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Prince Zarkon’s arch-enemy, Dr Zanfor Sinestro, returns for a second match in the fourth novel in Lin Carter’s fantastic Zarkon series, hoping to extort millions of dollars by targeting the banks of Knickerbocker City by targeting them with artificially generated earthquakes.

It was Thane who crossed the abyss of the ages and stood on the very brink of Eternity…who found the secret of the Time Treasure… who saw, and laughed and came back sane from that place beyond the Universe where no man had ever been before him, and where none should ever come again.

This was the ending. But the beginning was in the city of Zotheera on the planet Daikoon…

A restless outworlder was Thane of the Two Swords. A man of blood and steel, a man of strange powers strangely acquired. The warrior Thane possessed a secret vital to the greedy Princes of the Planets. And it was on the planet Daikoon that the princes tried to buy Thane’s services…

An anthology of fantasy short stories, edited by American writer Lin Carter, containing:

“The Vision of Yin” (Ernest Bramah, from The Wallet of Kai Lung)
“The Dragon of Chang Tao” (Ernest Bramah, from Kai Lung’s Golden Hours)
“The Bird with the Golden Beak” (Donald Corley, from The Haunted Jester)
“The Song of the Tombelaine” (Donald Corley, from The House of Lost Identity)
“The Poet of Panopolis” (Richard Garnett, from The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales)
“The City of Philosophers” (Richard Garnett, from The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales)
“The Miniature” (Eden Phillpotts)

A rich and joyous collection of tales of myth, magic and necromancy, by authors ancient and modern – all the way from the anonymous chronicler of perhaps the oldest of written fantasies – the Sumarian Angalta Kigalshe – to Anatole France and his Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche. Here you will find extracts from the Egyptian Book of Thoth, from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso from Voltaire, Alfred Noyes, and many more – a veritable feast of fantasy.

He knew his name: Kyon. He wore the garb of a gardener, therefore he was a gardener. But that was all he knew. The city of Urb was a maze of wonders and terrors. The people were strangers; condescending and perhaps spiteful. Kyon had to do something, to go somewhere, but none would tell him. And it was important!

Urbs, the ultimate city, was on the scales of history. It would be up to Kyon whether all it represented, the flowering of science, would be…

FOUND WANTING

BOOK TWO OF THE PERILOUS QUEST FOR LYONESSE

It is time for Simon Branthwaite to leave Sandarro, the city where he has lingered since reaching the fabled island of Roackall. Bidding a farewell to his new-found love, Princess Ilven, he sets out with Prince Avran to continue his quest for the lost realm of Lyonesse, heading toward the Stoney Mountains where many an adventure awaits them…

The Lords of Stoney Mountain is the second in Anthony Swithin’s fantastical Lyonesse sequence, edited by Mark Sebanc.

MARS: THE SKULL OF A PLANET PICKED CLEAN BY THE WIND OF TIME

North Beyond the desert of Meroe, past the ancient cliffs of the dust-locked continents, past the dry wharfs of a city that was old when Earth was new, the caravan crept into the unmapped waste called Umbra. It was into this shadowed land that the lost nation of the People had ridden and vanished-in a time beyond memory. It was here that the outworlder Ryker followed the golden-eyed Valarda and found the Child-of-Stars.

Far from his adopted home, the Golden City of Shondakor, Koja, self-exiled insectoid of the Yathoon Horde, has blundered into the savage land he had renounced, accompanied only by little Taran, ward of Prince Jandar. Lost in the treacherous scarlet plains, the two are hurled to separate, unnamable fates – Taran forsaken in shackles, along with the lovely Princess Xara, while the renegade Koja is locked on a perilous course of vengeance for the evils done to his clan. All destinies collide at the Great Yathoon Games in the hidden valley of Sargol – the impenetrable citadel girdled by a seething mote of flames.

Ganelon Silvermane, the genetically designed superhero of the Earth’s fabulous final age, has rapidly become the most popular of all Lin Carter’s creations. Brought to life prematurely, Ganelon’s adventures in a world of crumbling empires, ravaging hordes, and marvelous relics of forgotten scientific empires are always edge-of-the-seat wonder novels – the best creation of the author of the Thongor, Green Star, and Callisto books, to mention but a few!Now, in this third novel of Gondwane, Ganelon Silvermane encounters a city of illusion, the problem of scientific immortals, and the disastrous collision of a massive horde of the world’s ultimate barbarians!

The magician’s eyes gleamed with emerald hellfires as he looked at the council of nine.

“Let us enact upon Thongor of Valkarth the most terrible punishment conceivable to the human intelligence…the eternal slavery of the soul to Chaos.”

If the curse is carried out, Thongor’s body and soul will suffer throughout eternity. But much more than only Thongor’s fate is at stake. The Magicians of Zaar plan the conquest of the whole of Lemuria – and only Thongor stands in their way.

Can Thongor’s mighty sword keep his world from being enslaved by the sinister servants of Chaos?

Earth, can you spare a city?

The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth! Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local townspeople, a crackpot professor. But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his days on the smallest-and the nuttiest-planet in the galaxy!

“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…

Prince Zarkon is back! This thrilling new case from the top-secret files of the crime-fighting organization known as Omega begins in London with a strangely simple and bewildering crime. It’s just a warehouse robbery, but the perpetrators are no ordinary criminals. They are the diabolical Blue Men.

Sinister, invulnerable to conventional weaponry, and entirely blue, these evildoers can walk unharmed through clouds of deadly gases. Even gunfire doesn’t stop them – bullets bounce off their bodies as though they’d struck the steel side of a battleship. Bold and brazen, the chilling culprits carry out their crimes again and again, making headlines around the world. London is panicked . . . and Scotland Yard is stumped.

Straight from Knickerbocker City comes Prince Zarkon and the Omega Men to the rescue. The lord of the unknown and nemesis of all villains, Zarkon soon discovers the malignant mastermind behind the mysterious Blue Men. It is the aptly-named Vulture, a brilliant but deranged, unscrupulous, and embittered scientist who is determined to leave the bloody stain of his extraordinary genius upon the world. As the band of Blue Men multiplies, until it terrifyingly outnumbers the Omega Team, it looks as if our superhero has finally met his match.

Filled with electrifying suspense, this is a Zarkon adventure beyond compare . . . and one of the strangest pursuits in the annals of criminology.

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.

Kelder had always dreamed of a life more exciting than what waited for him on the family farm. So when a fortune-teller predicted a glorious future, that he’d roam free and unfettered and be a champion of the lost and forlorn, he immediately set out on the fabled Great Highway to Shan in search of adventure.

But once he was on the road, life was hardly as exciting as he’d hoped – until he met Irith. She was the most beautiful girl, and the only girl with wings, Kelder had ever seen. They teamed up to see the world, and then Kelder found adventures aplenty: there were bandits and demons, and there were curses to lift, wizards to seek spells from, orphans to champion, and legendary cities to visit. For the young and carefree, life on the Great Highway was filled with fun, action, and magic.

But Kelder began to wonder about his beautiful companion. Irith certainly had seen a lot of the world for one so young – and everyone along the highway seemed to know her . . .

Soon, discovering Irith’s secrets became Kelder’s greatest adventure of all . . .

It was definite – Dumery had no magical talent at all. He could never fulfill his dream to become a wizard’s apprentice. Hurt, angry, and mortally disappointed, he despaired of ever choosing a trade.

But then Dumery spied a so-called great wizard humbling himself before a man selling dragon’s blood – the precious stuff that made difficult spells work. If Dumery couldn’t be a wizard, maybe he could become a dragon-hunter and have all those scornful wizards crawling to him.

So, leaving his family, city, and comfortable home, Dumery began trailing Kensher, the man in brown – even though Kensher said he didn’t need a dragon-hunting apprentice. But when Dumery finally caught up with Kensher, he would discover Kensher’s great secret of how the precious fluid was obtained – a secret from which only Kensher’s kin could profit.
Once again, Dumery would be left without career or future.

Unless . . .

Archmage Planir and the wizards of Hadrumal have demonstrated their devastating powers and the corsair threat is no more. The mainland rulers’ relief is overshadowed with fear of one day facing such a threat to their own dominion. Will Tormalin’s Emperor make an alliance with Solura’s wizards, who so openly covet Hadrumals secrets? Will he seek out that other mysterious magic, Artifice, to counter Planir’s magecraft? How will the aloof Aetheric adepts of the mountains answer such an appeal? With many of the Wizard Council disputing Planir’s chosen course, he must look beyond the island city for allies. To Suthyfer, the controversial haven for mageborn far away in the Eastern Ocean. To Caladhria, where Corrain, Baron Halferan and Lady Zurenne believe they have finally won respite from all their trials. But absence of strife is hardly peace. The lull before winter’s storms descend from the distant northern peaks will be a short one.

The country of Lescar was carved out of the collapse of the Old Tormalin Empire. Every generation has seen the land laid waste by rival dukes fighting for the High King’s empty crown. Tathrin’s parents sent him to the distant city of Vanam to escape the recurrent skirmishes. He meets Aremil, another Lescari, whose parents have their own reasons for sending him so far away. These two young men cannot forget their homeland. Can they persuade other exiles with Lescari blood to help relieve their kinfolk’s misery? If they can persuade Branca, the down-to-earth scholar, to share the ancient lore which she has studied, then this mismatched band of commoners, merchants and nobles can begin plotting a revolution.

This volume contains 7 short works by Murray Leinster, including: “Rogue Star,” “Dear Charles,” “Dead City,” “Sam, This Is You,” “The Other Now,” The Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator,” and “The End.”

Life on the moon under anything less than optimal conditions had always been a nightmare, and as Joe Kenmore and his colleague, Moreau, drove back to the City On The Moon on that day the Earth shuttle was due to land, the nearby mountain supporting critical elements of the shuttle’s landing mechanisms crumbled causing an avalanche and resulting in chaos.

Optimal conditions were no where in sight that day and as Kenmore and Moreau’s investigations lead to their conclusion that explosions had been responsible for the avalanche. Now they realized that they were in a race against the clock to restore the landing beam before the shuttle had reached it’s point of no return prior to landing.

Kenmore had more than strictly humanitarian reasons for wanting to prevent a mishap aboard the shuttle that day, because on this particular mission, Arlene Gray was aboard. Kenmore had been anxiously awaiting her arrival, and now his love’s life might hang in the balance.

Newark . . . Manhattan . . . Baltimore – one by one they went out. A succession of thriving communities suddenly put out like a guttered flame. Men, women, children sprawled like grotesque manikins.

Steve Waldron knew it couldn’t be plague. There had to be some connection with the disappearance of the nation’s top scientists. And then he plunged to the center of a dead city and gaped at an unbelievable truth. What could he do against a force fearsome enough to engulf the entire nation?