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After an unintentionally successful demon-summoning, accountant Prosper Nash finds himself on the astral plane, inhabiting the body of Jean-Prospere, Chevalier de Néche-the swashbuckling cavalier he likes to imagine himself as-and in a New York filled with characters from similar wish-fulfillment daydreams of other mundane souls. The demon is possessing his body on a mundane plane, and he attempts to find his way back. This involves the Shamir, the Solomon’s Stone of the title, and plentiful swashbuckling adventure, and a plot in which Prosper Nash’s accounting abilities prove as useful as Chevalier de Néche’s athletic ones.

The Realm of Kiteworld has survived nuclear catastrophe and is governed by a feudal and militant religious oligarchy – the Church Variant.

In the outer Badlands, real or imagined Demons are kept at bay by flying defensive structures of giant interlocking Cody kites piloted by an elite and brave Corps of Observers.

Through a series of Kite stories we are drawn compellingly into a strange but recognizable world where loyalty to the Corps is everything and non-conformity is a sin. Keith Roberts depicts the fortunes, passions and failings of his characters against this background of a fragile and superstitious society. As the fanatical Ultras embark on a religious campaign of destruction, the Realm starts to disintegrate fast.

Welcome to a haunted world; the world of Keith Roberts’ powerful and unique imagination. These stories show Roberts’ fascination for the curious and unclassifiable; and as ever, his mastery of character and detail. ‘Susan’ introduces the reader to a schoolgirl with awesome psychic powers; but the sensitive treatment turns a shock situation into a brilliant fable, while ‘The Scarlet Lady’, predating Stephen King’s Christine, has the genuine stench of petrol, oil and demons. ‘The Eastern Windows’ chillingly continues the theme; by contrast, ‘Winderwood’ introduces us to a fearsome locale that Roberts insists is real. ‘Mrs. Cibber’ transports the reader, with complete conviction, to the smog-ridden London of the fifties and unfolds the strange tale of a young graphic designer haunted by a woman from the eighteenth century. ‘The Snake Princess’, equally atmospheric, tells the story of a boy’s doomed, bizarre love, while ‘Everything in the Garden’ presents the tour de force of a haunting within a haunting.

As author and illustrator, Keith Roberts did more than most to define the look of UK science fiction magazines in the 1960s. In addition to his BFSA Award wins, he was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. He is perhaps best known for his seminal alternate history novel, Pavane, but his work covered a broad range of SF’s tropes and settings, as can be seen from the titles collected in this omnibus: The Chalk Giants, Kiteworld and The Grain Kings.

THE CHALK GIANTS: After the apocalypse the hazardous evolution of mankind continues. And in primeval response to the disaster, humanity’s solutions to catastrophe carve the harsh new world in violent patterns of magic and myth, rite and religion. Brave images scar the ancient hills, the clash of swords and the ageless power of sexuality sign-post another, bloodsoaked path to civilisation.

KITEWORLD: Powerful churches have long kept their grip on the people with a theology of fear that makes formidable demons out of the poor, weak mutants of the surrounding badlands. To ward off these specters, an elaborate, tradition-encrusted system of kites with hex signs or armed observers fly over the realm. The men of this Kite Corps, performing hazardous duty to sustain a myth, are driven to find a separate peace, to transform, if they can, disillusionment into enlightenment, to move forward from an assumption of guilt to an assumption of responsibility.

THE GRAIN KINGS: They call them The Grain Kings. Gigantic mechanical monarchs of the wheat-bearing plains that were once the frozen Alaskan wastes. Whole eco-systems in themselves, they can supply the food so desperately needed by the teeming millions of our overpopulated planet. But even now, as the whole world waits in hungry suspense, the great powers battle for control of the prairies and two competing combine harvesters find they are heading on a course of collision.

All the signals seemed set at “go.” For Earl Dumarest had found people who believed in the legendary Earth. He had found the coordinates of the Sun and its attendant planets. And he would have the starship with a faithful crew of colonists for whom Earth was the paradise of their dreams.

But before he could reach that ideal moment, Dumarest would have to fight his way out of a demonic Cyclan trap as well as unravel a very tricky web of planetary conspiracy.

Only if he could achieve those desperate goals would he be able to set out on what he hoped would be the final lap of his long galactic trek . . .




(First published 1982)

Steve Matuckek Book 1

In a war waged against Black Magic, the fact that Steve is a werewolf and his wife is a highly skilled witch is not unusual. But their adventures prove very unusual, even for their world, when they are given the task of neutralizing an enemy’s ultimate weapon – the world’s most powerful demon.

New races of man had evolved, new species of beast; science had vanished and magic had arisen to dominate the twilight of our world as it dominated the earth’s morning. The Dying Earth is Jack Vance’s finest work – a stunning evocation of a world peopled by wizards, witches, demons, monsters, dashing princes and forlorn maidens. A bejewelled gallery of strange and wonderful beings in the eminent tradition of Tolkien and William Morris.

Jack Vance’s preferred title for this collection is Mazirian the Magician, but while we have elsewhere deferred to his wishes, in this case the book is so famous under a title of which he apparently strongly disapproves that we concluded it would be absurd to change it.

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.

The first book in the 5 volume Demon Princes saga. The protagonists parents were murdered by a posse of 5 galactic criminals, the “demon princes”. He vows revenge, and eliminates them one by one. In the process Vance does what he excels at: creating strange worlds, environments, customs, and adaptations that humans have made to live in these conditions.

Kirth Gersen, having brought arch-villain Malagate the Woe to justice, sets his sights on Kokor Hekkus, another of the Demon Princes. The name Kokor Hekkus, which means “killing machine” in the language of the planet Thamber, does not refer to Hekkus’s own predilection for homicide, but to his fondness for horrific and murderous devices, including the giant robotic executioner that first gained him his nickname.

As a boy, Kirth Gersen survived a raid on his home planet masterminded by five interstellar crime lords known as the Demon Princes. This five-novel sequence recounts his carefully-planned and implacable revenge. In this, the second volume, his target is Kokor Hekkus, better known as the Killing Machine.

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.

In the midpoint novel of the “Demon Princes” series, Kirth Gersen sets his sights upon the mysterious Viole Falushe. Vance describes this murderous creature as a “sybarite.” “Sadistic pervert” would probably be a more apropos phrase. After several false leads, Gersen backtracks the villain to his point of origin – Earth, of all places! Then the trail moves outward again, to the starworlds and a place back of beyond where there is actually a physical Palace of Love.

Book four in the series which relate the story of Kirth Gersen as he exacts his revenge on five notorious criminals, collectively known as the Demon Princes, who carried his village off into slavery during his childhood.

Kirth Gersen carries in his pocket a slip of paper with a list of five names written upon it – the names of five Demon Princes. The Demon Princes are a race of beings who disguise themselves as humans and delight in power and destruction. However, to Kirth they are merely murderers who killed his family and destroyed his home planet – and who deserve to die for those misdeeds. Three have already fallen at Kirth’s hands, but there are two more names on the list.

Jack Vance has long been one of the most influential, admired and imitated writers in science fiction and fantasy literature, the award-winning author of such widely acclaimed works as The Dying Earth, the Lyonesse trilogy, the adventures of Cugel the Clever, the Demon Princes series, and many other masterful tales set among the stars, in exotic fantasy realms or on our own Earth.

For much of his career, Vance has also been one of the field’s most private writers, an author who preferred to let his work speak for him. Now, at last, to coincide with the release of the tribute anthology Songs of the Dying Earth, Jack gives us this intimate and fascinating glimpse into his rich and eventful life, and a valuable insight into how he went about practicing his craft.

For fans of the Grand Master’s work, these memoirs are something to be treasured.

The room was quiet; the man in front of the mirror was the only living things there, and he was too horrified to utter a sound.

In the mirror, five faces stared back at him: one young and ruddy, which was his own, and four that did not belong in that place at all, for they were wrinkled, malevolent, small as crabapples and blue as smoke.

So begins Damon Knight’s ‘Be My Guest’, a story of the human race possessed by things that were – well, not exactly demons . . . but not exactly not demons, either.

It’s just one of the unpredictably imaginative tales in this fascinating collection by a modern master of science fiction.

Brother to Demons, Brother to Gods begins with a genetic engineering program conceived by the Smithwicks, a family of “Creators” who first improve on inadequate Homo sap (“preman”) with two laboratory species and then come up with the “stargods.” These powerful Frankenstein fabrications, however, send the Creators chasing back to their labs in a last desperate attempt to undo the consequences of their folly. A thousand years later, two “preman” waifs, Davey and Bugler, find unsuspected powers genetically programmed into their minds and bodies, and realize that they are to be the parents of the liberating “ultiman.”

According to legend, Zorn’s distant ancestors had vanquished fiery devils from the Demon Moon. Now, a thousand years later, that bloody red world looms closer every day.

But Zorn knows little of the past. For generations, his family have been Lords of Wolver Riding, flying their winged unicorns to protect the land from werewolves, wyverns and other deadly threats. As Zorn grows, he finds his world increasingly strange. Where did the werewolves come from? How did unicorns fly?

His questions end the day his evil uncle usurps the throne. Torn between ancient fears and modern science, wooed by a seductive temptress and plagued by a demonic priest, Zorn must unlock secrets shrouded in the mists of time – or watch everything he loves be consumed in the hellfire of the . . .

There is a citywide epidemic of arson in San Francisco, and Detective Dave Peters and his partner, Danny, are on the case.

But their routine investigation becomes more and more bizarre as the fires seem more and more spontaneous and impossible. An astonishing scenario emerges: the War in Heaven, which takes place outside of time, is still being fought. Sometimes a minor demon drops out of that war and into time, on Earth, to hide – masquerading as a human. Sometimes an angel is sent to Earth to destroy these evil beings. But an angel on such an errand may care nothing for human life.

Those who die go to heaven, or elsewhere – not the angel’s concern.


Such an angel now stalks its prey in San Francisco – but it is newly fallen because it has begun to enjoy destruction. Dave and Danny, the only ones who believe in the angel, must track it down and, with the help of the Church, exorcise it.

In 1997 an angel fell to Earth. Dave Peters, and his sidekick in the San Francisco police squad, Danny, were right there at the time. Caught up in a supernatural war between good and evil, they had eventually tracked down the rogue entity and brought an end to its reign of deadly fire. But now the stakes had risen. It’s 2002, and there’s a demon abroad in London, a soul so corrupt and foul that Satan himself has recruited him from the legions of the dead. Only one entity in Heaven can counter his power – an Archangel, an angel of the highest rank.

In the lands of the True Game, your lifelong identity will emerge as you play. Prince or Sorcerer, Armiger or Tragamor, Demon or Doyen…


Which will it be?

He wears the guise of a Necromancer: the black cloak, the broad-rimmed hat, the gauze mask painted with a death’s head. But raising the dead is the least of his Talents. He is a wild card that threatens the True Game itself. Demon, Doyen, Dragon and Tragamor, Sorcerer, Seer, Armiger and King – take your places. Let the Game begin.

For centuries it has waited. Now it is free.

Badger Ettison does not believe in demons. Until a shrieking, freezing horror escapes its ancient prison. A soulless hunger. Hunger that turns a beautiful woman into a shrivelled husk before she has time to scream. Hunger that has no form, no substance – but fangs and claws and eyes to seek its prey.

Badger Ettison does not believe in magic. But the old blood-rituals are the only way to stop the voracious evil that pursues his wife and son. And they demand that Badger must sacrifice one of the two he loves to save the other.

Badger Ettison does not believe in terror. Now he is living it.

14 science fiction shorts covering topics such as the rebuilding of Manhattan in the heart of Leicestershire, seeking help from an angel, enlivening Utopia by taking a demon lover, changing rivals into animals. A fascinating collection from one of the leading lights of feminist SF.

New readers will be amazed at Jane Saint’s bizarre adventures on her journey through the sticky Quagmire of patriarchal ideas, and those who followed her in earlier travails will be delighted to meet up again with Mr Rochester the cat, the loyal demon Zip and Agatha Hardcastle the witch of Hepstonhall.

When Ellen was fourteen, her cousin, Paul, angered a Malignant One, and he turned to Ellen for help. And then, when things had started to get out of hand, when the usual spells and charms didn’t work, and when the usual agencies didn’t want to know, she contacted Alison Birkett, the lawyer who specialised in demonic possession and corruption in the Spiritual Development Agency. And Ellen’s life was changed…


Temporary Agency is the follow-up to Rachel Pollack’s acclaimed novel, Unquenchable Fire, winner of the 1988 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Set in the same strange America of Bright Beings, miracles and religious ritual, it is a fantasy of power and humour, love and pain.