Search Results for: in-the-beginning

Rob Merlin was the best engineer who had ever lived. That was why “The King of Space” had to have him for the most spectacular construction project ever – even though Rob was a potentially fatal threat to his power…


Thus begins a breakthrough novel by the former President of the American Astronautical Society, about an idea whose time has come: a shimmering bridge between Earth and space that mankind will climb to the stars!

A man from Earth’s distant past is humanity’s only hope for a future…Drake Merlin’s wife, the love of his life, is dying of a rare, fatal disease for which there is no cure. Not now, in the 21st century. But surely in the future…For Drake there is only one solution: have Ana’s body frozen until she can be cured. And he will go with her into the cryowomb. It is a desperate gamble born of folly, obsession…and love.Thus begins an epic journey across eons, as Drake is revived again and again, only to find that Ana is beyond help. Millions of years past his first sleep, he learns there is hope for her restoration – at the Omega Point, where the universe collapses, merging past and present. But first he will be awakened to become humanity’s unwilling savior. For an alien menace is laying the solar system to waste, and only an anachronism from the days of human barbarism can save an enlightened race…

The brain of an Einstein – the mind of an engineer…
Presenting the space adventures of Arthur Morton McAndrew, space-time expert and scientist extraordinaire, and his long-suffering companion, spaceship skipper Jeanie Roker. Jeanie first met McAndrew on a routine run to Titan and quickly learned he was a genius of the caliber of Newton and Einstein. When McAndrew invented a space drive that let frail humans survive hundreds of gravities of acceleration, he disappeared while testing it, and Jeanie had to find him, using a trail of cryptic messages he had left behind.
That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, in spite of the gray hairs that Jeanie began accumulating as a result of McAndrew’s impractical nature and his talent for getting himself into trouble with much more practical villains…

18th Century Europe: Superstition is giving way to the force of reason, and no man so fully embodies the spirit of the times as Dr Erasmus Darwin. Thinker, healer, and explorer of he seemingly supernatural, no mystery can stand for long against Darwin’s enlightened analysis. And there are more mysteries than history records…
For Erasmus Darwin’s world is filled with oddities that most cannot believe: from unknown beings lurking just outside the boundaries of civilization, to mysterious deaths that give rise to fears of malevolent sorcery.
And when the renowned Dr Darwin is called upon to heal a man dying of an ailment that seems impossible, he has no idea that it is the beginning of a quest that will lead him to the darkest corners of Europe, and an encounter with the most famous inhabitant of a certain Scottish loch…

America, 1984 – not our version of America, but an America that calls itself the Real, an America in which the invention of Turing Gates has allowed it access to sheaves of alternate histories. For ten years, in the name of democracy, the Real has been waging clandestine wars and fomenting revolution, freeing versions of America from communist or fascist rule, and extending its influence across a wide variety of alternate realities.

But the human and political costs have proven too high, and new President Jimmy Carter has called an end to war, and is bringing troops and secret agents home.

Adam Stone is called out of retirement when his former comrade, Tom Waverly, begins to murder different versions of the same person, mathematician Eileen Barrie. Aided by Waverly’s daughter, Linda, Adam hunts for his old friend across different sheaves, but when they finally catch up with Waverly, they discover that they have stumbled into the middle of an audacious conspiracy that plans to exploit a new property of the Turing Gates: it will change not only the history of the Real, but that of every other sheaf, including our own.

Cowboy Angels combines the high-octane action and convoluted plots of the TV series 24 in a satirical, multi-layered alternate reality thriller.

Mars, 600 years in the future, is dying.

Five hundred years after the Chinese conquered the Red Planet, the great work of terraforming is failing. The human-machine Consensus of Earth had persuaded the AI Emperor to follow the Golden Path into a vast virtual reality universe, leaving behind an ungoverned planet swept by hunger riots and the beginnings of civil war.

Enter Wei Lee, a lowly itinerant agricultural technician: rock ‘n’ roll fan, dupe, holy fool – and unlikely Messiah. After stumbling on an anarchist pilot hiding near the wreckage of her spacecraft, he’s drawn into a revolutionary plot that has been spinning for decades. With the help of a ghost, the broadcasts of the King of the Cats, a Yankee yak herder, and a little Girl God, Lee travels across the badlands, swampy waterways and vast dust seas to a showdown at the summit of the biggest volcano in the Solar System. Not even the God-like Consensus can predict the outcome of his struggle to define his own destiny . . .

Epic in scope, Red Dust’s spectacular, fast-paced story brilliantly brings to life the planet that has captured our imagination like no other.

Richard Garrison, a corporal in the British Military Police, loses his sight while trying to save the wife and child of millionaire industrialist Thomas Schroeder from a terrorist bomb. While Garrison is recovering from his injuries, Schroeder makes him an offer the young man cannot refuse – refuge at Schroefer’s luxurious mountain retreat and rehabilitation from the best doctors who can treat Garrison’s blindness, and, if not cure him, at least teach him a new way of life.

But Thomas Schroeder has a secret. His is dying and determined not to lose his life. The doctors tell him his body cannot be saved. But what about his mind? Garrison’s healthy young body would make an excellent replacement for Schroeder’s failing corpus, if the machines to perform the operation can be perfected in time.

Garrison has secrets of his own. Since the bombing that caused the loss of his sight, Garrison has become aware of new abilities slowly developing in his mind: mental powers he is beginning to master, strengths Schroeder cannot expect.

Richard Garrison and Thomas Schroeder, two strong-willed men locked in battle for the greatest prize – life itself.

Castle Banat: a stronghold of insane enormity, created by a monstrous architectural genius. The size of Banat is such that it even has its own weather. Inside, room after room is filled with fantastical horrors: Banat holds an infinity of mystery and terrible wonder.


The castle is home to the Family, the clans that make up the vampires of the world. One of their greatest rites is the Golden, the sacrifice of a victim whose blood is the sweetest and most powerful there is. But in 186-, at a gathering three centuries in the planning, the Golden is murdered, brutally devoured by person or persons unknown.


The Parisian vampire Beheim, new to the game, is charged with finding the culprit. So begins a journey through the vastness of Banat and into the very core of the vampire mind; a personal odyssey of sublime terror.


Set against a backdrop that is one of the greatest imaginative feats since Gormenghast, and full of the passionate games and sheer sexual force of the vampire, The Golden is fabulous gothic mystery and exceptionally powerful storytelling.

The itinerant gun show draws together many subcultures from the margins of society: survivalists, Aryan brotherhoods, and the team of Rita Whitelaw and Jimmy Roy Guy, dealers in collectible arms. Rita has made Jimmy an exception to her general disdain for whites – “not your typical Caucasian,” as she describes him – for Jimmy’s got a storytelling ability that borders on mystic vision. When Jimmy makes an agreement with the widow of Aryan martyr Bob Champion to broker her husband’s infamous Colt .45, he and Rita run afoul of “the Major,” Champion’s spiritual successor. However, they’re not intimidated by the Major’s veiled threats. The gun has launched a story, and when Jimmy begins a story, one way or another, he’s bound to see it through.

In the town of Trujillo, in Honduras, on the edge of the Mosquito Coast, Dr. Arturo Ochoa, a semi-retired psychiatrist, has a single patient: a troubled young man named Thomas Stearns, the son of a wealthy Atlanta family.

Stearns has been found adrift on the Caribbean in a vessel owned by two Nicaraguans, both of whom are missing; he has been alone for eighteen days and has little memory of that time. Suspected of murder, Stearns is unconcerned. He knows his family will buy off the police. But he is reluctant to leave Trujillo, having developed an odd affinity for the town.

As therapy progresses, he tells of a mysterious stone figure regurgitated by, improbably, a whirlpool, and Dr. Ochoa – drawn into his pathology – begins to doubt not only Stearns’ sanity, but his own . . .

Centuries before the building of the Great Causeway, when the enveloping Ice seems to be in retreat, the lands of the North and South are on uneasy terms. War appears to be inevitable. But there is still some trade between them, particularly for the peerless weapons created by the Northern mastersmiths.



In one small town, Kunrad, one young mastersmith, has carved out a reputation as a fine armourer. Helped by his two apprentices, the ox-like Olvar and the silver-tongued Gille, Kunrad has created the greatest suit of armour ever made: armour fit for a hero or a king.



When that armour is stolen by a powerful Southern lord, Kunrad has only one concern – to regain it. And so begins an epic journey of discovery, filled with danger, magic – and love.

Visit Earth, the birthplace of man!

From the holiday planet of Paradiso one could go on many exciting tours and excursions – Mars, Venus, the Moon, even the most distant and alien worlds were accessible to the inquisitive holidaymaker, courtesy of Starways Inc. – the giant combine which owned Paradiso and over half of the galaxy.

But of all Starways illustrious trips, there was really only one which interested Ram Burrell – the one which Starways seemed to actually discourage people from taking… the trip to planet Earth. And once Burrell had got himself a ticket for the journey, he began to discover why Earth had become the least visited planet in the galaxy, and why Starways worked so hard to keep it that way…

Back in Husaquahr, the other world, after a brief sojourn on Earth, Joe expected to pick up his life and go on, pretty much the same. He should have known better.
To begin with, the evil Dark Baron had managed to escape and had teamed up in the far North with the Master of the Dead. Alone, either was a disaster; together, they were potential catastrophe.
There were also some changes for which Joe wasn’t prepared. He’d accepted the fact that his beloved Tiana now had the body of an exotic dancer. But then he discovered that she was a slave with a growing slave mindset – and would always be a slave.
Worst of all, Joe discovered that there had been some highly unwelcome changes in him. In all literal truth, he could no longer call his soul his own – because it wasn’t!

Since the beginning of time it had worked its will on humanity, and for as long as man could remember, he had struggled against its power. But in the 21st century the battle was won: the sea, mankind’s age-old enemy, had finally been conquered.
Professionals like Walter Franklin now patrolled the infinite savannahs of the oceans, harvesting from the plankton prairies as crop which kept the world fed. But like that other great frontier, space, the sea had not yet yielded up all its secrets. And men like Franklin would never rest until its every fathomless mystery had been challenged . . .

Immortal, unchanging, the external survivor, Nathan Brazil had tired of his long duty as the guardian of the Well World and had enlisted Mavra Chang, space pilot and adventurer, as his companion and equal, sharing with her some of the godlike power to control the universe’s destiny.

But over the millennia, Brazil and Chang had become estranged. When they were once again summoned to the Well World, they came as bitter rivals, each racing to be the first to reach the Well of Souls. What they found, however, was a Well World changed in ways it should not have been. Evolution on the Well World seemed to have diverged from its preset course- and that was impossible.

Brail sensed that some force beyond local animosity was at work, and he was determined to find out just what that force was and how it could have changed the elaborate programming of the Well of Souls. But the changes that had so affected the Well World were beginning to change the unchangeable Nathan Brazil – and if the watchman himself could altered, the universe might be left without any guardian at all . . .

A Pandora’s box of evil

Freitas had commanded the engineers of his vast, world-wide empire to build him a device that could ransack the past.

Now all the riches of the ages were his for the taking. But mere wealth was not what Freitas was after. Supreme power was what he sought, and from the past he picked the men and women who could help him gain absolute mastery over his rivals.

But one thing he had not reckoned on – the power these creatures fro the past would have over him, the reign of terror about to begin…

If the past is tampered with, the present might be totally transformed. So the whole fabric of reality depends on the watchful efforts of the Society of Time. Don Miguel Navarro is a junior officer in this force dedicated to defending the Spanish Empire and the mother church from the results of meddling in history by time-travellers.

But he begins to wonder just how dedicated the Society really is when he has to deal with a case of corruption involving fellow officers . . .

After he has to rescue the entire court from death at the hands of Amazon warriors brought through time, his greatest trial becomes unavoidable. Facing a threat to the most vulnerable event in his world’s history, can the young Don prevent catastrophe?

Or will the glorious triumph of the Spanish Armada never have occurred?




(First published 1969)

Nineteen light years from Earth, on Sigma Draconis, an international space team stumbles upon the first evidence of another highly advanced civilization in the universe.

Tragically, however, the Draconians are extinct and have been for a hundred thousand years. What mysterious disaster destroyed man’s nearest neighbour in the colossal emptiness of space? And will the same fate befall Earth?

The answers, as Earth degenerates into squabbles, paranoia and self-destruction, are vital. But how to begin the almost insuperable task of cracking the enigma of a long-buried and utterly alien culture?

First there was the end.



After weeks of running from pursuers, Gene and Stacy finally found refuge on an isolated island.



But around them the island changed – and so did they.



Each time they awoke from sleep, they lived a different life in a different time. And the farther back they went, the more they lost their anchor to their own world. When at last they were found, the people they had become no longer recognised their pursuers.



And that was the beginning.

Britain in the near future: the country is heading toward ecological disaster, chemical waste is seeping into people’s brains, deadly parasites contaminate food – and the despotic fascist government is trying to keep it all quiet. But there is one thing they can’t suppress – the emergence of a new master race. Children who have the power to persuade adults to do anything they want…

American sociologist Claudia and reporter Peter Levin begin an investigation that brings them to a trail of genetic theories. All the children, they discover, have the same father. But who is he? And is he a force of good…or of evil?

Among the six hundred thousand stars in the vast Arm of Stars, over six hundred planets had been seeded with human stock by the greatest feat of technology ever achieved, the Ship. And on each of these worlds, the memory of the Ship had faded into legend over the years.

The Ship, however, still endured, watching over the colonies on a cyclical and seemingly endless journey through time and space. But in its long odyssey, the Ship had somehow been damaged – it had become as conscious, and lonely, as any human being. And as it visited, again and again, each of the worlds it had seeded, it found tragedy in its wake. For the humans of the Arm of Stars were becoming more and more alien. Even worse, the Ship was beginning to change in ways its designers had never intended . . .

Jonathan Herovit is a science fiction writer in a state of deep personal and professional crisis. Whilst struggling to deal with his wife’s post-partum depression, his own alcoholism and a long-overdue novel that he has no motivation to write, the pseudonym under which he writes begins talking to him…

The Solar System is ours. Biotechnology has provided the Settled Worlds with a riot of habitable environments; sentient craft ply the routes between the planets; the souls of the dead live on in the Noosphere, a psychic Net where they can be contacted by the living.

Paradise? Not quite – and when a strange womb is recovered from a living spaceship crashed on Mars it swiftly becomes the focus of intrigue and murder as the Settled Worlds begin to disintegrate under the strain of a vicious interplanetary war between two rival factions.

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.