Search Results for: brink,-the

It is the 21st century and Earth is overcrowded, underfed and teetering on the brink of worldwide chaos. Their best and last hope rests among the stars, in finding another world able to sustain human life. Enter Colonel Jerry Cornelius, hero and adventurer extraordinaire. Along with his wife Cathy and good friend, Professor Frank Marek, he will brave the madness of space and the dangers of an alien world.

But there is more to this new world than meets the eye. Secrets are buried here, in its earth and in its history. Uncovering them could hold the keys to planet Earth’s salvation as well as its past. But time is against Jerry Cornelius. His friend has gone mad, his wife has gone missing, and with each tick of the clock planet Earth draws closer to its end.

Bereft of friends, loved ones, and all he has ever known, Jerry Cornelius will hold the fates of two worlds in his hands. A solution will require all his legendary strength, intelligence and courage … and even that might not be enough in the end.

With Earth teetering on the brink of extinction, only one man dares to defy the legacy of the Spaceraiders – Clovis Marca, the twilight man.

Long ago Earth, now fixed on her axis, with eternal day on one side, eternal night on the other and a ribbon of twilight in between, was ravaged by galactic raiders. Earthlings recovered, grew stronger. But now, unable to reproduce, the last humans are frenzied with final decadence. And fear.

Only Clovis Marca, the last man born on Earth, dares to brave infected space to seek the impossible solution. His dark quest leads him to face Orlando Sharvis, the scientist whose insane experiments on his own mind and body might just save the human race… but would that race then be more, or less, human?

The Gene Wars have turned Earth into a blighted wasteland. Mile-long airships patrol the skies, exacting crippling tribute from the scattered ground communities. Threatened by mutant vegetation and predatory creatures, forced to the brink of starvation by the Sky Lords, Minerva – a former feminist utopia – has had enough.

Its rebellion is swiftly crushed and Jan Dorvin, a Minervan warrior, is winched aboard a Sky Lord; towards a fate worse than death. For as a ground dweller and slave – but above all, as a woman – she is now regarded as the lowest form of humanity and is consigned to a life spent serving the sexual appetites of male slaves.

But no Minervan could be kept slave for very long…..

Ed Carter, a New York reporter on his way to his home town in Omaha for a short vacation, saw the missile in the last moments in its journey back to earth. A sweller on the brink, like all of us, he had no doubt about what it was; Oh God, he thought, this is it. The blast of the impact flung him some distance, and when he regained consciousness, his first reaction was one of surprised to find himself still alive, and not, it seemed, even badly hurt. Presumably the missile had been directed at the big Air Force base nearby, and should have destroyed everything and everyone within a radius of miles. Could it have failed to explode?

Carter sees the remains of part of the missile in an adjacent field and hobbles over to it. A minute or two later several Air Force officers arrive. They examine the remains, and find the burned-up body of a pilot. In other worlds, the missile was not Russia’s first shot in the Third World War, but a failure to launch a man into space. But Carter knows that the Distant Early Warning line will have reported the missile; that the senior Air Force officers, in accordance with plan, will have taken to the air – in the country’s interest, their lives must, of course, be preserved if possible; that by now the retaliatory American bombers will have passed the point of no recall; and that the Third World War has begun. Not so, Colonel Ben Goldwater tells him: “I called the bombers back.”

Goldwater, the man who had been left in command, has saved the world – for at least a little longer. So he becomes a world hero? Not a bit of it. On the contrary: a nightmare looms ahead both for him and for Ed Carter, and the reader watches it all with growing fury…

In the long twilight if a galactic empire, the old king is dying. He has little choice but to name his callow young son as heir and his wanton daughter as regent. It seems the long decline is destined to continue.

But everything is changed by the appearance of a rival claimant: a long-lost princess, accompanied only by a loyal champion and a mysterious advisor. Will her arrival herald a bright new dawn for the empire? Or drive a once-proud civilisation to the brink of war . . . ?

During his heroic first encounter with an alien race, Dick Muller was permanently altered, hideously transformed in a way that left him repulsive to the entire human race. Alone and embittered, he exiled himself to Lemnos, an abandoned planet famed for its labyrinthine horrors, both real and imagined.

But now, Earth trembles on the brink of extinction, threatened by another alien species, and only Muller can rescue the planet. Men must enter the murderous maze of Lemnos, find Muller, and convince him to return with them.

But will the homeless alien, alone in the universe, risk his life to save his race, the race that has utterly rejected him?




(First published 1968)

Sam Falkirk, Captain of the World Police and stationed at the World Council building in New York, has a special interest in investigating the sudden and inexplicable death of Angelo Augustine, the brother of his girl friend. A messenger employed by the Council, Augustine was also a spy in the pay of Senator Rayburn, a fanatical Nationalist who is fighting both to retain his power and to destroy the Orient before they, as he believes, turn against the Occident.

Augustine had died while delivering a parcel containing a statue of a Buddha for an employee of Senator Sucamari of the Japanese Legation, and who, in his own way, is as fanatical as Rayburn himself. Sucamari wants to gain living room for the teeming millions of the Orient, and his secret plan involves the releasing of a deadly bacterial plague across the Americas. The bacteria is contained in a special coating on the Buddha statue, but when the statue is stolen by a petty criminal, millions of people hover on the brink of agonizing death, unless Falkirk can find the criminal in time . . .

The second collection of short stories from the prize-winning author of Orbitsville.

Nine stories demonstrate Shaw’s superb imaginative range and cynically humorous approach to the world of the future.

Skirmish on a Summer Morning
Unreasonable Facsimile
A Full Member of the Club
The Silent Partners
The Giaconda Caper
An Uncomic Book Horror Story
The Brink
Waltz of the Bodysnatchers
A Little Night Flying

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 Penheniot Experimental Research Village was a top-secret community with an elaborate defence system to keep away prying eyes. Inside the walls men rushed ahead with practical experiments to develop a means of time travel, while outside the everyday world fell victim to more and more plagues, strikes and rioting.

The world was on the brink of chaos. Could the small band of scientists and chrononauts at Penheniot Village find a safe method of escape into the future before the violence and death outside destroyed them too?

A small cube of black rock has been unearthed in a 3500-year-old Mycenaean tomb. An incomprehensible object in an impossible place; its age, its purpose, and its origins are unknown. Its discovery has unleashed a global storm of intrigue, theft andespionage, and is pushing nations to the brink of war. Its substance has scientists baffled. And the miracle it contains does not belong on this Earth.

It is mystery and madness — an enigma with no equal in recordedhistory. It is mankind’s greatest discovery … and worst nightmare. It may have already obliterated a world. Ours is next.

In this chronicle of a long-ago land on civilization’s brink, Gorgik the Liberator’s campaign to end slavery has been successful. But in the novel and two novellas comprising this fourth, final, and eponymous volume in Delany’s series, slavery is both a political memory and a sado-masochistic sexual fantasy…


The Game of Time and Pain: In this novel, stopping in a deserted castle for the night, Gorgik reflected on his campaign to a barbarian boy.


The Tale of Rumor and Desire: From the gutters of port Kohari to the mountain gorge of Neveryon, the novella gives a moving account of the life of a Neveryon bandit and outlaw in the time of Gorgik the Liberator.


The Tale of Gorgik: With this story of Gorgik’s youth, we begin our real return to Neveryon…

Someone is thinking about Margaret. “I wondered about Margaret, and what she would do next. I didn’t care unless she went the route of drugs. They make her try and get at me sometimes, and that can be bothersome. She is so terribly afraid of me.”

Who so casually draws Margaret to the brink of hysteria – then, just as casually, tries to walk away?

Her subconsciousness does, when it becomes a living, breathing personality with an ego all its own – setting the stage for a remarkable transformation scarcely envisioned by the science of man.

What happens when . . .

An all-powerful killing machine is equipped with a human brain on the brink of madness?

A group of apes are injected with human intelligence and build their own strange empire?

A child with an other-worldly intellect is locked in mortal combat with his own down-to-earth father?

A hand-picked space team convenes at a countdown that can mean the start of a new era – or the end of mankind?

You’ll find out when you enter . . . THE DOWNSTAIRS ROOM.

Two explorers from the Earth’s surface had carved themselves an empire at the Earth’s core – Pellucidar.

The dangers were many. Untamed tribes and vicious beasts were a constant peril, and there were times when the lives of the surface-men were at stake. But, just when things seemed hopeless, they came up with a trump card – a new weapon.

What they didn’t realize was that it was a weapon that could bring its makers to the brink of disaster.

Twenty-first-century Moscow. Luther and Jake have a mission – to steal the experimental transferral device from under the nose of the Dream Team.
It’s a bold and dangerous plan that goes fatally wrong. The New York they return to is not the one they left: it’s a nightmare world of violence, paranoia and apartheid on the brink of a devastating war.

William Clarence Verity, Sergeant in ‘A’ Division of the Metropolitan Police, has seen most of the horrors of the nineteenth century, from the stews of Seven Dials to the prisons of the maharajahs. Now he is sent to the United States, to a nation on the brink of civil war, to guard two of his country’s most precious possessions: her good name, and the heir to the throne.

Both are threatened by Verney Dacre, thought to have died in the aftermath of the Great Train Robbery of 1857, but planning a coup to crown his career of evil: the robbery of the US mint in Philadelphia.

A missing wife, a husband suspected – and only the incorrigible private investigator can save them both.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

On the day that Emily Tate vanished, Inspector Marston met her husband, Stephen Tate, on the tow-path of the River Pyle. The unassuming Stephen was on the brink of a nightmare episode that was to make his unhappy marriage, his clandestine love affair and his disappointed hopes seem positively joyous by comparison.

The determination of the girl he loved was the only thing that could save him from the web of circumstances in which he was enmeshed. She sent for Detective Arthur Crook.

Joyce Cave had her husband, Robert, exactly where she wanted him – in a private gaol with herself, her aunt and her uncle as warders. He had been charged with killing the local good-time girl, who had tried the oldest trick in the world on the panicky Robert and ended up in the canal for her pains.

But Joyce hadn’t bargained on John Trewen Forbes, a slick operator with schemes to rid himself of his young cousin Lucy, who was following the dangrous course of not parting with any of the proceeds of her inheritance.

Anthropologists argue over the significance of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon remains and vast periods of pre-history remain to be filled satisfactorily. These hidden eras of the long-dead past are as open to speculation and mysterious adventure as the unguessed vistas of tomorrow. How many strange, undiscovered species of man have lived and died leaving no apparent record of their existence?

An avalanche on the Swiss-Italian border isolated Marian Sanderson and a frightening assortment of other guests in a peculiar old alpine chateau. Although no human rescue party was able to make the climb, something moved on the precipitous slopes around them.

As Marian gradually discovered the truth about her fellow guests she realised the avalanche had been no accident. Something of terrible potential lurked outside the isolated chateau…

Dark, supernatural forces were poised on the brink of Ultimate Fear…

The anatomy of fear is the unknown. The essence of terror is contained in the phrase “What if?” Suppose the dead should return? Are there invisible phychic entities hovering on the fringe of the physical world? Can the power of evil manifest itself in tangible form and launch world shattering violence against humanity?

The most gripping fear lies within the human mind. Lana Davis was a normal, healthy, sane young woman to all outward appearances but the Unknown was laying siege to her mind. By day her work kept the worst of the Terror at bay, but at night it returned. Time passed and Fear grew greater…Fear was embodied in a mysterious effigy which stood beside her bed . . . Fear lurked in a weird voice on the telephone.

Lana Davis ran screaming into the night – unable to face Fear any longer. The stranger who found her apparently knew more about her problems than she did; Lana found herself involved in a macabre new environment where Fear had expelled reality leaving the stranger as the only link with the world she had once known. Dark supernatural powers contended with insanity for Lana’s very soul, as she hovered on the brink of unreality and annihilation.

In the early years of the twenty-first century, Earth teetered on the brink of ecological destruction. Then the alien Hefn came, determined to save the dying Earth – and to the Hefn, the ends always justified the means. Humans were given nine years to correct their mistakes – alone, with no recourse to the Hefn’s advanced technology. If by then the Earth’s ecology had not stabilized, the Hefn would solve the problem for good . . . by eliminating humans entirely.

But slowly, against their will, some of the Hefn became deeply involved with their human counterparts. And to the handful of people who came to know them, the Hefn made a great difference: as mentors, researchers, rulers . . . and saviors. But could those few friendships sway the Hefn to help save a despoiled planet – and the human race?

Martin Bond had an intriguing theory of Cosmic Descent, believing that the first intelligent life in the solar system evolved on the Moon, with the Selenites later migrating to Mars, after they had destroyed their civilization and the Moon following the discovery of atomic power. The Martians had subsequently fallen victim to the same cycle of events, and their survivors had fled to Earth. There is something inherent in the atom which is released along with nuclear energy that stirs the baser passions of living beings. And now, humanity stands on the brink of atomic warfare…

The twenty-seventh century planet of Quopp is a world where Earthmen walk cautiously or not at all. The inhabitants are weirdly diabolical creatures, possessing spoked-wheel limbs and sprouting steel-sharp talons.

Plans are afoot to place these singular beings under a single government friendly to Earth. But Jame Retief, officer of the distinguished Corps Diplomatique Teresstienne, a supra-national organization devoted to keeping the peace, has discovered that evil forces are undermining the whole scheme.

Deviously sincere, uncompromisingly venal, fearlessly cowardly, Retief goes to work against mounting planetary intrigue and more than once brings those around him to the brink of nervous collapse.