Search Results for: burning,-the

From the vaults of the SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal introduction to one of the unique voices of British science fiction, John Middleton Murry, Jr, who wrote his best work under the pen name Richard Cowper.

The son of the famous critic John Middleton Murry, Cowper announced himself to the science fiction world in 1967 with BREAKTHROUGH, which found favour for a subtlety and richness of characterisation not seen in most contemporary SF. The idea of a transformed future England became his signature leitmotif and it is this theme that informs the Corlay tales contained in this omnibus. This is the complete Corlay sequence, featuring introductory novella ‘PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN’ and novels THE ROAD TO CORLAY, A DREAM OF KINSHIP and A TAPESTRY OF TIME.

THE ROAD TO CORLAY:
On the Eve of the Fourth Millennium a slowly-building civilization, struggling out of the rubble of the Drowning, was crushed beneath the sceptre of a powerful and repressive Church. But on the Eve of the Fourth Millennium the sound of a magical pipe was heard, and the air was filled with songs of freedom and enlightenment. And on the Eve of the Fourth Millennium the Boy appeared, bringing the gift of sacrilege, a harbinger of the future, heralding the arrival of the White Bird of Dawning. It is the coming of a New Age. A glorious future bearing the presents of the past!

A DREAM OF KINSHIP:
They came to destroy! The treacherous Falcons, uniformed in the black leather tunics of the fanatic Secular Arm, descended on Corlay to burn and kill. Commanded by Lord Constant, ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, they were determined to crush the religious heresy of Kinship. But a new dream rose from the ashes… When four Kinsmen escaped the carnage of their beloved land, each helped to fulfill the miracle that had been foretold: the coming of the Child of the Bride of Time.

A TAPESTRY OF TIME:
Twenty years have passed since the martyrdom of the Boy-piper at York, twenty years in which his legacy, the movement of Kinship, has challenged the tyranny of the Church Militant in Britain’s seven island kingdoms. Now his namesake, Tom, bearing the Boy’s own pipes and perhaps himself imbued with the spirit of the White Bird, is wandering Europe in company with the girl, Witchet. But disaster overtakes them and Tom, in a furry of vengeance, breaks his vow of Kinship. A terrible path lies before him, one that transcends his own world. As he travels it, Tom must come to understand the true nature of the wild White Bird, of The Bride of Time and her Child, and of the Song the Star Born sang.

He held the power of life after the world’s end! In four days the world was coming to an end! The exploding sun would burn every living thing on Earth to a cinder! In Simsville, it was Bill Easson who got the job of picking those fit to escape. He had to choose ten people – men, women, or children – out of its desperate, hysterical three thousand. Whom should he pick – the beautiful, the bold, or the clever? Did they really have a chance to reach a new world in the rickety, jerry-built, inadequate space boat that would be given them? Would cold and hostile Mars welcome them?

It is the early summer of 1945, and war reigns in the Pacific Rim with no end in sight. Back in the States, Hollywood B-movie star Syms Thorley lives in a very different world, starring as the Frankenstein-esque Corpuscula, and Kha-Ton-Ra, the living Mummy. But the U.S. Navy has a new role waiting for Thorley, the role of a lifetime.


The top secret Knickerbocker Project is putting the finishing touches on the ultimate biological weapon: a breed of gigantic, fire-breathing, proto-Godzillas engineered to stomp and burn cities on the Japanese mainland. The Navy calls upon Thorley to don a rubber suit and become the merciless Gorgantis, starring in a film that simulates the destruction of a miniature Japanese metropolis. If the demonstration succeeds, the Japanese will surrender and many thousands of lives will be spared; if it fails, the horrible mutant lizards must be unleashed.


One thing is certain: Syms Thorley must now give the most terrifyingly convincing performance of his life.

Marooned on the planet Quetzalia after their ship clashed with the irresistable force of gravity, Day One In Paradise is not quite the blissful Utopia fact-finding Nearthlings Francis Lostwax and Burne Newman were expecting.

Tropical fronds turn out to be brain-eating Neurovores who decimate the rest of the scientists’ crew, and a sweeping, majestic river becomes a bubbling cauldron of caustic ‘noctus’ or liquified hate.

Abandoning their craft, the two scientists flee to the Quetzalians, a peace-loving race guided by the precepts of the Ancient Mexicans. Together they vow to rid the planet of the evil Neurovores.

But the technology-free Quetzalians demand that the Nearthlings destroy their machines and with them their lifeline back to the planet New Earth…

Dr Ezawa had made some remarkable discoveries about the Voodoo beliefs that persisted in the Louisiana bayou country – like how to create zombies by injecting corpses with the dirt from old slave graveyards.


The eyes of the awoken dead blazed with a brilliant green luminosity, and before they burned out, strange visions and superhuman abilities tormented them.


The poet Harrison didn’t want to remain a guinea pig. He wanted to find out the truth behind the scientists’ sinister manipulations – and he wanted to stay alive.


But when he escaped and began to test his growing powers on the superstitious Cajun swamp dwellers, another terrifying world began to unfold before his green eyes…

The sun shone brightly on this fateful morning, bringing to its planets warmth and life-giving rays. The brightness increased sharply as the morning grew older. The glare was blinding; the radiation not life-giving, but deadly. By mid-afternoon the brilliant, intense sun shone on barren space. It had blasted each of its four planets out of existence.

Someone had found a way to poison a star.

And someone had to be found who could prevent the takeover – or destruction – of the entire universe. Who? Johnny Kettrick, as improbable a hero there never was. Johnny Kettrick who was banned from the Cluster World for his not-too-honest dealings was sent back there with his three equally unholy partners to search out the Doomstar…to find the Doomstar before it burned out another world.

One moment Kenniston was strolling down the quiet street, lost in pleasant reverie. The next moment the sky split open!

It split wide open, and above them was a burn and a blaze of light – so swift, so violent, that the air itself seemed to have burst into flame. Then there was silence – awful, suffocating silence.

Kenniston felt the chill of premonition – a shapeless terror that grew into a thing too evil to be borne alone.

In its northern fastness Britannia – despite all the benefits of the Pax Romana, with its technology and brutally rationalist philosophy – has kept its mysterious secrets, hidden deep in the wild forests that still cover much of the land.

As the Empire gathers its forces, three young people hold the future in their hands: the Roman Viti, now known as Coll, Angus the mechanic-turned-revolutionary and Mirana the student, now in touch with strange powers.

And as the cold, rational imperatives of Rome meet the wild magic of an older world, the Empire’s dominion will at last be challenged.

The Burning Forest: the triumphant conclusion to the magical epic A Land Fit for Heroes.

Lavan Chitward is a very unhappy young man; pulled away from his country home by his parents’ ambitions and resettled in the big city of Haven, he is desperately lonely, bullied and beaten at school, ignored by his parents. It is not surprising that he falls ill — but his illness is the first manifestation of a terrible power, the Gift of the Firestorm, a power which can and does kill. If controlled, the Gift of the Firestorm can save Valdemar, but if it is uncontrolled, it will destroy the country — and him. Chosen by the Companion Kalira, brought into the ranks of the Heralds of Valdemar, Lavan finds acceptance and hope for the first time. But war with Karse threatens to engulf the Kingdom and only Lavan Firestorm stands between Valdemar and destruction — and only then if he can harness his dreadful power to his will.

Keston Ochiltree’s visit home had been short and disastrous. His newborn nephew had proved to be one of the Hopeless Ones and had only served to remind him of the present plight of mankind. Keston knew that the decision he was being called on to make might mean a new start for humanity or the end of their underwater civilization.

Each day found more Hopeless Ones being born: pitiful creatures with webbed hands and feet. More important, the inhuman Zammu were pressing their attack in a fierce struggle between species. Most important, the silver sky was lowering. The shimmering sky-level would soon shrink until they had all burned in the gaseous beyond.

So Keston’s decision might mean everything. Should he stay in the Emperor’s shark-cavalry to fight the Zammu? Or should he join Professor Lansing in an illegal attempt to find what lay beyond the silver sky?

Emerging from the burned remains of their old home, the ancient, elegant Scarabae ready themselves for a new life of seduction and feasting, until little Ruth ignites a blaze of chaos through the streets of London that threatens them all.

This is book two in the Blood Opera series.

BURNING SKY is a collection of twenty-seven short stories by award-winning author Rachel Pollack. These stories – many of which have remained almost wholly unknown until now – reflect the author’s interests in unorthodox sexuality and subjectivity of experience, as well her wry sense of humor and impressive imagination.

The only survivor plucked from a world where life has been burned out from horizon to horizon, Rat Korga is a very unusual human. On his own world he was subjected to Radical Anxiety Termination-a synapse-jamming technique banned on many planets.

Now the officials of the Web must find a new world for him. Their first choice is the planet Velm: a world on which humans co-exist uneasily with the trisauian evelmi – and also the world of Marq Dyeth, for whom Korga is calculated to be the perfect erotic object, to about seven decimal places . . .

The megalomaniac Godmind is still planning to use all the minds in creation to make a vast ‘lens’, and if necessary it will burn out all life in the process.

Back beside the river and literally born again, Yaleen represents to the guild of riverwomen the perfect proof of salvation, of life after death. In fact, she is desperately searching for a way to save the whole universe from imminent destruction.

It lay in the grass, tiny and white and burning. He stooped, put out his fingers. And then there was nothing. Nothing but darkness and oblivion. A split second demolition of the world of Richard Avery.
From a damp February afternoon in Kensington Gardens, Avery is precipitated into a world of apparent unreason. A world in which his intelligence is tested by computers, and which he is finally left on a strange tropical island with three companions, and a strong human desire to survive.

But then the mystery deepens: for there are two moons in the sky, and the rabbits have six legs, and there is a physically satisfying reason for the entire situation.

Brilliant government scientist Richard Seaton discovers a remarkable faster-than-light fuel that will power his interstellar spaceship, The Skylark.
His ruthless rival, Marc DuQuesne, and the sinister World Steel Corporation will do anything to get their hands on the fuel.

When they kidnap Seaton’s fiancee and friends, they unleash a furious pursuit and ignite a burning desire for revenge that will propel The Skylark across the galaxy and back.

Earth and Firma were twin planets – mirror worlds in a single time-track. Now Firma was halted in its rotation around the sun by the Aliens. Unless Denning and Liston, twin humans, could destroy the Aliens and get Firma moving again, Earth would some day repeat Firma’s tragedy and be burned to a cinder.

The Aliens had an incredible array of weapons at their disposal.

Denning and Liston had only their courage and their brains.

Wholly Smokes was the last book completed by one of the most original, brilliant and under-rated American writers of the 20th century. Like so many of John Sladek’s earlier books, this is almost impossible to categorize. It’s the non-fiction or non-fact history of General Snuff and Tobacco, a very American tobacco company which seems to have been present at, or had bizarre influence on, many great and not-so-great moments of history.

John Sladek provides his own indescribable clip-art illustrations. As he says in the Introduction:
“The story of GST is also the story of the Badcock family, who owned and operated the company throughout its magnificent history. This book follows that history, stopping to explore a few of its more dazzling events. You will meet the Badcock who kidnapped Pocahontas, the Badcock
who burned London, the Badcock who started the American Revolution, the Badcock who almost killed a president, the Badcock who delivered the real Gettysburg address, the Badcock who wanted to prolong World War One (because he was doing so well out of it), the Badcock who tried to bribe Roosevelt, the Badcock who tried to kill Fidel Castro, and many others . . .”

John Sladek wrote some of the best science fiction stories of the 20th-century and his parodies of famous s/f authors are uproariously “right-on”. His talent went under-appreciated except by a few devoted followers, even though his satirical writing was on a par with the early Kurt Vonnegut.

Keep The Giraffe Burning is Sladek’s second short story collection (of four published during his life-time) and contains seventeen stories originally published in (mostly) various SF magazines between 1968 and 1975.

When Ray Jerome, a crotchety journalist on the Whiteford Examiner, is asked to investigate a case of spontaneous human combustion, his first reation is to ridicule the idea – but he is not able to back out of doing the story.

To his own surprise, he becomes fascinated by the phenomenon of people who burn up for no obvious reason. It is a fascination which will make 1996 the most unbelievable year of his life.

Shot at by aliens, eaten up by monsters, frozen up, burned up and shipped all over the galaxy¿ war was one game Private Peace didn’t want to play. So why had he joined the Space Legion?

Warren Peace had joined the Space Legion to forget – exactly what, he hadn’t the faintest idea. But he was sure about one thing – however horrific the crime he’d once committed, the memory of it could hardly be more unbearable than life in the lunatic Space Legion. Private Peace knew he’d got to get out¿

The trouble was, the only way to escape his 30-year contract was to discover exactly why he’d signed it in the first place. And that meant a hair raising journey into his forgotten past to meet the one person Peace definitely didn’t want to know – Warren Peace Mark I – in other words, himself!

The Presences mean something different to each of Jubal’s colonists. In some, these towering crystals inspire awe, in others fear. A small band must break through the long silence between humanity and the Presences to strike a new alliance – and bring about the end of a tyrannical dynasty.

Sheri S. Tepper’s world has the depths of galaxies. Her characters come alive like stars burning in the black of space. The tale she tells will leave you astounded.

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!

The first coming was the Man:
The second was Fire to burn Him;
The third was water to drown the Fire;
The fourth is the Bird of Dawning.

Twenty years have passed since the martyrdom of the Boy-piper at York, twenty years in which his legacy, the movement of Kinship, has challenged the tyranny of the Church Militant in Britain’s seven island kingdoms.

Now his namesake, Tom, bearing the Boy’s own pipes and perhaps himself imbued with the spirit of the White Bird, is wandering Europe in company with the girl, Witchet. But disaster overtakes them and Tom, in a fury of vengeance, breaks his vow of Kinship.

A terrible path lies before him, one that transcends his own world. As he travels it, Tom must come to understand the true nature of the wild White Bird, of The Bride of Time and her Child, and of the Song the Star Born sang.