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When she was a young girl Lucky belonged to a space-going mining commune which came upon an asteroid whose caves concealed the bones of serpentine aliens and humanoids. It was Lucky who discovered that the rock was an Ukko, a mysterious entity which would respond to stories told to it.

Centuries later Lucky, altered by the Ukko, is still alive, though capricious and sometimes crazy. By mating with her, her consort Bertel has had his life prolonged for centuries, as will the men who first bed her daughters – Lucky’s harvest.

The fate of the Earth Empire hung in the balance – and Security Commissioner Spangler knew it was up to him to find the monster, the Rithian Terror, as some called it. Seven Rithians had landed on Earth. Six had been disposed of. One was loose.

Surely, Spangler reasoned, the stereoptic fluoroscope would flush it out. ‘That’s one test the Rithian can’t meet, no matter how good his human disguise may be.’ Spangler explained to Pembun, the strange, little Colonial who had been sent to help find the monster.

But Pembun didn’t agree. ‘The trouble,’ he said, ‘is that the Rithi have no bones. Which would be indication enough under a fluoroscope, if it weren’t for the fact that it can easily swallow a skeleton.’

Spangler shuddered.

Anthologies seldom make history, but Dangerous Visions is a grand exception. Harlan Ellison’s 1967 collection of science fiction stories set an almost impossibly high standard, as more than a half dozen of its stories won major awards – not surprising with a contributors list that reads like a who’s who of 20th-century SF:

Evensong by Lester del Rey | Flies by Robert Silverberg | The Day After the Day the Martians Came by Frederik Pohl | Riders of the Purple Wage by Philip José Farmer | The Malley System by Miriam Allen deFord | A Toy for Juliette by Robert Bloch | The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World by Harlan Ellison | The Night That All Time Broke Out by Brian W. Aldiss | The Man Who Went to the Moon – Twice by Howard Rodman | Faith of Our Fathers by Philip K. Dick | The Jigsaw Man by Larry Niven | Gonna Roll the Bones by Fritz Leiber | Lord Randy, My Son by Joe L. Hensley | Eutopia by Poul Anderson | Incident in Moderan and The Escaping by David R. Bunch | The Doll-House by James Cross | Sex and/or Mr. Morrison by Carol Emshwiller | Shall the Dust Praise Thee? by Damon Knight | If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? by Theodore Sturgeon | What Happened to Auguste Clarot? by Larry Eisenberg | Ersatz by Henry Slesar | Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird by Sonya Dorman | The Happy Breed by John Sladek | Encounter with a Hick by Jonathan Brand | From the Government Printing Office by Kris Neville | Land of the Great Horses by R. A. Lafferty | The Recognition by J. G. Ballard | Judas by John Brunner | Test to Destruction by Keith Laumer | Carcinoma Angels by Norman Spinrad | Auto-da-Fé by Roger Zelazny | Aye, and Gomorrah by Samuel R. Delany

Unavailable for 15 years, this huge anthology now returns to print, as relevant now as when it was first published.

On several settled worlds of the Earth Confederation, towns had been utterly destroyed by attacking alien vessels – exploded into flaming ruin, and fleeing people reduced to smears of blood and bone.

And so they sent for Captain Kurt Varl, the only man to have fought an alien ship and destroyed it – the only survivor from his crew of thirty souls. And now he would have to lead another ship and crew into battle, knowing that as well as the alien raiders he faced the things that lurked in limbo, existing in four dimensions and capable of transforming humans into things of screaming horror…

The Collected Stories Volume 6: Multiples (1983 – 1987)

Winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, Robert Silverberg is one of the all time greats of science fiction. A professional writer for more than half a century, his short story output has been prolific and exceptional in quality.

This series of nine volumes will collect all of the short stories and novella-length that SF Grand Master Silverberg wants to take their place on the permanent shelf.

Each volume will be roughly 150,000-200,000 words, with classics and lesser known gems alike. The author has also graced us with a lengthy introduction and extensive story notes for each tale.

Contents:
Tourist Trade
Multiples
Against Babylon
Symbiont
Sailing to Byzantium
Sunrise on Pluto
Hardware
Hannibal’s Elephants
Blindsight
Gilgamesh in the Outback
The Pardoner’s Tale
The Iron Star
The Secret Sharer
House of Bones

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.

When the Colonnaders plucked him from a life of misery and their surgeons rebuilt his twisted body with silicon bones, Joachim Boaz renamed himself after THE PILLARS OF ETERNITY. Now he seeks Meirjaihn the Wanderer, a planet that plots its own course between stars: for on its surface lies a gem that offers mastery over time itself . . .

Maxie’s in trouble! Again. Only, this time it’s serious. Driving a stolen Ferrari Testarossa off a motorway flyover at something approaching Mach 1, with the police in hot pursuit, is no way to make old bones. But it’s child’s play to what follows.

For Maxie, small-time thief and general low-life, has crashed into the Spiral, a strange whirlpool of time and space, where, it seems, almost anything can happen, and anyone appear.

The two Elizabethan alchemists, for instance, who are convinced that Maxie can help them with their magickal endeavours. And the swashbuckling band of spectral pirates who promise Maxie power and riches beyond his wildest dreams – if only he’ll join them.

Malevolent aliens, the Mordri Three decide to become so evil that God himself will have to stop them. They can alter flesh with a simple touch, literally turning people inside out or seeding them with cancer. The Three have already destroyed an entire solar system and most of their own race. Their next targets: mankind and Earth!

On Earth, Scott St. John is mourning his wife when he is struck by a golden arrow of light – a fragment of the soul of Harry Keogh, the original Necroscope – and gains powers he does not understand. A mysterious, beautiful woman appears, desperately trying to warn Scott about something . . . then vanishes midword. Scott dreams of a very unusual Wolf, who begs him – in human speech – for rescue.

A fledgling Necroscope, a telepathic Wolf, a beautiful woman from beyond the stars, the ghost of Harry Keogh, the best of E-Branch’s psychic fighting forces, and a dead girl who is not yet ready to seek her just reward must defeat three impossibly strong, psychically gifted monsters whose touch literally melts flesh from bone.