since Earth had joined the Weave had the tide of the battle been slowly turning in the Weave’s favour. Then an elite unit, raised from childhood in dedication to the Amplitur Purpose and designed to match perfectly the Humans they were to fight, came of age – and it looked as if at last the Amplitur might prevail against the Weave.


But when one of the elite unit, a warrior called Ranji, was captured by the Weave, a horrible truth was revealed: Ranji was in fact Human, a subject of the Amplitur’s vile genetic manipulations.

The Weave promised to reverse the effects and help Ranji rescue other altered Humans from the clutches of the Amplitur. But neither Ranji nor his new allies could have know that the proposed cure would result in an abomination that could tear the Weave alliance apart – and brand Ranji and his kind as the most despicable creatures in the galaxy…

For eons, the Amplitur had searched space for intelligent species, each of which was joyously welcomed to take part in the fulfillment of the Amplitur Purpose. Whether it wanted to or not. When the Amplitur and their allies stumbled upon the races called the Weave, the Purpose seemed poised for a great leap forward. But the Weave’s surprising unity also gave it the ability to fight the Amplitur and their cause. And fight it did, for thousands of years.

Will Dulac was a New Orleans composer who thought the tiny reef off Belize would be the perfect spot to drop anchor and finish his latest symphony in solitude. What he found instead was a group of alien visitors – a scouting party for the Weave – looking for allies among what they believed to be a uniquely warlike race: Humans.

Will tried to convince the aliens that Man was fundamentally peaceful, for he understood that Human involvement would destroy the race. But all too soon, it didn’t matter. The Amplitur had discovered Earth…

Call him “Spellmaster Jr.”

Much to Clothahump the Wizard’s distress, ex-hippie Jon-Tom and otherworldly Talea’s son Buncan wants to be a questing hero, but not a spellsinger. Instead he forms a band with Mudge’s kids, otters Nocter and Squill, one that creates a wild, unpredictable magic – based on rap!

Then an anteater arrives with rumours about a dangerous legend. Soon the young rappers, aided by a drunk rhino, are off on an odyssey to a fortress where evil sorcerers threaten the world. And where only the unknown power of Buncan’s beat can stop the hordes of hideous hybrids…

Jonathan Meriweather, trapped in the strange world where animals walk and talk, and where he, as the Spellsinger, possesses unearthly powers, has faced any number of perils since Clothahump the wizard called him from his own world to help in the war against the evil of the Greendowns.

Now Jonathan, with Clothahump and Mudge the Otter, faces the greatest challenge of all, for the mysterious Perambulator is threatening the very fabric of the universe – unless Jonathan and his company can stop him.

In The Moment of the Magician Alan Dean Foster continues the adventures of Jon Thomas Meriweather, the Spellsinger, in a land where magic and constant danger combine against a background of beauty and individual courage.

Jon-Tom (as he is known in the land), in his quest to find a way back to his own world, discovers that there exists in the land another human from Earth who may hold the secret he so desperately seeks. This individual, however, is reputedly evil and has strange powers.

Jon-Tom’s adventures in seeking out this mysterious and dangerous human make this sequel to The Day of Dissonance a suspenseful and exciting saga in the Spellsinger epoch.

It was where beasts walked and talked as men, armed with swords and daggers. And it was where Clothahump, turtle and wizard, stretched his powers of sorcery to their limit, reaching out to another universe, seeking help to combat the force of evil emanating from the dreaded Greendowns.

And so Jonathan Meriweather found himself plucked from his peaceful university life and catapulted into a strange new world to become part of a very strange fellowship. Soldier and crusader, fighting with sword and song, he is the Spellsinger.

Dreams of love, hate, fear and revenge come true in…


WOLFSTROKER – Willie Whitehorse could have been just another boozed-up guitarist, if it hadn’t been for his songs. Somehow they were different – they reached out and grabbed people’s souls. Now agent Sam Parker wanted a piece of the action. But when he had it, Sam knew he’d made a terrible mistake…a mistake it was much too late to correct…


WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE… – The aliens had returned to Earth after centuries because they needed allies. But after hundreds of years, they had no idea what they would be getting the universe into…and they soon found out!


DREAM GONE GREEN – Pericles was a poet and a genius, who also happened to be a horse!


WHY JOHNNY CAN’T SPEED – A father could teach his son a lot of important things, but combat on the freeways wasn’t one of them…not when the kit was eighteen and too full of himself to survive. But revenge did have it’s compensations!

The Humanx Commonwealth: Book Eight.

The mission to planet Quofum to investigate unknown flora and fauna is supposed to be a quickie for Captain Boylan and his crew.

The first surprise is that Quofum, which seems to regularly slip in and out of existence, is actually there when they arrive. The second surprise is Quofum’s wild biodiversity: the planet is not logical, ordered or rational. But the real shock comes when the crew members not only find a killer in their midst but discover that their spaceship is missing – along with all means of communication.

Of course, the marooned team-mates know nothing about the Great Evil racing toward the galaxy, or about Flinx, the only person with half a chance to stop it. Nor do they know that Quofum could play a crucial role in defeating the all devouring monster from beyond.

The Humanx Commonwealth: Book Seven.

They call it the Drowning World. It is Fluva, a planet on the fringes of the Commonwealth where it rains torrentially, ceaselessly, and maddeningly for all but one month of the Fluvan year. Chief Administrator Lauren Matthias is fairly new to the position. Her primary goal: keeping Fluva’s indigenous species, the warlike Sakuntala, and its immigrant species, the timid but hardworking Deyzara, from annihilating one another.
The wettest place on Fluva is Viisiiviisii, an immense, mostly unexplored jungle. Thanks to the endless rains and humid conditions, exotic animals and plants have thrived there, many of them deadly predators. Yet the same evolutionary process responsible for creating toxic creatures has made the jungle a treasure trove of undiscovered botanicals potentially useful in engineering everything from pharmaceuticals to perfumes. A man can get rich there. Or die trying.
Bio-prospector Sadrach Hasselemoga has come to the jungle to get rich – if he survives the terrain once his sabotaged ship goes down. When a Sakuntala and a Deyzara are dispatched by Matthias to rescue the unfortunate soul, their ship crashes, too. Now, in order to survive, the three unlikely allies must do something that no one has ever done before: walk out of the Viisiiviisii.
Meanwhile, in what passes for civilization, long-simmering tensions between Sakuntala and Deyzara erupt into violence, threatening Matthias’s official position of neutrality – and her life. Behind the violence, Matthias detects a mysterious presence, one related to Shadrach’s disappearance. But how are the two related? The answer, when it comes, will send shock waves through the entire Commonwealth…and beyond.

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…

A guilt-ridden Earth had turned Cachalot over to the few surviving cetaceans as a perpetual refuge – a planet whose surface was one great ocean, where the remnants of the whales, porpoises and dolphins could pursue their lives and perhaps even the development of an intelligence even greater than man’s.
Humans on Cachalot were strictly confined to a few islands and the floating towns, prospering from the wealth of its sea. The cetaceans seemed to have forgiven the thousands of years of terror and slaughter they had suffered – some had even befriended selected humans.
But something was destroying the towns of Cachalot – leaving no clues…or survivors.

Born was a child of the rain forest that covered Midworld, part of the primitive society that the peaceful jungle planet had sustained for hundreds of years. He was wise in the ways of his world, and he knew well the precarious natural balance that governed all things.Then one day the aliens came. Giants. They knew nothing of the Upper or Lower Hell ? and they cared less. Born had risked his life to save them, to guide them through the myriad tangled boughs, past unseen, unsuspected dangers lurking in the underbrush. But worse than their ignorance of how to survive, the aliens had plans for Midworld, plans that could utterly destroy the globe-spanning forest that his people called home.As the days passed, Born realized his mistake. And as he had once hunted only to live, he knew now that he would be forced to live only to kill…

Just when it looked as if Ethan Fortune might be able to breathe a warm sigh of relief at getting away from the icy world of Tran-ky-ky, he was ordered to stay right where he was.

It seemed the scientists at the outpost of Brass Monkey had spotted something odd – an isolated and ominous atmosphere hot spot far to the south.

Only Ethan, along with the huge, hell-raising Skua September, had the local knowledge and the persuasiveness to get the Tran to mount an expedition. Only the giant icerigger Slanderscree could cope with the conditions.

Knowing you’re wanted may warm the cockles of the human heart but Ethan knew at once that the rest of him was going to be exposed to freezing cold, considerable danger and a whole lot more of the adventures that kept coming his way…

For Ethan Frome Fortune and his musclebound sidekick Skua September, the frozen planet of Tran-ky-ky had become too much of a cold thing. Aboard their giant icerigger Slanderscree, they headed for the trading post of Brass Monkey to book a passage home.
Then fate intervened with the news that their Tran friends were being exploited by ruthless off-world profiteers. To help, Ethan and Skua – interplanetary sales team extraordinaire – must make a desperate mission to Moulokin, the fabled fortified city across the frozen seas and ringed with chilling peril…