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The Earth’s population was more than eight billion. One day they were there, the next they were gone – all except the guests at a family birthday party, a small tribe of American Indians, and, of course, the robots. Technology disintegrated, the Indians went back to nature, and the rest developed new and extraordinary powers. As for the robots, some went to live with the remnants of humanity, others gathered in their own community and commenced work on the Project, work which was baffling in all its fantastic electronic complexity. Then one day a traveller returned from the stars – and the idyllic existence of the last of Earth’s humans was threatened.

Once the great Glacier enclosed the Raumsdalian Empire. Now it’s broken open, and Count Hamnet Thyssen faces a new world. With the wisecracking Ulric Skakki, the neighboring clan leader Trasamund (politely addressed as Your Ferocity), and his lover, the shaman Liv, Hamnet leads an exploration of the new territory in hopes of finding the legendary Golden Shrine.

But dangers abound. A violent and implacable group known as the Rulers has already killed many, and now they attack again. Riding deer and woolly mammoths and using powerful magic, the Rulers triumph and force the Raumsdalians to flee.

In the spring another battle ends even more badly for Hamnet’s side, but the Glacier is also retreating, so they are able to escape. Meeting a tribe whose desperate living conditions have led them to overcome the Raumsdalian taboo against eating fallen foes, they find unexpected allies. Now, returning to the capital city and its intrigues, Hamnet prepares to lead an army against the merciless Rulers. The world, once so bounded and comprehensible, will never be the same…

In the summer of 1921, a disenchanted journalist escapes the rat race for a drive in the country. But Mr. Barnstaple’s trip exceeds his expectations when he and other motorists are swept 3,000 years into the future. The inadvertent time travelers arrive in a world that corresponds exactly to Barnstaple’s ideals: a utopian state, free of crime, poverty, war, disease, and bigotry. Unfettered by the constraints of government and organized religion, the citizens lead rich, meaningful lives, passed in pursuit of their creative fancies. Barnstaple’s traveling companions, however, quickly contrive a scheme to remake the utopia in the image of their twentieth-century world.

Men had fought wars throughout history, but never such a war as the one which destroyed the cities of earth and turned vast areas into badlands, stretches of intense radioactivity where nothing could grow and no one could live. It also produced the deviates, mutants who had warped bodies and strange talents.
But there were others who had still stranger talents, mental powers exceeding those of the mutants, and whose bodies did not bear the sign of the deviate. Their origin could not be traced to an atomic war; even they themselves had no idea whence they came.
Forced to take part in the abortive war between the Eastern and Western Federations, one man and one man eventually escaped and discovered creatures similar to themselves. But to discover their origin they had to go back five thousand years; and the answer lay not on earth, but somewhere in the stars.

In its hour of need, the Well World’s guardians had been neutralized. Nathan Brazil was shipwrecked on a desert island with a seemingly harmless girl but his contact with her had allowed his mind to be invaded, his will sapped, and his mission forgotten.
Mavra Chang had been abducted by a vicious gang of inter-hex drug smugglers, and was now held prisoner by a revenge-mad creature who had surgically and genetically altered her into a bizarre form and made her a slave to powerful narcotics. But the Well could allow nothing to stop the guardian’s journey for long. For the Well of Souls was only a machine; it needed the Watchers to handle events and circumstances beyond its sophisticated programming. And so it set plans in motion to jolt its champions back into the game.
The only other help Brazil and Chang could expect was from the companions who had been swept along to the Well World by accident or design. But the newcomers had been caught in a web of intrigue and deceit spun by the ruling council, a group desperate to stop both Brazil and Chang.
What none of them could know was that all of them, even the great Well computer, were being manipulated by the Kraang, an entity more ancient than the universe itself, a being that would use the guardians to give it powers far beyond even those of the Well of Souls- a being that would become a living god…

After the overwhelming defeat of their tribes, Khardan and Zohra find themselves prisoners of an evil god’s disciples – and in danger of losing their honor, their lives and their souls!

In the second century AD, a Greek nobleman is travelling and living abroad in Germany while carrying on an affair with a military man’s wife. When discovered, he takes an emergency business trip to save his life and packs amongst his belongings certain items that lead the people he encounters to think him a Norse God, a fortuitous point of view which he does little to dispel. Forced to keep up the pretence of being a god while staying one step ahead of his lover’s jealous husband, Photinus must juggle the severity of his situation with the enjoyment of being a God.

Thomas Blades has been released from his time as God-King in the alternative world he fought and ruled over. His descendants rule and fight but he cannot bear to return and meddle in their lives.

A gripping retelling of the myth of Perseus by award-winning author Gwyneth Jones, writing as Ann Halam.

Perseus, the God-Touched son of Zeus, lives in luxury on the island of Serifos. But trouble is brewing in the world – Gods and mortals are bringing discord closer to his home shores.

When a beautiful stranger, a fugitive from another disaster zone, arrives on the island, Perseus is smitten. But Andromeda isn’t all she seems. She must die to save her people, and a stunning, world-changing discovery will die with her, unless Perseus abandons everything to confront the Medusa quest.

A race of octopoid aliens visits earth to restore man’s dying beliefs, with spaceships containing the very Gods themselves. In the future the rich are allowed a four week holiday – into their own futures. A soldier wounded at the front finds his memories too terrifying to live with once his government-approved drugs are withdrawn. A young girl is convinced that mother-earth is male and dedicates her life to consummating her love for him. God is dead and the Devil makes an offer for the real estate of heaven…

These dark visions of the future by James Tiptree Jr. are a vivid, sometimes frightening foretelling of what may happen.

The Gone-Away gods were real, once, and taller than towers. But they’re long dead now, buried in the catacombs beneath the city of Eth, where their calcified organs radiate an eldritch power that calls out to anyone hardy enough to live in this cut-throat, war-torn land. Some survivors are human, while others are close enough, but all are struggling to carve out their lives in a world both unforgiving and wondrous.

Darkly comic and viciously original, Viscera is an unforgettable journey through swords-and-sorcery fantasy where strangeness gleams from every nook and cranny.

Secretive, enigmatic beings, they came to Earth to live among humanity in quiet, aristocratic isolation. But now, after years of silence, the “gods” have decided to share their art.

Across the vast galactic void come great ships bearing the fruits of an incomprehensible alien culture – paintings and sculpture of such raw, visceral power that their unveiling plunges the Earth into violent chaos, and sends the visitors fleeing from their adopted planet. But some remain behind – to face death at the hands of rampaging mobs, to witness the outcome of the grand cosmic game, and to assist in the creation of one last, potentially universe-shattering masterpiece that will illuminate the awesome, final destinies of god and man.

Lin Carter brews a magic storm where conjurers, imperfect gods and immortal humans live in whimsical unreality. BEYOND THE GATES OF DREAM collects seven stories, including:

“Masters of the Metropolis” (with Randall Garrett)
“Owlstone”
“Keru”
“The Hand of Nergal” (with Robert E. Howard)
“Harvey Hodges, Veebelfetzer”
“Uncollected Works”
“The Mantichore”
“A Few Last Words”

Barbaric customs and bizarre human cults are prserved on the planet Elsewhere. The rest of the universe has been taken over by the Hobbs Land Gods, which means that everyone alive, with the exception of the people on Elsewhere, lives in perfect harmony with nature and with each other.

But Elsewhere is ruled by computer-encrypted professors who have been dead for a thousand years. The professors werededicated to maintaining human diversity. Their ancient analogs are dedicated to something far more sinister.

The time has come to consider whether enslavement by the Hobbs Land Gods is not preferable to the depravity being cultivated on Elsewhere. The time has come to ask the Big Question: what is the Destiny of Man?

And answer it . . .

It is a nameless city somewhere between past and future, a mythic realm at the “heart of the world,” where wicked Rat Lords have reduced all humankind to slaves, and god-daemons make the decision to end all existence. This energizes a compelling quest for survival, and prompts the powerful White Crow to order an uprising against this chaotic strike that threatens them all. Among those who respond to her are the defiant Prince Lucas of Candover, a student at the University of Crime, and no mans’s slave; and Zari, the young Katayan woman who is destined to become the living Memory of all that follows. And others rally to join them in one final desperate revolt, hoping to create a magic powerful enough to reshape the very nature of how they live.

Tarra Khash is a Hrossak, a barbarian from the steppes beyond the River Luhr. A fearless adventurer, Tarra roves Theem-hdra in search of his next fortune, his next drink, and warm, willing females to share his bed. The Hrossak is a most fortunate man, for he has faced more than one god during his travels and – so far – has escaped unscathed.

Seeking to avenge the murder of a beautiful young woman of the half-mystical Suhm-yi race, Tarra joins forces with her husband, now the last of his kind. Each worships a moon-god, and together their faith and Tarra’s weapons wreak a terrible vengeance on those who stole the treasure of the Suhm-yi.

Eager for wealth, Tarra is trapped by a wily old man who has lured him into plumbing the depths of a treasure-filled cavern guarded by golden statues of the Great God Cthulhu. But Cthulhu’s treasure is not easily plundered, and Tarra nearly loses his life to the monstrous forces of the Elder God.

Many men have met the lamia Orbiquita, but none have lived to tell of her extraordinary powers of love-making – until Tarra Khash, who treats her as a woman wants to be treated and thus earns her forgiveness and his life. Alas, others who assume her to be weakened by her love for Tarra Khash are not so lucky!

It has been one hundred years since the Archangel Alleluia and the mortal Caleb discovered the truth about the god of Samaria. Legend says they left a record of that truth, though no document has ever been found. In time, an underground cult arose, seeking to find again what Alleluia found. But the reigning Archangel Bael called down the wrath of Jovah upon the cult, and hundreds died in a hail of thunderbolts.

Yet some survived.

Among them is Tamar, child of cultists, raised in captivity among the angels. Tamar believes that the Alleluia Files exist. She is determined to find them, and to free the people of Samaria from their fear of Jovah. In her search, she encounters the angel Jared, one of the members of his own kind who have come to question the wisdom of Bael. Together, these two uneasy allies will journey the length and breadth of Samaria, risking their lives and the lives of their comrades, seeking a truth that will alter the face of Samaria forever…

The ultimate maquiladora. Montezuma Strip: First World tech and Third World wages, sprawling from L.A. to East Elpaso Juarez, Guyamas to Phoenix; a thousand gangs, a million locos; and a few wealthy beyond the dreams of gods…


And Federale Angel Cardenas, a living lie detector, is a top cop on the blistering streets of virtual reality scams and cryogenic kidnaps, where talking animals are programmed to kill, computer screens can spit murder, and even the Holy Blessed Virgin’s ghost runs extortion rackets.


Once Angel Cardenas was blind. But now he sees…straight into the heart of darkness that rules…


MONTEZUMA STRIP

The beautiful Dedo Nyneve’s innocent tales of a land called Camelot have spawned a real-life cast determined to choose their own fates, yet each move draws them closer to catastrophe. And as the many happentracks of the universe narrow to a dangerous few, the actions of every sorcerer, man, and living creature will determine whether the great god Starquin lives or dies.
For the first time in remembered history, humans and gnomes find themselves sharing the same Earth happentrack. But King Arthur has larger concerns as he watches the society he rules spiralling toward ultimate destruction. Little does he know that the evil Mogan Le Fay has been working her treacherous magic to split the happentracks wide open – a deadly betrayal that could spell the end of Camelot.
With the ma possible futures swiftly shrinking to one last destiny too awful to contemplate, courageous Fang the gnome joins forces with Arthur and Nyneve to manipulate history in a final confrontation of wills and worlds. The last move is Fang’s, as he unravels the strands of time to keep his clan from the brutal vision of Starquin’s end.

Killed by the power of the god Zezeth, his true father, Lionwolf has been cast into a bleak and icy hell lit just by a cold blue sun. Here he and others of the living dead must wage endless combat and war, to appease the whim of a deathly King whose face is made of stone. But when Lionwolf encounters the King’s wife, she is none other than the beautiful, god-fashioned Chillel, his own former lover – and nemesis.

As Lionwolf struggles in the toils of Hell, elsewhere in the hell-cold ice-age of the mortal earth, men and women work out their own destinies. An empire has fallen. Ru Karismi, Capital of the Kings, has been abandoned to the poisons of the White Death. Reivers cross the lands of the Jafn and the Ruk, preying wherever they wish.

Against this unsettled backdrop, Jemhara the sorceress determines to save the Magician Thryfe from a dire self-inflicted punishment, and Saphay, now a goddess of the far north, seeks to lead her people to a new world.

Yet Seseth’s violent hadred shadows all – and from the depths of an ice-locked sea his other terrifying son, the mountainous whale-leviathan Brightshade, is once more rising for vengeance…

Aleph is a machine mentality overseeing a future Earth largely bereft of humans, most of whom have sublimed into a virtuality.Remaining are the smug but cautious adherents of science. Amanda, still a teen at age 30, is a skilled violinist and mathematician but craves the applause of the Mall for some daring exploit.

In a nearby enclave live the rustic, non-scientific people who worship the god of their choice. In the center of their poly-religious valley a wicked tower has emerged, surely a tool of evil temptation. Far below, a supersonic railroad is being constructed. Amanda conceives a dangerous feat: to enter the valley and descend to the rushing train, hitching a mad ride to the next city.

Using a cyber “Liar bee,” she buzzes the ear of young Matthewmark, who chafes under the restrictions of his own narrow society. He agrees to aid Amanda and her friend Vikram Singh, but the scheme goes horribly wrong. Vik dies; Matthewmark’s brain is seriously damaged, although he recovers with advanced neurological prostheses. This treatment, condemned by his own people, allows him contact with the AI Aleph.

In a series of startling moves, Amanda graduates to adulthood (and her modish clipped speech patterns give way to this new sophistication), while Matthewmark explores uncanny and sometimes very funny opportunities in the Alephverse, climaxing in the dismantling of the solar system and its embrace by the hyperuniverse beyond ours. This is the Singularity, at last, the Transcension, and everyone lives happily ever after, for rather mindboggling values of “lives” and “happily.”

Space Tug by Murray Leinster is an independent sequel to the author’s popular Space Platform.

Joe Kenmore heard the airlock close with a sickening wheeze and then a clank. In desperation he turned toward Haney. “My God, we’ve been locked out!”
Through the transparent domes of their space helmets, Joe could see a look of horror and disbelief pass across Haney’s face. But it was true! Joe and his crew were locked out of the Space Platform.
Four thousand miles below circled the Earth. Under Joe’s feet rested the solid steel hull of his home in outer space. But without tools there was no hope of getting back inside. Joe looked at his oxygen meter. It registered thirty minutes to live.

Searching for the beautiful witch Jemhara, the magician Thryfe at last finds her in the reinvented town of Kandexa, where a strange and passionate wooing begins. From this union a son is born – golden-skinned, red-haired, blue-eyed – and thus the Lionwolf returns to the world of men.

Unaware of this birth, his original mother the goddess Saftri has begun her own search for her lost love Athluan . . . while elsewhere the black and shining ones, the Children of Chillel, seek to establish claims on the ice-locked planet. Beyond, over, under all, the evil god Zzth rages and plans the ruin of these separate and immortal lives.

Strafed by the tumult of such conflicting powers, the be-wintered realm of mortals can only wait to learn its destiny.

The Plague’s origins were mysterious, but its consequences were all too obvious: quarantined cities, safe-sex machines, Sex Police, the outlawing of old-fashioned love. Four people hold the fate of humanity in their hands…A sexual mercenary condemned to death as a foot soldier in the Army of the Living Dead; a scientist who’s devoted his whole life to destroying the virus and now discovers he has only ten weeks to succeed; a God-fearing fundamentalist on his way to the presidency before he accepts a higher calling; and a young infected coed from Berkeley on a bizarre crusade to save the world with a new religion of carnal abandon. Each will discover that the only thing more dangerous than the Plague is the cure.