Search Results for: city-of-no-return

Silverberg returns to the world of his greatest triumph – Majipoor – to tell the thrilling story of a young man’s quest into the unknown!

For young Prince Harpirias, the journey into the tundra beyond Majipoor might as well be a death sentence. But it is the only way to escape his dull job in a provincial city. The mission: to rescue a lost party of palaeontologists searching for the remains of a fabled species of dragons. With only a small band of soldiers and one wily Shapeshifter for company, Harpirias must endure blizzards, ice storms, privation and strange beasts.

But when they reach their destination, they discover a shockingly barbaric culture. One mistake, one minor violation of custom, and the prince and his retinue will face endless captivity – or endless death!

For countless years the enigmatic city of Klagan had rested beneath the racing moons of ancient Mars. Forbidden, guarded, sheltered in the cup of the Blue Mountains and surrounded by waterless desert. It rested there, a place of a thousand rumours and whispered fantasies, and gave birth to muttered tales of incredible wealth and riches.

To this city came Halmar, the guide; Lorna, the dancer from Venus; and the man called Smith. Defying the ban of the Terran Authorities, the fanatical Drylanders, and the harsh desert, they reached the crystal walls of the strange city. There they found a tremendous mystery, the deserted artefacts of a vanquished civilisation – and found themselves snared in an incredible trap.

For Klagan was more than a city. It was. . .
What it was and how the intrepid adventurers solved the incredible secret of the mysterious city makes this an exciting tale of science and plausible speculation, action and human motivations.

A thousand years in the future, the earth has been conquered by an alien race and covered by a single sea. Dovirr Stargan, who is disgusted with the servility of his life on the floating city of Vythain, longs to become one of the Sea-Lords, who roam the sea as powerful protectors of the cities.

Dovirr gets his wish, but the return of the alien race brings unexpected and critically dangerous crises to his new life as he learns the real, sometimes terrible, significance of power.




(First published 1965)

2650 AD

The Earth has been buried beneath a sheet of ice for 300 years. In cities miles beneath the surface humanity huddles, waiting for release.
Dr. Raymond Barnes waits with passion, and listens daily for evidence of life on the still Earth. Finally, a voice from across the void hails his open frequency . . . the surface awaits mankind.
But not all men are anxious to return to what was . . . those in power are determined to keep man in his new place, to retain their order of fear and oppression. Barnes and his courageous group of scientists and adventurers are arrested for possession of forbidden technology; the radio is destroyed! Their punishment is swift ejection from the underground city, their only hope is to reach London – 3000 desolate miles across a frozen wasteland!

Edward Davis was a promising rookie in the Time Service. He had made jumps into the past – two, three, even six centuries – but nothing could prepare him for a leap of thirty-five centuries, all the way back to Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt.

In the blink of an eye, he found himself in a world of temples and tombs, pharaohs and pyramids, jackal-headed gods, mummies and talking beetles. In the ancient city of Thebes, Davis must rescue two members of the Service lost in time.

Taken in by a mysterious temple priestess and befriended by a beautiful Egyptian slave girl, Davis is sent to the City of the Dead to learn the trade of embalming. But as the hour of his scheduled return to his own time approaches, Edward Davis must come to grips with the truth behind the fate of his comrades – and the seductive allure of ancient Egypt.

In the year 25,000 AD
When John Martels returned to consciousness he found himself the Delphic Oracle of a world far different from the Twentieth Century. Humanity has risen and fallen three times and was back once again in a semi-primative state.

He shared his oracular powers with a mind and a device left over from the last Rebirth, but the real problem was not rebuilding civilization, it was that another genus of creatures had arisen to claim inheritance of the world – the evolved. Strangely intelligent birds, whose priority was the elimination of the world’s former masters.

The problem of man versus bird, complicated by the question of John’s personal survival, presents a canvas worthy of the diverse talents of the author of A Case of Conscience and Cities in Flight.

Landing on a new planet is a danger every time, and Selm II is no exception.

The specialist didn’t like it. There were no cities visable from space, no broadcasts or transmissions on the airwaves – yet the wrecked war machines of an advanced technology littered the rich pastures of the planet. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of crumpled and gigantic weapons of war, a graveyard of destruction stretching almost to the lifeless horizon. But the war wasn’t over…and they weren’t all wrecks.

It’s an emergency. It’s a job for Brian Brand, the mightiest weightlifter in the galaxy. With the brilliant, sensuous Dr Lea Morees at his side he plunges into the war zone, into the steel jaws of…the Planet of No Return!

Anthologies seldom make history, but Dangerous Visions is a grand exception. Harlan Ellison’s 1967 collection of science fiction stories set an almost impossibly high standard, as more than a half dozen of its stories won major awards – not surprising with a contributors list that reads like a who’s who of 20th-century SF:

Evensong by Lester del Rey | Flies by Robert Silverberg | The Day After the Day the Martians Came by Frederik Pohl | Riders of the Purple Wage by Philip José Farmer | The Malley System by Miriam Allen deFord | A Toy for Juliette by Robert Bloch | The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World by Harlan Ellison | The Night That All Time Broke Out by Brian W. Aldiss | The Man Who Went to the Moon – Twice by Howard Rodman | Faith of Our Fathers by Philip K. Dick | The Jigsaw Man by Larry Niven | Gonna Roll the Bones by Fritz Leiber | Lord Randy, My Son by Joe L. Hensley | Eutopia by Poul Anderson | Incident in Moderan and The Escaping by David R. Bunch | The Doll-House by James Cross | Sex and/or Mr. Morrison by Carol Emshwiller | Shall the Dust Praise Thee? by Damon Knight | If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? by Theodore Sturgeon | What Happened to Auguste Clarot? by Larry Eisenberg | Ersatz by Henry Slesar | Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird by Sonya Dorman | The Happy Breed by John Sladek | Encounter with a Hick by Jonathan Brand | From the Government Printing Office by Kris Neville | Land of the Great Horses by R. A. Lafferty | The Recognition by J. G. Ballard | Judas by John Brunner | Test to Destruction by Keith Laumer | Carcinoma Angels by Norman Spinrad | Auto-da-Fé by Roger Zelazny | Aye, and Gomorrah by Samuel R. Delany

Unavailable for 15 years, this huge anthology now returns to print, as relevant now as when it was first published.

Life had become too interesting on one world crawling across the rubble-strewn arm of a spiral galaxy.

For as the system moved it swept up cosmic dust and debris. Ice ages and periods of tropical warmth followed one another very quickly. Meteors large and small fell constantly. Yesterday’s fabled culture might be tomorrow’s interesting hole in the ground.

But society had always endured. Many thought it always would. Only the brightest scientists admitted that to survive, the race would have to abandon the planet. And to do that they’d have to invent spacecraft . . .

This engrossing epic describes the development, over millennia, of a species from a culture of planet-bound medieval city-states to a sophisticated, technological civilization. With The Crucible of Time, John Brunner returns to the large-canvas science fiction he pioneered in his Hugo Award-winning, novel Stand on Zanzibar.


First published in 1982.

In the forgotten city of Opar, the bloodied sacrificial altar of the Flaming God stood above vaults piled high with the gold destined for fabled, lost Atlantis. There La, the beautiful high priestess, still dreamed of Tarzan, who had escaped her knife before. Around her, the hideous priests vowed that he should never escape again. For now Tarzan was returning, and they were waiting for him. Tarzan planned to avoid La and the priests. But he could not avoid the earthquake that struck him down in the vaults and left him without memory of his wife or home – only with what memory he had had as a child among the savage apes who reared him.

Tarzan had renounced his right to the woman he loved, and civilisation held no pleasure for him. After a brief and harrowing period among men, he turned back to the African jungle where he had grown to manhood. It was there he first heard of Opar, the city of gold, left over from fabled Atlantis. It was a city of hideous men – and of beautiful, savage women, over whom reigned La, high priestess of the Flaming God. Its altars were stained with the blood of many sacrifices. Unheeding of the dangers, Tarzan led a band of savage warriors toward the ancient crypts and the more ancient evil of Opar.

Under Eddie Burton’s management the ambitious starlet Lorna Maxwell seemed headed for the top of Broadway’s glamorous world of make-believe. And then she vanished – through a wall where there was no door. Eddie found himself plunging after her into a city beyond reality.

In that weird twin city to New York, Eddie became a hunted fugitive while his girl friend turned up as an ever-present face and all-pervading voice that awed and mystified the inhabitants. And Eddie learned that between him and return to his natural home stood her new manager, a mysterious figure who ruled by a tyrannical combination of super-scientific miracle and brute force.

Jack Chatwin has visions, which leave tangible evidence – sounds and smells, which linger afterwards. What he sees are two primitive figures, with painted faces – Greyface and Greenface, a brother and sister. He calls them bullrunners.
John Garth is a city dowser, searching for the mythical pre-Roman city of Glanum. He hopes to find an entryway to the elusive city beneath Exburgh, Jack’s home town. And he thinks Jack’s bullrunners may be connected to Glanum . . .
Years later, Jack, now grown up, agrees to take part in experiments to investigate his bullrunners – until Greyface, the male, breaks free of Jack and takes corporeal form. The bullrunner kidnaps Jack’s young daughter so Jack will force Greenface to follow her brother-husband, even against her own wishes. Though Greyface returns the daughter, he keeps a shadow of her, which takes on a life of its own. If Jack refuses to co-operate, the shadow will drain his daughter’s vitality and personality – and her very future.

The story of Jack’s search for Greenface is interwoven with the connections between the bullrunners and the mystical city of Glanum in this resonant tale of ancient mythic wonder.

In the great battle which had returned control of Morvannec, the legendary city, to mankind, Elof the Smith had saved Kara, his love, from the immortal Power which ruled her. But in the seven years since, the Smith has grown fearful that Kara, herself no mortal, will one day leave him. In his fear, Elof makes the mistake of drawing on his own uncanny powers to bind Kara closer to him; he only succeeds in driving her away.

Haunted, guilt-ridden, Elof can do nothing but follow his love eastwards, across the Seas of Sunrise, towards the city of Kerys in which Kermorvan of Kerbryhaine’s people had originated. In the myth-filled lands of the East, where the Powers of the Ice contemplate the total extinction of life, Elof must face his past, his future and his destiny.

Walled off from a world it no longer remembers, the city of Thryn decays in arrogant isolation. Its ancient scriptures tell of the god,Gomath, who will one day return to perfect his city. But his return has been long awaited.

In a bizarre coincidence of events, Lupio, a cynical and decadent young aristocrat, is unwillingly entangled in the prophecy. Appalled, he decides to break ancient law and flee the city. He joins up with Dubilier, a failed poet and dreamer, who is trying to escape from the death of inspiration and love. Together they travel through uncharted lands in search of the lost god. One of them wants to find him. The other certainly does not…

Since the Roman legion had been mysteriously transported to a world of magic, tribune Marcus Scaurus had served the rulers of war-torn Videssos well. He had ousted the Pretender and put Thorisin Gavras on the throne. That made him a hero.

But in Rome or Videssos, Fortune was a fickle goddess.

Now he and the legion were returning in triumph to the city of Videssos after defeating a powerful army of rebel mercenaries. But Marcus, betrayed by the one closest to him, was seized, dragged before the Emperor and questioned under the truth drug like a traitor.

In court, only Alypia Gavra stuck by him – but consorting with the Emperor’s niece was dangerous. It could lead to exile – or death!

Yet Alypia was beautiful. And Marcus was lonely…

The world, as we know it, has changed considerably. A civil war is raging, between the eastern half of North America and the west. The latest methods of destruction are frightening, brutal, inescapable. They are called light raids – massive laser-beam assaults that are as effective as they are merciless.

Seventeen-year-old Hellene Ariadne, daughter of a prominent Western scientist, has been evacuated to Victoria for her protection. When the letters from her parents suddenly stop, Ariadne is forced to leave the safety of the North and return to her home in Denver Springs. There she finds her house in ruins, the city devastated by a huge light raid.

Ariadne assumes that her parents are dead. But the truth is much worse: her mother is in prison, accused of sabotage and treason, and her father is left helpless, an emotional cripple.

It is up to Ariadne to clear her mother’s name. But, as she plunges deeper and deeper into a fatal web of intrigue and deception, she discovers that there are truths far more shocking than war, more devastating than the fiercest light raids…

In search of the Aureate Cities, Captain Rovic had brought the Golden Leaper halfway round the World. Weathering hurricanes and mutiny, he meant to do what no other ship’s master had done: circulate the globe and return to riches and glory. Then, on a distant barbarous island, Rovic met a shipwrecked traveler who claimed to have come on an even longer voyage. But who could believe his tale – of a ship that sailed between the stars?

Leaving the Rise, Claidi anticipates a joyful reunion with her beloved Argul.

Instead, her return to the Hulta people meets only mistrust, fury and betrayal. Determined to unravel the lies and deceit which haunt her past and threaten her future, she journeys northward.

But in the strange cities-and even stranger people-she finds, Claidi sees only more mystery and deeper secrets.

Sixteen-year-old Annie Ember lives in grinding poverty in the city…until one day in a mysterious shop she discovers a tiny and ancient ivory elephant. The subsequent murder of her sister’s husband leaves Annie homeless, and she is found employment in a country house far away.

Sir Hampton Smolte returned from India with a great fortune – and also a dark obsession with that conquered land. His mansion is fanciful and extraordinary, like a raja’s palace set down in green English parkland.

Annie becomes a scullery maid in this strange place full of stuffed animals, eccentric servants and the even more peculiar Smolte family. Soon she catches the eye of the handsome Rupert and gradually succumbs to his advances…till one night she learns in disgust and horror just what his lovemaking entails.

Annie’s helpless fury then transforms this dream-house into a whirlwind of panic and the impossible…legging in all the avenging power of the jungle, and unlocking Hampton Smolte’s darkest secrets.

Once the great Glacier enclosed the Raumsdalian Empire. Now it’s broken open, and Count Hamnet Thyssen faces a new world. With the wisecracking Ulric Skakki, the neighboring clan leader Trasamund (politely addressed as Your Ferocity), and his lover, the shaman Liv, Hamnet leads an exploration of the new territory in hopes of finding the legendary Golden Shrine.

But dangers abound. A violent and implacable group known as the Rulers has already killed many, and now they attack again. Riding deer and woolly mammoths and using powerful magic, the Rulers triumph and force the Raumsdalians to flee.

In the spring another battle ends even more badly for Hamnet’s side, but the Glacier is also retreating, so they are able to escape. Meeting a tribe whose desperate living conditions have led them to overcome the Raumsdalian taboo against eating fallen foes, they find unexpected allies. Now, returning to the capital city and its intrigues, Hamnet prepares to lead an army against the merciless Rulers. The world, once so bounded and comprehensible, will never be the same…

After a meteor explosion, Rikardon wakes in a new body-and in a strange desert land named Gandalara, where a sacred gem known as the Ra’ira grants its owner the power to rule-or to destroy…

Victory is sweet-but for Rikardon and Tarani, it is all too brief. Although they have retrieved the sword of the Kings from the lost city of Kä, a savage battle with the vineh mars their journey back to Raithskar. These ape-like creatures were once controlled through the power of the Ra’ira. Now they pose a threat both to the cat-like sha’um and humanoid Gandalarans.

To restore order, Rikardon and Tarani must travel to Eddarta, where Tarani can use the Ra’ira against the increasingly vicious vineh. First she must face her treacherous brother, Indomel, and convince the Council to name her High Lord in his place. Indomel will not take such betrayal lightly, but another danger is about to reveal itself-a sinister and ambitious traitor who has been hiding in plain sight all along.

After the death of her father – a former royal adviser – Zoe Ardelay has little time to grieve before she receives astonishing news: she has been chosen to become the king’s fifth wife.

Zoe accompanies an ambassador to the royal city, but once there she slips away and hides among those who live along the shores of the mighty river. For Zoe is coru: ruled by the elemental sign of water.

Gradually she discovers that she is, in fact, the coru prime. Which means she must return to the palace, not as an unwilling bride for the king but as a woman with power in her own right . . .

Ethshar, or “the World” as its inhabitants call it, is the setting for almost a dozen novels by Lawrence Watt-Evans. The dominant nation on the World is the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, while the largest, richest city, where most of the stories are set, is Ethshar of the Spices. The name itself comes from words meaning “safe harbor.” You don’t need to have read any of the novels to enjoy the stories herein; each one should stand alone. And if you’ve read the novels, you will enjoy this return to the world of Ethshar with 11 stories…