Search Results for: out-of-this-world

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…

To see the stars.

This was the great and paradoxical dream. To stand and look upward into space, at the myriad pin-points of light, forever out of reach, just as their forebears on Earth had in the long gone days before the building of the planetary shells.

Mars, Jupiter, Saturn… Shell had succeeded shell, each studded with its captive caged worlds, each progressively populated by men who could look up only into a sky of artificial luminaries and space debris.

Always Zeus, man-created prime mover, was at work beyond them, the giant space machines forming and working the next shell.

Uranus, Neptune, Pluto…The last shell.

Again they journeyed: Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry and Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotic, to reach the outer shell, to return to the past when Man could see the stars.

Time was running out for Bob Kinnaird. Without much warning, the Hunter – the green protoplasmic alien that lived inside him and cured all his ills – had suddenly become his destroyer. Day by day Bob grew weaker and weaker, but only specialists from the Hunter’s distant world would know what was wrong with him and, more importantly, how to save him.

But the only way searchers from his planet could find him was to locate his missing spaceship . . . a spaceship that had crashed beneath the ocean years before, its location still very much a mystery. Once again leading an investigation against time – as he had done so many years before – the Hunter knew he had to find comrades and find them fast . . . before someone murdered his best friend.

The world that Man has known for close on twenty thousand years had been overthrown in a holocaust of atomic fire and annihilation. The immense and complex system of civilisation had been utterly destroyed almost overnight and only a scant handful of true humans remained.

Stretched out between the rivers of radioactive fire, the cities were growing wildernesses of shattered stone and brick, splintered glass and silent streets. But here and there in quiet places sheltered from the deadly rains, men waited for the fires to subside and hoped to rebuilt something a little like the civilisation which had existed before.

This is the stirring and sometimes terrible story of the supreme struggle for survival, when the continued existence of the human race on Earth is uncertain after such a tremendous catastrophe, and when all life is menaced by the wandering bands of mutants, creatures spawned and tainted by the deadly radiation.

Until the coming of the People of Asa, the world of Man went its own, often quarrelsome, way along the road of human advancement. There were many pitfalls on the road, conflict and misery often going hand-in-hand; but there was happiness as well. It was, for us and millions more, a happiness interrupted by the terrible advent of the worst scourge ever visited on Man – an alien invasion of the Earth’s surface by beings of diabolical power.

Rising from the deeps, wielding weapons hitherto beyond mortal conception, the Asans wrought havoc on a fearful scale. Picked out from our fellow men, we witnessed scenes of appalling chaos, experiencing as well a measure of the seeming magic of which these beings were capable. Only when all seemed lost did the fortunes of mankind change, and that in a manner we none of us dared to hope…

Sheri Tepper, one of the foremost science fiction writers in the world, gives us an exciting, evocative and thought-provoking tale where science and magic meet head-on. A group of colonists, waking every few hundred years to see what’s been happening on the planet they fled to from a dying Earth, watch as the systems and rules they set in place so long ago become debased and decayed.

The corrupt leaders govern by oppression, but technological resources run low and the knowledge of how to replace them is lost in the mists of time. Instead, the power-hungry leaders turn to sorcery of the blackest kind, kindled by pain and despair.

And when they launch a religious crusade to wipe out all those who won’t conform to the government’s ever-more-stringent dictates, not even the original colonists – the new gods – are safe from the ravaging sorcery-fuelled armies of the righteous . . .

There’s no place like home…

It was a pretty good life for a spellsinger from L.A. He’d battled demons, fought deadly Plated Folk, even met a socialist dragon and survived. Now Jon-Tom was quite happy to settle into domestic bliss with the fiery Talea, study magic, and practice spellsinging on his duar. But the magic instrument is broken when Jon-Tom protects the wizard Clothahump from thieves and he must set out across the Glittergeist Sea to find the one person who can fix it. With the irrepressible Mudge the Otter as a travelling companion, only the unexpected can happen. But cannibal muskrats, ogres, and a fierce pirate king parrot must seem ordinary indeed when Jon-Tom finds a way back to Earth – and he must choose which world is home.

ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING meets MONSIEUR SPADE

It’s 1932, and Nick and Nora Charles, and their pet schnauzer, Asta, are in New York City for the Christmas holidays. With the privilege of wealth, they can enjoy whatever they want – the best food and drink, open-topped rides through the city; speakeasies where the rich rub shoulders with gangsters…

Rich they may be, but they are also great fun to be with, kind to those in need, and more than capable of keeping their cool in a fight. So when a friend asks Nick to help him find a killer they accept – and are soon plunged into the world of the eccentric Wynant family, the head of which is an inventor who disappeared ten years before.

Nick and Nora have to pick through implausible alibis, false identities, a highly glamorous but dysfunctional family – and the mystery of The Thin Man – in order to find out the truth.

A magician turned detective is caught up in the most baffling locked-room murder mystery…

‘One of the all-time greatest impossible murder mysteries’ Publishers Weekly starred review

‘Dazzling’ Saturday Review

‘A cornerstone of detective fiction’ New York Times


Master magician The Great Merlini has hung up his top hat and white gloves, and now spends his days running a magic shop in New York and his nights moonlighting as a consultant for the NYPD. When the crimes seem impossible, it is his magician’s mind they need.

So when two occultists are discovered dead in locked rooms, one spread out on a pentagram, both appearing to have been murdered under similar circumstances, Merlini is immediately called in. The list of suspects includes an escape artist, a professional medium, and a ventriloquist – and it is only too clear that this is a world Merlini knows rather too well…

Whether or not he had wanted to turn back at the last minute, he couldn’t have – the wave of dirty, hungry people carried him helplessly along in their fervour reach the temple. Like dope addicts, he told himself, they don’t even care about themselves, only about the thing that is inside the temple!

He remembered the day ten years ago when his older brother had been made a Warden of Asconel, a prosperous and happy planet, and he and his other brothers had left in the interests of their people. Now they returned to a world where a fanatical cult had usurped the Warden’s chair, and men and women were offering themselves up as human sacrifices to Belizuek – whoever or whatever that being from beyond the galaxy was . . .

I’ll find out, he told himself grimly, when I enter these doors . . .



(First published 1965)

The gods of Poseidonis – or Atlantis – were powerful and real. Now they were determined to destroy the kingdom ruled by the father of Prince Vakar, the one man whose mind they could not read. The only way to save the kingdom was to discover that thing which the gods feared most.

To find it, Prince Vakar set out across the largely unknown world where dangers multiplied with every league. There he found savage countries and strange people – the wild Amazons; a voluptuous, ensorcelled queen; a too-charming girl who was half-horse, half-woman; dangerous magicians who ruled hordes of headless slaves; and the Gorgons, who could paralyze their victims at a glance.

Behind was his ambitious brother, determined that Vakar must fail. Even closer were unknown enemies set on his trail by the suspicious gods.

And to add to his troubles, Vakar had no idea of what he sought!

Time after time, life after life, Cory Maddox was being incarnated into worlds he found both familiar and strangely different. And only in this latest incarnation did Cory bring along knowledge, skills, and memories of his previous existence – memories of cold betrayal that promised nothing he saw or felt could be trusted. Nor could he trust his companions who, like himself, kept moving from life to life trying to escape the endless cycle.

But it was only with the help of those companions that Cory could develop the technological means to peer beyond the veil of reality – to the shadowy figures whom he was sure were manipulating reality . . . if what he was experiencing actually was reality.

Time was running out. His memories gave him an advantage over the others, but he would have to act quickly and surely if he were to discover the truth – before truth itself could no longer be trusted . . .

I’m Horowitz. Private eye. I work of G.O.D., Inc. – the company that rules the Labyrinth between infinite alternate Earths. Only now I’ve got new clients – vengeful rebels out to wreck the Labyrinth. But their Big Plan’s on hold: one of the inner circle’s dead, leaving eight conspirator/ prime suspends on eight private worlds.

And finding the killer’s the least of my problems. The rebels play for high stakes – and I know too much to live. If I succeed, they’ll kill me. If I stall, they’ll blow up a planet – ours. If I escape, the Company will kill me. If I stop the rebel scheme, my wife and child will be turned into mindless drug-sex slaves.

But if I don’t stop them, they’ll unleash a force that might well cremate Earths. All Earths. In all universes. Throughout all creation…

Scientific progress has taken human beings to remote planes in far galaxies and enabled them to build comfortable homes there. But when that science proved a deadly enemy and had to be abandoned, the pioneers were isolated in alien surroundings. There was no way home. Earth, which had once been home, had ceased to exist. And when the men of the planet Demeter died out in space, the destiny of the human race was left to a group of women.

Clare Monkton worked to establish a feminist world. She used the resources of science to assure the continuance of the race … but the resulting children were to be brought up according to her ideas.

There was bound to be a challenge. When there were once more young men growing up on the planet, it was inevitable that they should oppose the authority of the women. And when one of those young men proved to come from such a dangerous ancestry, Clare knew she had a battle on her hands…

He had forgotten his real name, so they called him “Spingarn” after the last role he had played. He was the man the directors of the Frames regarded as their major headache – for he was guilty of two unforgivable arrogances. He had programmed himself into every one of the vast world-staged dramas he had directed – and he had reactivated the forbidden Frames of the pre-human planet of Talisker.

In those days of an overcrowded colonized cosmos, a thousand years from now, the Frames were the major means of diversion. Historical re-creations and fictional dramas played out with planets as stages and while populations as actors – the Frame directors and their robot assistants had become the masters of all life.

They could not destroy Spingarn, THE PROBABILITY MAN, but they could sentence him to undo the damage he had done. So he was sent to the mad Frames of Talisker to unravel the secret of their origin a billion years before the universe

Earth was a crowded world of vast cities, manned by robots who carried out all of the menial tasks, who saw to it that everything contained functioning normally. Interplanetary travel was now an established fact. The planets favourable to Man’s existence had been colonised but where, as yet, under-developed according to Earth standards.

In the whole of the Solar System, mankind was supreme. There was life on Mars, Venus and the outer moons of Jupiter and Saturn, but nothing which could match the military might of Earth.

Yet now, Earth itself faced destruction. Quite suddenly the thread had materialised. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Someone – or Something – wanted Earth. But vast creatures such as these had never originated on any of the Solar Planets and Brad Norton, investigating events for the Military Commission, refused to believe that they could have been transported through space from an of the stars.

But the undeniable fact was that they were here and Earth science was powerless against them…

Beyond the eccentric orbits of Pluto and Neptune lies a vast, empty wilderness. There is nothing but the silence of space between the fringes of the Solar System and our nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri. The outer worlds of the Home System were only inhabited by Service and Scientific Personnel. Life for them was a constant routine war against an almost impossibly hostile environment.
Then something in deep space began to affect the fringe of the Solar System. The isolated Observers in their living domes were helpless. They could do nothing except report on the increasingly bewildering phenomena. As the strange effects worsened, several domes were abandoned. The menace from Beyond continued to encroach on the civilised planets as it head steadily earthwards…
What was the rational, scientific explanation for the thing that looked like an eye? Was it merely motiveless and purposeless, or was it guided by something sinister and more dangerous? Were men fighting a Cosmic Accident or an enormous Intelligence from out there…?

Ever since science began seriously investigating the potentials of electronics, man has toyed with the idea of creating robots. The dawn of the robot age has already broken. We have automatic telephone exchanges. We fly planes with robot pilots. We send self-sufficient instruments into the void to record and transmit cosmic information.

Frobisher was a brilliant theorist, years ahead of his time. He worked out a scheme that took long patient decades of planning. His great moment came. The robots were a success. Frobisher was a kindly old man. There was nothing evil in his plans. But the world is not entirely inhabited by kindly old men with high visions. Someone else got hold of the plans and the robots embarked on a career of international crime and pillage.

Despite his pacifist ideals, the old professor tried to combat the evil which he had unwittingly released . . . the results were staggering.

Jonga and Krull had a routine job in the solar system defence organisation. Week after week and year after year they checked the asteroids. 23rd century astronomy had accurately charted 2,812 of those miniature worlds, compared with the 1,539 that are known to-day.
Suddenly a new asteroid appears, and a survey expedition under Squadron-leader Gregg Masterson, is sent out to investigate. They expedition fails to return, and when the watching asteroid observation corps make another anxious check, they find that the mysterious planetoid has disappeared as mysteriously as it came. A second expedition is launched under General Rotherson himself. An expedition that finds the wreckage of the survey ships, and the bodies of every man except Gregg Masterson.
Where is the missing Squadron leader?
Who is the terrible ageless asteroid man? So strong that he can control the destinies of a planet. What is the beautiful Princess Astra of Altain doing in the labyrinth below the surface of the asteroid?

Leinster was a scientist with rather odd political ideas. When he discovers a new super-efficient rocket projectile, he decides to publish his findings to the entire world. The implications are tremendous. Who-ever reaches the moon first and establishes a base can control the earth…
East and West despatch their various expeditions and the space race ends in something like a photo-finish. Almost every Lunar crater in the Sea of Rains becomes a new base for one or other of the great powers, and a new miniature cold-war develops on the moon. Suddenly the leaders of the various expeditions mysteriously disappear. What sinister power is at work? Does life still exist below the dead surface of Lunar?
Has out satellite been the target for non-human space expeditions?
Can the earth men combine against this weird scientific peril?
Or will they remain divided and fall before the terrible alien aggressor?

Without setting foot on another planet, people like Shep Blaine were reaching out to the stars with their minds, telepathically contacting strange beings on other worlds. But even Blaine was unprepared for what happened when he communed with the soul of an utterly alien being light years from Earth. After recovering from his experience, he becomes a dangerous man: not only has he gained startling new powers – but he now understands that humankind must share the stars.

Hunted through time and space by those who he used to trust, Blaine undergoes a unique odyssey that takes him through a nightmarish version of small-town America as he seeks to find others who share his vision of a humane future. Blaine has mastered death and time. Now he must master the fear and ignorance that threatened to destroy him!

The long-awaited new novel in the superb Hainish cycle

‘Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power’ OBSERVER

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


There have been eighty requests to send an Observer into the hinterlands of the planet Aka to study the natives. Much to everyone’s surprise, the eighty-first request is granted, and Observer Sutty is sent upriver to Okzat-Ozkat, a small city in the foothills of Rangma, to talk to the remnants in hiding of a cult practising a banned religion. On Aka, everything that was written in the old scripts has been destroyed; modern aural literature is all written to Corporation specifications.

The Corporation expects Sutty to report back so the non-standardised folk stories and songs can be wiped out and the people ‘re-educated’.

But Sutty herself is in for an education she never imagined.

In the aftermath of World War II, 8-year-old Luellen Enright is orphaned and shipped to San Francisco and the care of a covetous aunt, over-friendly uncle, and adolescent male cousins.
Her only friend is a neighbor boy-the sickly and eccentric “Chickweed”, who writes in his “Book of Dreams” and makes home movies. Lulu suffers indignities and all manner of abuse, is finally accused of murder, and sent to juvenile detention.
Years later Lulu sets out to reclaim what was taken from her-a priceless Sung vase left by her missionary father, baldly stolen by her aunt.
One of four Jack Vance mystery novels which never found a mainstream publisher, The View from Chickweed’s Window tells in delicate detail the misery of a defenseless child in the hands of unpleasant adults, and cruel older children. In typical style Vance gives us a robust heroine who, rather than crushed by hardship-is instead motivated strongly to restore justice, with a focus on result over scruple!