Search Results for: impossibles,-the

In two words, IM POSSIBLE

First, late-model cars began driving themselves away – with nobody at the wheel…

Then, valuables began vanishing from locked rooms…

It was a new kind of crime. And Malone, the Government’s expert on “impossibilities,” was afraid it was a new kind of criminal…one who could disappear at will, walk through walls, and thumb his nose at the police.

And Malone was dead right…

Winner of six Nebula and two Hugo awards for her fiction, Connie Willis is acclaimed for her gifted imagination and bold invention. Here are eleven of her finest stories, surprising tales in which the impossible becomes real, the real becomes impossible, and strangeness lurks at every turn.

The end of the world comes not with a bang but a series of whimpers over many years in “The Last of the Winnebagos.”

The terror of pain and dying gives birth to a startling truth about the nature of the stars, a principle known as the “Schwarzschild Radius.”

In “Spice Pogrom,” an outrageous colony in outer space becomes the setting for a screwball comedy of bizarre complications, mistaken identities, far-too-friendly aliens – and even true love.

For three decades science fiction legend Alan Dean Foster has captivated readers around the world, from his debut classic The Tar-Aiym Krang and his inspired scenario for the first Star Trek movie to a host of New York Times bestsellers, including Splinter of the Mind’s Eye and Flinx in Flux.
In this collection of twenty brilliant odysseys of the imagination, Foster once again soars beyond the limits of reality – where the real thrills begin…
NASA Sending Addicts to Mars!: It was the most insane idea in the annals of space travel – and the only one that would work.
Diesel Dream: Sometimes on dark, lonely highways dreams do come true, and this trucker’s hope was the best one of all.
Sideshow: Flinx hadn’t a clue about the alien dancer, but Pip knew trouble when she saw it.
Empowered: A magnificent male discovers the not-so-super part about being a superhero.
The Question: A bold adventurer determines to solve one of life’s profound mysteries.
…and fourteen other amazing stories!

With hair the colour of the moon, Corleu was different from the other Wayfolk. He alone tried to free his wandering tribe from the unearthly swamp that ensnared them – and he alone dared to cross the forbidden threshold. There he found a strange dark house, a place of legends and gods, foreseen in the stars. And there, to save his people, began Corleu’s search for the heart of the Cygnet – and impossible treasure…

But if legends are real, nothing is impossible.

The rift in the fabric of space was fast approaching the Well World, and time was running out. Troops all over the planet were gathering for the final battle.

Nathan Brazil and Mavra Chang somehow had to reach the Well of Souls in time to save the universe and before any of the hostile natives managed to kill them.

At best, a difficult mission. At worst, impossible – especially since there was a price on Brazil’s head and many would be claimants! For Brazil, the difficult was but the work of a moment – the impossible would take a little longer!

AN UNLIKELY BAND OF SUPERHEROES

A woman who loved in vain, a magician who loved only wisdom, and a warrior to whom love was a genetic impossibility – fought the Doom that filled the skies of their strange world.

And it came to pass that Zolobion the Magician and Ganelon Silvermane set forth from the land of the great Stone Face and took the first steps of their gigantic journey across the world, a journey so long and fearful and so filled with wonders that no man since time began until that hour had undertaken a like adventure.

But their mission was a logical impossibility. Hence what purpose in undertaking it?

Only that the Moon was falling.

A washed-up actor, a mysterious motel and a Malaysian “woman of power” form the central elements in a riveting account of a rootless man forced to confront the impossible – but very real- demons of his past.

What would you do if little men in purple uniforms filled your living room with impossible machinery?

A machine made it possible to bury your crimes in the future?

You were abandoned on an asteroid alone with a murderous living snake of metal?

A magician turned detective is caught up in the most baffling locked-room murder mystery…

‘One of the all-time greatest impossible murder mysteries’ Publishers Weekly starred review

‘Dazzling’ Saturday Review

‘A cornerstone of detective fiction’ New York Times


Master magician The Great Merlini has hung up his top hat and white gloves, and now spends his days running a magic shop in New York and his nights moonlighting as a consultant for the NYPD. When the crimes seem impossible, it is his magician’s mind they need.

So when two occultists are discovered dead in locked rooms, one spread out on a pentagram, both appearing to have been murdered under similar circumstances, Merlini is immediately called in. The list of suspects includes an escape artist, a professional medium, and a ventriloquist – and it is only too clear that this is a world Merlini knows rather too well…

On the surface, James Ellerbee was a crackpot with an impossible invention: a crystal cube you could hold in your hand that allowed instant communication with anyone on Earth. But the inventor came with affidavits, signed and notarized, from three unbiased witnesses: the Fire Chief, the Chief of Police, and the Community Church Pastor of Redrock…

A revised version of THE ASTRONAUTS MUST NOT LAND (1963). It isn’t every day that the impossible happens. But when it does, and you’re a witness, you have to start looking for answers. The authorities won’t talk. So you decide to find out for yourself. That’s what Drummond did. And when he found out. it changed the universe!

WE DEMAND THAT YOU HAND OVER THE OBJECT.
Impossible. Ownership is in the hands of our clients.
HUMAN OWNERSHIP OF THE OBJECT IS NOT ADMISSIBLE. STREALL CLAIM IS ABSOLUTE. YOU WILL NOTIFY US OF WHEREABOUTS
It is already in transit.
WE WILL INTERCEPT. NOTIFY.
Your claim must be made through the courts.
HUMAN COURTS MEAN NOTHING TO THE STREALL. EITHER YOU COMPLY OR TREALL FLEETS WILL OCCUPY YOUR SYSTEM.

Lydia Grey, an American returning to London after many years, is woken by footsteps in the night. There is someone in her room – of that she is sure. But that is also impossible. There is only one door and it is bolted shut. The windows are eight floors up, and are locked against the winter night.

As the noise recedes she switches on her bedside lamp. No one is there. Was it a dream? An illusion of a half-awakened state? Or is someone out to get her?

When a yacht explodes in the Bahamas, apparently killing six people, Sam Boyleston, an attorney from Texas and the brother of one of the victims, is compelled to investigate the circumstances, as does Raoul Kelly, a newspaper reporter.

After the disaster the yacht’s burned captain was temporarily marooned on a small island, and soon it becomes apparent that one person is ruthlessly manipulating events. But for Boyleston and Kelly proving guilt appears impossible …

‘A major suspense novel’ New York Times

When Karl Rainer Andor came to Berlin for the last time it was sacrifice, not victory, that was uppermost in his mind. He intended to use the plutonium bomb he had elaborately planted to effect the reunification of Germany, but he didn’t expect to survive.

The ‘allied’ powers are concerned as much with scoring off each other as with finding the bomb – or with seducing or frightening Andor into telling them where it is. And eventually they are faced with the impossible task of evacuating the historic capital of Germany.

Jim Blake, journalist and successful spy novelist, is sent to New Orleans to do a story on James Claiborne Blake, a congressional hopeful in the 1912 election. But even from New York he senses following eyes. James Blake, it seems, is threatened by sexual indiscretions.

And as the plot thickens, both Blakes become involved in politics and intrigue – and then impossible murder – among the atmospheric byways of New Orleans.


‘A wonderful period piece that includes some fascinating real-life characters’ Saturday Review

Is the story of 21st Century Earth – a world where work is forgotten, where the masses fight boredom with trank pills and telly, and where it is almost impossible to leave the social class you were born in. You could break the class barrier only by hiring yourself out as a mercenary to fight in the prime-time wars that are fought to keep the telly-viewing public satisfied. That is the only way to move up the ladder – if you could stay alive long enough.

It was totally impossible for Cliaand to wage interstellar war…but the crazy little planet was winning, whatever the odds. And there wasn’t much the peaceful galaxy could do…except send Slippery Jim di Griz – the Stainless Steel Rat – to wage his own kind of guerrilla campaign against the grey men of Cliaand and their leader, the indomitable Kraj. But then the Rat was aided by a band of liberated Amazons and his own beloved, murderous Angelina…and they had to swing the odds in his favour.

In the shadowy hallway of clockmaker Johannes Carver’s house a policeman is found murdered, the arrow-tipped minute hand of an antique clock embedded in his neck.

For Dr Gideon Fell this is the only case that has ever really frightened him, and before he can solve it he must find answers to some seemingly impossible questions: why was Calvin Boscombe standing near the corpse with a silencer on his gun? Who locked the attic door? And what has become of the sixteenth-century death-watch?

In this exhilarating sequel to The Skylark of Space, momentous danger again stalks genius inventor and interplanetary adventurer Dr. Richard Seaton.

Seaton’s allies on the planet Kondal are suffering devastating attacks by the forces of the Third Planet. Even worse, the menacing and contemptuous Fenachrones are threatening to conquer the galaxy and wipe out all who oppose them. And don’t forget the dastardly machinations of Seaton’s arch-nemesis, DuQuesne, who embarks on a nefarious mission of his own.

Against such vile foes and impossible odds, how is victory possible?

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.

Makstarn was ugly, an outcast in the midst of the beautiful people of his tribe. Where they were tall and slender, he was short and squat. Where they were golden, touched with the beauty of the dawn, he was black and hairy . . . and hated by those of his own generation. It little mattered that the Elders respected him for what he was . . . and for what his father, Max Quest, had been; the young were all that mattered.

And their hatred drove him at last from the tribe, and on an impossible journey in search of the memory of his father . . . and in search of his own manhood.

Mercury is slowly dying. Each year its air grows thinner. Each month thousands of broken Mercurians are ordered to leave their planet.

They have only one hope. Captain Future, the Solar System’s most daring agent, has promised to restore their world – a next to impossible task.

The solution lies beyond the stars…at the very core of the universe where no man has ventured before. There, in the shadow of doom, Captain Future meets the mightiest of all evil beings – creatures he may not live to describe…

Every wizard in Ethshar knew that if you needed something special, something difficult to find, that Gresh the Supplier was the man to see. He was expensive, but always delivered. So when the Wizards’ Guild finally got fed up with the little green nuisances that called themselves “spriggans,” the Guild hired Gresh to fetch them the magic mirror that created the troublesome imps. The wizards thought finding it looked impossible. Gresh thought his methods would do the job. But no one had asked the spriggans what they thought!