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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.

Lucius Shepard’s work ranges across the fields of fantasy, science fiction and magic realism, garnering comparisons with Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Best-known for the story suite The Dragon Griaule – available as a Gollancz Fantasy Masterwork – he has won or been nominated for every major SFF award.

This omnibus collects his ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD-shortlisted novel GREEN EYES, WORLD FANTASY AWARD-winning collection THE JAGUAR HUNTER and SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD-winning novella VACANCY.

Dr Ezawa had made some remarkable discoveries about the Voodoo beliefs that persisted in the Louisiana bayou country – like how to create zombies by injecting corpses with the dirt from old slave graveyards.


The eyes of the awoken dead blazed with a brilliant green luminosity, and before they burned out, strange visions and superhuman abilities tormented them.


The poet Harrison didn’t want to remain a guinea pig. He wanted to find out the truth behind the scientists’ sinister manipulations – and he wanted to stay alive.


But when he escaped and began to test his growing powers on the superstitious Cajun swamp dwellers, another terrifying world began to unfold before his green eyes…

They had conquered Mars! Earth was next.

And in the council chambers at Washington, Earth’s leaders gathered to face the peril.

Mars had gone down to defeat in one hour and thirty-four minutes. And now a fleet of creatures from outer space was headed towards Earth.

All eyes turned to Eldin Raigmore, President of the United States – the one man to be trusted above all others. One by one the elite were dispatched on missions of last-minute strategy. They went with confidence, inspired by the swift, sure mind of Raigmore.

Civilization rested in his hands. And he was a secret member of the invader race!

The Earth does not belong to man alone

The Himalayas bury their secrets well. Two skulls unearthed in the cradle of the human race – the remote heights of Kashmir – throw evolutionary theory into chaos. But a far more disturbing secret lies hidden deep in the bleak mountains and snow-swept valleys unseen by human eyes.

A few miles from the explosive triangle of tension where Afghanistan and Pakistan border on India the story of the century breaks. And the echoes of the most shattering revelation yet made to man threaten to plunge the world into total war which will turn the cradle of the human race into its final grave.

It was the ultimate case: to stop the ultimate drug…
I’m Horowitz. Brandy Horowitz. My husband Sam and I are private eyes who take cases for G.O.D., Inc. – the outfit that runs the Labyrinth to infinite alternate earths filled with crime, danger…and murder.

Power-mad fanatics are running a narcotic V.D. that spreads like a bug, works like a drug, and one touch hooks you for good. You don’t become a junkie…you become a zombie. ‘Cause this monkey’s not just on your back, but in your brain – it’s got a mind, and if you kick it, it kicks back with madness and death.

So this beautiful black PI and wonderful Jewish sleuth have to smash the source before the drug-bug reaches our client’s Home World. But the opposition’s got fake Sams and Brandys set up in headquarters on the two worlds that hold any possible leads: one that never heard of civil rights…

And one ruled by the Nazis.

I’m Horowitz. Private eye. I work of G.O.D., Inc. – the company that rules the Labyrinth between infinite alternate Earths. Only now I’ve got new clients – vengeful rebels out to wreck the Labyrinth. But their Big Plan’s on hold: one of the inner circle’s dead, leaving eight conspirator/ prime suspends on eight private worlds.

And finding the killer’s the least of my problems. The rebels play for high stakes – and I know too much to live. If I succeed, they’ll kill me. If I stall, they’ll blow up a planet – ours. If I escape, the Company will kill me. If I stop the rebel scheme, my wife and child will be turned into mindless drug-sex slaves.

But if I don’t stop them, they’ll unleash a force that might well cremate Earths. All Earths. In all universes. Throughout all creation…

Marooned! The pulsating Well World Saga continues…


As Volume Three opens, Mavra Chang has been a prisoner on the Well World for eleven years. Her once human friends are now grotesquely mutated, and her own body is monstrously changed.


Mavra is abandoned. Her only hope, the planetoid circling above her, containing Obie, the supercomputer that could restore her body. But Obie can only be reached by entering the northern hemisphere, where no creature of blood and flesh can exist. yet Mavra’s eyes were shining. After all these years the great game was on again, the game she was born to play…

The man in black picked up something which had been leaning beside him. A ring perhaps two feet wide . . . yet when the man in black laid it down on the floor it was as large as he was tall.

The light went out. A bluish glow now emanated from the ring, revealing Bryda’s face ghastly gray as she leaned forward, and Yarco’s also, set and serious, and the conjurer’s impassive.

And within the ring, where moments before there had been the bare planks of the floor, a shape that moved, and opened eyes glowing like coals, and spoke.

‘What world is this?’ the awful voice inquired.



(First published 1962)

Rex Morris belonged to the master class which ruled the entire world by brain power or brutality, depending on which was needed. He should have functioned perfectly in the rigid totalitarian society of the future where every thought, word, and action was controlled by the superstate, where everyone was watched night and day by the Great Eye of the internal security forces.

It was a strange world, but the rewards were great for those who belonged to the right caste. Morris had all the qualifications – yet he didn’t belong. Nonconformity could mean liquidation – but he was prepared to take the risk!

Amazonia had a reputation for strangeness even among the zany worlds of the United Federation of Planets. It was a spartan planet ruled by a fearsome military caste – made up exclusively of women. The males of Amazonia usually wound up in some warrior’s harem.

When Guy Thomas arrived he was allowed the privilege of landing only because he offered the government profitable trade agreements, but it wasn’t long before his real plans were fulfilled by his secret meetings with the male-liberationist revolutionary group, The Sons of Liberty. They needed a lot of help.

The more he got involved, however, the more he got the feeling that something was wrong with the whole setup. Guy Thomas was soon to learn that there was more to Amazonia than met the eye – and he wasn’t going to like the truth at all.

The Long Winter is over.

The People of the New Springtime must go out and reclaim their world.

For generations the survivors of the cataclysm have sheltered in cocoons buried in the earth and waited for the gods to grow tired of hurling down death-stars onto a frozen world. Now it is time for Koshmar and the boy-chronicler, Hresh, and the rest of Koshmar’s tribe to emerge into the sun. A strange and savage landscape awaits them, where rat-wolves, bloodbirds and soulless hjjk-men stalk – and terrifyingly altered other creatures.

In the ruins of Vengiboneeza, the ancient capital of the sapphire-eyes folk, Hresh dares to celebrate their triumph – and suffers a shattering defeat at the realisation of a great and terrible truth.




(First published 1988)

The death-stars had come, and they had kept on coming for hundreds of thousands of years, falling upon the Earth, swept upon it by a vagrant star that had passed through the outer reaches of the solar system. They brought with them a time of unending darkness and cold. It was an event that occured every twenty-six million years, and there was no turning it aside.

But all that was done with now. At last the death-stars had ceased to fall, the sky had cleared of dust and cinders, the sun’s warmth again was able to break through the clouds. The glaciers relinquished their hold on the land; the Long Winter ended; the New Springtime began. The world was born anew.

Now each year was warmer than the last. The fair seasons of spring and summer, long lost from the world, came again with increasing power. And the People, having survived the dark time in their sealed cocoons, were spreading rapidly across the fertile land. But others were already there. The hjjks, the somber cold-eyed insect-folk, had never retreated, even at the time of greatest chill. The world had fallen to them by default, and they had been its sole masters for seven hundred thousand years. They were not likely to share it gladly now . . .

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.

The new millennium has barely begun when a vast fleet of alien vessels descends without warning on the Earth. Some starships blaze mighty trails of fire; some pop into view, unfathomably silent. Three different but equally strange kinds of alien emerge. Wide-eyed UFOlogists who rush to welcome them are scooped up like bugs collected for study.

The aliens make no response when the governments attempt to communicate with them, but a single act of resistance to them provokes massive retaliation. This is the first major catastrophe of the alien years and it will be followed by others. In silence the aliens take control of the world, effortlessly enslaving what remains of its population.

On a remote California ranch, the Carmichaels are a family of blue-eyed, straight-backed patriots, flawed by narrow thinking and repressed emotions – but redeemed by their courage. With them rests the slender hope that natives of Earth may one day be free.



(First published 1997)

In the course of a continuing quest for his legendary birthplace, Earl Dumarest befriends a young man who says his home world was called Nerth.

New Earth, perhaps? Or even the original planet Dumarest seeks? He must find out.

And so Dumarest comes to Nerth – to discover that the Cyclan, his prime enemy in the cosmos, is already there . . . together with mysteries and terror that defy the imagination!




(First published 1975)

The Terridae believed the lost Earth was heaven and utopia combined. In their artificial planet, they moved slowly through the universe in search of it. And in their eyes, the rediscovery of Earth was to be the Event.

Now they said the Event was coming! Earl Dumarest – who was born on Earth and knew the truth – was an unwelcome visitor among them. If they knew of Earth’s whereabouts, they were not telling him.

But another Event was already on its way. A Cyclan ship was rapidly approaching the Terridae’s world, confident that this time Dumarest would fall into their heartless clutches.

Dumarest was not ready to flee – but if he stayed there would be no Earth for him, only a long, lingering doom.





(First published 1982)

Alvin is a clone. One of four, all raised separately, all with unnatural powers. Terrified by their potential, their creator attempts to wipe their recent memories, their knowledge of the talents. But the process goes wrong, and all four are left with no memory at all. They see the world with brand new eyes.

Sent to a remote research station, kept under the guidance of an intelligent ape, Alvin begins to recover his memories. Desperate to rediscover his brothers, he sets off to London in a desperate search for their creator. But when he is kidnapped by criminal apes, the trouble really begins.

In the dim far future of Earth, when the sun had shrunk to a small red disk in the dark sky and the race of man lived in isolated cities that echoed with the vastness of the world’s history, science, myth and magic had become one. Sorcerors who read the books of ancient times held great power, and fearsome monsters created in ages long forgotten stalked the land. In this world of mystery and danger, the adventurer known as Cugel the Clever was forced to undertake a quest for Iucounu the Laughing Magician – a quest that was to take him to lands stranger than any he had dreamed of, and pit his wits and his sword against powers from beyond time itself.

Previously published as The Eyes of the Overworld, this is the second of a quartet of titles sharing the same far-future setting first introduced in The Dying Earth

Contents: The Overworld, Cil, The Mountains of Magnatz, The Sorcerer Pharesm, The Pilgrims, The Cave in the Forest, The Manse of Iucounu.

All Jack Vance titles in the SFGateway use the author’s preferred texts, as restored for the Vance Integral Edition (VIE), an extensive project masterminded by an international online community of Vance’s admirers. In general, we also use the VIE titles, and have adopted the arrangement of short story collections to eliminate overlaps.

This is the strange tale of Horty, a little boy who ran away from home and took refuge in the bizarre world of the carnival. With him went his favourite toy – an old jack-in-the-box whose jewelled eyes sparkled and shone, hypnotic in their brilliance.

And among the freaks and oddities of the sideshows he found friends – ‘jewel’ people like him, who tried to protect him from the terrible secret of his existence .

Time was running out for Bob Kinnaird. Without much warning, the Hunter – the green protoplasmic alien that lived inside him and cured all his ills – had suddenly become his destroyer. Day by day Bob grew weaker and weaker, but only specialists from the Hunter’s distant world would know what was wrong with him and, more importantly, how to save him.

But the only way searchers from his planet could find him was to locate his missing spaceship . . . a spaceship that had crashed beneath the ocean years before, its location still very much a mystery. Once again leading an investigation against time – as he had done so many years before – the Hunter knew he had to find comrades and find them fast . . . before someone murdered his best friend.

The black-clad mercenaries of the Friendly planets fought where their employer and their God dictated. On New Earth they pitted their fanaticism against the cold courage of the Dorsai.

And the implacable hatred of one man, Tam Olyn. Olyn saw his brother-in-law shot down before his eyes. His quest for vengeance took him across half the civilised worlds, to Cassida and Frieland, to St. Marie and back to New Earth. He met men of all the splinter groups into which mankind had evolved an he used them all to bring about his revenge – until Padma the Exotic taught him how to use his special powers, and the frightening knowledge of Final Encyclopaedia.

So begins one of the most celebrated stories in fantasy literature . . . packed full of mystery, deep themes and incredible prose, meet Severian the Torturer and follow him on his journey across the great world of Urth

Severian is a torturer, born to the guild and with an exceptionally promising career ahead of him . . . until he falls in love with one of his victims, a beautiful young noblewoman.

Her excruciations are delayed for some months and, out of love, Severian helps her commit suicide and escape her fate. For a torturer, there is no more unforgivable act. In punishment he is exiled from the guild and his home city to the distant metropolis of Thrax with little more than Terminus Est, a fabled sword, to his name.

Along the way he has to learn to survive in a wider world without the guild – a world in which he has already made both allies and enemies. And a strange gem is about to fall into his possession, which will only make his enemies pursue him with ever-more determination . . .

Winner of the World Fantasy Award for best novel, 1981
Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1982

Readers can’t stop reading The Shadow of the Torturer:

‘Full of rich characters and great imagination’ Mark Lawrence, author of Red Sister

‘A dark jewel . . . He has a mastery of language not often seen in fantasy writing . . . Couple this with an original and unique, highly imaginative and complex worldbuilding and the high praise is warranted‘ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘This is a picaresque fantasy with a difference, for our hero Severian is no wide-eyed country boy from the shire, but an apprentice torturer, thoroughly schooled in his trade’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘There are certain books that can be considered life-changing experiences. Gene Wolfe is an author who has written one of those for me’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
‘The Book of the New Sun Tetralogy is one of the great achievements in science fiction and is a MUST READ for fans of the genre. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘In addition to being unique in style, The Shadow of the Torturer is a gorgeous piece of work: passionate storytelling (heart-wrenching in places), fascinating insights into nature and the human condition, beautiful prose’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Genre fiction at its finest. Original, difficult and well-crafted, it is easy to see how Wolfe is regarded as a writer’s writer’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

In the Country of Tattooed Men the nights feel hollow and are full of sounds of the jungle: danger is everywhere. Tattoos hide all from the prying eyes of the world. On Murderer’s Walk the cards are dealt for the ultimate game. There can be only one loser: pray you do not hold the ace of spades. And from York to London, Northampton to Southend the boys are surfing Spanish style.
It’s exciting and exhilarating and potentially fatal.

Gary Kilworth has created a powerful and striking anthology of stories from the past, present and future.