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Only Earl Dumarest himself believed that there was ever a planet called Earth. He had been seeking it a long time – but nobody else at the crowded galactic centre believed in it. During his quest he had acquired some bits of information – a Terrestrial zodiac, and authentic painting of Luna, a general series of hints that he was getting closer.

The he learned of a man on Elysius who knew where Earth was, and who had the special coordinates that would take a starship directly to it. Though the man was dead, his widow knew where the data lay. But she demanded a price from Dumarest – a chore that involved a mining expedition which would bring her back a fortune . . . and for him the information he sought.

But the Terra Data would not be so easily come by!




(First published 1980)

Ascelius was an academic world, whose primary business was teaching the knowledge of the thousands of worlds, and housing great universities and colleges, populated by students and scholars from all over the galaxy.

Such a world was surely the place to learn of the legendary planet called Earth. And Dumarest discovered that there had once indeed been a study-group of Earth lore. But to find the remnants of it was not easy. Not when the dreaded Cyber already had a toe-hold on Ascelius – and genetic engineering of man and monster was the latest fad.

But Dumarest was not a quitter. Whatever the tests might demand, he would not give up . . . although it might mean death for others – or even for himself.




(First published 1980)

Clues from Angado, clues from the lady Govinda, all leading Dumarest on in his search for the lost Planet Earth. But first they lead him to a collector of ancient wisdom called Tama Chenault.

But Chenault is not all that he seems, and Dumarest is forced to bargain for the information he seeks. In return he must pledge allegiance to Chenault’s deadly plan . . .





(First published 1984)

For ten years, Colin sweated, slaved, and eventually built-up a nice business on a dusty world called Mars. Ten more years and he’d have been able to retire a rich man. Five more years and he’d have put all worry behind him. He didn’t get those five years.

During a sandstorm, he blundered accidentally into the forbidden zone, where the temple of Dra Vheera waited and rested, an area guarded zealously to the death by a fanatical faith. The Martians complained, and he lost all, stripped of everything he owned, fined, and sent back to Earth on a one-way ticket. And who was to blame? The Dra Vheera, the priesthood of Mars, the temple, the religion. One name for all three, but all three really one.

A man named Barhart offered vengeance, sweet, pure vengeance. With his help and money, Colin put together a force of eager men determined to strike back at the Martians, but he found more than they bargained for. The safety of Earth was now at stake, and Colin had to race against time and Death to save mankind.

PILLAR OF FIRE

Millions of Years before humanity and other intelligent races learned to roam the Milky Way, the Zheltyana had created an empire among the stars – rose, triumphed, and vanished. All that remained were a few ruins, some artifacts, and the knowledge that their powerful scientific secrets awaited rediscovery.

One such secret had been found on the feudal planet Naxos, under the tyranny of the half-mad Idalia Ancanette. Her scientists had tapped its mystery to create a pillar of energy which promised to make Idalia mistress of a hundred worlds – if it did not destroy Naxos before it could be harnessed.

Such an event called for the attention of Earth’s master agent, Cap Kennedy, and his scientific crew. Because that column of atomic fire was a beacon that could herald a millennium or end in A WORLD AFLAME.

Honor White Jackson was a human being. But his planet was not Earth, nor his time Now. His world was dominated by a giant Iron Thorn. Beyond the reach of this tower there was supposedly, nothing – except a frozen, airless desert where huge winged beasts called Amsirs roamed.

The duty of Jackson’s caste was to hunt and kill the Amsir. And it was not until Jackson had made his first kill that he discovered the secret of his world. As the creature lay dying at his feet, Honor White Jackson partook of the fruit of knowledge. Forevermore he was committed to another life – and the bitter discovery of genius, cruelty and the human paradox.

Starfarers is the story of an expedition into the far reaches of the galaxy, where answers to mankind’s greatest questions await.

The saga begins when evidence of an advanced civilization is discovered by SETI astronomers. “Trails” observed in the sky are thought to be from starships travelling at the speed of light, an enigma that spurs scientific minds until this breakthrough is achieved by mankind as well. An expedition is then mounted and an eclectic team of scientists chosen to journey into the sector where the intelligent life is allegedly located.

But because the destination of the starship, Envoy, and her crew is 60,000 light-years away, the time required to reach the point of origin of the signals and return is 120,000 years – longer than Homo sapiens has been on Earth. And though the crew is ready to face the ramifications of such a trek, no one is prepared for what awaits them at the outer edge of the cosmos – or back at the planet they once called home.

Starfarers is a story of patience and immediacy, but most of all of courage. It is a saga for anyone who has ever felt the emptiness of life on Earth and found the missing substance in the spaces between the stars.

They built a ship called the Southern Cross and launched her to Alpha Crucis. Centuries passed, civilisations rose and fell, the very races of mankind changed, and still the ship fell on her headlong journey toward the distant star.

After ten generations the Southern Cross was the farthest thing from Earth of any human work – but she was still not halfway to her goal.

Here is an absolutely absorbingly exciting tale of the far future from one of the giants in the field of Science Fiction writing.

Poul Anderson wrote stories ranging throughout time and space, from the near future to the far future, tales set on Earth, other planets, and galaxies distant… sometimes with a bit of time travel added to the brew.

Call me Joe is the first of a multi-volume compendium of Poul Anderson’s best works from a writing career that spans over 50 years and contains 26 stories, including:

“Call Me Joe”
“Enough Rope”
“Starfog”
“The Helping Hand”
“The Man Who Came Early”
“The Sharing of Flesh” (1969 Hugo winner)
“Time Patrol”
“Tomorrow’s Children”
“Wildcat”

A space opera is what science fiction readers call an adventure in outer space and on alien planets. But a space opera could also be an opera, a musical work, that originated in outer space…

Jack Vance’s unique novel SPACE OPERA fits both definitions marvelously! Because it starts with the mysterious opera company from the equally mysterious planet Rlaru that arrives on Earth to astonish and infuriate music-lovers – and then disappears without trace!

And when Roger Wool’s wealthy aunt determined to reciprocate by bringing an Earthly operatic team into space and to the unknown world Rlaru, there unwinds a complex and surprising space opera of the first kind …filled with enigmatic aliens, weird worlds, and all the special color and cunning that is the hallmark of the best Jack Vance.

The inhabitants of a planet called Iszm, a species known as the Iszic, have evolved the native giant trees into living homes, with all needs and various luxuries supplied by the trees’ own natural growth. The Iszic maintain a jealously-guarded monopoly, exporting only enough trees to keep prices high and make a great profit. The protagonist, Ailie Farr, is a human botanist who goes to Iszm (like many others before him, of many species) to steal a female tree, which might allow the propagation of the species off world and break the monopoly.

This volume includes two short novels, previously published separately – the title story, and Nopalgarth (published as The Brains of Earth). The collection is rounded out by two of his best shorter works – “The Gift of Gab” and “The Narrow Land”. “The Narrow Land” was the first of a proposed story sequence which was never completed.

Contents: The Houses of Iszm, The Gift of Gab, Nopalgarth (The Brains of Earth), The Narrow Land

All Jack Vance titles in the SFGateway use the author’s preferred texts, as restored for the Vance Integral Edition (VIE), an extensive project masterminded by an international online community of Vance’s admirers. In general, we also use the VIE titles, and have adopted the arrangement of short story collections to eliminate overlaps.

Thirteen fantastical tales, including What Time Do You Call This? – a wildly ironic story about a bank robber who shuttles to an alternate universe and runs into himself. Communication – a modest plan by a shaman spiritualist gets out of hand when the dead begin to contact him. And Isles Where Good Men Lie – a space caravan of scale-armoured, bacteria-laden immigrants begins to make landings on Earth every twenty-two hours.. and is likely to do so for the next twelve centuries.

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.

Winner of the Nebula Award for best novel, 2005
Winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award 2004

Unknown to anyone, two creatures have wandered the Earth for generations. The aliens have no knowledge of each other, but share a residual memory of a mysterious, sunken relic – and an affinity for deep water. One, the changeling, has survived by adaptation, taking the shapes of many different organisms. The other, the chameleon, has survived solely by destroying anything or anyone that threatens it.

Now, finally brought up from the bottom of the sea by marine biologist Russell Sutton, the relic calls to them both . . . to come home. For all these generations there have been two invincible creatures on Earth. But the chameleon has decided there’s only room for one . . .

General Benjamin Shore was heading for the stars – under forged orders and in defiance of Presidential commands. He was leaving Earth in an untested ship with a crew chosen by necessity. And with nothing but faith to guide him. His only hope was to find habitable worlds in the uncharted regions of space ahead.

Thus began Man’s first mission to the unexplored universe. Shore knew that before him lay danger, probable disillusion – maybe even death. But nothing had prepared him for the nightmare he would face on the planet of the Grey-furs for the menace of the Golden People who had driven all other races from Galactic Centre or for what awaited him if he returned to the world he called home.

The day the Time Storm came, Marc Despard was one of the handful to survive – or keep a remnant of sanity. Mist walls moving endlessly across the surface of the Earth, created a devastated, shifting patchwork of temporal anarchy, wrenching both inanimate and living things between the past and the future, beyond all hope of return.

But Despard saw strange, dazzling patterns in his head that he knew were instruments that might enable him to beat the Time Storm.
Travelling through the violent, terrifying landscape of an ever-changing world, slowly gathering others around him, he began to realise his awe-inspiring mission.

He, Marc Despard, must become nothing less than master of the universe – what men call God.

ALLIANCE CENTRAL: the world once called Earth. Nothing breathes upon it but man and the wind, and the wind is tamed beneath great domes. From here humanity rules a vast stellar empire.
FIRSTISM: the belief that the universe is made for humanity. Therefore be fruitful, and multiply, and replace all other creatures with humankind and its domesticated beasts, and replace all other green things with plants useful to human life…
HERMES SECTOR: the remote frontier system where colonists are abruptly wiped out by an alien visitation. As a deadly threat to the countless billions of humans swarming outward from Alliance Central, the aliens must be identified.
One planet alone in Hermes Sector was spared. But that planet is Dinadh, the strangest and most secretive of all populated worlds. Firsters are not welcome on Dinadh, nor Firster technology. The only people from Alliance Central qualified by blood to visit Dinadh are a lone woman and her severely disabled five-year-old son. Their journey to Dinadh marks the beginning of a terrifying ordeal pitching mother and son beyond the shadow cast by human civilization.
Astounding sights, extraordinary aliens and colossal dangers await them…

‘Welcome to Heaven’, said the voice. ‘The acquisition programme is entirely for females; but the occasional enterprising male does not displease us.’

Berry, Chief of his clan, knew his people could survive the dangers of the forest; and when winter came he made them build barricades against raiders from other clans. But no barricades were strong enough to hold against the Night Comers – huge silver beings of horrifying strength who carried away the womenfolk and were drastically lowering the human population.

Were the Night Comers men, monsters or gods? Berry believed they were men; and when the inevitable night came when the women of his clan were seized, he managed to follow. He followed them to a huge tapering column of metal, which took him away from the world he had known to an island in the sky called ‘heaven’.

And there Berry realised that he had to defeat the Lords of Heaven if the people on Earth were to survive.

The final chapter of humanity’s future has begun and one man, Nigel Walmsley, has been alive through it all. An ancient scientist from the distant past, Walmsley had been marooned inside an anomaly of time and space. From here he recalls Earth’s desperate struggle against the mechs, a violent artificial intelligence dedicated to total annihilation.


In a strange space-time continuum called the Esty, the last few survivors from humanity’s ravaged planets have taken refuge, readying themselves for a final stand against their ruthless executioners.


Three generations of men stand between the mechs and total oblivion for the human race: Toby Bishop, a young warrior-in-training; Killeen Bishop, Toby’s father and leader of the last remnants of humanity; and Killeen’s own father, long believed dead, but now mysteriously returned to his family.


As the mechs continue to carve their swathe of destruction through the galaxy, these three men hold the sole hope for the survival of the human race.

“. . . and they all moved to the true start, the true airport, the place that was written on the tickets, the place they should all have been at, the place that would lead them to what they expected, the place with speeding planes; the place with organization behind it; the place where officials walked around in splendid hats with badges on; the place where the beginning of their journey was, and perhaps if they had known they would have jumped off the bus screaming or would have bitten ff their own tongues in order to bleed to death or they would have looked at one another merely in doubt and horror, but as they knew nothing of the future, and no person on earth knows anything much of the future which accounts for the extremely low suicide rate, they all sat and moved forwards to the point in time and space which could only logically and positively be called the start of their journey which was called Super Tour.”

This book contains four striking novellas, and the author’s own philosophy of fiction writing expressed in her speech as a guest of honour at the 38th World Science Fiction Convention.

“The Winter Beach” turns what might be a spy story into suspense of a far different order.

“Julian” begins when its youthful hero trains his telescope on nearby earth rather than the stars and sees a woman who rules the rest of his life.

“With Thimbles, with Forks and Hope” seems to be the dramatic story of a holiday fishing trip, but once on the ocean we are gripped by a different reality.

“Moongate”, set in the mountains of the Northwest, takes its two men and one woman through many dimensions in time and space.

“The Uncertain Edge of Reality” casts a new light on Kate Wilhelm’s many books and short stories. “This is my subject matter when I write,” she says. “I am asking, What actually do we mean by reality, and are we stuck with the one we have? This is what I mean by reality fiction, and usually it is also called science fiction…We are more than simple animals using sophisticated tools in our search for food, security and mates. We are something new on the earth…We can change reality.”

Kate Wilhelm’s writing always has meaning on many levels. Listen, Listen provides a feasts for fans and new readers alike.

The Soviet Union won the Cold War. The Russians were a little smarter than they were in our own world, and the United States was a little dumber and a lot less resolute. Now, more than a century later, the world’s gone Communist, and capitalism is a bad word.

For Gianfranco and his friend Annarita, a couple of teenagers growing up in Milan, life in a heavily regimented, surveillance-rich command economy is just plain dreary. The eventual withering-away of the state doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime soon.

Annarita’s a hard-working student and a member of the Young Socialists’ League. Gianfranco is a lot less motivated–but on the other hand, his father’s a Party apparatchik. The biggest excitement in their lives is a wargame shop called The Gladiator, which runs tournaments, and stocks marvelous complex games you can’t find anywhere else.

Then, abruptly, the shop is shut down. Someone’s figured out that The Gladiator’s games are teaching counterrevolutionary capitalist principles. The Security Police are searching high and low for the shop’s proprietors, who’ve not only vanished into thin air, but have left behind sets of fingerprints that aren’t in the records of any government on earth.

Only one staffer is left: Gianfranco and Annarita’s friend Eduardo. He’s on the run, and he comes to them in secret with an astonishing story: he’s a time trader from our own timeline, accidentally left behind when the store was evacuated. The only way Eduardo can get home to his own timeline is if Gianfranco and Annarita can help him reach one of the other time trader sites in this world – and the Security Police will be on their tails all the way there…

David Fisher, an EPA (Environmental Perfection Agency) bureaucrat, was not the stuff of which heroes are made. At least he hoped not. All he wanted was a good life with a good wife, and a chance to do his bit for society reviewing magical impact statements (like the one that assesses the effect on local non-life resulting from the introduction of leprechauns into Southern California, for example) and ensuring that various manufacturers of magical devices did not intentionally or otherwise foul the environment with the sorcerous by-products of their trade. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a more regular and down to earth soul than that of David Fisher of the EPA. No hero he!

Then one day David received a call from Washington to investigate a certain Toxic Spell Dump, and suddenly he is up to his neck in skullduggery and magic most foul. Some ancient deity, it seems, is attempting to reopen for business in the L.A. Basin, complete with human sacrifice (open up their hearts and let the sun shine in!) and the destruction of Western Civilization. All that stands in the way is David Fisher – and he’s no hero.

Until he has to be.

The Empire of Earth, spanning more than a thousand solar systems, is threatened by a conspiracy from within. Now, with more than three-quarters of the Galaxy ready to fall into enemy hands, the Empire is forced to call on its top-secret weapon: the renowned Circus of the Galaxy featuring the d’Alembert family, a clan of circus performers with uncanny abilities. But even these super agents may not be in time to save the Empire.

The Imperial Stars is the first book in the “Family D’Alembert” series.