Search Results for: dark-as-day

Fifteen billion years from now, Earth is a dying planet, its skies darkened by the ashes of burned-out galaxies, its molten core long cooled. The sunless planet is nearing the day of final gravitational collapse in the surrounding galaxy. Mutations and evolution have led to a great disparity of life-forms, while civilization has resorted to the primitive.
Young Deyv of the Turtle Tribe knew nothing of his world’s history or its fate. He lived only to track down the wretched Yawtl who had stolen his precious Soul Egg. Joined by other victims of the same thief – the feisty Vana and the plant-man Sloosh – the group sets off across a nightmare landscape of monster-haunted jungle and wetland. Their search leads them ultimately to the jeweled wasteland of the Shemibob, an ageless being from another star who knows Earth’s end is near and holds the only key to escape.

During the day a blazing and merciless sun beat down on “the boy” and at night a friendless and cold darkness enveloped him. It was a bleak and lonely countryside over which he had been wandering for ten years. A rare tree, bird or wild animal was the only life he encountered during his desolate trek through his young years of roaming. Infrequently, he was fortunate enough to find shelter and food in the shops of deserted villages; otherwise he foraged what he could from the nearly barren land. Contact with other humans was his innermost and greatest fear.

But the day came when his curiosity overcame his sensibilities of self-preservation and he was drawn to the sound of a great wailing not far from a place where he had come to rest.

Form that moment on his whole existence took on a radical change. His wanderings became a kaleidoscope of adventures, emotions, and responsibilities – never static, forever mobile, and potentially dangerous. There were moments when it would have been easier to turn his back, return to old ways, but somehow he knew this was an impossibility. He accepted his new fate, but still feared the greatest of all commitments until it was too late for him.

This fantasy adventure will not fail to excite and stir in every reader memories and emotions of seemingly forgotten times and moments.

Patrick Joya lifted his head to scan the southern sky and saw a dark bluish shape flicker against the clouds. Growing larger and larger the object undulated like a wide piece of cloth carried along a moving current of water. He could hear the babble of voices around him swelling to a mounting groan of panic. The sound went racing like a cresting wave back toward the Terminal where the thousands there would be lifting their gaze skyward. Another Space Swimmer, Pat thought with sinking heart. It seemed as if it intended to swallow up the sky – for the brightness of day had blackened into night.

Kerron and his business associates, Chang and Forrest, were three of the richest men on Earth. Now old and approaching the end of their days, they were desperate to prolong their lives. And there was one man who seemed to possess the secret of immortality-the mysterious Brett, a tall adventurer who had apparently lived for centuries.

So the three men paid a fortune to the one man they believed could help them, But Brett had a dark secret, and he in turn made a bargain with them, They had to accompany him on the strangest and most dangerous journey ever undertaken – to the very centre of the Galaxy – beyond the Wall!

The Collected Stories Volume 2: To The Dark Star (1962 – 1969)

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:
To See The Invisible Man
The Pain Peddlers
Neighbor
The Sixth Palace
Flies
Halfway House
To The Dark Star
Hawksbill Station
Passengers
Bride 91
Going Down Smooth
The Fangs of the Trees
Ishmael in Love
Ringing the Changes
Sundance
How It Was When the Past Went Away
A Happy Day in 2381
(Now + n, Now – n)
After the Myths Went Home
The Pleasure of Their Company
We Know Who We Are

Rhys Morgan and Jack Dawson are the last two boys on the school bus. It’s the same everyday. But today will be different.

Coming down the hill towards Wellthorpe, through a heavy snow laden day, the bus careers out of control and crashes.

Into a river and a different world. A world where crows talk. The world of the Icetower and its dark owner. A world where Rhys and Jack must find the strength to be heroes.

In Dreamtime, you have to look before you leap. So, do you dare step over the Threshold?

Kane. The Mystic Swordsman becomes the living link with the awesome power of a vanished superrace.

In the dark swamp where toadmen croak and cower, slumbers a secret relic of the days when creatures from the stars ruled the Earth. In the booty captured in a savage raid, Kane discovers a ring, a bloodstone, which is key to the power that lies buried, inactive but not dead, within the forest.

Now Kane, whose bloody sword has slashed and killed for the glory of other rulers, can scheme to rule the Earth – himself!

With Earth teetering on the brink of extinction, only one man dares to defy the legacy of the Spaceraiders – Clovis Marca, the twilight man.

Long ago Earth, now fixed on her axis, with eternal day on one side, eternal night on the other and a ribbon of twilight in between, was ravaged by galactic raiders. Earthlings recovered, grew stronger. But now, unable to reproduce, the last humans are frenzied with final decadence. And fear.

Only Clovis Marca, the last man born on Earth, dares to brave infected space to seek the impossible solution. His dark quest leads him to face Orlando Sharvis, the scientist whose insane experiments on his own mind and body might just save the human race… but would that race then be more, or less, human?

The Solar System is finally recovering from the Great War – a war that devastated the planets and nearly wiped out the human race – and the population of the outer moons, orbiting Jupiter and Saturn, is growing.

On one of those moons, Alex Ligon, scion of a great interplanetary trading family has developed a wonderfully accurate new population model and cannot wait until the newly reconstituted “Seine”, the interlinked network of computers that spans the planets and moons and asteroids, comes back online. But when it does, and he extends his perfect model a century into the future, it predicts the complete destruction of the human race.

On another moon, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence goes on, undaunted by generations of failure. And to her amazement, Millie Wu, a young genius newly recruited to the project, has found a signal… a signal that is coming from outside the solar system.

And in his new retreat on a minor moon of Saturn, the cranky genius Rustum Battachariya is still collecting weapons from the Great War. He thinks he may have stumbled on an unexpected new one…but he’ll need to disarm it before it destroys the Sun.

Jephraim Tallow went naked to his mirror and viewed his strange body – stranger now for the absence of a navel. The blood had gone and so had his navel. Tallow deliberated upon this discovery and then, frowning, returned to bed.

A number of hours later, Tallow awoke, put his hand into his mouth and found no blood, slid his large hand down his scrawny length and found no navel. He sighed and arose, donned his sackcloth clothes, opened the door of the hovel and looked out into the dark day full of mist. The mist was coming off the river, close by.

This is the story of Jephraim Tallow’s obsession with a mysterious golden barge, which he follows down-river, in the belief that, should he be able to board it, the answers to the mystery of his existence will be made clear.