Search Results for: mutant

People called them BALDIES!

…a race of mutants, hairless with egg-like skulls and lashless eyes…

…a race hated by normal human beings, who hunted them with animal ferocity and killed them with religious fervour…

…a race that was even split amongst itself with some that wanted to establish rule by mutants…

…a race that had an extraordinary talent, the powers of telepathy !

So the baldies disguised themselves with wigs and waited for the day when there would be enough of them to stop their persecution by normal men !

After long years of struggle, the fight for acceptance and equality is over. The mutant clans have fit themselves and their extraordinary talents into the mainstream of human society. But when peculiar phenomena begin in the New Mexican desert – “miracle” cures, supernatural rescues – the issue of mutancy rises once more to the forefront of human affairs. At the center of the conflict are three strong and vastly different personalities, three men who will guide the tides of human destiny – and ultimately the tides of evolutionary destiny as well:

Joachim Metzger – Leader of the mutant clans, desperate to keep the hard-won peace and prosperity his people have finally achieved.

Julian Akimura – The brilliant therapist who banished his twin brother, Rick, in the hopes of saving humanity from his unsurpassed mutant talents.

Rick Akimura – The long-sought supermutant, the promise of whose power has been the building force of mutant society for centuries – and whose coming is nothing that anyone could have foretold.

For hundreds of years the mutants walked among us, concealing their dazzling psychic abilities, living in fear. With the coming of the 1990s, the mutants took their rightful place in normal human society in a storm of political upheaval. Now, as summer ripens for the mutant clans, the long struggle for equality nears its end. But the mutants’ awesome talents – and their belief in the coming of a mutant messiah – still set them apart. The clans can join together in hope…but for how long?

Alanna, talented in her own right, but overshadowed by the brilliance of her mother, the world-renowned artist Narlydda.

Julian, he gifted graduate student, hoping to forge a link between medicine and mutant healing – and between himself and the beautiful researcher, Eva Seguy.

Rick, Julian’s mercurial twin brother, whose lack of mutant talents is his burden…and his freedom.

Strange currents are flowing, and the entire world is about to change. Unthinkable and unspeakable powers are about to be released, powers that not even the massed mutants can control.

Spring comes to the mutant clans. Now, the mutants begin to emerge from their long, hidden sleep. Slowly, quietly, they have slipped into the paths of ordinary life and become caught up in the everyday problems that face all of us, mutant or normal. One career is stalled. Another is threatened by the political need for a scapegoat. The clan must come together again.

Michael, trapped in a loveless marriage and facing the blame for a disaster in which he had no part.

Melanie, separated from clan and family, fighting to prove her worth in the world of normals.

Narlydda, using her fame and wealth as a blind for her mutant identity, trapped in an age of luxury.

Now, from nowhere comes a man who thrusts himself into all their lives – a man who might change the world. Is Victor Ashman the long-awaited, long-sought supermutant – the Mutant Prime? Before his frightening powers can turn the normal world against them all, the clan must find him, identify him, and – if necessary – stop him.

When winter comes, the mutants gather . . .

They have always lived in the shadows, on the fringes of normal society. Ignored, shunned, they survived in their own invisible clans, using their extraordinary psychic abilities to shield themselves from the intolerance, bigotry, and hatred of the normals – until now . . .

The first mutant leader to emerge into the light of public life demanding equality has been savagely murdered. Finding her assassin has become the obsession of one courageous group of mutants. There is Michael, torn between loyalty to his clan and his love for a normal. Melanie, denied her mutant heritage by a cruel trick of genetic fate. And Jena, willing to use her psychic powers and mutant sexuality to get what she wants most.

As society faces the explosive implications of radical evolution and as inner rivalries threaten to tear the clan apart, the mutants must find a way to protect their identities, their lovers – and their very lives.

MUST THE UNIVERSE DIE WITH THEM?

The Starfolk, arrogant masters of vast stretches of the cosmos beyond the Earth’s sphere of influence, were determined to complete the extermination of the mind-reading mutants of Regnier’s planet.

But to the mutants themselves, the terror of the Starfolk was nothing compared to the greater dread that gripped their spirits – the obsession that the universe itself was doomed. This obsession ripped into their minds, overwhelmed them, and plunged them into horrifying hysteria.

The message of room reached the ears of the Starfolk themselves, forcing the to a fateful decision. They would allow an Earthman, archeologist Philip Gascon, to visit Regnier in an attempt to unravel its secrets. What he found would either contain the key to the ultimate destiny of the universe – or the date of the doomsday.

“Who was your father?” the mutant asked Dale Kesley. And try as he might, Kesley could not remember; his past was an utter blank. But he knew one thing – the answer to his life’s riddle lay in Antarctica, the once-frozen continent, now an earthly paradise surrounded by an impenetrable barrier.

But how to get there? The only means of transportation were the spindly six-legged mutant horses. And it was suicide for Kesley to travel on the American continents. Two immortal dictators had set king-size rewards for his capture – dead or alive! But somewhere in the two continents there was someone who would help him, someone he had to find. The future of the world depended on his success.



(First published 1956)

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.

Jay Vickers was an ordinary man, or so he thought. All he wanted was to be left in peace to finish his next book. However, strange things started happenin – from his discovery of a mouse that was not a mouse, to the visit of an old neighbor that was not a man. Or at least he was not an ordinary man.

For as it turned out, neither was Jay Vickers. This is the story of human mutation – the next step in the evolution of the species. What if mutants walked among us already? What if they were organized? What if they had unbelievable powers, such as the ability to cross between alternate worlds or dimensions at will, or to intuitively reach the absolutely correct answer by intuition or “hunch”, or to telepathically reach out to the stars?

Such supermen would automatically try to conquer lesser men, would they not? Or would they do everything in their power to free the rest of humanity from slavery and suffering? Just what would the political and corporate powers-that-be do to keep their power and their slaves? How would mutants undermine the power of these bosses to set mankind free?

This is a story of unlimited freedom, of worlds without end, ready for the taking. It is also the story of powerful, benevolent beings that exist only to help those who need that help. This is a future of a lop-sided mechanical culture of technology that could provide creature comfort for a few, but not human justice or security for the many. It is a future of hate, and war, and worry. Nothing like the way the world really turned out – after all, there couldn’t really be an underground of mutants working to free humanity . . . could there?

Dumarest continues his restless wandering – combing the spaceways for an ancient and almost forgotten planet called Earth.

Then, on a primitive world, he fights a giant mutant for the life of the lovely psychic Lallia – and wins a vital clue that could lead him to the end of his quest . . .



(First published 1971)

Cassie did not feel the Soul Rider enter her body…

…but suddenly she knew that Anchor was corrupt. Knew that the Flux beyond Anchor was no formless void, from which could issue only mutant changelings and evil wizards…

…Flux was the source of Anchor’s existence!

The price of her knowledge is exile – the first confrontation with the Seven Who Wait for the redemption of World…

This is book one in the Soul Rider series.

It was a sight he had seen once before in reality, and a thousand times since in nightmare. A planet surrounded by a glowing, pulsating, golden nimbus of lethal radiation…

Co ninuing his search for the evil Galactic Warlord, Keill Randor, the Last Legionary, joins a rebellion on the Cluster and meets a powerful mutant who may be part of Deathwing, the Warlord’s deadly army.

Keill and Glr, his alien friend, must fight this enemy and escape the lethal forces ranged against them. But can they also save the planet Veynaa from total annihilation?

Earl Dumarest, trans-galactic soldier of fortune, is still seeking his birthplace, the fabled planet Earth.

On the distant, decadent planet Dradea, he meets the mysterious, mutant woman Veruchia. She selected him from the gladiators’ arena to become her servant. . . and more.

Soon, Dumarest discovers that she too is engaged in a quest – and that the fate of her planet hangs in the balance. Fascinated, compelled, he agrees to help her.

But then he must face bizarre perils which make the gladiatorial arena seem a haven of safety. . .



(First published 1973)

The Gene Wars have turned Earth into a blighted wasteland. Mile-long airships patrol the skies, exacting crippling tribute from the scattered ground communities. Threatened by mutant vegetation and predatory creatures, forced to the brink of starvation by the Sky Lords, Minerva – a former feminist utopia – has had enough.

Its rebellion is swiftly crushed and Jan Dorvin, a Minervan warrior, is winched aboard a Sky Lord; towards a fate worse than death. For as a ground dweller and slave – but above all, as a woman – she is now regarded as the lowest form of humanity and is consigned to a life spent serving the sexual appetites of male slaves.

But no Minervan could be kept slave for very long…..

The orphan had always known she wasn’t what people described as ‘normal’. Whether merely precocious or a mutant freak, she had always been able to link minds with an equally weird mutated lion and skip into the worlds of the fourth dimension.



What the heck, it sure beat staying in school on Earth – that is until she realized that some of her fellow dimension-hoppers from other planets had more in mind than just a romp in the swamp.



They were launching an inter-dimensional war of imperialism, and she alone held the secret which could save her home world – if she could only escape the truant officer long enough to pull it off!

Mercury Shell, Venus Shell, Earth, Mars, Asteroid, Jupiter, Saturn. Each shell concentric, studded with artificial planets, each planet embedded in its shell, spinning like a ball-bearing. The whole Zeus-created in the service of Man but now beyond his control.
Now mathematics and space physics, converging, suggested another shell, its existence hidden from Man. A shell of utter darkness, cold and silence where only extreme mutants could survive.
To find that shell, the three were journeying again: Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry and Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotic. Together, daring the all-seeing, all-sensing hostility of Zeus.

From the vaults of The SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal introduction to the fantastic work of one of the Golden Age’s most influential writers, Henry Kuttner.

Henry Kuttner sold his first story WEIRD TALES in early 1936 and was, with his wife, fellow writer C. L. Moore, a regular contributor to John W. Campbell’s ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION. He and Moore collaborated for most of the 1940s and 1950s, but his career was tragically cut short in 1958, when he suffered a fatal heart attack. This omnibus contains two of his major novels, which have been out of print for many years – FURY and MUTANT – and collection THE BEST OF HENRY KUTTNER.

It began with a few small items in the newspapers – dead dogs and cats, a mutilated child, a series of unexplained fires. Then suddenly it exploded into a full sized catastrophe.

Huge mutants – half rat, half man – began to take over the world, stealing children for slaves and destroying their populations.

Only a few people escaped, among them Tim Barrett, his wife Jane, and a handful of survivors. Alone on the high seas in a small ship, they set off to find the island where Dr. Theodore Piper had been experimenting with a sonic death ray.

They knew Dr. Piper was their only hope for personal and world survival – if he was still alive… if the King Rats hadn’t forced him to serve their evil purpose… and if he could find a way to stop the spreading horror of invasion.

Many times, Dumarest’s dream of Earth has almost cost him his life. As he journeys from world to world, restlessly moving outwards towards the edge of the galaxy where his goal lies, Dumarest must be alert, watchful. For there are new dangers – forces more powerful than man – which threaten his dream.

On a planet where violence and superstition hold sway, Dumarest forges a bond with the prophetess Kalin. And now, more than ever, he needs her.

Kalin. The mutant girl whose mysterious talent for seeing into the future has already saved him from Bloodtime on Logis, from space-disaster, from slavery on desolate Chron.

Kalin. Who can foretell the terrors yet to come.



(First published 1969)

Seeking the answer to the mystery of life, Captain Oswald Bastable visits the Temple of the Future Buddha and is thrown through time to a new twentieth century. Plague, anarchy and superstition rule the world where he finds himself. Bands of diseased mutants pillage the continents while pirate U-boats prowl the oceans.

But from this chaos emerges Black Attila, commander of the African Hordes and master of the most terrible weapon ever devised by Man – the Land Leviathan, a terrifying ziggurat on wheels, a moving mountain of deadly artillery.

At last, after centuries of cruel oppression, the Land Leviathan helps the Black Attila establish Black Power on an unimaginable, global scale. Unimaginable, that is, to anyone except Michael Moorcock who has re-written the history of the twentieth century in his own totally original, biting style.

Winner of seven Nebula and eleven Hugo awards, Connie Willis is one of the most acclaimed and imaginative authors of our time. Her startling and powerful works have redefined the boundaries of contemporary science fiction.

Here in one volume are twelve of her greatest stories, including double award-winner “Fire Watch”, set in the universe of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, in which a time-travelling student learns one of history’s hardest lessons. In “A Letter from the Clearys”, a routine message from distant friends shatters the fragile world of a beleaguered family. In “The Sidon in the Mirror”, a mutant with the unconscious urge to become other people finds himself becoming both killer and victim.

Disturbing, revealing and provocative, this remarkable collection of short fiction brings together some of the best work of an incomparable writer whose ability to amaze, confound and enlighten never fails.

In an incredible far future, the known laws of Time and Space no longer apply to the world – and the seed of Man has mutated. Lobey is a mutant, different because he can hear the music in people’s minds. And when he encounters the beautiful dead-mute, Friza, he knows he has found a kindred soul.

Then Friza is killed, by someone or something unknown, and Lobey, driven by a knowledge he does not understand, sets out to bring her back from the dead. His journey leads him to strange lands and stranger people: people such as Spider, the eternal traitor incarnate; the Dove, embodiment of beauty; and Green-Eye, doomed to be the victim of a ritual as old as Time.

And always in the background, always waiting, stands the shadow of the chilling, childlike killer from the sea. The being called Kid Death . . .

Winner of the Nebula Award for best novel, 1968

On Cloudrock the penalty for imperfection is death: death by the long fall into the void, through the poisonous mists and gases that rise from the deadlands far, far below.

The two tribes who survive on the Rock, the tribes of Day and Night, keep their families tight, their bloodlines pure and true, by incest, by cannibalism and by murder. Parcelling out their tiny world in measures of light and time, they wrap themselves in ritual and taboo, each family denying the presence of the other. Then came the Shadow.

Born to the matriarch Catrunner, the Shadow is deformed – a neuter dwarf – a natural candidate for instant death. But for this mutant, fate intervenes. The Shadow may live – on the condition that none acknowledge its presence: one word, one glance, and the Shadow will join its luckless kin in the long death-flight.

Surviving on the outskirts of the family, the Shadow’s very existence creates an unspoken question that challenges the ties that bind. This is the Shadow’s tale…

Britain, years after the Debacle, and a new London has risen phoenix-like from near the ashes. Though Londoners have retained their physical purity through the ruthless destruction of generations of mutants, man is no longer the same, and society crueller. Cynicism and a whole-hearted recognition of the absolute power of money has replaced humanism, and a belief in reincarnation has replaced religion and the old moral code of ‘doing unto others . . .’ The individual can exist, has a right to exist, only if he is selfish.

Death is a Dream is the story of three survivors from the twentieth century who awake from suspended animation in The Cradle to find themselves unemployable, and unfit to live by virtue of their commitments to out-dated ideals. As well as being an investigation of the form society may take after an atomic war, it is, by association, an indictment of society as it is now.