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World War II veteran Edward Bond’s recuperation from a disastrous fighter plane crash takes a distinct turn for the weird when he encounters a giant wolf, a red witch, and the undeniable power of the need-fire, a portal to a world of magic and swordplay at once terribly new and hauntingly familiar. In the Dark World, Bond opposes the machinations of the dread lord Ganelon and his terrible retinue of werewolves, wizards, and witches, but all is not as it seems in this shadowy mirror of the real world, and Bond discovers that a part of him feels more at home here than he ever has on Earth.

Warren Peace joined the Space Legion to forget – and forget what it was he wanted to forget. In his quest to find out who he’d been he got turned into an Oscar by a symbiotic alien parasite.



Oscars are invulnerable superbeings, immune to everything and with no need for air, food or drink, let alone sex and drugs and rock’n’roll. Marooned on an airless planet with a whole bunch of them, Warren is bored witless.



Then a chance encounter with a lump of pryktonite turns him back into a human, and Warren embarks on a new career- as a galactic troubleshooter. His first mission takes him (with a couple of Oscars providing the muscle) to a water-covered planet where a company producing a mind-blowing drug is having trouble with its alien work force. It seems they’re smuggling alien porn mags on to the planet, and are too…tired to work. Warren sets out to find the solution…



Warren Peace is the second bizarre episode in the series that began with Who Goes Here? By the acclaimed author of Orbitsville and the Ragged Astronauts trilogy.

Police officer Dora Henry is investigating the bizarre murders of three geneticists. Meanwhile, strange things are happening everywhere she turns. Weeds are becoming trees; trees are becoming forests. Overnight a city is being transformed into a wild and verdant place.

And, strangest of all, Dora can somehow communicate with the rampaging flora.

A potential civilization-ending catastrophe is in the making. The nearer Dora gets to a murderer – and to the truth – the more seemingly desperate events begin to entwine. And the answers she seeks today to the salvation of humankind may lie in a far distant future . . . one which is suddenly much closer than anyone imagines.

For centuries it has waited. Now it is free.

Badger Ettison does not believe in demons. Until a shrieking, freezing horror escapes its ancient prison. A soulless hunger. Hunger that turns a beautiful woman into a shrivelled husk before she has time to scream. Hunger that has no form, no substance – but fangs and claws and eyes to seek its prey.

Badger Ettison does not believe in magic. But the old blood-rituals are the only way to stop the voracious evil that pursues his wife and son. And they demand that Badger must sacrifice one of the two he loves to save the other.

Badger Ettison does not believe in terror. Now he is living it.

I am called Jinian Footseer by some. By some, Jinian Star-Eye. And by some, the Wizard Jinian. One or two call me Dervish Daughter.

On thinking it over, I decided I had been right all along. Everything I had told Peter was true. All the evidence pointed in one way and one way only. I felt as I had felt so long ago, travelling toward Bleer with Peter, when he put the clues to a mystery in my hands and asked me to make sense of it. Now, as then, all the pieces were in my hands, or my head.

The great flitchhawk who had granted me a boon in Chimmerdong, and the d’bor wife, and the gobblemole. The story of Lite Star and the Daylight Bell. The Oracle. The Eesties. Yellow crystals and blue, separated by a thousand years of time. My illness in Chimmerdong, the diagnoses of Bartelmy of the Ban, the Dervish, my mother. All these. No matter how I turned them, there was no other explanation.

Could anything be done?

Bright the sun burning,
Night will come turning,
Mothwings go spinning,
End and beginning,
Eye of the star,
Where Old Gods are.

Players, take your places!
The Land itself calls Game!

Culled from the most imaginative and provocative minds of the pas thirty years, these pieces demonstrate the vitality and diversity, the excitement and commitment of the writers who helped make science fiction what it is today.

Brilliant invention, a rich sense of humour, an equal facility for describing ideas and technologies – these are the ingredients of Knight’s extraordinary talent as an SF writer. This collection of stories takes the reader from the death bed of the last man on earth to the unlikely demise of a vegetable vampire – and proves that Knight was at the top of his form.

Thrown into the alternate universe of 14th century England, 20th century mathematician Jim Eckert and his wife Angie have become Sir James, Baron de Bois de Malencontri, and Lady Angela. A bit of a shock, but they’d coped with it. In fact they were dealing with their new life’s hazards and magical manifestations just fine. Until Jim is suddenly transformed into a dragon. None too pleased about this latest turn of events, Jim turns for help to his neighbour, the magician S. Carolinus, who takes him on as an apprentice. When Prince Edward is captured by the French at the Battle of Poitiers, Jim sets out with some companions, including Aaargh the wolf, to join the English forces. He ends up as chief pawn in a battle against the Dark Powers – with extraordinary consequences.

Annihilating everything before it, a horde of monstrous space travellers were advancing through the stars. And Earth lay in their route. To defend their home planets, the worlds that lay in the path of the monsters created a super defence force, asking each planet to contribute one especially talented warrior to help turn the invaders away. Miles Vander was Earth’s man, but when he arrived at the rendezvous point he found that he was included in the special task force of the less civilized defenders.

But in the contest of advanced nuclear weaponry and computer strategy, it turned out to be Vander’s group that had the special independent qualities and the raw courage to meet the challenge most effectively.

Kainui is one of a pair of double planets circling a pair of binary stars. Mike Hoani has come there to study the languarge of the colonists. But Kainui is an ocean planet, covered in water 1700 miles deep, with no solid ground anywhere. The population is scattered in cities on floating artificial islands with no fixed locations. The atmosphere isn’t breathable, and lightning, water-spouts, and tsunamis are constant. Out on the great planetary ocean, self-sufficiency is crucial, and far from any floating city, on a small working-family ship, anything can happen. Mike’s academic research turns into an exotic nautical adventure unlike anything he could have imagined.

The Ledom had made a world without war, without fear – a world in which each individual was free to love, to create, to explore . . .

The Ledom, a gentle and kindly new race, made their twentieth-century guest, Charlie Johns, welcome to their paradise.

Charlie thought he was in heaven. But then he found out just where – and when – he was . . . an Eden turned into a nightmare!

This fourth volume of Theodore Sturgeon’s Complete Stories publishes the work of 1946-1948, wen Sturgeon’s early popularity among science fiction readers crystallized into a lasting reputation among a wider group of readers. “Maturity” and “Thunder and Roses” are the best-known of the stories in this period. “It Wasn’t Syzygy” display’s Sturgeon’s interest in psychological themes. “The Professor’s Teddy Bear” is an early prototype of the modern “horror story” as practiced by Clive Baker, Stephen King and many others.


In these years Sturgeon was recovering from the failure of his first marriage and a severe case of “writer’s block”. In March 1947 his luck turned around: a story he had failed to sell earlier won a short story contest sponsored by the prominent British magazine, Argosy, with the then-enormous prize of $1000. Later Sturgeon credited this event for restoring his faith in himself as a writer. The same year “Maturity” and “Thunder and Roses” were received with tremendous enthusiasm by his peers. Ray Bradbury, a few years short of his own success, wrote to Sturgeon in February 1947:


“Ted, I hate you!…MATURITY…is a damned nice story. Your sense of humour, sir, is incredible. I don’t believe you’ve written a bad story yet; I don’t think you ever will. This is not log-rolling, by God; I only speak the truth. I predict you’ll be selling at least six stories a year to Collier’s and The Post before long. You have the touch.” A month later, the day he learned he’d won the contest, Sturgeon wrote to his ex-wife, “It’s more than a thousand dollars. The curse is off with me. My faith in [the story’s] quality and my own is restored, and I don’t think that I shall ever again experience that mystic diffidence and childish astonishment when one of my stories sells or is anthologized. I know now why they do, and I’m proud of it, and I know how to use it.”


This fourth volume also features a major “undiscovered” story, “Wham Bop!”, from an obscure youth magazine in 1947. It may be one of the finest fictional portraits of a 1940s jazz band in American letters.


Additional delicacies awaiting the Sturgeon fan in Thunder and Roses are his first Western Story, “Well Spiced”, and a UFO saga, “The Sky Was Full of Ships”, written in 1947 and set in the Southwest. It could well be the true story of the Roswell incident.

The second volume of the Complete Short Stories of Theodore Sturgeon covers his prolific output during 1940 and 1941, after which he suffered five years of writer’s block. Showcasing Sturgeon’s early penchant for fantasy, the first six selections include whimsical ghost stories, such as “Cargo,” in which a World War II munitions freighter is commandeered by invisible, peace-loving fairies. With the publication of his enduring SF classic, “Microcosmic God,” Sturgeon finally found his voice, combining literate, sharp-edged prose with fascinating speculative science while recounting the power struggle between a brilliant scientist, who creates his own miniature race of gadget makers, and his greedy banker. Voice found or not, every one of the stories here is readable and entertaining today because of Sturgeon’s singular gifts for clever turns of phrase and compelling narrative. As Samuel R. Delaney emphasizes in an insightful introduction, Sturgeon was the single most influential SF writer from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Rhialto the Marvellous takes up the personal and political conflicts among a conclave of two dozen magicians of Ascolais and Almery in the 21st Aeon. The shocking appearance of the Llorio the Murtha, a powerful female force from an earlier aeon threatens to unbalance nature by “ensqualming” or feminizing the magicians. This triggers a tremendous struggle for power and the other mages turn against Rhialto. Hoping to reestablish his rightful place, Rhialto travels to other aeons to restore the missing Perciplex which projects the Mostrament, the constitution of the association. In his final adventure, Rhialto must, ultimately, travel to the very ends of time and space to confront an old adversary whom he had wronged and must commit further misdeeds to restore order.

There is a Hole at the eastern fringe of the known universe. Deep within it hangs a lost star, Mora, with twin planets, Maske and Skay. On wild Maske there is a rocky peninsula inhabited by a clan of warlike dreamers, the Droads. The eldest son, Trewe, is by birthright Droad of Droad. The second son has no choice but to turn his face toward adventure. His name is Jubal Droad…

Miro Hetzel is an effectuator: a private investigator and gentleman of the Gaean Reach. This book contains two stories of his adventures.

“The Dogtown Tourist Agency” – The Istagam Corporation has found an inexpensive means of manufacturing technical goods which greatly undercuts its competition. Hetzel, hired by that competition, must trace down the mysterious Istagam and discover their secret. His investigation leads him to the dangerous and exotic planet Maz, whose inhuman inhabitants’ life cycle is dependent upon conflict and warfare. There he becomes embroiled in murder.


“Freitzke’s Turn” – Hetzel must locate one Faurence Dacre, a brilliant surgeon and sociopath who has stolen the body parts of Hetzel’s client. In order to locate Dacre, Hetzel must retrace the man’s history to find his likely hiding place.

Gastel Etzwane had held total power in the Land of Shant: the brooding musician, turned man of action with his corps of Brave Free Men, rid the land of slavery and alien invaders in one masterful stroke-only to discover the greatest threat of all – alien parasites of inconceivable intelligence and unfathomable purpose. Their expulsion from Shat has been celebrated by all, but Etzwane is uneasy. For wild rumours come out of the hidden land of Caraz-and once again the musician must don the cloak of action, setting out on a dangerous quest for knowledge that will take him farther than he ever wanted to go: to the grim reaches of a hideously alien world, there to learn the secret of the Asutra!

Uprooted from her Southern home during the Civil War, Rosa Coleman settles in Philadelphia with a husband whose compassion quickly turns to cruelty. But when that cruelty is inflicted upon their only son, she picks up and flees with the boy across the uncivilized Western frontier – and into Alaska to start anew among the region’s gold fields.

But even the harsh journey across America has not prepared Rosa for the infinite possibilities that await her. Something not of this world has approached her. It has revealed the universe’s secrets to her. And it will take her on an extraordinary odyssey as she discovers the role she must play in bringing peace to Earth…

Shef, the One King, is a visionary and warrior. His accomplishments have changed the history of the Dark Ages as we know it – he has defeated the English, the Pope’s army and the Norse in turn. Now, he must face the reborn power of the Holy Roman Empire.

While the Gods of Asgard continue to use him as a plaything Shef must defeat Bruno, the German emperor, who wields the Holy Lance which pierced Christ’s side. The terrible invention of Greek Fire threatens Shef’s fearsome Viking navy, and he must turn to the East to seek new wisdom. Finally, his quest may lead him to the Holy Grail itself.

As Harry Harrison’s highly-acclaimed series reaches its climax, not even the gods can predict victor and vanquished.

Todd Wells is prepared for excitement when he joins his father, captain of the atomic tugboat STORMQUEEN, on a voyage from Antarctica to California. For this is no ordinary journey – they are towing five icebergs, each weighing six thousand million tons, to bring pure water to the drought-stricken areas of the United States.


But when a violent storm erupts and once iceberg threatens to break loose, the excitement turns to terror – as Todd is caught up in the desperate battle to save the iceberg and the lives of the men on the ship.

THE TRILOGY CONCLUDES…



In West of Eden and Winter in Eden, Harry Harrison, an acknowledged master of imaginative fiction, broke new ground with his most ambitious project to date. He brought to vivid life the world as it might have been, where dinosaurs survived, where their intelligent descendants, the Yilanè, challenged humans for mastery of the Earth, and where the human Kerrick, a young hunter of the Tanu tribe, grew among the dinosaurs and rose to become their most feared enemy.



Now, in Return to Eden, Harrison brings the epic trilogy to a stunning conclusion. After Kerrick rescues his people from the warlike Yilanè, they must regroup and consider their future. They find a safe haven on an island and there begin to rebuild their shattered lives. But with fierce predators stalking the forests, how long can these unarmed human outcasts hope to survive? They need weapons, but they only effective weapons lie in the hands of the technologically superior Yilanè. The small band of humans has no choice but to confront their face head-on.



And, of course, Kerrick cannot forget Vaintè, his implacable Yilantè enemy. She’s been cast out from her kind, under sentence of death, but how long will her banishment last? For her strange attraction to Kerrick has turned into a hatred even more powerful than her inbred instincts – an obsession that compels her to hunt down Kerrick and kill him. In a world completely unlike her own, two great cultures struggling for mastery of the Earth face the same problem that faces us today: how to coexist on the same planet completely unlike ourselves – or mutually perish.

They called him Number Thirteen, the latest and best of Dr. Von Horn’s attempts to make life from lifeless chemicals. He found himself an almost-human on Von Horn’s hideaway jungle island off the coast of Borneo. He saw the monsters that had preceded him and grew used to those dreadful travesties of humanity.



Not until Number Thirteen met the American girl who was Von Horn’s unwilling prisoner did he realize how different he was from the others. Because, monster or not, he turned against his master and threw in his lot with the girl and his friends in their desperate effort to escape the island of terror.



The story of THE MONSTER MEN is an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel of savages, primitive monsters and jungles in the best Tarzan style.

If you have ever wondered what a civilized man of the twentieth century would do if catapulted into an Old Stone Age where huge cave bears, saber-toothed tigers, monstrous carnivorous dinosaurs, mammoths, and mastodons roamed the savage terrain, you need look no further thanLand of Terror, the sixth installment of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar series. Years ago David Innes and Abner Perry bored straight down through five hundred miles of the earth’s crust and landed in Pellucidar, the savage, primeval world that lies at the center of the earth. This is the story of their continuing adventures in the timeless land of perpetual noon and their encounters with the hideous creatures and savage men who pursue them. Although they encounter enemies at every turn, David and Abner find a few loyal friends as they embark on exhilarating adventures.