Search Results for: nightmare

At first he though it was all part of some crazy nightmare. But it wasn’t.

Russell Graheme, M.P. was one of a handful of passengers flying from Stockholm to London. One moment flying peacefully in the sky, the next lying in an un-Earthly green coffin.

Grahame was the first to emerge from this strange resting place. But for him, as well as for the others, it had been only the ecliptical experience. Soon all were to find themselves lost in a bizarre world of Mediaeval knights, Stone Age warriors and gremlins, caught unalterably in the weirdest cocoon of Time.

In the corner gas station, the local saloon, on the down-east farm, in the settings of EVERYDAY – there appear UNEXPECTEDLY THE ALIEN, THE WEIRD, THE MYSTERIOUS
The title story tells of one tearful stray from a herd of alien livestock which crushes most of Manhattan and causes apologetic herders to make amends. There is a shivery novelette about the abduction of a country wife by a hairy beast, and the story of a pickup truck full of mythical characters asking directions to Olympus. Then there are the ten-legged blue bugs from inner – or outer – space that can give you a dream – or a nightmare; the shadow-monkeys who have the absurd habit of following along and changing by what you think; the tiny angel that hatches from an egg; and the ‘wrens’ that hatch from Grandpa’s beard the summer he was 106.

Welcome aboard the sex-drive void ship . . .

Captain Genro commands the giant spaceship Dragon Zephyr – on board are ten thousand passengers in electrocoma, a smaller number of conscious passengers eagerly utilising the ship’s dream chambers – and a Pilot.

In the context of space travel, the Pilot is merely a biological component in the machine. Always a woman, her function is to launch the ship into the Jump by means of a cosmic orgasm. She is a pariah, shunned by all.

Void Captain Genro should never even have spoken to his Pilot, let alone tried to embark on a relationship with her. When he did so, the result was every space traveller’s nightmare.

A Blind Jump into the Void . . .

American Dream or American Nightmare? Norman Spinrad describes The Star-Spangled Future:

“America is something new under the sun. not so much a nation at all as a precog flash of the future of the species . . .

I wrote believing that I was simply writing disconnected science fiction stories from whatever came into my head . . . And they all turned out to be about America, the leading edge of all possible futures unfolding around us . . . After all, that was what was coming into my head, that’s the mother lode of science fiction realities – the American fusion plasma of which we are creatures – and all we have to do is keep ourselves open to it . . . that’s my definition of science fiction.

We have seen the future and it is us.”

In the early hours before dawn, a small Michigan town vanishes from the face of the earth. That morning the men and women of Two Rivers wake up in a world strangely different from their own – a world of curfews, food rationing and secret police.

Something has gone terribly wrong in Two Rivers, something that has to do with the mysterious government facility on the outskirts of the town. For schoolteacher Dexter Graham, who has lost his family and has nothing left he values . . . for twelve-year-old Clifford Stockton, driven by a child’s curiosity and courage . . . for Evelyn Woodward, torn between obedience to the state and loyalty to her friends . . . and for physicist Howard Poole, haunted by the memory of his brilliant, enigmatic uncle, the only way to escape the nightmare is to journey deeper into fear.

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 . . .

A small cube of black rock has been unearthed in a 3500-year-old Mycenaean tomb. An incomprehensible object in an impossible place; its age, its purpose, and its origins are unknown. Its discovery has unleashed a global storm of intrigue, theft andespionage, and is pushing nations to the brink of war. Its substance has scientists baffled. And the miracle it contains does not belong on this Earth.

It is mystery and madness — an enigma with no equal in recordedhistory. It is mankind’s greatest discovery … and worst nightmare. It may have already obliterated a world. Ours is next.

Simon Bradley, a highly imaginative child, brain-damaged after a bizarre attack, vanishes one day from his home. Months later a body is found on the edge of Ryhope Wood. The wood shields a heart of primeval forest wherein live phantoms and strange creatures – mythagos – those shades generated over time by our dreams and nightmares.

Alex has in fact been absorbed by the wood, drawn into its green heart – through a ‘hollowing’. There his dreams will continue to populate the wood with its mythagos. But like Alex, they too are damaged: the great heroes he conjures are warped, incomplete and dangerous. Savage and lost, they are compelled to seek their creator. The havoc they wreak threatens those who search for Alex, including his father, Richard.

In the end, it will threaten the very existence of the wood itself and of its natural mythagos. Richard must quest repeatedly through Ryhope’s hollowings in an attempt to bring his son to safety and quiet the monsters Alex has created.

There his dreams continue to populate the wood with “mythagos”, warped, dangerous hero figures, threatening all those who come in search of the boy.

Several years ago, Christian Huxley’s father, George, obsessively documented the strange phenomena emanating from Ryhope Wood at the edge of their property. He watched the ancient heroes emerge, shouting both incomprehensible warnings and unmistakable invitations. Recklessly, George followed them inot the mysterious sylvan shadows that changed him forever.
Christian himself was not untouched by these living dreams. A childhood encounter with a phantom from another time draws him to the Wood as an adult. Deep in Ryhope, Christian uncovers the lie that permeates his worst nightmares. And like his father, he will be consumed with the mythagoes of Ryhope, especially a young Celtic warrior called Guiwenneth. She is the key to the mystery of the universe, an ancient heroine caught in a timeless tale of bravery and sacrifice.
Now, together with a band of crusaders from a world long gone, Christian and Guiwenneth become part of the unfolding stories both remembered and forgotten. They meet sorcerers in battle and giants who can travel miles in one step. And they discover the meaning of the two gates, Ivory and Horn – one the lie, the other the truth.

After viewing his partner’s mutilation in a home movie, a horrified private detective pursues leads in the most disgusting case of his career. His investigation plunges him into a nightmare of sexual brutality and supernatural bestiality.

It is a journey he – and you – will never forget.

In Philip Jose Farmers incredible sequel to The Image of the Beast, Herald Childe continues what started as a murder case – a very gruesome one – but which has now become a struggle against the strange and deadly beings who have taken his wife, who threaten his manhood and threaten mankind itself.

His seems a hopeless quest. He is fighting not people but inhuman, unhuman monster from another universe. They take grotesque physical forms, they indulge cruel whims, and they are sex-mad.

There is Vivienne, amazingly beautiful, who used to be Joan of Arc. But she has false teeth and she comes literally to pieces. Her lover is a snake-like horror whose needle teeth drip aphrodisiac venom. There is Count Igescu, a real live vampire. And these three are surrounded by a grisly crowd of bizarre aliens, characters in a science fiction nightmare. But for Childe there is to be no waking up: though no one else will believe him, he knows this is for real…

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.

His journey began with the blast of a shotgun aimed at a gleaming nimbus of light. The tightening of his finger on the trigger was almost accidental; his punishment was almost merciful. But his journey has just begun, and when it is over Paul Eyre will no longer be human….

For hundreds of years, the rulers of Avornis sought to reclaim the Scepter of Mercy, their only protection from the fallen god known as the Banished One. They all failed. Now the burden rests on the shoulders of two kings divided by pride, but united in duty…

King Lanius has crafted a daring plan to recover the Scepter – a plan that must remain utterly secret lest the Banished One discover and thwart it. But the Scepter lies far to the south, in lands held by the Menteshe tribes. Lanius will need help from a military man – King Grus.

King Grus answers the call. Civil war has broken out among the Menteshe, distracting them from guarding the Scepter. While King Grus fights his way to the citadel that holds the sacred talisman, Lanius puts his plan into action.

But the worst nightmares of Lanius and Grus are about to come true, for the Banished One is aware of their every move…

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?

For Mary Stevenson Crye, a beautiful young housewife, life had been wonderful. Loving husband, two delightful children, meaningful existence in a small Southern community. Then it all fell apart: with the sudden, unexpected death of her husband, Stevie must struggle to earn a living as a free-lance writer.

When her typewriter – the sole economic support for her surviving family – breaks down, Stevie begins to receive demonic messages through the machine, the prelude to a living nightmare of satanic emissaries, ghouls from beyond the grave, and the revelation of an unrequited curse over the Crye household.

For Mary Stevenson Crye, the nightmare is about to begin . . .

For the beautiful young woman Ash, life has always been arquebuses and artillery, swords and armour and the true horrors of hand-to-hand combat. War is her job. She has fought her way to the command of a mercenary company, and on her unlikely shoulders lies the destiny of a Europe threatened by the depredations of an Infidel army more terrible than any nightmare.

Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 2000

Travelt – a corporate flunkey at DynaZauber Inc. – is dead, but his prowler is still stalking the Wedge. Harrisch needs the prowler back, before it spews DynaZauber’s secrets to the enemy.

When Harrisch approaches ex-agent McNihil with the Travelt case. McNihil’s every nerve ending screams no – even though the payout might buy his late wife out of limbo. His days in the Wedge are over – too many ghosts, too many nightmares. But Harrisch won’t take no for an answer.

NOIR is a brilliantly atmospheric thriller, set in a Los Angeles that stands at the centre of an urban sprawl spanning half the globe. Where the haves live in splendour and the have-nots scrabble in the dark. Where the dead live on until their debts are paid.

For Jeff Johnston, a young historical researcher for a Civil War novelist, reality is redefined on a bitter cold night near the close of a lingering winter. He meets Annie, an intense and lovely young woman suffering from vivid, intense nightmares. Haunted by the dreamer and her unrelenting dreams, Jeff leads Annie on an emotional odyssey through the heartland of the Civil War in search of a cure. On long-silenced battlefields their relationship blossoms – two obsessed lovers linked by unbreakable chains of history, torn by a duty that could destroy them both. Suspenseful, moving and highly compelling, Lincoln’s Dreams is a novel of rare imaginative power that strikes a chord deep within the hearts of us all.

THE DREAD RETURNS

Jon Meriweather, plucked from his own world to a place where animals walk, talk and cast spells, is pitted once more against a deadly foe. Now he and his strange fellowship must embark on a journey from which none has survived.

His way lies down the treacherous river that winds through the subterranean lair of Massaurath, Mother of Nightmares, across Helldrink through a tunnel of cold flame to the centre of the Earth…

Not so long ago Marcus Walker was just another young commodities trader in Chicago, working hard and playing harder. But that’s all in the past, part of a life half forgotten – a reality that vanished when he was attacked while camping and tossed aboard a starship bound for deep space.

Desperately, Walker searches for explanations, only to realise he’s trapped in a horrifying nightmare that is all too real. Instead of being a rich hotshot at the top of the food chain, Walker discovers he’s just another amusing novelty, part of a cargo of “cute” aliens from primitive planets – destined to be sold as pets to highly advanced populations in “civilized” regions of the galaxy.

Even if he weren’t constantly watched by his captors, Walker has few options. After all, there is no escape from a speeding starship. Another man might resign himself to the inevitable and hope to be sold to a kindly owner, but not Walker. This former college football star has plenty of American ingenuity and no intention of admitting defeat, now or ever. In fact, he’s only just begun to fight.

When a team of scientists starts to investigate the flora and fauna of the distant planet of Xica, it soon becomes apparent that this is a unique opportunity to study alien life forms. The planet offers a rich and varied eco-system and each of the scientists recognises what this could mean for their individual reputations.
And then, their dreams come true – they establish first contact with a humanoid civilization.
But this is a planet where nature breaks all the rules, where logic falls apart, and where nothing is as it seems. And their dreams turn into a nightmare.

The year is 1998, and the nightmare is close at hand.

The world economy has gone into a mega-crash. Most of the population has been plunged into abject poverty. Anarchy and violence stalk the streets. All power is in the hands of Dryco, headed by paranoid tycoon Thatcher Dryden, and his monstrous wife, Susie.

But on the desperate streets of the Lower East Side miracles are happening. A Messiah seems to have risen from the people and is healing the sick, teaching children, raising the dead.

Dryco’s New Projects Manager, Joanna, is sent to check him out. Thatcher’s got a plan for world domination, and a genuine Messiah could be the key he’s looking for. And even if he’s fake, he may have his uses.

But soon, Joanna finds herself trapped in a crisis of conscience, between the relative security of a Dryco job and the dream of healing a sick world.

You need to be rich to survive at all. But it’s easier to be dead than poor.

Twenty-first-century New York. It’s a nightmare. Reaganomics has gone mad. There’s murder and mutilation on the bombed-out streets and in the corporate conference rooms. Manhattan is a zoo. There’s guerrilla war on Long Island.

Seamus O’Malley is a bodyguard and assassin in the outrageously powerful Dryco organisation, and he’s in deep trouble. Taking the job sounded like a good idea at the time. Falling in love with his employer’s mistress, Avalon, probably wasn’t so bright. Getting caught up in the Dryden family’s crazy rivalries didn’t help. Agreeing to murder the Old Man was plain stupid. And getting involved with the Ambients could only complicate matters further.

Before long, O’Malley’s on the run, and there’s nowhere safe to hide.