Search Results for: beauty

Hurled from Earth through the depths of space by a force beyond human comprehension, Jonathan Dark is forced to pit his strength and wits against the terrors of savage jungles and plains on the Jovian moon, Callisto. As Jandar, he must fight cunning wizards and grotesque beasts of prey, to survive on this savage planet and someday find a way home.

In the merciless clutches of Zhu Kor, last of the legendary Mind Wizards of Callisto, the beautiful raven-haired jungle maiden is spirited away upon a hideous winged ghastozar. Captives of a vicious tribe that worships the evil Zhu Kor as a god, while their jungle stronghold is attacked by a rival tribe, Ylana and Tomar battle savages and predatory monsters alike … until the Galleon of the Clouds finds them in the very jaws of doom ….

Zarouk, aging warrior and grandfather to young Kadji, implored the boy to dethrone Prince Yakthodah, vile impostor-heir to the throne of the Dragon Emperor. On Haral, his faithful, black Feridoon pony, and with beautiful, redhaired Thyra at his side, Kadji rode East to vanquish his foe – knowing full well that if he failed to decapitate Yakthodah, he would be branded coward . . . and worse!

“Go to thy master and say that Mardanax hath come. I have lived to see the barbarian Thongor in his tomb.”

As the stranger throws back his cloak the hellish gleam of his emerald eyes confirms his statement – Mardanax, the Black Magician of Zaar – has survived Thongor’s destruction of the dread City of Magicians.

Mardanax strikes swiftly. His evil sorcery explodes with inconceivable power, and Thongor lies dead. Thongor’s beautiful queen is drugged into mindless obedience to the Black Magician. Her son, the prince, is kidnapped. Thongor’s empire seems to have fallen to the forces of Chaos.

Then, wandering in the land of the dead, Thongor finds a powerful sword of light…

When creation which is contrary to all the accepted laws of Nature springs directly from Genius in the grip of Evil the results may well take a form so terrible as to be beyond human understanding. When Philip Grayling did what he did he turned his back on the beauty of Right, choosing instead the Paths of Darkness. He perished through the medium of his own foolhardiness, but even in death his genius survived, an ally of Evil. To his sister, Veronique, to his friend, McGrath, and to his partner, Harman, he left a heritage of such awful malignancy that all three were engulfed in a sea of unspeakable peril.

In the sulphurous The High Place, the amoral hero Florian enters the sleeping-beauty story and (unlike Jurgen with Helen) does not draw back at the sight of excessive beauty. Complications ensue: Beauty is realistically diminished during pregnancy, the first-born child is forfeit to Satan under the pact that guaranteed Florain’s success, and an irascible saint is eager to call down holy fire on transgressors. Florian treads close to damnation and is saved only when Satan and the angel Michael conspire to let recent events become, again, a dream: he has a rare second chance and learns better.

An old woman who spends her days scrubbing the floors might be an unlikely damsel in distress, but Lord Dunsany proves once again his mastery of the fantastical. The Charwoman’s Shadow is a beautiful tale of a sorcerer’s apprentice who discovers his master’s nefarious usage of stolen shadows, and vows to save the charwoman from her slavery.

Sarnac is a scientist and a leading figure in the field of chemical reactions of cells. Plagued by a beautiful and terrifying dream he had when he was a young child, he reflects on his early years in an attempt to understand the dream’s roots. However, he finds that his dreams and the reality he has lived have become so entangled that he is no longer able to distinguish between them.

The Girl in the Golden Atom is the story of a young chemist who finds a hidden atomic world within his mother’s wedding ring. Under a microscope, he sees within the ring a beautiful young woman sitting before a cave. Enchanted by her, he shrinks himself so that he can join her world.

This classic of Gothic horror follows Laura, a woman haunted by a girlhood dream of a beautiful visitor to her bedroom. Now, a decade later, Laura finds Carmilla, who appears to be her own age, on the side of the road after a carriage accident. The two recognize each other from the same childhood dream and become fast friends. Soon after, Laura begins to experience mysterious feelings and is once again haunted by nightmares. She finds Carmilla strangely irresistible and longs to be with her.

But as the two friends grow closer, Laura’s health begins to fail. It becomes apparent that her enchanting companion is harboring a sinister secret. To free herself from Carmilla’s grasp, Laura and her family must fight for their lives.

The finest tale ever written of fabled Atlantis, The Lost Continent is a sweeping, fiery saga of the last days of the doomed land. Atlantis, at the height of its power and glory, is without equal. It has established far-flung colonies in Egypt and Central America, and its mighty navies patrol the seas. The priests of Atlantis channel the elemental powers of the universe, and a powerful monarch rules from a staggeringly beautiful city of pyramids and shining temples clustered around a sacred mountain.

Mighty Atlantis is also decaying and corrupt. Its people are growing soft and decadent, and many live in squalor. Rebellion is in the air, and prophecies of doom ring forth. Into this epic drama of the end of time stride two memorable characters: the warrior-priest Deucalion, stern, just, and loyal, and the Empress Phorenice, brilliant, ambitious, and passionate. The old and new Atlantis collide in a titanic showdown between Deucalion and Phorenice, a struggle that soon affects the destiny of an entire civilization.

The hero of this romance is named Golden Walter, son of Bartholomew Golden, a great merchant in the town of Langton on Holm. Tired of his mundane life, Walter sets out on a sea voyage, anxious to see and learn more of the outside world, eventually winning for himself the kingdom of Stark-Wall and the love of a beautiful maiden.

What did our ancestors dream of when they gazed up at the stars and looked beyond the present?

A Journey in Other Worlds races far ahead of the nineteenth century to imagine what life would be like in the year 2000. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Earth is effectively a corporate technocracy, with big businesses using incredible advances in science to improve life on the planet as a whole. Seeking other planets habitable for the growing human population, the spaceship Callisto, powered by an antigravitational force known as apergy, embarks on a momentous tour of the solar system. Jupiter proves to be a wilderness paradise, full of threatening beasts and landscapes of inspired beauty, where the explorers must fight for their lives. Dangers less tangible but equally deadly await the Callisto crew on Saturn, which yields profound secrets about their fate and the ultimate destiny of mankind.

‘The mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck – It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.’

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house he is disturbed by the horrifying discoveries he makes in his client’s castle. But worse, Harker’s actions introduce Dracula to London. Soon afterwards, the Count embarks on a reign of seduction and terror. And all, it seems, who encounter the charismatic Eastern European aristocrat – a succession of madmen, physicians and beautiful women – are never seen in daylight again…

Bram Stoker’s DRACULA has inspired countless movies, books, and plays since it’s first publication in 1897. Few, if any, have been fully faithful to Stoker’s original, best-selling novel of mystery and horror, love and death, sin and redemption. But in DRACULA, Stoker created a new word for terror, a new myth to feed our nightmares, and a character who will outlive us all.

Draftsmen can’t fight dragons.

Then again, that’s usually no problem – they generally don’t have to. But Lafayette O’Leary does. When an accidental overdose of self-hypnosis wrenches him out of the dull (but safe) Mrs. MacGlint’s Clean Rooms and Board and deposits him in the feudal, bedragoned world of Artesia, it takes him a little while to catch on, even with the attentions of the beautiful Princess Adoranne. Then he decides that he likes this new life of his – except for the part where he’s supposed to get killed…

BLINDING LIGHT, NOISE BEYOND SOUND – A JOURNEY INTO NOTHINGNESS…

Imperial Intelligence Agent Brion Bayard was catapulted into nothingness by an unknown force and woke to find himself in a universe not his own. Surrounded by hulking, cannibalistic ape men who called themselves Hagroon, Bayard was soon entrapped in a web of time lines. He found himself running from the Hagroon into the arms of Dzok, the educated monkey man of Xonijeel; transported by Dzok to a universe where Napoleon the Fifth was in power and left there to the tender powers of the beautiful witch Olivia; struggling with the bonds of a fictitious past, always striving to regain his lost universe of Zero-zero Stockholm so he could bring the warning which might save his world from sudden, violent death…

Don Haig had been content to lie around and drink in the synthetic beauty of the pleasure planetoid Fyon, until a woman came into his life. A woman more beautiful and more perfect than any other female in the galaxy. A woman who brought about a curious change in Don.

For she was a pocket-sized foll – a very strange and miraculous puppet who shed constant tears and held powers that Don never even dreamed of.

But what Don did know was that dangerous alien forces were swiftly focusing on him and his living puppet – and that he had to discover the doll’s super-scientific secret before his own life was smashed into atoms.

Young Ishta found it in the forest, buried beneath dead leaves: a rounded, flattened stone as black as onyx. One side held a golden oval that glowed with a unnatural light. Of course, it had to be magic.

But what did farmers know of magic? It could be dangerous, or it could be some harmless toy. They had to find out.

Since Ishta was too young to bring her discovery to the Baron of Varag’s stronghold, her older brother, Garander, went instead. Once there, Azlia, a beautiful wizard, recognized the stone immediately as Northern sorcery. She had to call Sammel, the local sorcerer, to find out its nature . . . a relic of the last great war.

When the Baron takes the stone for himself, that should have ended things. But it was just the beginning for Garander. Because that magical stone wasn’t the only relic left in the woods…

It was the End of Summer of the year 2035. The Global Village that was the World was ruled by a Kangaroo Court of Compassionate Aldermen who ordered assassinations when it was deemed to be for the common good. As a sign of their openness, they were always experimenting to find new ways of looking at the World. Most of these experiments would would fail; some of them would succeed to an extent; and others would succeed only too well, and so would have to be crushed in the shell for the good of the World.

The Lynn-Randal Experiment raised three children together almost from infancy. Of these three, Lord Randal was human (though somewhat enhanced and tampered with). Axel belonged to the gargoyle-faced ‘Golden People’ (‘God believes they are the most beautiful creatures he ever made,’ a theologian said, ‘and there will be hell to pay when he founds out that we don’t agree.’). And the third child was Inneal who often elicited the comment ‘she’s really something different, isn’t she!’ Yes, she was. All of these were super-mega-persons, which meant that they might be able to change the world itself. But why did they begin to change the Ocean first?

When these three were just short of ten years old, they were merged with children of three other experiments, and formed with them a Magic Dozen. Immediately they began to have an astonishing effect on the World. And the fave of the children themselves hung in the balance.

Was the experiment too successful? Was their effect on the World too dangerous? Would their group be, as other groups had been, adjudged to be a ‘Serpent’s Egg‘ that had to be crushed in the shell for the good of the world?

The Three Days of Summerset, the End of Summer, would give the answer.

Egil’s Saga is the tale of the long and brutal life of Egil Skallagrimsson, the tenth-century warrior-poet: a morally ambiguous character who was both the composer of intricately beautiful poetry and a physical grotesque capable of staggering brutality. It recounts Egil’s progression from youthful savagery to mature wisdom as he struggles to avenge his father’s exile from Norway, defend his honour against the Norwegian King Erik Bloodaxe, and fight for the English King Athelstan in his battles against Scotland.

Translated from Icelandic by the great fantasist, E R Eddison, and accounted by many to be the greatest of the Icelandic sagas, Egil’s Saga is a fascinating depiction of a deeply human character.

When J.R.R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings was published, reviewers saw that there was only one book with which it could legitimately be compared: E.R. Eddison’s classic fantasy adventure The Worm Ouroboros.

Set on a distant planet of spectacular beauty and peopled by Lords and Kings, mighty warriors and raven-haired temptresses, Eddison’s extravagant story, of a great war for total domination, is an unforgettable work of splendour.

Harry Keogh is moving on. Though the search for his missing wife and child continues, his heart now lies in Edinburgh with Bonnie Jean-a beautiful Scottish werewolf whose friendly pack and flourishing pub have given him a place he can almost call home.

But from the rocky heights of Sicily, the diabolical Francezci brothers plot the wolf-pack’s destruction; and down in the terrible Pit beneath Le Manse Madonie, an ancient evil schemes.

The vampires conspire. They reach a decision. They choose a vector. Mafia thug Mike Milazzo is no good to anyone, anytime, anywhere . . . which makes him perfect. Disposable.

The brothers infect him with a deadly poison-an engineered plague that even a werewolf could never survive-and they offer him a terrible bargain: successfully contaminate the wolf-pack, and receive the antidote. Fail, and die!

Mike has everything to lose. So does Harry Keogh. But the Necroscope lost everything once before, and he isn’t about to do it again…

The Far Traveler was hardly the sort of starship to use in the study of lost space colonies. Lost colonies were likely to be desperate, eccentric and otherwise unappreciative. And The Far Traveler was a rich woman’s toy, constructed of gold and directed by an omniscient, dictatorial and feminine computer known as Big Sister.

John Grimes had become that golden vessel’s captain. A captain in name only because nobody could talk back to Big Sister or the haughty beauty who owned everything aboard. But Grimes was a man of many resources and lost space colonies were placed that did not observe the civilized rules. You could be sure, therefore, that the man known as the Commodore Hornblower of Outer Space would be likely to come through okay, even if the ladies – mechanical and physical – never expected him to!

A selection of John Grimes short stories including:

With Good Intentions
The Subtracter
The Tin Messiah
The Sleeping Beauty
The Wandering Buoy
The Mountain Movers
What You Know

Meet John Grimes at the very beginning of a career that will lead him to fame and glory out at the edge of the galaxy, out where the laws of men are nonexistent, and those of nature itself are sometimes tenuous.

Someday Grimes will be a Commodore in the secessionist Rim Worlds Navy, but for now he is merely a very junior lieutenant in another space navy entirely: that of the Federation. If he keeps his nose clean, one day he can be an admiral in that Service; all he has to do is follow regulations regardless of the consequences, and obey orders regardless of whether they are right or wrong – and he is determined to do just that.

But being John Grimes, he will find it a more difficult task than he expects – especially when he must turn a blind eye to the piratical acts of the Waldegrenese Navy, or ignore the plight of a beautiful damsel in distress. That’s why, although he doesn’t know it yet, he is already on . . . the Road To The Rim.