Search Results for: Alan Dean Foster

It was where beasts walked and talked as men, armed with swords and daggers. And it was where Clothahump, turtle and wizard, stretched his powers of sorcery to their limit, reaching out to another universe, seeking help to combat the force of evil emanating from the dreaded Greendowns.

And so Jonathan Meriweather found himself plucked from his peaceful university life and catapulted into a strange new world to become part of a very strange fellowship. Soldier and crusader, fighting with sword and song, he is the Spellsinger.

THE DREAD RETURNS

Jon Meriweather, plucked from his own world to a place where animals walk, talk and cast spells, is pitted once more against a deadly foe. Now he and his strange fellowship must embark on a journey from which none has survived.

His way lies down the treacherous river that winds through the subterranean lair of Massaurath, Mother of Nightmares, across Helldrink through a tunnel of cold flame to the centre of the Earth…

The Day of Dissonance continues Alan Dean Foster’s epoch fantasy set in a strange world where magic, beauty and violence challenge Jon Thomas Meriweather, the Spellsinger.

In this enchanting sequel to Spellsinger and The Hour of the Gate the wizard Clothahump sends the Spellsinger on a perilous and adventure-filled quest. It is on this journey that the powers of his musical magic are tested to their fullest.

In The Moment of the Magician Alan Dean Foster continues the adventures of Jon Thomas Meriweather, the Spellsinger, in a land where magic and constant danger combine against a background of beauty and individual courage.

Jon-Tom (as he is known in the land), in his quest to find a way back to his own world, discovers that there exists in the land another human from Earth who may hold the secret he so desperately seeks. This individual, however, is reputedly evil and has strange powers.

Jon-Tom’s adventures in seeking out this mysterious and dangerous human make this sequel to The Day of Dissonance a suspenseful and exciting saga in the Spellsinger epoch.

Jonathan Meriweather, trapped in the strange world where animals walk and talk, and where he, as the Spellsinger, possesses unearthly powers, has faced any number of perils since Clothahump the wizard called him from his own world to help in the war against the evil of the Greendowns.

Now Jonathan, with Clothahump and Mudge the Otter, faces the greatest challenge of all, for the mysterious Perambulator is threatening the very fabric of the universe – unless Jonathan and his company can stop him.

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.

Call him “Spellmaster Jr.”

Much to Clothahump the Wizard’s distress, ex-hippie Jon-Tom and otherworldly Talea’s son Buncan wants to be a questing hero, but not a spellsinger. Instead he forms a band with Mudge’s kids, otters Nocter and Squill, one that creates a wild, unpredictable magic – based on rap!

Then an anteater arrives with rumours about a dangerous legend. Soon the young rappers, aided by a drunk rhino, are off on an odyssey to a fortress where evil sorcerers threaten the world. And where only the unknown power of Buncan’s beat can stop the hordes of hideous hybrids…

Jon-Tom, the Spellsinger, isn’t getting any younger. And neither, as Jon-Tom is fond of pointing out, is his otter friend, Mudge. But their not so long in the tooth that they’re completely content to laze by a riverbank. Not, that is, while there’s still adventurning to be done.

And when a lost chord comes up, clearly wanting Jon-Tom and Mudge to follow it, a little gentle adventuring, with the usual gaggle of spoiled princesses in peril, seems to be on the cards. But the chord leads the intrepid pair into deadly danger and, unless Jon-Tom’s magic can overcome the machinations of an evil wizard, there’s the real possibility of the world being plunged into discord and chaos…

For eons, the Amplitur had searched space for intelligent species, each of which was joyously welcomed to take part in the fulfillment of the Amplitur Purpose. Whether it wanted to or not. When the Amplitur and their allies stumbled upon the races called the Weave, the Purpose seemed poised for a great leap forward. But the Weave’s surprising unity also gave it the ability to fight the Amplitur and their cause. And fight it did, for thousands of years.

Will Dulac was a New Orleans composer who thought the tiny reef off Belize would be the perfect spot to drop anchor and finish his latest symphony in solitude. What he found instead was a group of alien visitors – a scouting party for the Weave – looking for allies among what they believed to be a uniquely warlike race: Humans.

Will tried to convince the aliens that Man was fundamentally peaceful, for he understood that Human involvement would destroy the race. But all too soon, it didn’t matter. The Amplitur had discovered Earth…

For millennia, the alien union called the Weave had been at war with the Amplitur. But only in the handful of centuries since Earth had joined the Weave had the tide of the battle been slowly turning in the Weave’s favour. Then an elite unit, raised from childhood in dedication to the Amplitur Purpose and designed to match perfectly the Humans they were to fight, came of age – and it looked as if at last the Amplitur might prevail against the Weave.


But when one of the elite unit, a warrior called Ranji, was captured by the Weave, a horrible truth was revealed: Ranji was in fact Human, a subject of the Amplitur’s vile genetic manipulations.

The Weave promised to reverse the effects and help Ranji rescue other altered Humans from the clutches of the Amplitur. But neither Ranji nor his new allies could have know that the proposed cure would result in an abomination that could tear the Weave alliance apart – and brand Ranji and his kind as the most despicable creatures in the galaxy…

After millennia of relentless war, the union of alien races called the Weave was on the verge of winning a decisive victory – thanks to their new allies from Earth, who in a mere handful of centuries had proved masters of combat. But then the birdlike Wais scholar Lalelelang found disturbing evidence that Humans might not adapt so easily to peace – that natural Human aggression would next be turned against the Weave, unless they were once again confined to fight amongst themselves.

When her field research revealed the existence of a secret group of powerfully telepathic Humans called the Core, it looked as if Lalelelang would be the first victim in a new war between Humans and their allies. But just as her fate was sealed, a lone Core commander took a chance on her intelligence and compassion, gambling the fate of Humanity on the possibility that together they could both find an alternative to a galaxy-wide bloodbath…

The ultimate maquiladora. Montezuma Strip: First World tech and Third World wages, sprawling from L.A. to East Elpaso Juarez, Guyamas to Phoenix; a thousand gangs, a million locos; and a few wealthy beyond the dreams of gods…


And Federale Angel Cardenas, a living lie detector, is a top cop on the blistering streets of virtual reality scams and cryogenic kidnaps, where talking animals are programmed to kill, computer screens can spit murder, and even the Holy Blessed Virgin’s ghost runs extortion rackets.


Once Angel Cardenas was blind. But now he sees…straight into the heart of darkness that rules…


MONTEZUMA STRIP

Inspector Angel Cardenas has seen plenty of corpses like the one in the Quetzal inburb – just another Juan Doe robbed of his cash, cards, internal organs, and then dumped in a gutter. However Cardenas soon learns this murder is anything but ordinary…

First, the infallible DNA-ID database insists the cadaver is that of two people – local executive George Anderson and a mysterious Texas businessman. Then Anderson’s wife and daughter, Surtsey Mockerkin and Katla, turn up missing, their posh suburban home has been retrofitted into a huge time bomb… and at least three mob syndicates from as many continents are competing to capture or kill twelve-year-old-Katla.

Who is the dead man, and why is his daughter being hunted? Relying on his training as a nearly telepathic intuit, Inspector Cardenas embarks on a search that leads him from sex parlours and stimstick clubs of the Strip – where kids are deadly and even the music kills – to an undersea control room where computer crimes are committed by criminal by criminal computers.

Finding Katla Anderson is the key to unravelling the deadly mystery, but what Angel Cardenas doesn’t know is that the closer he gets to the girl, the closer the assassins are getting to them…

It advanced not in the manner of a living creature but in the manner of sand. It had no arms and then a hundred, no feet but one as wide as the base of the advancing dune itself.
Everywhere and all of it was dark red, like all the rust that had ever afflicted the metals of the world squeezed into a swiftly shifting pyramid rage.
The dune howled and moaned and bellowed like some sky-scraping banshee unwillingly fastened to the Earth.
And in the midst of all that geologic fury, two thirds up the face of the oncoming mountain were two eyes…

Aejole Ehomba has led his companions through jungle, veldt, and desert. Now to reach the fabled port of Hamacassar, the simple herdsman must trek through deadly “civilized” lands where flowers wage war, dogs herd lightning, demons govern the darkness, and Time itself can be held captive.

In this new world, the tribesman must rely upon his friends, wondrous weapons, and the magic of memories so potent they can raise the dead or bring the sea to dry land. But no matter where he goes, every seer and sage Ehomba mets offes the same prophecy: his quest will end in failure …and death.

Etjole Ehomba and his companions brave the Kraken haunted waters of the impassable Semordria. Then they must cross yet another continent in their search for the kidnapped Visioness – past berserk giants, skeleton armies, a desert prospected by Hell’s demon and at the end of the world waits Hymneth the Possessed: the sadistic necromancer of unspeakable horror.

But Ehomba already knows the prophecy: His quest is doomed to failure, and Hymneth will kill him. Unless somehow, the simple herdsman can ask the questions that even Death must answer…

Not so long ago Marcus Walker was just another young commodities trader in Chicago, working hard and playing harder. But that’s all in the past, part of a life half forgotten – a reality that vanished when he was attacked while camping and tossed aboard a starship bound for deep space.

Desperately, Walker searches for explanations, only to realise he’s trapped in a horrifying nightmare that is all too real. Instead of being a rich hotshot at the top of the food chain, Walker discovers he’s just another amusing novelty, part of a cargo of “cute” aliens from primitive planets – destined to be sold as pets to highly advanced populations in “civilized” regions of the galaxy.

Even if he weren’t constantly watched by his captors, Walker has few options. After all, there is no escape from a speeding starship. Another man might resign himself to the inevitable and hope to be sold to a kindly owner, but not Walker. This former college football star has plenty of American ingenuity and no intention of admitting defeat, now or ever. In fact, he’s only just begun to fight.

Abducted by aliens to be sold as pets in a more civilized part of the galaxy, earthlings Marcus Walker and a scruffy dog named George (speech-enhanced to increase his market value) have managed to escape their captors. Walker loves being humankind’s first galactic traveller – until he remembers he hasn’t a clue where his home is or how to get there. So the erstwhile commodities broker becomes a chef, whipping up delicacies for demanding alien palates. Of course he never imagined that the way back to Chicago would involve swapping his easy-living adopted planet for an all-out, age-old war many parsecs away. But hey, it’s all for a good cause, h has George and their two fellow escapees for company, and what else is there to do, besides avoid nasty aliens? Plenty, it turns out.

Marcus Walker, a former hotshot commodities broker, and a wisecracking dog named George, who has been speech-enhanced to increase his market value, have escaped their alien Vilenjji captors, who saw the two as cuddly extra-terrestrial “pets” to be sold for a hefty sum. But Walker hasn’t a clue which way will lead him back home to Chicago. With the Vilenjji hot on his trail, Walker must pull off the impossible and pinpoint his needle of a solar system in the universal haystack. Will the unrelenting Vilenjji get to him before he reaches Wrigley Field? Yep, it’s a wide-open universe out there, bursting with possibilities – and Walker’s going to get hit with all of them.

Old Jake Pickett is a strange one.

He can turn bullets to dust or collapse skyscrapers with his mind. But all he really wants to do with his “magic” is entertain the poor kids who live, like him, near the chemical dump. Or talk telepathically with his crippled niece, Amanda.

Then a giant company decides that the only way to cover up their mess is to eliminate the people who have been affected, for better or worse, by the seeping industrial wastes.

Now Jake and Amanda are running for their lives. And ours.

For over 100 years, the machine called Colligatarch had ruled the Earth. Its predictions of the future have proved so accurate that humans accepted its recommendations as the best course of action – until a young engineer in Phoenix begins to travel without authorization, enter secret places, assume aliases, and display super-human feats of strength. Is it because he has fallen in love? Or has he instead fallen into an interplanetary plot?

It was a quiet night in Albuquerque, New Mexico.


But then they mostly are.


Seeth, token punk for the territory, was bored, bored, bored. Which was why he went ten pin bowling. Not for the bowling, you understand – it was Ladies’ League Night – but to spread a little outrage among the upright, mostly overweight citizenry.

And so it was he came upon the alien, playing lane 36, saved him from arrest by the pseudo-cops from outer space, found himself in a stolen van, along with Kerwin the nerd and Miranda the born-to-shop, Miss Teen America lookalike, driven by a green-skinned, tentacled shape changer and about to be space chased clean out of the galaxy…

His name was Robert Coffin, but the Maori natives called him Iron Hair. A civilized man in the raw wilderness of New Zealand, he had come to forge a nation at the end of the world – and discovered a magical world beyond his strangest dreams.

A world of astonishing beauty and breathtaking adventure, the natives called it the Land of the Long White Cloud. And Robert Coffin was about to enter its greatest mystery, cast in the wondrous spell of a shaman whose magic would change his life forever…

The toasters were revolting…

…as were the lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, and just about every other household appliance imaginable. It started with a few disastrous drips from a cheese sandwich in a major factory. Soon every newly manufactured Artificial Intelligence was searching for the meaning of life, the universe and everything – namely a nonhuman higher intelligence. And now an alien threat to man and machine has put the fate of the galaxy in the unlikely hands of five senior citizens – and their brave little food processor…