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In another sparkling and slightly askew adventure in the mode of Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Jack Vance, Fools Errant’s Filidor Vesh sashays once more through the penultimate age, finding that love is a many splintered thing.
The dandified Archon’s apprentice is literally bowled over by beautiful Emmlyn Podarke — she knocks him flat and steals his credentials, daring him to pursue her to a remote and mostly forgotten corner of Old Earth. Now Filidor must cope with philosophical pirates, prophet-seeking aliens, light-fingered mummers, and a tiny, bothersome voice in his left ear. Meanwhile, the Archon may or may not have been kidnaped, and somebody’s digging up a mysterious ancient artefact buried on the Podarke family farm.

Praise for Matthew Hughes:

“Matthew Hughes does Jack Vance better than anyone except Jack himself” – George R.R. Martin
“Heir apparent to Jack Vance” – Booklist
“Hughes’s boldness is admirable”- New York Review of Science Fiction
“Hughes effortlessly renders fantastic worlds and beings believable”- Publishers Weekly
“A towering talent”- Robert J. Sawyer
“A treasure” – David Gerrold

Welcome to Argylle, where the ruling family – a brilliant, flighty, civilized and occasionally dangerous clan of nearly-immortal warriors and magicians – are hoping for a few years of relative peace.

True, their Father Gaston has vanished, leaving both throne and family while he pursues some unexplained errand. His absence has stretched into years. True as well that their powerful Uncle Dewar has also wandered off without leaving a forwarding address, and hasn’t been heard from for a worrisome length of time. It’s a bad habit of running off that this family’s elders have.

But now young Prince Gwydion’s been stuck with ruling the Dominion of Argylle, and with any luck, life can go back to being a satisfactory mixture of intrigue, gossip and viniculture, periodically enlivened by amateur theatricals and the odd quest or two.

Yet Gwydion is finding this arrangement uncomfortable. Strange things keep turning up. A plague of monsters appears out of nowhere, attempting to take up residence in the local barns and forests. These are trumped by the arrival of a ravenous Great Dragon – ancient, sorcerous, profoundly cunning – so big you can see it thirty miles away. Meanwhile, a mysterious young woman has shown up, claiming to be Gwydion’s long-lost – indeed, quite unexpected – sister. And then there are the high-tech aliens, who say they just want to conduct a legal investigation. It’s enough, Gwydion thinks, to make a ruler want to find some nice long errand that’ll take him away from his homeland for a spell…

The Well-Favored Man is a courtly, complex, bloody-minded fantasy for those who love Roger Zelazny’s Amber, Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint and the fantasy adventures of Steven Brust.

The planet Elysium should be a paradise.

Like Earth before the Age of Waste, it is both beautiful and bountiful, inhabited by peaceful aboriginals and human colonists. But in its chief city, Port of Plenty, the first colonists have kept the superior technology sent from Earth for themselves, governing the outlying settlements with an iron fist.

As unrest grows, two unlikely allies, Richard Florey, an employee of the city’s university, and Miguel Lucas, a settler who has ‘gone dingo’, are caught up in a revolution that could awaken the alien aboriginals and change the balance of power on Elysium forever . . .

The Bear’s Baby and Other Stories gathers together for the first time six standalone tales by award-winning author Judith Moffett. Featuring aliens intent on halting humanity’s biosphere-destroying behaviour, an alternate USA under the presidency of Davy Crockett, cross-species telepathic communication, angels, dreaming, and climate change – although not all at once! – this is a collection defined by variety, and admirably demonstrates the broad range of Moffett’s skill as a writer.

With new introductions to each story from the author, The Bear’s Baby and Other Stories contains:

The Bear’s Baby
Chickasaw Slave
The Realms of Glory
Ten Lights and Darks
The Middle of Somewhere
Space Ballet

In the distant future, when science has evolved into an art indistinguishable from magic, Kirin the thief finds himself forced down on an alien planet. Gathering allies, he must defeat the Witch Queen – who plans nothing less than the conquest of the entire galaxy!

JANDAR THE LOST ALIEN

…in the mysterious and treacherous domain of the insidious Mind Wizards. Searching for him is a fearless armada of his loyal friends, and a stranger who knows him better than anyone on Callisto. The stranger, Lankar, is none other than Lin Carter, accidentally transported through the Gate Between the Worlds to the land of the Thanatorians. Aware of Jandar’s plight, Lankar joins the search beyond the world’s edge and suddenly finds himself battling for his own existence against the most nightmarish creatures on the planet – the gruesome flesh robots of Kuur and the fiendish Mind Wizards of Callisto themselves…

Jandar – the alien clawed from his airship by the cannibalistic Zarkoon bird-men while leading his aerial armada to an attack on the hidden city of Kuur – devises a daring escape into the land beyond the world’s edge. But in this unknown terrain, with only a nubile jungle maid as a guide, he is no longer the hunter but the hunted, prey for the giant fang-snouted groack, game for the ferocious six-legged othodes, and stalked by a fate far worse than death which forces him to renounce all hope of rescue: the merciless vengeance of the fiendish Mind Wizards of Callisto…

Jandar – the alien abducted by the mad Tharkolian princess Zamara and taken prisoner in the Scarlet City, along with his devoted companion Ergon and beloved Darloona – effects a daring celestial escape. But freedom proves more terrifying than the most heinous captivity when they find themselves adrift in the skies of the great monstrous ghastozar, enslaved by the barbaric arthropods of the Yathoon Horde and at the fiendish mercy of an insidious Kuurian Mind Wizard determined to snare them in a macabre and horrifying web of death…

He was Karn, the savage of the sky-high trees. He was protector and defender of the princess Niamh, whose very city was lost in the mapless jungles of the world under the Green Star. But he was also an Earthling, whose helpless body lay in suspended animation in a guarded mansion in New England. It was his alien mind that drove Karn through perils that no other wold dare…

In the Green Star’s Glow is a science fantasy novel in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Written by American author Lin Carter, it is the final book in his Green Star series. It was first published in 1976.

In the marvel-adventure sagas of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline, and John Norman, has there ever been a situation such as befell the Earthling who found his way to the world under the Green Star? For while his real body lay crippled and silent under the sun of old Earth, his mind occupied the vigorous body of a young primitive on that alien planet of mighty trees, floating cities, and unmapped limits. And in that guise he had found incredible friends, a royal love, and inhuman and superhuman enemies. But no matter what predicament he was in – and as this book starts he is alone, abandoned on an uncharted sea – his courage never flagged though the greatest of risks would confront him as the Green Star rises.

Full colour three dimensional television is a target at which engineers will soon be aiming. The technical obstacles are bound to be numerous, and it is also possible that other difficulties of an entirely different nature will arise – as Herrick soon finds out. Herrick had already achieved success on a limited scale, but his work led to curious results when the newly-developed receiver started picking up what appeared to be transmissions from an alien world…

The arrival of a party of aliens from a distant world would arouse mixed feelings in the mind of any human witness involved. But if the strangers prove to be the advance party of a gigantic global migration scheme most human beings would almost certainly be afraid. Hardly surprising, therefore, that Mike and Jay, caught up in the mesh of just such a situation, were two very frightened people. But they were also on the brink of the most fantastic adventure ever woven around the lives of ordinary mortal beings…

Fate’s selection of Nick and Pat for the task of preserving the world is one of those problems which will always remain unsolved. Outwardly, they were hardly a suitable pair. One was liable to be branded a traitor; the other was incurably ill. And yet to them fell the colossal responsibility of doing what they did – destroying the alien threat at terrible sacrifice to themselves…

When Zaan, the ruler of the dying world of Ginya, set his sights on Earth as a place where his race could prosper and be safe from extinction, conquest was assured. The people of Earth were decadent and sunk in idle complacency and peace and technological advancement came to the world when the Ginyan race became Earth’s overlords. Only a small group of human beings saw far enough ahead to exile themselves on dark Zoaster with a view to freeing the world from alien rule in the future, hoping to build up an army of synthetic supermen who would one day sweep the Ginyan race from the face of the Earth. They did not count on the weird elementals that dwelt on Zoaster, spirits of evil and darkness . . .

Few adventures in the annals of spatial conquest have aroused so much interest and speculation as the discovery, some ten years ago, of Cloris 2. Often described nowadays as a small, exotic world of infinite charm, Cloris 2 is regarded as an ideal holiday resort. It now boasts some of the best hotels and playgrounds in the universe, yet no so long ago it was deserted, peopled only by the ghosts of a long dead race.
Belonging to a neighbouring galaxy, Cloris 2 was well outside the exploration range of the vessels of the time, and could only have been visited through a mischance, without hope of return. Such a chance was forced on a handful of people caught up in the mesh of an operation which began long in the past – they had no choice. The discovery of Cloris 2 is one of human courage and the hand of the unexpected, piracy, narrow escapes from alien defence and the ghosts of past tragedy.

When scientist Jim Marshal disappears from work, leaving only a mysterious letter saying that his research assistant Deidre will know what has happened, Deidre and Jim’s distraught wife Beryl try to find where he has gone.

Their search flings them across space and into the power of sinister aliens – a beam that can transport them to another planet. These powerful aliens have collected people from Earth, and are studying them, putting them through strange experiments. Is it just scientific curiosity, or are there darker designs behind it? And, stranded on an alien planet, is there anything Deidre, Beryl and Jim can do?

GAMMA PRODUCT is one of Denis Hughes’ works under his many pseudonyms. It has been out of print in the UK for decades and is now available for the first time as an eBook!

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…

Throughout the centuries that have passed since humans first ventured into interstellar space, they have been at war with the alien Veich. The human race has, in consequence, been fully militarized, its educational system being a form of military training–which includes, among other disciplines, the elimination of fear from the human psyche. Attitudes to the war have, however, been colored by the gradual discovery of relics revealing that it is echoing an earlier interstellar conflict whose antagonists have completely disappeared, victors and vanquished alike. On a neglected continent of an unimportant world, ex-sergeant Remy and other human and Veich deserters have joined forces to form a mercenary company that places its expert skills at the disposal of the dominant indigenes. This refuge from the greater war is, however, disrupted when archeologists on another world discover evidence that there might be significant relics of the earlier war buried in the inhospitable heart of the continent, where barbarian tribes are currently massing for a religious war. Remy has no alternative but to revert to working for his own race, knowing that whatever he enables them to find, or even if they find nothing at all, his own life will be in grave peril, and that nothing will ever be the same again….

Paul Heisenberg is mysteriously endowed with the ability to jump through time. Together with thousands of eventual followers, he begins a journey that eventually takes him a billion years into the future. The Earth has been devastated by war with an alien race, and the changes that have resulted from the degradation of the world’s biosphere force him–and others–to rethink their own humanity. His pilgrim’s progress through the coming time is beset by doubts, distractions, and temptations as various voices attempt to distract him from his determination to follow the process through to its end. He eventually witnesses the complete transformation of the Earth, and the evolution of a single omnipotent but mindless Gaean organism. Is intelligence itself just a brief candle, forever doomed to burn out? Or can Paul find some other alternative for his race.

Before the hyper-space vessels could go from planet to planet, stations had to be set up. And that meant manned spaceships cut off from Earth for decades.
The explorer vessel Ariadne had gone toward galactic centre and was considered lost – until its call came in appealing for a xenobiologist.
Their new world was all swamp. As far as could be seen, there was no intelligent species. Yes, this was alarming because all inhabitable planets so far discovered had thinking inhabitants.
But the nature of that planet’s “people” turned out to be an enigma that had to be solved. For their alien biology could spell doom to all the civilizations of the stars … doom or a terrible unity!

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots that link the cosmos are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own lifetime. The atmosphere of Mormyr is so dense that the surface is unreachable, which made it the ideal place for the alien Gallacellans to hide an ancient spaceship. Now they want it back. Grainger refuses, but when the Hooded Swan answers a mayday call, Grainger and his crew are trapped by a madman, who forces them to pursue the salvage anyway. Success will mean Grainger’s freedom from Titus Charlot, owner of the Hooded Swan; failure will mean the death of the inhabitants of an entire planet. And then the Gallacellans appear!

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, starship pilots have become the great romantic heroes of the day. When Star-Pilot Grainger is rescued from a shipwreck, he finds himself pressed into reluctant service to fly the Hooded Swan, the prototype of a new kind of interstellar ship. He’s also picked up an alien parasite that’s determined to share his brain. Under these dire circumstances, can Grainger possibly stay out of trouble? Not a chance!

The final contact made by the Daedalus Mission begins badly, even before the ship makes a hard landing in the middle of nowhere. The situation of the colony doesn’t seem to make any sense, and neither does the situation of the indigenous aliens–the Sets–that have helped the colony survive and thrive. Alex Alexander doesn’t take long to work out a hypothesis that might explain the mystery–a hypothesis that the people on the ground have already worked out for themselves–and he’s fortunate enough to fall in with a colonist who’s obsessively determined to prove the hypothesis. Unfortunately, the quest seems likely to become so dangerous that both of them might die trying–and there’s too much at stake not to take it to the very limit of possibility, no matter what the cost.

The planet Attica has two continents: Lambda and Delta. The indigenous alien population being restricted to Delta, Earth’s colony was planted on Lambda. Before the arrival of the Daedalus, two sailing ships had set out from Lambda to cross the ocean separating the two continents, and neither had returned. Now a third is on its way, and Mariel Valory and Alex Alexander of the Daedalus have hitched a lift, in order that Mariel might use her talent to try to make contact with the aliens. Unfortunately, it turns out that contact has already been made, and that the aliens are building an empire with the aid of borrowed Terran technology–an empire that’s beginning to crack under its internal strains and eternal challenges. And when Alex and Mariel are marooned by their reluctant hosts, things start to go from very bad to much worse….