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Most people think witches are old and ugly – but ANITA isn’t.

ANITA doesn’t cackle and hiss as she works dark curses, either. Oh, she casts witch’s spells and incantations, but not the usual kind.

ANITA’s main interest is boys, just like any other girl her age. And she doesn’t really need things like love potions – not with her face and figure.

But ANITA is a witch, and she’s young and a little reckless. Which means she sometimes makes mistakes (usually with boys), and when she does… all Hell might break loose….

In the year 2794, the greatest civilisation in Earth’s history, ravaged by over-population and lack of food, faces almost certain destruction. A handful of men and women struggle desperately to avert the coming holocaust, but they seem doomed to failure. And even if they succeed, Earth will never be the same again . . .

Tipton Bond was a man who lived for challenges – and Earth had no more challenges for him. But on Xota:

One of the giants’ faces bent over him, sardonically benign. “You are an Earthman, little human electron. You are a denizen of a planet which the Warriors of Day will reach and engulf, in a bare thousand years. Did you think to escape us by coming to Xota? You have brought yourself closer to the thing which you thought to escape. You will share in the general holocaust when the Wild Star arrives!”

Giants they might be, Bond decided, but they had limitations. “What is this Wild Star?” he called.

The slow thunder answered: “It is the most condensed of white dwarfs, almost pure neutronium throughout. And what makes a sun a runaway sun? The answer, little one, is very simple: The Warriors of Day!”

When the scientists of the wandering planet, journeying through inter-galactic space, heard the sound of hydrogen atoms coming into existence out of nothing, they realized that they had accidentally discovered the birthplace of continuous creation. They had lifted the curtain and caught an instant’s glimpse of the unknowable. But to have looked it full in the face could have been no more fatal. For later, much later, they were to learn that they had also uncovered mankind’s Day of Judgment . . .

When Fergus Reith agrees to act as tour guide for the famed palaeontologist Dr Aristide Marot, little does he realise that the search for the elusive Ozymandias will uncover spectacular riches, ruthless adversaries – and his former wife, the seductive Dr. Alicia Dyckman! Caught in a bloody civil was, the three adventurers must fight or face death by boiling in the Cauldron of Repentance! The secrets of the planet Krishna continue to unfold in L. Sprague de Camp’s latest tale of mystery, treachery and romance.

The Bones of Zora is the sixth of L. Sprague de Camp’s Krishna book – interplanetary romance in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian Tales.

SHYLER-DEME IS UNDER SEIGE!
The enemy has no face. It does not show on the scanners. It avoids the world’s most sophisticated surveillance system. But it leaves a wake of profitless crime and motiveless murder…
And puts the future of mankind’s paradise-on-earth in peril!

IT SEEMED AS IF EVERYONE WAS A SPY!

The political situation in the 21st century was coming to the boil: one man, a scientist, held what might be the important key to ultimate power in the struggle between the three blocs: West-world, Sov-world, and Common Europe. The scientist, Auguste Bazaine, disappears, and each bloc accuses the other of kidnapping.

There was only one way to settle the difference! So nine men were chosen to fight to the death in a trial by combat organised by the World Court. The winner will put his country on top. But when an American and a Russian meet face to face – the result is not what was expected!

PROGRESS REPORT:


Cornwall, Nebraska – 894 catatonic, 86 dead


Boland, California – 1200 blind


Berwick, Maine – 2100 severely mentally retarded


McKay, Maryland – 2300 with complete loss of memory


Small towns, each wiped out as surely as if bombed off the face of the earth.

The president’s announcement was simple: “My fellow Americans, the people of the United States are under attack. Terrorists are using germ warfare against us and we must take extraordinary enforcement measures. I will ask Congress to declare a state of national emergency…”

Omega: an apocalyptic rumour from the Eastern Front. Omega: something that will alter all the strategic calculations of the Earth’s great military blocs. Omega: the code name for a weapon that may well bring doomsday with it. But if Omega is indeed the agent that will destroy the world, that world is not our own. For this is a timeline in which World War Two never truly ended: a timeline in which Hitler died in a plane crash, Britain joined Germany in its battle against Communist Russia, and the present is an age of intermittent, but deadly, armed conflict between the USSR, the European Alliance, and the USA.

The frontier regions are radioactive wastelands, nuclear winter threatens catastrophe, global confrontation could erupt again any time – and that’s before Omega is taken into account…This is the reality experienced by Owen Meredith when an accident forces his consciousness from the England we know into the mind of his cognate self in that other darker, Europe.

Switching back and forth between being plain Owen Meredith and troubled Major Owain Maredudd, Owen is faced not only with a Cold War going Hot, but with a deep crisis of identity. Who is he? Whose twisted destiny is he treading? Did the ordinary domestic life he remembers ever even take place? Perhaps the universe of Owain and Omega is merely a symptom of mental illness – but if so, why is it so urgently tangible?

The Last Transaction is a deep and fascinating glimpse into the memories, inner compulsions, torments, triumphs, and events in the life of a President of the United States in a world gone mad, from 1980 to 1985. Even more, it is a perceptive vision of the major issues our society will face tomorrow. Sure to be a controversial, possibly prophetic, like anything Barry Malzberg writes, this novel is an experience you will not forget.

Pout, the chimera, half-man, half-ape, was incorporated into one of the plants or vice versa. He was jammed into a squatting position, while the stems, entering at his buttocks, merged with his legs, his arms and his torso, emerging at knees, elbows, and through his abdomen and thorax. A large, yellow-petalled flower seemed to frame his face.

It was his face that rivetted Ikematsu’s attention, while the chimera squirmed in dumb distress, glaring with huge piteous eyes. For in that face, set into it as if set in pudding, was the zen gun. The gun was his face, or a part of it. The barrel pointed straight out in place of a nose… the stock merged with and disappeared into Pout’s pendulous mouth.

Ikematsu leaned toward the chimera. “How you loved your toy! Now it is truly yours!”

That was the strange message left on Cory Maddox’s e-mail – just at the moment when years of work on a revolutionary subspace computer system were about to pay off. Nothing would be the same for Cory again. Suddenly his life was thrown into chaos when the company that controlled his patent was sold out from under him, and instead of imminent watch, Cory was facing immediate poverty. Then along came Alan Stark, who wanted to recruit Cory for a special research project on virtual reality.

Initially thrilled to be involved, Cory quickly discovered that there was nothing virtual about the realities he was working on. Instead, he found that Stark was on the verge of controlling the very fabric of reality itself.

Cory was unsure of Stark’s ultimate goal until he began to recall pieces of another life and found himself in the middle of a battle between two groups of people who could use “rabbit holes” in space and time to jump between different realities, personalities, and lives. Whoever had control of the power to shape reality would have power to become a god – or a devil. But before Cory could combat Stark and his minions, he first had to remember which side he was on.

From the Garlowe Clusters in the north to the Veils of Darkness in the south, the Star Kingdom sprawled over roughly a fifth of the galaxy. So huge was this realm that those who tussled for power over it seemed unable to appreciate that it faced annihilation by the Patch, a roving region of peculiar pseudo-energy a light-year across which drained the life-force from any living thing it encountered.

The Patch had moved into the Kingdom and was systematically feeding on system after system. Cynically unperturbed by the appalling loss of life, the royal houses merely tried to involve the Patch in their machinations, to the extent that civil war broke out all over again. But in the event, the Patch was to provide the crucial factor in the struggle for absolute power. The Annihilation Factor!

Robot evolution has advanced to the point that intelligent robots have liberated themselves from servitude, defending themselves from servitude, defending themselves against the humans who work to exterminate them using super-machines.

The ultimate hope of the most powerfully intelligent robots lies in the attainment of human consciousness. And they are willing to steal men’s souls if they must, to get this final elusive quality for themselves.

Only one free robot, Jasperodus, has been granted true consciousness – a soul – by his maker, now long dead. Brought into the soul research project by force, Jasperodus faces a moral dilemma: to release his secret and bring about the final downfall of humanity to a new race of super-robots, or to keep his own kind forever from the light of consciousness. And the mechanized armies of the humans press ever forward, seeking the robot hideout.

Even before the renegade pirates of the giant spaceship Thunder had collected all five of the rings that would eliminate the threat of Master System forever, Hawks knew that they still faced even greater problems.

The shapechanger, Vulture, was lost on the watery planet of Chanchuk, his fate unknown. Master System’s space fleet dogged the renegade’s every step. Hawks suspected that the group was harbouring a traitor, but he was powerless to act. And, most important, the rebels had not yet figured out how the rings were used – a riddle that seemed to have no solution!

Somewhere back on Earth lay the original computer interface, and somewhere in the distant past lay the secret to Master System’s demise. As a historian, Hawks had the knowledge to solve the riddle; yet he had to be absolutely sure – for one misstep would destroy them all.

When suddenly all the fissionable material on Earth was exploded, Earthmen had their first notice of the aliens’ arrival.

And by the time the panic, death and chaos had been sorted out, reports were coming in about mysterious cities scattered across the face of the planet – huge areas of flickering light and awesome free energy, disorienting to human senses and impregnable to attack.

The question was: were they alien bases . . . or something else?

If the past is tampered with, the present might be totally transformed. So the whole fabric of reality depends on the watchful efforts of the Society of Time. Don Miguel Navarro is a junior officer in this force dedicated to defending the Spanish Empire and the mother church from the results of meddling in history by time-travellers.

But he begins to wonder just how dedicated the Society really is when he has to deal with a case of corruption involving fellow officers . . .

After he has to rescue the entire court from death at the hands of Amazon warriors brought through time, his greatest trial becomes unavoidable. Facing a threat to the most vulnerable event in his world’s history, can the young Don prevent catastrophe?

Or will the glorious triumph of the Spanish Armada never have occurred?




(First published 1969)

Kynance Foy was young, beautiful, intelligent an highly trained in both qua-space physics and business law when she left Earth to seek her fortune in the interstellar outworlds. But she found that the further she got from Earth, the tougher became the competition from the environment-hardened populations of these young worlds . . . and by the time she reached the planet Nefertiti, she was facing poverty.

Then, unexpectedly, a wonderful opportunity opened up for her: the job of Planetary Supervisor of the fabulously wealthy world called Zygra, where exotic pelts costing a million credits each were grown. The salary was huge, and at the end of the year’s tour of duty she would be transported free of charge back to Earth, where she would be a very wealthy young woman.

There had to be a catch to it, she thought as she signed the contract. And, of course, there was.



(First published 1966)

The barrenland lay on the face of the world like a sore, nearly round, more than three hundred miles in circumference. It had been there so long that it was endured, as were the twisted monsters that wandered out of the barrenland and killed.

Conrad, living on the edge, had visions of a time when the barrenland was a rich region full of powerful, magical people-people who travelled to other worlds. He was ruled by a burning need to know what none could tell him: the explanation of the mysterious visions which had plagued him all his life.

Then he met Jervis Yanderman, a soldier who knew of these visions. Yanderman was convinced there was an island in the barrenland where people still clung to life.

And Yanderman knew that a man had come out of it . . . within living memory!

First published in 1964.

The secret of the three kings – revealed at last

For centuries, interstellar prospectors had searched for the fabled Worlds of the Three Kings, the lost El Dorado of the galaxy. But if any found it, they were never heard from again. The mad cyborg Prophet, Ishmael Hand, discovered the mysterious system, with artefacts indicating a superhuman technology, and he had refused to reveal its location before vanishing forever in history.

Two more recent expeditions have found the Three Kings. A starfaring evangelist – Doctor Karl Woodward, preacher and leader of the starship The Mountain – followed a clue and found it, but never returned. Then a spacegoing salvage team followed Woodward’s trail, and also vanished.

Now a chance encounter between what’s left of the once-mighty human military with an inexplicable alien force has brought an armed expedition to the third planet of the Three Kings, Kaspar. They will join forces with the survivors of the first two expeditions, who have been marooned both by alien powers and by human treachery, as they at last encounter the alien minds behind the mysterious triple planetary system – and face a decision that may determine the fate of the entire human race!

The man in black picked up something which had been leaning beside him. A ring perhaps two feet wide . . . yet when the man in black laid it down on the floor it was as large as he was tall.

The light went out. A bluish glow now emanated from the ring, revealing Bryda’s face ghastly gray as she leaned forward, and Yarco’s also, set and serious, and the conjurer’s impassive.

And within the ring, where moments before there had been the bare planks of the floor, a shape that moved, and opened eyes glowing like coals, and spoke.

‘What world is this?’ the awful voice inquired.



(First published 1962)

Mervyn, wizard and Fluxlord, leader of the Nine Who Guard, faces the ultimate threat of the opposing Seven Who Wait: the opening of the Hellgates to World. Closed more than two thousand years ago, they are portals to unknowable danger and, perhaps, great power.

Mervyn must gather the shattered forces of guardianship, dispersed and reeling after the battle with Coydt:

Cassie, once the powerful saint and crusader, now the brainwashed slave of an oppressive male dictatorship.

Spirit, her daughter, controlled by her mysterious Soul Raider.

Jeff, Spirit’s son

Matson: he will lead the entire force of the Stringers Guild to war, if need be.

But all of them are doomed to death unless they can become Masters of Flux and Anchor.

THE CALL OF THE WELL


For uncounted eons, the Well World had regulated and given order to the universe, and throughout the eternity, Nathan Brazil had been the guardian of the Well of Souls, where the universe’s master control lay. Forever wandering and alone, returning to the Well in times of Danger, Brazil had destroyed and re-created the cosmos several times over. But even he wearied of his endless watch, and had enlisted the aid of space pilot and high-tech thief Mavra Chang the last time the universal order required resetting.


But now the universe faced a threat more grave than mere destruction. An unnamed and utterly alien entity had somehow been released from its ancient prison and was bent on the corruption of the Well World itself. If successful, it would cause chaos beyond mortal understanding.


The Well World needed Brazil and Chang. But when it found them, would they once again answer the call? And though Brazil was immortal, could he even fight the force threatening the Well? For the force was not of this universe – and it had plans for Nathan Brazil…

THE PHENOMENAL, SPELLBINDING WELL-WORLD SAGA

‘I was a beggar who became queen of beggars, a whore when I had to buy the stars I craved…’

Volume two finds Mavra Chang, who alone is able to protect the Universe from the archvillain Antor Trelig, exiled on the Well World. There she and Trelig face countless bizarre ecologies, locked in a desperate struggle for control of the Universe.