Search Results for: dreaming-earth,-the

Zabul was no ordinary world. It was a private religious sanctuary – location secret, visitors unwelcome. It was a world fanatically dedicated to one belief and to one goal. The belief that mankind originated on a single world . . . the goal was to find it.

To find Earth was a goal that Earl Dumarest shared. But how much did he really have in common with the zealot Terridae, who slept in caskets decorated with the zodiacs and dreamed of soaring towers of crystal and floating cities? And what were their despotic Guardians really after?





(First published 1981)

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)

There should have been soft breezes scented with entrancing perfumes, the soothing warmth of a golden sun, lakes of wine and mountains of grain, trees adorned with fruit and bud and flower, shrubs bearing a profusion of glittering gems. Herbs and spices to provide freedom from pain, a return to youthful zest, an end of aging and decay. Salves and ointments and natural fungi to cure all physical ills. . .

For this was Earth, that planet of legend, the paradise for which all yearned and hungered to find. The world of joy and beauty and riches beyond the wildest dreams.

Instead Earl Dumarest found a landscape of unremitting hostility. Could this really be the fabled home world for which he had spent his entire life searching . . . ?



(First published 2008)

There were two: Rosslyn, the pilot, and Comain, the dreamer. Rosslyn died in space, frozen, preserved for two centuries until found and resurrected by a miracle of future surgery. Comain . . . ?

Comain remained on Earth and crystallised his dreams, and when Rosslyn returned he found a civilisation beyond his wildest imaginings. Women ruled the planet, guided solely by the automatic and relentless predictions of a tremendous and frightening machine. A machine that foretold the future and determined the actions of an entire world with devastating accuracy. Into this assured and new civilisation Rosslyn came – and the impact of his presence brought near chaos.

He had to be assimilated – or eliminated.

DOORWAY TO UTOPIA

“Beyond that curtain of darkness lies paradise.”

That was the promise of the doorway known as the Gholan Gate, a doorway so ancient that its makers had vanished millions of years before the first Earthly life crawled out of the primeval oceans. It was still functioning in the possession of its discoverers.

To go through it was to enter a universe where all your dreams came true – where your every wish was obeyed, every fantasy became reality, where you could play God to your heart’s content.

But there was a price, for once beyond the Gholan Gate, you would live only in hopes for a second visit, and a third. . . . And to get the right for that return to paradise a man would sell his soul, his people, his world.

Cap Kennedy entered THE GHOLAN GATE once . . . and the result became cosmic history.

THE HAND OF DR KAIFENG

By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a super-race – that was the ideal of many scientific Utopians.

By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a super-army – that was a dream of many military commanders.

By tampering with the genes of humanity to create a horde of obedient but brilliant monsters – that was the scheme of Dr. Kaifeng.

For Cap Kennedy, the abduction of a dozen leading geneticists spelled trouble for Earth. For their trails led not to some idealist, or to some would-be Napoleon, but pointed only at the one man in the galaxy who might prove to be more powerful than the legions of Terra themselves.

Artificial intelligence has been developed to a point where human intelligence can be uploaded into a computer, achieving a sort of hybrid immortality. Astronaut Christian Brannock welcomes this technology that will make it possible for him to achieve his dream and explore the stars.

A billion years later, Brannock is dispatched to Earth to check on some strange anomalies. While there he meets Laurinda Ashcroft, another hybrid upload. Brannock and Laurinda join forces and investigate Gaia, the supermind dominating the planet, and learn the truth of her terrifying and secret plans for Earth…

Winner of the John W. Campbell Award for best novel, 2001

In the dim far future of Earth, when the sun had shrunk to a small red disk in the dark sky and the race of man lived in isolated cities that echoed with the vastness of the world’s history, science, myth and magic had become one. Sorcerors who read the books of ancient times held great power, and fearsome monsters created in ages long forgotten stalked the land. In this world of mystery and danger, the adventurer known as Cugel the Clever was forced to undertake a quest for Iucounu the Laughing Magician – a quest that was to take him to lands stranger than any he had dreamed of, and pit his wits and his sword against powers from beyond time itself.

Previously published as The Eyes of the Overworld, this is the second of a quartet of titles sharing the same far-future setting first introduced in The Dying Earth

Contents: The Overworld, Cil, The Mountains of Magnatz, The Sorcerer Pharesm, The Pilgrims, The Cave in the Forest, The Manse of Iucounu.

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.

If wishes would only come true; how often has every human being thought that? How wonderful life would be if only we could have everything we ever dreamed of?

But the man who invented the dream-machine turned out to be the worst enemy humanity ever encountered! The dream became as real as the reality – and yet remained a figment of the imagination. And thereby the very foundations of civilization were undermined. Why strive – when you could get it all without effort?

Reality Forbidden is the unusual novel of what came afterwards. Of the world in which only the most rigid of terror kept cities standing, and of the man who dared to escape that world, to find the last place on Earth where dreaming was not prohibited, and where one could not only have one’s cake, but eat it as well!

This is the gripping story of the collision between two vastly different human civilisations. One is Earth in the early 21st century, rushing toward self-inflicted nuclear doom. The other is the distant world of Mollan, whose inhabitants have achieved great longevity and the power to transport themselves instantly from star to star.

Bob Shaw’s novel unfolds a tale which spans thousands of years and the reaches of interstellar space. On Earth’s side, there is Denny Hargate, whose indomitable courage drives him to alter the course of history. On their side is the Gretana ty Iltha, working on Earth as a secret observer, who dreams of returning to the delights of her world’s high society, but who gets caught up in a cosmic train of events leading to an explosive climax.

Sea Venture, CV for short, is the largest ocean-going vessel ever built by man. It is not a ship but a huge sea habitat housing a scientific research station, an entire city of two thousand permanent residents and a thousand passengers.

For some, CV is the vacation dream of a lifetime; for others, a vision of man’s conquest of the seas; for two men it becomes the arena for a deadly game of cat and mouse.

But for one, CV is something else: a place to stalk its next victim. It is not human, it is not even of Earthly origin. To be touched by it is deadly.

What important are the hopes and dreams, fears and schemes of the people of Sea Venture when they are threatened by a force that could destroy all of human civilization?

This stunning collection showcases 11 of Haldeman’s best stories. They range through time and space from planets beyond our wildest dreams to a nightmare future Earth all too close to home.

Lindsay and the Red City Blues: A story of revenge – with a heart-stopping twist in the tail.

Blood Brothers: A ‘Thieves World’ story.

You Can Never Go Back: A self-contained story from the original version of ‘The Forever War’, never before published in book form.

And ten more sharp and startling visions of tomorrow.

Sam Houston Kellington had from boyhood known that he would someday fly to Mars. But what children dream of is often far different in reality from what one could ever imagine. Having been chosen as one of a select crew Kelligan does go to Mars, only to be marooned with a crippled spacecraft, afflicted with a debilitating illness, and abandoned by crewmates. Aided by one brave woman Kelligan must somehow find a way to survive the rigors of the hostile planet and return to Earth before the members of the first manned mission to Mars have all succumbed.

After roving through space for centuries, a starship unburdens its cargo of human embryos on a harsh new world. They quickly grow to maturity in the ship’s artificial womb. A lifetime of Earth memories is programmed into their dreams.
But before their indoctrination is complete, an alien intruder infiltrates and destroys the system, and the reason for the odyssey is never learned.
Now, on a verdant island surrounded by quicksand, Othman, wanderer, dreamer, and self-proclaimed leader of the Earthling band, builds a mighty bridge to span the ocean of molten mud that keeps them from the world beyond.
He has yet to face the deadly toll his quest will take on the delicate ecology of the planet – or the revolt of his beautiful, strong-willed wife, Silandi. And he has yet to discover the hidden knowledge locked deep within their hearts.

The dream of being a superman came true for Max Quest – and immediately turned into a nightmare.

He was not alone. There were Others with extraordinary powers, and the last thing they wanted was another superman on Earth – especially one working for good instead of evil.

They couldn’t kill him. But they could send him . . . elsewhere.

Elsewhere was the viciously hostile world of Qanar, where Max’s powers didn’t work and sorcery was a more potent weapon than science, where shadows were as menacing as steel. Max Quest still had to save Earth from the corrupt threat of the Others – but he found his destiny intricately linked with that of Qanar as well. And somewhere in space-time was his lost love . . .

There is a landscape between reality and dreams, a strange and primitive country that exists upon the edge of our waking world. Michael Whitlock knows that country well. His best friend lives there…
It beings with a scatter of earth, thrown over the infant by unseen hands, a haunting attack that is repeated day after day, culminating with an explosive fall of mud that nearly kills the boy. And found in those tons of raw, wet earth: flints, chalk artefacts, and remains of a primitive shrine and the dismembered carcase of a hunting dog.
The Whitlocks’ house, in the Kentish Weald, stands near a chalk-pit, and it is here that their son, Michael creates his preculiar imaginary world, making his camp by the pile of grave-earth from that early attack. Unaware of what is happening to him, the boy touches and uses the strange force that now ebbs and flows in the pit, And when the haunting returns, this time it is more subtle, almost wonderful in its secutive nature. Torn between a fear of the supernatural and greed for the results of Michael’s power, his adoptive parents are helpless. It is left to Françoise Jeury, a psyhic investigator, to piece together the bizarre truth of th epit and the shrine and the oddly silent boy.

OUT FROM THE GREEN WORLD: Humans had colonized the planets & lost its birthright. Civilization was a lonely chain of space stations linked by terror. The Empire kept the pioneers enslaved with a weapon that shattered any protest into screaming insanity.
All they had left was the dream of someday returning home. Until their dream exploded in the holocaust that destroyed the Earth. But the embers of their dead planet sparked a brain-blasting revolution that swept the galaxy: a revolution of exiles in an alien universe-with nothing left to lose.

Man reached for the stars – and failed to keep the Earth in his grasp. With the western United States devastated by drought, the survivors huddle in squalid concentration camps in the east.

And still the dream won’t go away. In high orbit, an artefact is found that may be man’s first contact with aliens. The only woman who can decode it has found her future in the past, in the remote Indian territories of the Pacific Northwest. But in which direction does the planet’s survival lie?

A mind-shaking glimpse into the future of the earth: a brilliantly imagined, horrifyingly plausible glimpse into a world where the social elite, the Uppers, live in absolute luxury, boosting themselves with ‘Joy Juice’.



The ‘Joy Juice’ is the vital life fluid extracted from the workers, the second class citizens whose life is a constant search for and movement from one trip, one hallucination to the next. It is only when the workers are tripping that the Uppers can extract the ‘Joy Juice’.



But what happens when the good trips turn into bad ones? When pleasant dreams become nightmares?

Cy Yancey dreamt of being a big game hunter adventuring in Africa. Little did he know that stepping into an alleyway outside his rifle club would lead him to the most important hunt in his life, a hunt that would take Cy much farther than Africa, a hunt through the worlds of the Dimensions, seeking, of all things, Earth!

For Yancey, in trying to grab a cab, ends up hitching a ride with Porteurs Zelda and Jorine – escapees from the power of the mysterious Contessa.

Fleeing with them, Yancey is bounced from one Dimension to another until he arrives on Jundagai, planet of the Hunters.

On Jundagai lies the answer to Yancey’s dreams. The Hunt reigns supreme, though often one is not sure what the quarry is. But Jundagai holds still a greater attraction. Jundagai, Yancey’s prison, holds the key to home. Yancey has only to find the right lock before death finds him.

GALACTIC THREAT

The awesome forces of the Empire of Earth have destroyed most of the evil conspiracy’s fleet, including the ship bearing the ice-blooded Lady A, when the Family d’Alembert uncover a plot on the planet Newforest, proving that the conspiracy commanded by the mysterious C is even more widespread than they have dreamed.

For Yvette suddenly realises who – or what – C actually is, and she knows the terrifying true meaning of Lady A’s boast that the conspiracy is the Empire!

Revolt of the Galaxy is the tenth and final exciting novel in the enthralling space adventure series whose heroes and heroines are the intrepid Family dAlembert.

The daughter of rich but neglectful parents, Terisa Morgan lives alone in a New York City apartment, a young woman who has grown to doubt her own existence. Surrounded by the flat reassurance of mirrors, she leads an unfulfilled life-until the night a strange man named Geraden comes crashing through one of her mirrors, on a quest to find a champion to save his kingdom of Mordant from a pervasive evil that threatens the land. Terisa is no champion. She wields neither magic nor power. And yet, much to her own surprise, when Geraden begs her to come back with him, she agrees.Now, in a culture where women are little more than the playthings of powerful men, in a castle honeycombed with secret passages and clever traps, in a kingdom threatened from without and within by enemies able to appear and vanish out of thin air, Terisa must become more than the pale reflection of a person. For the way back to Earth is closed to her. And the enemies of Mordant will stop at nothing to see her dead.

Dreams of love, hate, fear and revenge come true in…


WOLFSTROKER – Willie Whitehorse could have been just another boozed-up guitarist, if it hadn’t been for his songs. Somehow they were different – they reached out and grabbed people’s souls. Now agent Sam Parker wanted a piece of the action. But when he had it, Sam knew he’d made a terrible mistake…a mistake it was much too late to correct…


WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE… – The aliens had returned to Earth after centuries because they needed allies. But after hundreds of years, they had no idea what they would be getting the universe into…and they soon found out!


DREAM GONE GREEN – Pericles was a poet and a genius, who also happened to be a horse!


WHY JOHNNY CAN’T SPEED – A father could teach his son a lot of important things, but combat on the freeways wasn’t one of them…not when the kit was eighteen and too full of himself to survive. But revenge did have it’s compensations!

To see the stars.

This was the great and paradoxical dream. To stand and look upward into space, at the myriad pin-points of light, forever out of reach, just as their forebears on Earth had in the long gone days before the building of the planetary shells.

Mars, Jupiter, Saturn… Shell had succeeded shell, each studded with its captive caged worlds, each progressively populated by men who could look up only into a sky of artificial luminaries and space debris.

Always Zeus, man-created prime mover, was at work beyond them, the giant space machines forming and working the next shell.

Uranus, Neptune, Pluto…The last shell.

Again they journeyed: Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry and Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotic, to reach the outer shell, to return to the past when Man could see the stars.