Search Results for: danger-planet

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.

The end draws nigh….The year is 2053, and Earth has barely recovered from the Alpha Centauri supernova that destroyed much of the planet’s infrastructure. Now the supernova’s residual effect – a storm of high-energy particles – is racing toward Earth, and an international effort has been launched out of the Sky City space colony to save the planet. But the controversial plan – to build a giant protective shield for Earth – is falling dangerously behind schedule. A series of unexplained murders has disrupted the Sky City workforce, so much so that a brilliant but monstrous criminal has been enlisted to track down the Sky City killer.Then comes more startling news. Evidence indicates that the original supernova was caused deliberately, and that the lethal particle storm will arrive sooner than anyone expected. But who – or what – tried to destroy the Earth? And will the answer come in time to save it from its final apocalypse?

By the twenty-first century the world was drowning in its own population. A solution had to be found quickly – and it was, in ‘gravi-power’. Wonderful, unending source of power – only the scientists knew that its use was reducing the Earth’s distance from the sun at a dangerous rate. But if another planet’s gravi-power could harnessed . . .

An expedition was launched to Mars, known to be uninhabited – except that a woman was wandering around its surface who claimed she had come from another galaxy to warn Earth of a terrible menace, and there was a huge poly-hedron of metal emanting a force very much like that of gravipower.

Someone else had discovered it! A thousand years ago, or now? Friend, or enemy?



(First published 1965)

Everything about the planet revolving about Sigma Draconis seemed to indicate that here was a world that could be made into a second Earth. It was fertile and lacked native inhabitants and dangerous beasts. Then what was troubling the pioneer colony that had landed and set up shop there? Was it really possible just to create a new Earth on any vacant world waiting a landing?

Or was there a lot more to planetary ecologies than humanity realized?

A hundred thousand years from now, it was discovered that a star was approaching the world on a collision course. Its discoverer, Creohan, figured there might be time to save the world if he could arouse everyone to the danger.
But the Earth had become a strange and kaleidoscopic place in that distant era. Too many empires had risen and fallen, too many cultures had spread their shattered fragments across a planet whose very maps had long since been forgotten. People were too busy with their own private dreams to pay attention to one more new alarm.
The story Creohan’s effort to Catch a Falling Star is one of John Brunner’s most colourful science-fiction concepts.

THREE AGAINST THE STARS!

A sky pirate armed with superior weapons of his own invention…

First contact with an alien race dangerous enough to threaten the safety of two planets…

The arrival of an unseen dark sun whose attendant marauders aimed at the very end of civilization in this Solar System…

These were the three challenges that tested the skill and minds of the brilliant team of scientist-astronauts Arcot, Wade, and Morey. Their initial adventures are a classic of science fiction which first brought the name of their author, John W. Campbell, Jr., into prominence as a master of the inventive imagination – long before he became the editor of Astounding/Analog and changed the field of science fiction forever!

For over a century, the human colonists on the planet Gaia have prospered under the guidance of the M’threnni. But when David arrives in the capital Helixport and makes contact with the aliens, he begins to learn the terrifying truth about them. From that moment on he is in mortal danger, for the M’threnni far from being silent benefactors, may turn out to be the deadliest of cruel dictators.

Newly accepted as a Special Agent of the star-spanning United Planets organization, Ronny Bronston found that his first assignment was one which had taken the lives of dozens of agents before him: he was to track down a man named Tommy Paine.

‘We’ve been trying to catch him for twenty years,’ said Ronny’s section chief. ‘How long before that he was active, we have no way of knowing. It was some time before we became aware that half the revolts, coups d’états and assassinations that occur in the United Planets have his dirty finger stirring around in them.’

‘But what motivates him?’ Ronny asked. ‘What’s he get out of all the war and killing he stirs up?’

‘Nobody seems to know. But the best guess is that he’s insane – a homicidal maniac on an intergalactic scale. He’s dangerous, Ronny, and you’ve got to get him!’

On the 15th day of Franklin, Year of Descent 1008, in the Kralate of Vizantia Planet Kforri.

A young teacher, Marko Prokopiu, is convicted and jailed. His heinous crime: preaching the false and unholy belief that Kforri was originally settled by men arriving from Earth in flying machines – a dangerous heresy against the official doctrine of divine evolution.

Goaded into jail-break by his wife’s desertion and mightily armed with his father’s great ax, Markorushes to avenge his marital honour. With an eminent philosopher, Dr. Halran, inventor of the incredible hot-air balloon, Marko journeys perilously to exotic lands – to decadent Anglonia, hostile Afka, civilised Eropia and, at last, the all-female Isle of Mnaenn. There, by clever ruse and uncommon physical daring, he must recover the Great Fetish and solve the riddle of planet Kforri’s ancient history, or meet a fate more complicated than death!

Abner Harris was sent to Earth on a mission of extreme urgency. The universe was in danger of enslavement by the Medlins, and the fight against them called for Harris to assume the disguise of a flesh-and-blood Earthman.

But he discovered that the real villains of space were not the Medlins or the people of Earth: they were his own kind.

Suddenly he was alone, alienated from his own race, hated by the Medlins, and an imposter on Earth. No matter what side he chose he’d be a traitor.

Yet choose he must – or remain for ever a man without a planet.




(First published 1963)

Many times, Dumarest’s dream of Earth has almost cost him his life. As he journeys from world to world, restlessly moving outwards towards the edge of the galaxy where his goal lies, Dumarest must be alert, watchful. For there are new dangers – forces more powerful than man – which threaten his dream.

On a planet where violence and superstition hold sway, Dumarest forges a bond with the prophetess Kalin. And now, more than ever, he needs her.

Kalin. The mutant girl whose mysterious talent for seeing into the future has already saved him from Bloodtime on Logis, from space-disaster, from slavery on desolate Chron.

Kalin. Who can foretell the terrors yet to come.



(First published 1969)

Earls Dumarest’s quest for his homeland – the legendary planet Earth – had been long and dangerous. Trekking across the galactic wastelands of the Milky Way, he had been pursued and hindered at every step by the deadly Cyclan.

Now, just as his search seems to be nearing its close, Dumarest is once again side-tracked – forced to lead an army for Zenya in the deadly feuds of the alien planet of Paiyar . . .



(First published 1974)

Fighting for Mars means a battle with the Lobants, a formidable enemy, robot yet human, whose origins are shrouded in a terrifying Martian mystery. Ace rocketship pilot John Delmar, on a dangerous and unlicensed space light to the fabulous planet, solves the answer to the swarming scourge of Mars in a story that possesses all the compulsion of a three-dimensional horrific…

For Mark Carodyne, all of life was a gamble. For money, for sport, for knowledge, for danger. That’s why he had come to Krait for the skimming races he knew would make him rich. Or broke.

Or dead.

Krait. It was dominated by the pulsing quivering kaleidoscopic Omphalos that filled the sky above. An unmeasurable mass that was said to have the power to swallow whole planets – even galaxies. Indeed, seven ships had been sent to explore its mysteries and none had returned.

Now there were those who believed that Krait was about to come into its path. And Mark Carodyne had agreed to gamble his life to obtain the scientific data that might save the planet from destruction. One man. In a single ship. Skimming the edge of the unknown . . .

HUMAN VS INHUMAN

To the reptilian mind – especially the intelligent type of planets like Sergan and Obrac – the lives of others were as nothing to the need for status.

To the feline mind – especially to the clever advisor of the master of Sergan – the agonies of others were not only of no consequence, they could even be a source of joy.

So when these two types of inhuman intelligences got together to defy the Terran orders against interplanetary kidnapping, space hijacking, and human slavery, it was definitely a case for a top-notch secret agent. Because Earth could not afford a showdown with more than one alien species at a time.

The secret agent was Cap Kennedy, Free Acting Terran Envoy, and his pursuit of the SLAVE SHIP FROM SERGAN turned out to be one of his most dangerous single-handed adventures.

DOMINIC FLANDRY HAS FOUGHT THE GOOD FIGHT.

But fight, scheme and betray he might to stave it off, with the inevitability of physical law the Long Night of interstellar barbarism approaches. He has known that for 50 years – just as he has known that a lost cause may be the only one worth fighting for. That is why he has devoted his life (that part of it not devoted to the decadent pleasures of a decadent civilisation) to providing a few more years of peace and plenty for uncounted billions of sentient beings.

But now Dominic is of an age more suited to deciding the fate of empires from behind the throne; others must take up the challenge of courting danger on strange planets filled with creatures stranger still. Such a one, with her faithful Tigery companion, now enters the galactic stage. Her name is Diana.

Though her career is just beginning, two things are certain: illegitimate or not, she’s the true daughter of Dominic and…

SHE’LL DO HER OLD MAN PROUD!

Miro Hetzel is an effectuator: a private investigator and gentleman of the Gaean Reach. This book contains two stories of his adventures.

“The Dogtown Tourist Agency” – The Istagam Corporation has found an inexpensive means of manufacturing technical goods which greatly undercuts its competition. Hetzel, hired by that competition, must trace down the mysterious Istagam and discover their secret. His investigation leads him to the dangerous and exotic planet Maz, whose inhuman inhabitants’ life cycle is dependent upon conflict and warfare. There he becomes embroiled in murder.


“Freitzke’s Turn” – Hetzel must locate one Faurence Dacre, a brilliant surgeon and sociopath who has stolen the body parts of Hetzel’s client. In order to locate Dacre, Hetzel must retrace the man’s history to find his likely hiding place.

As the planet gleamed in his viewport, Sallman Ken could not believe that such a bleak and icy globe could have produced intelligent life. Yet when the expedition had sent in unmanned landers, that was what it had found. Some sort of native alien, surviving on the barren planet.

But Sallman and his team were not the first to make contact. Smugglers from his own planet had begun trading with the natives for a new and virulent narcotic – the most dangerous drug in the universe. Now Sallman would have to find out how he could survive on a planet so cold that sulphur was solid and water was liquid – and how to stop the source of the deadly drug!

Stranded on an alien planet, light years from home, wandering from blistering heat to searing cold, Nils Kruger was not a happy man. So when he met another being – even though it wasn’t human – things seemed to be looking up. The alien might be helpless, or it might be dangerous, but one thing was for sure – they stood a better chance for survival if they worked together.

But as the two creatures overcame their mutual suspicion, as they worked together, as the language barrier was broken down, Nils came to a terrifying conclusion – this alien was more intelligent than a human. And to it, Nils was the alien.

Power-Greedy.

Men wished to rule the world, but one man stood in their way. Peter Duncan came from the planet Mattrain – but who was he? Was he human? If so, whence came his vastly superior intellect and technical knowledge? These were mysteries the Administration feared – because they could not find the answer to them. Too late they saw danger. For, by then, Peter Duncan had escaped and taken refuge in the Devastated Areas, from which he continued his fight to save the human race from final utter destruction. But then, he had a reason. Martha of the chestnut hair and striking beauty, who alone knew his secret and who taught him how to love.

If you’re a human, the deadliest game.

You may consider yourselves experienced hunters. You have hunted on many planets. But here things are different.

For there are no mindless monsters or charging carnivores, but a devious, intelligent and dangerous prey.

A prey who is out to get you before you get him.

Man!

Jacque LeFavre is a tamer – a member of one of the tough and honed exploration teams that, since the dramatic discovery of the Levant-Meyer Translation, humankind has been able to send to the stars. And Jacque’s first world is the second planet out from Groombridge 1618. It isn’t an especially promising place; the planets accompanying small stars rarely pan out. But the strange and mysterious creature that Jacque and his colleagues find there, with its gift of telepathy, leads to contact with the alien and enigmatic L’vrai, and confronts humankind with an awesome opportunity – and appalling danger.

General Benjamin Shore was heading for the stars – under forged orders and in defiance of Presidential commands. He was leaving Earth in an untested ship with a crew chosen by necessity. And with nothing but faith to guide him. His only hope was to find habitable worlds in the uncharted regions of space ahead.

Thus began Man’s first mission to the unexplored universe. Shore knew that before him lay danger, probable disillusion – maybe even death. But nothing had prepared him for the nightmare he would face on the planet of the Grey-furs for the menace of the Golden People who had driven all other races from Galactic Centre or for what awaited him if he returned to the world he called home.

They were humanity’s hope – the first young people selected to leave Earth for study in the Galactic Federation. But something went wrong in deep space. Terribly wrong.

Suddenly Jim Rawlins, Ellen Bouvier, Curt Harrington, and the squirrel-like Alien philosopher Peep were castaways, stranded on the quarantined planet of Quebahr – with no training, and little hope of rescue. Between them and the Federation’s emergency beacon were primitive Mauregs, aggressive Walats, lizard-like Noifs – plus danger, conspiracy and the mystery of an impending high-tech war on a backward peaceful planet.
Without warning, the future of the two worlds – Earth and Quebahr – depended on three young humans’ ability to adapt and survive.