Search Results for: darkness-and-the-light

Stapledon projects two separate futures for humanity, depending not on the outcome of World War II but on the failure or success of a future “Tibetan Renaissance” to influence the temper and ideology of the militaristic empires that threaten it.

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…

Tanith Lee today is one of the most versatile and respected writers of fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and DREAMS OF DARK AND LIGHT represents a massive mid-career retrospective of her achievements over the previous decade.

Here are unforgettable tales of werewolves that prowl chateaux, an Earthwoman in exile on a distant planet, demons that inhabit bodies of the living dead, a race of vampiric creatures who prey upon a cursed castle, and many other works of exotic vision, mythic science fiction, and contemporary horror. Also included are two stories that have received the World Fantasy Award, “Elle est Trois, (La Mort)” and “The Gorgon,” making DREAMS OF DARK AND LIGHT a distinguished one volume library of myth-weaving at its most eloquent and evocative.

The Mannschenn Drive was the gateway to the stars, but it had one unfortunate site effect: Traveling faster than light, mankind reverted to the bestial form of his own legendary nightmare-the lycanthropic horror that the full moon once called forth from the soul’s depths, now no longer howling at the moon but soaring far beyond it…

On what trivialities the big things in life hang.

From the moment when, dining alone in her Brussels hotel, Georgia Yeo, celebrated writer of detective thrillers, opens her cigarette case and the Count comes into her life with the polite offer of a light, she realises that here is fate.

In that moment too begins the strange and inimitable spell of Georgia’s story. It is an enthralling story, of a woman successful in her career, yet timid and hesitant in making a decision which might have a far-reaching effect on her private life.

It’s truly a step in the dark …

The night watchman at Hallams, the long-established Bond Street jewellers, is found dead with his head battered in, and a number of display cases have been rifled. Chief Inspector Burr picks up the trail, with the young Inspector Poole as his assistant.

But before long, the crime at Hallams is overshadowed by a mystery which stirs Scotland Yard into a frenzy of activity. Even the great Superintendent Fraser is aroused from his customary Olympian calm; but it is the detailed work of young Poole which eventually solves the double problem, links mystery to mystery and brings the clear light of day . . .

Against the Fall of Night

The Roman Empire had spread order, knowledge, and civilisation throughout the ancient world. When Rome fell, the light of reason flickered out across the Empire. The Dark Ages had begun; they would last a thousand years. Could a man from the 20th century prevent the fall of Rome? When lightening struck and he was hurled backward into the sixth century, the question became anything but academic to Martin Padway, but even forearmed with a knowledge of 20th century technology and of events to come, what could one man do? But Padway must try, lest darkness fall.

Hesta Web, with her hot red hair and her tough, guarded coldness, is trapped with a mother who hates her and a father who is mostly away earning money on an oil rig. When Hesta discovers that her mother and her mother’s lover have had rampant sex in Hesta’s bed, she absconds with her friend Janey to the seaside.

It is the last day of the season, sun bright and sea sparkling. The bars and shops are open, the funfair spins round with shrieks and shouts. As night falls, the illuminations go on. But when Janey catches the last train to London, Hesta stays behind. She falls in with the gothic-looking, unpleasantly attractive Skilt and his subject colony of junkies and beggars. In a rotting hotel on the front, among the broken marble balustrades, the mouse-eaten rooms and the bonfire in the ballroom, Hesta takes up her new life. She hears drugged legends told beside the fire, the rumours of ghosts and the strangeness of the sea.

For now the season has ended, the seaside is deserted, the illuminations are switched off, this place is very strange. Does Skilt know its secret? Should Hesta be wary of the blond man who watches her from the pier? And what happens when the lights go out?

It’s dark.

It is a time of great darkness, when the sun is in danger of being forever extinguished, and mankind has been divided into two warring factions: the worshipers of the God of Light and the servants of Eternal Night. Now three unsuspecting travelers are called by prophecy to face a legion of the undead and the powers of the Dark Lord in the faint hope of reclaiming the world for the light.

What is an orc?

An orc is an 18 stone fighting machine, made of muscle, hide, talon and tusk, with a villainous disposition and a mean sense of humour. And, of course, an orc is a poor dumb grunt – the much abused foot soldier of the Evil Horde of Darkness.

The usual last battle of Good against Evil is about to begin. Orc Captain Ashnak and his war-band know exactly what they can expect. The forces of Light are outnumbered, full of headstrong heroes devoid of tactics – but the Light’s still going to win. Orcs – the sword fodder in the front line – will die by the thousands.

Life’s a bitch.

In this, the second book of the epic trilogy begun in The Forging of the Shadows, the once-glorious city of Thrull has become a place of death and despair. Seven years before, Lord Faran Groton, High Priest of the God of Darkness, overthrew Thrull and set loose his army of vampires to plague the city, waiting for the day the sun would rise no more…But the God of Light has his champions as well. A motley trio of survivors searches for the three ancient artifacts which can defeat the darkness. Traveling far beyond their own lands, they will encounter nightmares and disasters before facing their most dangerous enemies — the Dark-born Nations of the Night!

Uma, a beautiful but frightened dancing girl, sells a strange bronze statuette of Nataraja, the dancing Siva, to Dr Chris Anderson, while he was visiting a bazaar in Pollachi, Southern India. He travels back to Kerala and puts the statuette on the bedside cabinet in his hotel room. His sleep is tortured by fantastic nightmares in which he seems hosts of ancient Indian gods and demons, in all their splendour and horror.

He wakes in terror to hear a faint voice whispering in the darkness. The bronze statuette is glowing with unearthly light and there is a smell if incense.

Can a human soul be imprisoned in bronze by the power of weird, unearthly dark magic?

Can Dr Chris Anderson release the psychic prisoner? Who is Uma, the mysterious dancing girl?

A planet’s destiny trembled in the balance.Waiting, quiet and as dangerous as a timber-wolf, Vickery heard another faint slither of foot on stone. A dark shape flitted past the lighted shop front on the opposite side of the street and vanished into the doorway. Vickery’s heard gave one gigantic lunge, and a wolfish smile creased his face. He fired at the shadows and the brilliance of the exploding charge threw everything out in the street into garish highlights…

White-skinned, black-haired Sovaz is beautiful and wayward, yet seemingly soulless – as if vampirised by some unknown force. Wife of a very wealthy but older husband, she is the prize ornament of his treasure collection, yet she is toying with a naive young American lover. And while the faces of this doomed trio converge, somewhere outside the glowing casements a creature of darkness prepares to feed…

Here are a novel and twelve short stories encompassing all the richness and variety of Tanith Lee’s unique talent.

This fascinating and disturbing collection casts a new and chilling light on that ancient mythical creature, the mermaid… pinpoints the ultimate peril of mankind’s fascination with the domestic cat… sucks us into the pulsing horror of bricks and mortar with a life of their own… investigates the dark and marvellous legends of tree spirits, and the tantalising allure of other carnal obsessions.

VOLKHAVAAR is a novel of witchcraft and wonders on a world far removed from those we know. Here the gods contend for power – the Dark forces against the Light – and here an entire city and its land is plunged into the shadow of an eil beyond anything conceivable.

It is the story of Shaina the slave girl and of Volk the outcast who enslaved himself to cosmic forces to gain total power – and of how they were finally to meet and flash – with an entire world as their prize.

For the people in this novel, the concerns of everyday life are beginning to transmute into the extraordinary and to reveal the forces, dark and light, that truly govern their lives. So it is for Pierce Moffett, would-be historian and author, who has moved from New York to the Faraway Hills, where he seems to discover – or rediscover – a path into magic, past and present. And so it is for Rosie Rasmussen, a single mother grappling with her mysterious uncle’s legacy and her young daughter Samantha’s inexplicable seizures. For Pierce’s lover Rose Ryder, another path unfolds: she’s drawn into a cult that promises to exorcise her demons – the same cult that Samantha’s father has joined. It is the dark of the year, between Halloween and the winter solstice, and the gateway is open between the worlds of the living and the dead. A great cycle of time is ending, and Pierce and Rosie, Samantha and Rose Ryder must take sides in an age-old war that is approaching the final battle…Or is it?

Under the cover of darkness and a violent storm, electrical engineer Sidney Cassell thought he’d committed the perfect murder. But immediately after pushing his rival to his death from atop a pylon, he himself is struck by a live high-voltage cable. Cassell survives the accident, only to discover that the electrical shock has affected his body, causing him to glow with a strange inner light. Soon he becomes sucked into a vortex of murders and treachery, hunted by the police and unscrupulous scientists seeking the secret of his weird affliction.

It was rarer and more beautiful and more precious than any piece of mineral, and its dark glory outshone the lights of the heavens. The Gods had wrought it in the Country of the Immortals, and no other thing like it had ever been upon the earth.

No emperor could hold the Throne without the Black Star. And now it was missing.

The evil Green-Robed One who had usurped the Throne would use his darkest powers to reclaim it – and the young warrior fleeing across the embattled land with his beautiful lady to save this treasure of all the world would know the torments of the damned…

The Bear’s Baby and Other Stories gathers together for the first time six standalone tales by award-winning author Judith Moffett. Featuring aliens intent on halting humanity’s biosphere-destroying behaviour, an alternate USA under the presidency of Davy Crockett, cross-species telepathic communication, angels, dreaming, and climate change – although not all at once! – this is a collection defined by variety, and admirably demonstrates the broad range of Moffett’s skill as a writer.

With new introductions to each story from the author, The Bear’s Baby and Other Stories contains:

The Bear’s Baby
Chickasaw Slave
The Realms of Glory
Ten Lights and Darks
The Middle of Somewhere
Space Ballet

There were three of them – Adzel who measured four and a half metres and resembled a dragon, Chee Lan who was furry, catlike and female, and David Falkayn, a dare-devil rakehell from space.

When they learned of a rogue planet two hundred and four light-years from Sol, they were interested because the planet, a nightmare of ice and darkness, was rich in minerals. And the planet was about to melt – to move closer to a sun and release the vast wealth entombed in its depths.

And Falkayn, Chee Lan and Adzel were prepared to risk the horrors of an erupting, melting world if they could only salvage the riches that would shortly boil from the planet’s core…

The siege was over. The citadel of Avillis had burned, burned through the night, with its terrible Lord and his monstrous children in it. Nothing remained now but broken walls, charred stumps where trees had, grown, tattered lattices open to the sky. But at the heart of the palace the great Cup of Avillis stood untouched: pure gold, crusted with jewels each worth an emperor’s ransom. Small wonder that Kachil, common thief, should covet it. Or Feluce, dapper arrogant climber; riches would mean much to him. But why did Havor of Taon, the hawk, join them to carry the cursed Cup away? For it was Havor who found that the Chalice once stolen could not be lightly cast aside, even in horror and despair. While always, inexorably, half-seen, slipping through shadows, shapes in the mind’s eye, three phantom riders followed after it across the winter-blasted plain.

This chilling tale of flight and inescapable pursuit rises to a confrontation of ghostly powers. Havor thought his story could have only one ending, but the spirit world can summon Forces of Light as well as Dark.

On the mysterious Well World, the evil tyrant Josich and his dark agents search desperately for the eight scattered pieces of the fabled Straight Gate. Whoever possesses the Gate will wield enormous power, travelling between universes at the speed of light and wreaking havoc across galaxies.

Opposing Josich is a small band of travellers new to the Well World. There is Core, once a machine, now flesh and blood; Ming and Ari, two minds sharing a single body; Jaysu, an angel; and Ghengis O’Leary, a lizard being. Unbeknownst to them, they have an unlikely ally: a vengeful entity who is able to clone any person or object with a single touch – and mete out death just as swift…

From the Garlowe Clusters in the north to the Veils of Darkness in the south, the Star Kingdom sprawled over roughly a fifth of the galaxy. So huge was this realm that those who tussled for power over it seemed unable to appreciate that it faced annihilation by the Patch, a roving region of peculiar pseudo-energy a light-year across which drained the life-force from any living thing it encountered.

The Patch had moved into the Kingdom and was systematically feeding on system after system. Cynically unperturbed by the appalling loss of life, the royal houses merely tried to involve the Patch in their machinations, to the extent that civil war broke out all over again. But in the event, the Patch was to provide the crucial factor in the struggle for absolute power. The Annihilation Factor!

From the vaults of the SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal introduction to the varied work of author, editor and critic, L. Sprague de Camp.

Although arguably best known for his continuation of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, de Camp was an important figure in the formative period of modern SF, alongside the likes of Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. In a career spanning seven decades, he won the HUGO, WORLD FANTASY LIFE ACHIEVEMENT and SFWA GRAND MASTER AWARDs. This omnibus collects three previously out-of-print classics: LEST DARKNESS FALL, ROGUE QUEEN and THE TRITONIAN RING.

Lest Darkness Fall:
The Roman Empire had spread order, knowledge and civilisation throughout the ancient world. When Rome fell, the light of reason flickered out across the Empire. The Dark Ages had begun; they would last a thousand years. Could a man from the 20th century prevent the fall of Rome?

Rogue Queen:
Decades before a certain five-year voyage, L. Sprague de Camp sent a spirited crew to a strange and distant world, where their meeting with its inhabitants created chaos in local politics, upset the balance of power and generally created the most entertaining havoc.

The Tritonian Ring:
The gods of Poseidonis – or Atlantis – were powerful and real. Now they were determined to destroy the kingdom ruled by the father of Prince Vakar, the one man whose mind they could not read. The only way to save the kingdom was to discover that thing which the gods feared most.