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Pacifica was a monument to freedom and equality-until the off-worlders came. The Femocrats, a party of female separatists, and the Transcendental Scientists, an institute of technofascists dedicated to male supremacy. Carlotta Madigan, Pacifica’s prime minister, and Royce Lindblad, her handsome young lover and media adviser, had to find a way to stop the Pink and Blue War-without becoming casualties themselves.

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!

This unique novel represents a collaboration between two greats of science fantasy writing, published for the first time on the SF Gateway.

Between 1956 and 1962, John Brunner wrote three novellas that blurred the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy. Following Brunner’s untimely death, Damien Broderick was given permission to develop these works into a full-length novel, expanding on the ideas and concepts that had captured his imagination when he first read them. The result is a story that blends the technological with the magical, and travels to different worlds and undiscovered parts of our own.

Weaving together ideas from No Other Gods But Me, The Kingdom of the world and Father of Lies, Broderick takes us from the modern day Earth, across dimensions and into battle with cults, dragons, ogres and people with psychokinetic powers. This is a fantastic read for both fans of Brunner’s original works and readers looking to be swept away on a new adventure.

The opening of The Fugitive Worlds finds Toller Maraquine II – grandson of the hero of The Ragged Astronauts and The Wooden Spaceships – bemoaning the fact that life on the twin planets of Land and Overland has become dull and uneventful compared to the stirring times in which his illustrious forebear lived. Then, while on a balloon flight between the worlds, he makes an astonishing discovery – a rapidly growing crystal disc, many miles across, is creating a barrier between Land and Overland. Precipitated for personal reasons into investigating the enigmatic disc, Toller – armed with only his sword and boundless courage – becomes a pivotal figure in events which will decide the future of entire planets and their civilizations.

The human personality had been defined by leading psychologists as the integrated and dynamic organisation of psychical, mental, moral and social qualities. A personality is the product of heredity and environment. Every experience records itself in the neurons of the brain producing an almost infinite number of possible combinations. Brains are as individual as fingerprints.
In an infinite universe, however, there is a possibility that somewhere – separated by vast distances of Time and Space – two exactly similar brains exist. The strange telepathic bonds between identical twins could operate between identical minds.
Melinda Tracey was a practical, intelligent, modern girl who didn’t believe in dreams – even recurring dreams – but her odd sleep experiences of the ruined city, and the strangely suited figure who searched it, disturbed her considerably.
What incredible psychological bond linked Melinda to the lonely stranger, probing the wreckage of an alien metropolis?

The barbarians in their long ships waiting at the edge of the Galaxy waited for the ancient Terran Empire to fall, while two struggled to save it: ex-Admiral McCormac, forced to rebel against a corrupt Emperor, and Starship Commander Flandry, the brilliant young officer who served the Imperium even as he scorned it.

Trapped between them was the woman they both loved, but couldn’t share: the beautiful Kathryn – whose single word could decide the fate of a billion suns.

When the curiously exotic millionairess Klai Ford started telling him about ghosts in a uranium mine, Sawyer knew he’d better be ready for anything in his investigations.

But he didn’t count on being drawn into a passage between dimensions and tossed adrift in a world of islands floating in the sky, where strange brute-like creatures were attacking the cities in a vast struggle for power.

Lost in this new world, Sawyer realised that the key to everything lay in the mysterious Well of the Worlds – and that the future of the universe lay in its secret.

Everything was ordinary. Men worked in factories and fields. Women were shopping. Children were at school. Then came the four-minute warning. Wires hummed madly between heads of governments. Just before the massive retaliation went into the air the world realised that no-one had despatched the first rocket.

The retaliation was checked with seconds to spare. Experts examined the ruined city. There was something else besides radiation. Deadly bacteria from an unknown source spread across the planet. More alien bombs followed the first. But there was no real pattern in the attacks, if they were genuine attacks.

At last the detectors found the alien ships. They were fighting among themselves and earth was the battle-area. Could the remnants of humanity interfere? What would be the result if they did?

George Mallory was out for a quiet day’s shooting. A typical country-man, in typical English country. His day’s sport was interrupted by the beginning of the greatest catastrophe in man’s history – an alien space ship was crashing as his feet.
The ghastly monstrosity that emerged was so hideously repulsive that no one would have guessed at the degree of intelligence and potential friendliness in its strange mind.
Mallory shot first and asked questions afterwards. With its dying strength, the alien cursed the earth with a scientific horror beyond the comprehension of man, a horror that turned the beasts against us.
The only escape seemed to lie out in space… but the devastating effect of the cosmic rays wrought havoc in the minds of the space men and the lunar expedition turned on itself in deadly carnage.
What would be the outcome of the terrible conflict between man and beast?

Dorian Hawkmoon… Corum Jhaelen Irsei… Elric of Melniboné. Over the years, Michael Moorcock has captivated readers with his unending versions of the Eternal Champion, the timeless warrior who serves the Cosmic Balance in the ongoing battle that rages between Law and Chaos through the many planes and levels of the multiverse. But what is the multiverse and what are its origins? In this essential novel, Michael Moorcock provides readers these critical answers.
World War Three has come and gone, and humankind has survived its brutal past to assume its place among the stars. Yet their existence is endangered nonetheless, as their entire universe is threatening to collapse. All their hopes rest on the shoulders of Count Renark von Bek, a nobleman of extraordinary psychic abilities and carefully guarded secrets.
Aided by his companions, von Bek will delve into the Sundered Worlds, a mysterious galaxy outside the space-time continuum that has materialized on the edges of known space. Inside this roving galaxy, they will uncover the secrets of the multiverse and embark upon a last desperate gamble to save humankind.
But as they will soon discover, even survival comes laden with danger, as the solutions to their dilemma may also hold the final keys to their destruction

The Humanx Commonwealth: Book Seven.

They call it the Drowning World. It is Fluva, a planet on the fringes of the Commonwealth where it rains torrentially, ceaselessly, and maddeningly for all but one month of the Fluvan year. Chief Administrator Lauren Matthias is fairly new to the position. Her primary goal: keeping Fluva’s indigenous species, the warlike Sakuntala, and its immigrant species, the timid but hardworking Deyzara, from annihilating one another.
The wettest place on Fluva is Viisiiviisii, an immense, mostly unexplored jungle. Thanks to the endless rains and humid conditions, exotic animals and plants have thrived there, many of them deadly predators. Yet the same evolutionary process responsible for creating toxic creatures has made the jungle a treasure trove of undiscovered botanicals potentially useful in engineering everything from pharmaceuticals to perfumes. A man can get rich there. Or die trying.
Bio-prospector Sadrach Hasselemoga has come to the jungle to get rich – if he survives the terrain once his sabotaged ship goes down. When a Sakuntala and a Deyzara are dispatched by Matthias to rescue the unfortunate soul, their ship crashes, too. Now, in order to survive, the three unlikely allies must do something that no one has ever done before: walk out of the Viisiiviisii.
Meanwhile, in what passes for civilization, long-simmering tensions between Sakuntala and Deyzara erupt into violence, threatening Matthias’s official position of neutrality – and her life. Behind the violence, Matthias detects a mysterious presence, one related to Shadrach’s disappearance. But how are the two related? The answer, when it comes, will send shock waves through the entire Commonwealth…and beyond.

Arthur C. Clarke has been one of the most influential commentators on – and prophets of – the communications technology which has created the global village. Now, drawing partly on his own sometimes very personal writings, he provides an absorbing history and survey of modern communications.

The story begins with the titanic struggles to lay transatlantic telegraph cables in the nineteenth century. Fighting against widespread scepticism, lack of funds, technical disasters and setbacks – and against the Atlantic itself, above and below the surface – the pioneers achieved the seemingly impossible and by 1858 Britain and America were linked by Telegraph.

Nearly a century later, as the first transatlantic telephone cable was being laid, the technology that would rival and perhaps even supersede it was undergoing its painful birth as scientists developed the communications satellite precisely as Clarke first described in his famous 1945 article Wireless World, ‘Extra-terrestrial Relays’, reprinted in this book.

The rivalry between cable and satellite continued through the decades. Communication satellites (Comsats) performed even beyond the most optimistic expectations, but cable fought back with the development of the transistor. Then, in one of the most dramatic and unexpected breakthroughs in any technology, the potential of cable systems was transformed. The development of fibre optics technology meant that once more the seabeds of the world began to be draped with the newest and most sophisticated artefacts of human engineering.

It is an enthralling story, filled with extraordinary events and people, and Arthur C. Clarke brings all his storytelling flair and scientific expertise to bear on it. The result is a superb combination of history, comment and challenging speculation.

Between the lines of the official histories of the frontier worlds of the 29th Century lie myriad confidential accounts of the boners, near-catastrophes, and interstellar crises that were bound to occur when human meets non-human. The adventures of CDC (Corps Diplomatique Terra) diplomat Jame Retief loom large in six highly classified missions where brain and brawn save land and lives despite red-tape bound superiors amid conspiracy and conflict across alien planets – guaranteed astounding, amazing, startling, galactic, weird, and thrillingly wonderful.

Towards the end of the twenty-first century 41 Worlds, small satellites with a total population of half a million, orbit the Earth, which has seen many changes, not least of which is a second revolution in America. Marianne O’Hara, a brilliant political sciences student, is from New New York, a hollowed out asteroid and the largest of the Worlds, but is to spend a year on Earth as a postgraduate student. Because the political relationship between the Worlds and Earth is complex and voltatile, Marianne unwittingly finds herself caught up with a group of fanatics determined on a third revolution in America – even if such a revolution could lead to the destruction of the Earth…

In the 277th century, Earth is dead, but mankind survives in colonies scattered across the galaxy. To these new worlds come the Immortals, beings with strange ties to ancient Earth who seem to live forever, who can travel light years in days – and who use their strange powers to control the existence of ordinary mortals. On the planet Pentecost, a small group sets out to find and challenge the Immortals. But in the search they themselves are changed: as Immortals, they discover a new threat, not just to themselves, but to the galaxy itself.

World-saver, or world-breaker?

The treaty that ended the civil war decreed that the men of science and the followers of the gods would split all of society between them. Yet Guild apprentice Pol was torn between the logic of science and the lure of faith, unaware that destiny had already chosen a very special role for him to play.

For Pol was about to encounter a woman of unique power, the mistress of a mysterious, forbidden castle, who would lead him down the pathways of prophecy to a strange and frightening new world . . .

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.

In the heart of the gordath, danger is waiting…

A year ago, Lynn Romano and Kate Mossland stumbled through the gordath, a portal between our world and the war-torn society called Aeritan. Now, a powerful Aeritan general has crossed through to Earth, and his obsession with Kate could tear both worlds apart.

When Commander Herries of the Space Line began to sell the water of Mars as a ‘potion’ for lengthening life he had no idea that he was going to create the world’s greatest thirst and produce havoc among the two social grades of Earth – the Inelligentsia and the Normals. But produce it he did.

Among the confusion thus produced one man thinks clearly for his own ends – Vance Unthra, the leading scientist of the world – and he sees in the crisis which has hit Earth a way to be rid of all those who do not measure up to what he thinks as an intellectual standard. By his orders two synthetic worlds are created – Alpha and Omega – and to these are ruthlessly evacuated all the victims of the Martian water, there to rebuild there shattered fortunes and never cross the ‘Dark Boundaries’ which exist between those worlds and Earth.

Despite his careful planning, however, Unthra makes one mistake. In destroying the power of the Martian water over the evacuated thousands he miscalculates the strength of cosmic radiation on Omega with the result that the leader – the Controllix – of this world, Sylvia Grantham, becomes a far greater power in the grand scheme of things than her former lover, Dexter Carfax. Through the machinations of the wily Unthra open hostility breaks out between Dexter Carfax and the girl, and eventually their worlds are destroyed through the influence of a deadly chain reaction ‘disease’ from the Great Red Spot of Jupoter.

Both of them, however, through the various experiences they undergo, hold to one objective – to be avenged on Vance Unthra for his viciousness.

It was a world slowly recovering form a battle between Titanic forces of good and evil. A grand alliance had been formed to fight humanity’s battle. For good had not won the final victory. The Nine, rulers of hell, had formed their own empire and planned to invade the world, first subverting humans to their own unholy use.

Sweetly are the secrets told
wrapt in crystal,
limned in gold . . .

On a planet of barren beauty near the edge of the civilized galaxy, two religions are practiced. Both sects worship the same goddess – the Triumphantes in joy and splendour, the Fideles in solemnity and selflessness. As different as day and night, sun and shadow, joy and grief, the two sects are now bound together in death . . .

A serial killer is stalking the priestesses, killing first a Triumphante, then a Fidele, in turn. Six women are now dead, and the planetary authorities are at a loss. Enter Interfed Agent Cowen Drake. A cunning professional, he must immerse himself in an unfamiliar world of stark spirituality to catch the killer. A world that will trap him between opulence and sacrifice, between duty and desire and between two extraordinary women – one who could become the killer’s ultimate victim . . .

‘The gems in this impressive collection have the same power to disconcert as her best novels’ Martin Amis

‘Her worlds have a magic sheen . . . she moulds them into dimensions we can only just sense. She is unique. She is legend’ THE TIMES

North to Orsinia and the boundaries between reality and madness … South to discover Antarctica with nine South American women … West to find an enchanted harp and the borderland between life and death … and onward to all points on and off the compass. Twenty astonishing stories from acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin carry us to worlds of wonder and horror, desire and destiny, enchantment and doom.

In early 20th-century England, Edward Lessingham and Lasy Mary Scarnsdale conduct a passionate if tumultuous courtship. After the First World War, they raise their children in their Cumbrian idyll, until tragedy strikes.

On the world of Zimiamvia, Duke Barganax pursues the divine Lady Florinda who toys with his affections like a cat with a mouse. Meanwhile, King Mezentius struggles to hold his Threee Kingdoms together against the intrigues of his enemies.

And over a fish dinner in Memison the true relationship between worlds and lovers will be made shockingly clear . . .

The first installment of Second Ether trilogy by the award-winning author of Cornelius Chronicles.

The world is swirling with entropic decay, opening pockets of chaos that draw unsuspecting souls into a paralled universe. Blood tells the heartbreaking story of two pairs of star-crossed lovers caught between the old world, a lawless society ruled by gamblers and riverboat captains, and the new reality called the “Second Ether”.