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For eons, King Oblivion, Ph.D., was one of the most ruthless supervillains the world has ever known. As the CEO of the ISS (International Society of Supervillains) for half a century, he was personally responsible for numerous nefarious acts, including Nixon’s presidential election, stealing the country of Japan, Star Wars: Episode I-III, and Milli Vanilli, just to name a few.

Since his untimely (and inexplicable) passing, Matt D. Wilson, who was found rotting in one of Oblivion’s numerous dungeons, has discovered in his giant lair (located in the Earth’s mantle) what seems to be the early workings of the villain’s ultimate manifesto. Though in-depth research (and paper cuts), Wilson reviewed endless documents and has compiled numerous unedited chapters, email correspondences, and various threats which combine tell the “life story” of this anti-hero.

Supreme Villainy is an intimate look into the mastermind who once ruled the globe with an iron fist (and ray gun). For the first time ever, readers will learn of his birth (which has never been noted on record), rise to power, and domination of the world as we know it today. Revealed inside are never-before-seen notes, illustrations, and personal letters which, now collected, show a glimpse into the once-infamous villain’s uncompleted manuscript, and maybe a hint into who the real man was behind that horrible mask.

All around us, under most of humanity’s very noses, lurks a dangerous alien race. The Nafikh inhabit human bodies while visiting Earth, and an underground system designed to disguise and protect them from being discovered allows them to indulge their wildest and often violent urges. The circumstances of these brutal visits require the sacrifice of servs.

Servs are aliens themselves, created by the Nafikh to attend to their every need. Physically indistinguishable from humans, they are destined to live in pain, their very livelihood regulated by the Source, a powerful force of energy inside each of them that burns like a white-hot fire under the stress of their servitude.

Lucy is a serv who arrived a baby, and by chance was adopted by humans. She’s an outcast among outcasts, dwelling in both worlds but belonging to neither. For years she has been walking a tightrope, balancing between the horrors of her serv existence and the ordinary human life she desperately longs to maintain, her family unaware of her darkest secrets.

But when the body of a serv child turns up and Lucy is implicated in the gruesome death, the worlds she’s tried so hard to keep separate collide. Hounded by the police, targeted in the dog-eat-dog world of servs, she’ll find herself fighting to protect her family and the life she’s made for herself. Skinner Luce is Lucy’s story.

In a world stripped bare of digital images and promotainment, unveiled with the audiovisual overlay of the ImmaNet, in an exposed world, a naked world, Amon Kenzaki awakens, lost and alone. He must now travel deep into the District of Dreams in search of Anisha Birla, the one person that might help him unravel the mystery of jubilee. But deprived of the apps and informational tools he’s depended on his entire life, traversing the largest bankdeath camp on Earth is no easy task.

Inside an ephemeral labyrinth of slowly-dissolving disposable skyscrapers clogged to the limit with the bankdead masses, Amon soon finds himself face to face with two dangerous groups: a luddite cult called the Borginans, who preach bizarre superstitions about electronic banking, and a supposedly humanitarian army called the Charity Brigade, whose mandate of protecting the bankdead conceals opportunistic motives.

Taking refuge in a hospital that strives to improve conditions in the camps, Amon begins to work towards its cause and reconciles himself to his newfound poverty. But when political forces threaten the community’s existence and the lives of its members, he is forced to team up with a vending-machine designer, an Olympic runner, a fertility researcher, a corporate tycoon, and many others to expose the heinous secret festering at the heart of the action-transaction market he once served.

In book two of the Jubilee Cycle, Eli K. P. William delves beneath the surface of his cyber-dystopian Tokyo to unearth the fate of outcasts trapped in its depths and shine a light on the financial obstacles blocking one individual’s efforts to help them.

A COMIC SCIENCE FICTION MASTERPIECE!
In the spirit of Monty Python, Arthur Schopenhauer and Douglas Adams, Striped Holes is science fiction with a sense of humor.
Sopwith Hammil might be the nation’s top chat-show host but his peace of mind is shattered when a time traveling bureaucrat lands on his couch. To save his life and the human race (They’re turning the Sun off!), Sopwith must find a wife inside three hours. Turns out it’s not that easy, Soppy.
Meanwhile, popular astrologer and certified lifesaver O’Flaherty Gribble, a favorite guest on Sopwith’s show, has discovered the Callisto Effect and how to build striped holes. And in a future that makes Nineteen Eighty-Four look like Brave New World or vice versa, beautiful Hsia Shan-Yun is about to have her brain scrubbed for knitting one of those striped holes, with frightful consequences. But luckily, O’Flaherty finds himself seated on a plane next to God. Tighten your belt, it’s that kind of novel.

An instant cult classic upon first publication, Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue trilogy has earned wide critical acclaim, shocking and captivating a loyal readership among science fiction and women’s literature audiences alike.

Sequel to the enormously popular Native Tongue, The Judas Rosecontinues Elgin’s gripping vision of a frightening, male-dominated world where the women of Earth are virtually enslaved. Once again, this group of women-and the nonviolent yet transformative power of language-is called upon to challenge Earth’s violent, patriarchal order. Their revolutionary tool is Laadan-a secret women’s language created to free them from men’s control and make resistance possible for all women.

In The Judas Rose, the time has come to take Laadan from underground and spread its revolutionary power to women everywhere-in part, through a group of nuns inside the Roman Catholic Church. But when a handful of horrified priests uncover the women’s sabotage they move to stamp it out with an undercover female agent of their own.

The acclaimed science fiction author Brian M. Stableford returns with the final book in his trilogy about a planet that contains thousands of worlds inside it – and the one man who will do anything to penetrate its secrets. The conflict between the Isthomi and Scarid races and the surface dwellers of Asgard had come to a halt, but not an end. Forces are at work on all sides to attempt to gain the upper hand in the struggle to control Asgard, for control of Asgard’s heart could mean total power over the planet itself, and all who live in it. At the middle of the struggle is Michael Rousseau, who must penetrate the very core of the planet itself – both in reality and in another dimension altogether – to save Asgard and all who dwell in it, before it’s too late,

Pel Brown has troubles in his basement. But it’s not water leaking in – it’s magic. Sword-carrying barbarians are spilling through, demanding that Pel help them defeat Shadow, a dark force taking over their world.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, a spaceship has crashed in Amy Jewell’s backyard, and the aliens want Amy’s help against the Shadow seeking to conquer their world. When Pel and Amy go through the basement portal into the world of magic, the Shadow attacks and traps them inside.

Now Pel and Amy find themselves entangled in escapades that will make them into heroes … or corpses.

The mysterious disintegration of the planet Mercury presaged mutational changes in the solar system. Next, the Moon followed Mercury into oblivion, bombarding Earth with giant meteors and causing more earthquakes. Then a giant metal globe that had apparently been buried inside the Moon took up an orbit of the Earth. The new satellite is an alien spaceship carrying the survivors of a super scientific race forced to abandon their own world to emigrate to our solar system. The aliens seeded the then primeval Earth with life cultures in their own image, and then placed themselves in suspended animation whilst evolution took place. They have awakened to assist humanity to avert the mutational danger now facing the remaining planets…

So, just how was Tarzan created? Eager to know the inside story about the legendary John Carter and the amazing cities and peoples of Barsoom? Perhaps your taste is more suited to David Innes and the fantastic lost world at the Earth’s core? Or maybe wrong-way Napier and the bizarre civilizations of cloud-enshrouded Venus are more to your liking? These pages contain all that you will ever want to know about the wondrous worlds and unforgettable characters penned by the master storyteller Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Richard A. Lupoff, the respected critic and writer who helped spark a Burroughs revival in the 1960s, reveals fascinating details about the stories written by the creator of Tarzan. Featured here are outlines of all of Burroughs’s major novels, with descriptions of how they were each written and their respective sources of inspiration.

Deep inside a palace on the edge of the world, the orphan Nepenthe pores over books in the royal library, translating their languages and learning their secrets. At sixteen, she knows little of the outside world. But when a young mage gives Nepenthe a book that has defied translation – a book written in a language of thorns – it speaks to Nepenthe’s soul, and becomes her secret obsession. As the words escape the brambles they reveal themselves – and begin to reveal Nepenthe’s destiny …

They were trying out a new drive when a cosmic accident took them incalculable light years off course. A miracle of courage and astrogation meant than there were some survivors from the inevitable crash. The ship itself did not escape unscathed. What had been their vehicle became their prison. The buckled lock could not be opened from the inside and they had no other means of getting free. The air was slowly running out.

The planet they had hit was raw and primitive by their own standards, but it did hold intelligent life. One of the natives found the ship. Dare the trapped space travellers hope for a miracle? If they go out what kind of strange life forms would they be involved with? Could they hope to find the kind of raw materials which would get their crippled ship into space again? If not, could they face life sentences on this strange, unknown, primitive world . . . ?

Faced by a thousand fantastic difficulties the astronauts battled untiringly for their right to survive.

The world of 2165 needed co-ordinators to link the liaison officers from different broad fields. Natasha was a trained nexus officer who became curious about Building 297.

All her enquiries reached a blank wall . . . literally. Nobody seemed to know what went on inside the tall glass and concrete tower. An important security project of some sort . . . but what?

At last she found a way to enter the building nobody understood only to find a project that had gone unbelievably wrong. The original purpose of Building 297 had long since been forgotten. The operators no longer directed the research in the bleak laboratories, they were in the grip of an unknown power.

The menace in the sinister tower had reached a crucial stage. It threatened to leak through the concrete and engulf the city . . . perhaps far more than the city. Natasha had to understand the incredible new force, to escape from its citadel and rouse the sceptical, complacent population before it was too late.

The arrival of the Stranger offered her a terrible choice. Was he her one hope as a potential ally, or had he in some way engineered the menace in the tower?

Servius had always been a faithful servant of the goddess Diana. As a gladiator he had given her thanks for his victories, as a Centurion he had prayed to her on the eve of every battle. When at last the tide of war turned against him he fled to her sanctuary on the shore of Lake Nemi. Here he killed the Priest in order to become the Priest and ever after he lived in fear of being killed himself by the next aspirant for the office. When the fatal battle was fought the dying Servius had a vision of Diana, who made him a strange promise. He would die, yet he would not die. He would live, yet he would not live. When he found himself he would be lost, and when he was lost he would be found.

Servius closed his eyes by the shorts of Lake Nemi and opened them in a strange, frightening world where chariots ran without horses and where men flew inside iron birds. His first problem was to survive. His second was to find his way home!

One morning in 1995, Jonah Ransom, clothier, is going about his everyday business when he meets a beautiful demon in his storecupboard. At around the same time, the King of England with his entire court, vanishes abruptly before the astonished eyes of his public as he prepares to attend Mass. Even in an England where the Reformation failed, and magic has become a commonplace tool of the all-powerful Catholic Church, such events could be described as unusual.

Before long, it is apparent that something very different is abroad – magic ceases to work in its accustomed way, instability and political unrest threaten to disrupt a society used to order and rigid social obedience. Eventually the Pope is sufficiently perturbed to send one of his beloved (by him) and dreaded (by the public in general) Sicarii to investigate the disturbance. Arriving late on the scene, Adam (he has no other name), Sicarii extraordinaire, sometime spy, sometime security officer, sometime assassin, discovers a mystifying, malicious power at work, a power that can twist not only souls, but his entire world inside out.

The gun straps to the inside of my leg with Velcro. It’s not the absolute zenith of fashion to do this anymore, but girls who wear theirs with leather straps and buckles aren’t serious: with Velcro you can get at the thing when you need it.

I also have a pink ammo belt. It’s heavy, but who said fashion was easy?’

In a mall like any other, a gang of teenage girls are suddenly caught up in a maelstrom of shopping and violence. But – as the designer bullets fly – it is not only their own lives they are fighting for. Unknown to them they are battling for the life of a man trapped in another place, in a different world, and with very different enemies.
He is a man they have never met, but who represents the future of the human race … or could destroy it.

In the late 1930’s as the threat of war is building in Germany, twelve year old Julia arrives to spend the summer with her famous playwright father, only to find herself alone with Trudl, her Austrian stepmother. With Trudl preoccupied by the plight of her fellow countrymen in Europe, Julia retreats into the scary Gothic novels left behind by her older siblings, and becomes haunted by dreams of Joshua Harken, the notorious alchemist who built the 17th century house, and then disappeared, accused of murder. Even after she joins forces with local boy Tim Bellyap to investigate the stories of Joshua’s ghost, she is afraid to tell anybody about the terrifying voices coming unbidden from somewhere inside her chest…

In a compelling exploration of loneliness and adolescent insecurities, peopled by ghosts from the old house, this is the powerful story of Julia’s awakening from her nightmare world.

Also published as Voices, and set in Joan Aiken’s own supposedly haunted childhood home, Jeake’s House in Rye, Sussex, this Y.A. ghost story draws on some of her own childhood memories to create an unusual thriller.

“When reduced to its essence, Julia’s story may not be so very different from that of Aiken’s Wolves Chronicles heroine Dido Twite: each girl must cope with a distant, unreliable father and learn to survive in a world peopled with self-absorbed adults. It is the exploration of these issues, even more than the fine storytelling, which makes this novel so compelling” Publisher’s Weekly
“Joan Aiken is the godsend to children who are at the age when they read as if there were no tomorrow” Washington Post

“An entertaining read, for readers who like to read suspenseful ghost stories with a hint of real menace. The ghostly elements of this story are nicely mirrored by the historical menace of the times, as Julia ruminates on the dangers of Hitler, whom she sees as a sort of spider, spreading his web out over Europe” Goodreads reviewer

In the late twentieth century, Admiral Julian 3rd can get no rest, for he knows his future. He will be reborn as his grandson in the next century to journey through space and make an ominous discovery inside the moon; he will live again in the dark years of the twenty-second century as Julian 9th, who refuses to bow down to the victorious Moon Men; and as Julian 20th, the fierce Red Hawk, he will lead humanity’s final battle against the alien invaders in the twenty-fifth century. The Moon Maid is Edgar Rice Burroughs’s stunning epic of a world conquered by alien invaders from the moon and of the hero Julian, who champions the earth’s struggle for freedom, peace, and dignity.

An urgent message from Pellucidar, that world of primitive men and primeval jungles that lies inside the crust of the Earth, called on Tarzan of the Apes for assistance.

Tarzan, used to the dangers of darkest Africa, heeded the call to Pellucidar, where all his skill in the jungle, all his talents with beasts and primitive men, would be put to the extreme test. For in that land at the Earth’s core, under the eternal day of the Central Sun, his terrific talents were needed just to stay alive – let alone to fulfil the mission that had called him there!

Twelve thousand years in the future, mankind has survived two enigmatic, civilisation-destroying setbacks. Now a third holocaust is anticipated by the people of the island refuge of Ongladred. They fear destruction from invading barbarians of the Angromain Archipelagoes, the reappearance of a semi-mythical sea creature and the devious intervention of the neo-human Parfects.

The imminent disaster is very much the concern of Ingram Marley, a government spy sent to keep surveillance over Stonelore – a secluded haven and the centre of free thought on Ongladred – and Gabriel Elk, Stonelore’s master and resident genius. While panic and fear rage outside, deep inside Stonelore the mysteries of life are pursued – reanimation of the dead, the invention of powerful laser weapons and the secrets of ‘old earth’ knowledge.

Amidst harrowing dangers of sea battles and land invasions, beneath the shattered moons, Ingram Marley’s world is about to change beyond his wildest imaginings.

Yellowstone National Park sits on a hot spot: a plume of molten rock coming up from deep inside the earth capable of volcanic eruptions far greater than any that have occurred in times past. It has been silent for many years, providing false security for a nation unprepared for the full force and fury of nature unleashed.

Then explosions send lava and mud flowing far beyond Yellowstone toward populated areas. Clouds of ash drift across the country, nearly blanketing the land from coast to coast. The fall-out destroys crops and livestock, clogs machinery, and makes cities uninhabitable. Those who survive find themselves facing the dawn of a new ice age as temperatures plummet worldwide.

Colin Ferguson is a police lieutenant in a suburb of Los Angeles, where snow is falling for the first time in decades. He fears for his family, who are spread across America, refugees caught in an apocalyptic catastrophe in which humanity has no choice but to rise from the ashes and re-create the world…

The Penheniot Experimental Research Village was a top-secret community with an elaborate defence system to keep away prying eyes. Inside the walls men rushed ahead with practical experiments to develop a means of time travel, while outside the everyday world fell victim to more and more plagues, strikes and rioting.

The world was on the brink of chaos. Could the small band of scientists and chrononauts at Penheniot Village find a safe method of escape into the future before the violence and death outside destroyed them too?

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk – a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world’s artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they’d been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside – more than a hundred million years per day on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.

Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who’s forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.

Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans…and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth’s probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun – and report back on what they find.

Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

The largest spaceship ever made is hurtling overhead, falling. Six people are trapped inside with no escape. If it strikes the Earth it will explode with the force of an atomic bomb; what can be done?

The mighty 2,000-tonne Prometheus is the largest piece of space hardware ever launched – a joint Soviet-American project to harness solar energy before the power resources of the world run out. But politically and technically the project is doomed, and the nerve-racking predicament of the crew of six shrinks to nothing beside the horrifying destruction which threatens hundreds of thousands of people if no way can be found to move the satellite from it’s ever-decreasing orbit towards Earth . . .

Skyfall is a tale of incredible terror, giving a foresight of the global disaster which could one day become reality.

Time Switch at the Zoo.

One day Martin Naumchik, reporter for Paris Soir, visited the Berlin Zoo. He was standing outside the spacious cage housing the newly-acquired Brecht Biped, Fritz, when the world seemed to lurch.

Then he was no longer outside the cage looking in, but inside looking out. He was no longer Martin Naumchik. He was Fritz, the Biped, that strange celestial animal from a world eighteen light-years away.

At the same time, Fritz, who had lived almost all his life in Hamburg Zoo, also felt the lurching motion. And found himself standing outside his cage in the body of Martin Naumchik, looking at the frantic Biped inside, who was beating with both hands on the glass.