Search Results for: no-way-back

The fifth of ten volumes that will reprint all Sturgeon’s short fiction contains fifteen classics and two previously unpublished stories, including “Quietly.” The Perfect Host provides enough of a representative sampling of Sturgeon’s “greatest hits” to give the uninitiated a good sense of what all the fuss was about way back when. At the same time, it offers a generous selection of alternate takes and rarities, notably several of Sturgeon’s best forays into other forms of genre writing, plus previously unreleased cuts and liner notes.

The spaceship landed on the planet Earth to bring it the message of a new religion and a new way of life that would fit the terrestrial barbarians to take their place in the great community of the Galaxy.

Their motives were beyond reproach. Their objectives were honourable. It was not their fault that humanity distrusted their motives, repudiated their objectives – and did its best to drive the missionaries back into space . . .

Abducted by aliens to be sold as pets in a more civilized part of the galaxy, earthlings Marcus Walker and a scruffy dog named George (speech-enhanced to increase his market value) have managed to escape their captors. Walker loves being humankind’s first galactic traveller – until he remembers he hasn’t a clue where his home is or how to get there. So the erstwhile commodities broker becomes a chef, whipping up delicacies for demanding alien palates. Of course he never imagined that the way back to Chicago would involve swapping his easy-living adopted planet for an all-out, age-old war many parsecs away. But hey, it’s all for a good cause, h has George and their two fellow escapees for company, and what else is there to do, besides avoid nasty aliens? Plenty, it turns out.

There’s no place like home…

It was a pretty good life for a spellsinger from L.A. He’d battled demons, fought deadly Plated Folk, even met a socialist dragon and survived. Now Jon-Tom was quite happy to settle into domestic bliss with the fiery Talea, study magic, and practice spellsinging on his duar. But the magic instrument is broken when Jon-Tom protects the wizard Clothahump from thieves and he must set out across the Glittergeist Sea to find the one person who can fix it. With the irrepressible Mudge the Otter as a travelling companion, only the unexpected can happen. But cannibal muskrats, ogres, and a fierce pirate king parrot must seem ordinary indeed when Jon-Tom finds a way back to Earth – and he must choose which world is home.

Asmodeus Mogart was not a bad fellow, as demons go. Having gotten in trouble back in the home office, he had been assigned to duty on Earth. There he toiled, doing the kinds of things demons do and turning into something of a drunk.

Then a rogue asteroid threatened to crash into Earth and destroy all life on the planet – demons included! There had to be a better way.

Mac Walters and Jill McCullough, holding a private wake for their world in a Reno bar, were more than startled when a strange-looking little drunk told them they could save the world. All they had to do was enter five alternate universes and steal a demon-guarded jewel in each. Clearly, the man was crazy.

But they had nothing better to do than go along with the gag. Then they each found themselves, naked and alone, on a hostile alien world!

Keith Devery, burdened with a criminal record, arrives in Wicksteed, a prosperous little town on the Pacific coast. He is looking for any job that will provide eating money. It is when he meets Beth Marshall – whose husband, a local drunk, is to inherit $1,000,000 – that he realises there’s a way to get back in the big league.

Together they ruthlessly plot the perfect murder, but Keith soon finds himself at the centre of a double-bluff. Beth has plans of her own once the money is hers …

Along with progress in other spheres, criminology and remedial treatment for the socially unacceptable will undoubtedly make rapid strides in the Twenty-second and Twenty-third centuries.
Purely retributive justice is not a satisfactory answer to the enlightened Welfare Officer of the Future. Psychiatry, criminology and electronic mind control could combine into an entirely new concept of reclamation. In the right hands this would be an advance into something close to Utopia – in the wrong it would be leave 1984 looking like a pleasant week-end in the country.
This thoughtful new novel is a daring attempt to handle the deliucate theme of advanced criminology and the unresolved conflict of Society versus those who will not or cannot conform. Try as they will to be impersonal and humane, the psychiatrists of the future – even with electronic aids – will be as human as we are today. Their problems will be ours…

Dr. Joanna Lander is a psychologist specializing in near-death experiences. She is about to get help from a new doctor with the power to give her the chance to get as close to death as anyone can.

A brilliant young neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright has come up with a way to manufacture the near-death experience using a psychoactive drug. Joanna’s first NDE is as fascinating as she imagined – so astounding that she knows she must go back, if only to find out why that place is so hauntingly familiar.

But each time Joanna goes under, her sense of dread begins to grow, because part of her already knows why the experience is so familiar, and why she has every reason to be afraid.

Yet just when Joanna thinks she understands, she’s in for the biggest surprise of all – a shattering scenario that will keep you feverishly reading until the final climactic page.

Dick Tredgold has spent seven years in jail for a murder he insists he did not commit. Now eligible for parole, he refuses to apply, because he feels that by doing so he would acknowledge his guilt. His family, at their wit’s end, appeal to Jesse Falkenstein for help.

Falkenstein realises the only way of getting Tredgold to leave prison is to identify the real murderer – no easy task in an eight-year-old investigation. And when Jesse re-examines the case he begins to discover that not all the witnesses were as reliable as they had seemed. . .

‘My favourite American crime-writer’ New York Herald Tribune

On June 1st 1963 Donald Bailey set out on a hiking tour. For twelve days it was mountain and lakes, rivers and fells, healthy exercise and the magic of a starlit campfire. On the thirteenth day they found a cave and decided to explore. A rock fall cut off the entrance and they searched desperately for another way out. Exhausted and battered, they finally scrambled through a small shaft into a strangely changed countryside which was familiar, yet not familiar.

From a cottager who fed them and tended their wounds they learnt that somehow they were back in the days of the Civil War. Roundheads and Cavaliers battled desperately across the country and they found themselves involved in the bitter struggle for power.

Unwittingly they gave information to a Roundhead spy, which resulted in the death of a Cavalier Commander. He returns from the dead in monstrous form, trying to exact a terrible vengeance on the bewildered pair who are desperately seeking to return to their own time.

Space fiction is no longer fiction in the same way that it used to be. There was an element of distance and strangeness about it a few years back. Now, fact has caught up and threatens to overtake. Science fiction today has become science prediction.

An atom is a miniature solar system in some respects. The clustering molecules resemble galaxies, colloids are, perhaps, tiny models of the whole creation. Man stands midway between the unbelievably small and the unbelievably huge. This is one of the allies of science fiction. We look down into the mysteries of the infinitesimal; we look up into the majesty of the macrocosm.

In all this vastness of stars and planets there must be other life. One day we shall make contact with that life. What will the aliens be like? How will human culture compete with non-human culture? Which will survive?

It looks like a trivial enough incident: a would-be petty thief makes his escape before he has stolen anything. But when the beat constable arrives to look for damage, he finds something he hasn’t been expecting – a dead man, with a wound in his back made by a broad blade … possibly a spearhead.

Scotland Yard get to work, following what turns out to be a very complicated business, especially when they find they are on the trail of smuggled diamonds leading all the way to South Africa …

The hill below the fortress of Taurovinda, stronghold of Urtha, High King of the Cornovidi, is coming alive: the Otherworldly realm of the Shadows of Heroes are claiming the land as their own. But this time their actions are driven by a force that is darker and older than even the oldest among the ghosts. Who or what is raising the Dead? Merlin, a temporary resident in the fortress, must answer that question if this time of kings and lovers is to be saved. Jason’s wonderful ship, Argo, has returned, drawn back by her own guilty past, and a dreadful secret that she will reveal only to Merlin. Argo holds the key to the mystery. And Niiv, the bewitching, beautiful Northlands enchantress, is working her way even closer into Merlin’s charms.

This is a journey that will take Merlin back in history, and to a fabled island of legend. Love is in the air. But at a price.

Who killed Louie Lepetino?

Was it Barby, with her silvery sheen of hair, looking like a top model and acting like a woman madly in love?

Or the beautiful Toni, who is hiding some strange secrets?

Could it be Otto, a handsome refugee, nicknamed Blue Eyes and an object of attraction for Barby?

Kit, a cop’s son, has come back to New York to track down his best buddy’s killer. It had to be murder: Louie wasn’t the suicidal type. One person stands in the way of his revenge – The Wobblefoot, his unseen nemesis from two terrible years spent in captivity during the Spanish Civil War. He is watching. One false step will mean curtains for Kit. But Kit is willing to take any risk for a friend – even murder in cold blood.

Ed Carter, a New York reporter on his way to his home town in Omaha for a short vacation, saw the missile in the last moments in its journey back to earth. A sweller on the brink, like all of us, he had no doubt about what it was; Oh God, he thought, this is it. The blast of the impact flung him some distance, and when he regained consciousness, his first reaction was one of surprised to find himself still alive, and not, it seemed, even badly hurt. Presumably the missile had been directed at the big Air Force base nearby, and should have destroyed everything and everyone within a radius of miles. Could it have failed to explode?

Carter sees the remains of part of the missile in an adjacent field and hobbles over to it. A minute or two later several Air Force officers arrive. They examine the remains, and find the burned-up body of a pilot. In other worlds, the missile was not Russia’s first shot in the Third World War, but a failure to launch a man into space. But Carter knows that the Distant Early Warning line will have reported the missile; that the senior Air Force officers, in accordance with plan, will have taken to the air – in the country’s interest, their lives must, of course, be preserved if possible; that by now the retaliatory American bombers will have passed the point of no recall; and that the Third World War has begun. Not so, Colonel Ben Goldwater tells him: “I called the bombers back.”

Goldwater, the man who had been left in command, has saved the world – for at least a little longer. So he becomes a world hero? Not a bit of it. On the contrary: a nightmare looms ahead both for him and for Ed Carter, and the reader watches it all with growing fury…

Brendan Thorne, ex-army Ranger and master CIA sniper, has turned his back on violence. But while working as a game warden at a Kenya safari park, an FBI team appear from nowhere, kidnap him and fly him back to the US to meet the newly elected President.

President Wallberg is being stalked by veteran Vietnam sniper and old schoolmate Hal Corwin. According to the government’s computers, Thorne is the perfect match for Corwin in every way. Only Thorne can stop him before he gets to the President.

Thorne pursues Corwin across America in a deadly game of cat and mouse, but as he closes in on his target, he learns that all is not as it seems, and that he can trust no one. Now he is caught in a web of deceit and ambition far larger than he ever suspected . . .

New Alabama. A planet that’s a fair reproduction of long-lost Dixie, filled with down-home, racist rednecks. The N’Alabamians have carried their tribal prejudices to the farthest reached of the galaxy, like the other minorities expelled from the Earth by the dominant Pan-Semitic Alliance. There’s New Transvaal. New Cathay. And New Haiti, a black world where Papa Doc’s descendants carry on the old ways.

When New Alabama and New Haiti go to war with each other, it’s a bloody black-versus-white stalemate. Until the N’Haitians develop a horrific new secret weapon based on a very ancient tradition.

Imagine you’re a clean-cut N’Alabamian good ol’ boy, giving your all up there in the space fleet, and you suddenly realise the enemy crews aren’t human at all. They’re what people back on Earth used to call Zombies…

From the ether came mysterious messages announcing that a hitherto unknown Englishman had conquered space, flown to Venus, and is now on his way back to Earth. The fact that science’s most highly developed range and frequency finders are unable to pinpoint the actual source of the voice is looked upon as absolute proof that they are hearing from outer space. The aggressive and autocratic quality about the way in which the eccentric Ardath Steele makes his proclamations not only annoys Betty Travers, ace reporter on the Daily Searchlight, but also deciders her to embark on a one-woman vendetta to prove that Steele is an impostor. Even when the spaceship finally lands she remains the only sceptic in a country full of pride in its first space explorer.

“Hello Earth! Hello London!”

But no reply was forthcoming to the message sent out by the spaceship in which the four pioneers had been exploring all the planets en route to Pluto, and which was now on its way back to London after two long years. Even the silence failed to dismay the voyagers; it could well be explained by a major fault of the airport’s wireless transmitter. It was only when they touched down that they realised some terrible catastrophe had hit Earth in their absence…

Gregg Haljan was aware that there was a certain danger in having the giant spaceship Planetara stop off at the moon to pick up Grantline’s special cargo of moon ore. For that rare metal – invaluable in keeping Earth’s technology running – was the target of many greedy eyes. But nevertheless he hadn’t figured on the special twist the clever Martian brigands would use. So when he found both the ship and himself suddenly in their hands, he knew that there was only one way in which he could hope to save that cargo and his own secret – that would be by turning space-pirate himself and paying the Brigands of the Moon back in their own interplanetary coin.

A young Viking sets off on a quest to rescue his kidnapped bride and, along the way, discovers an earthly paradise. Somehow he must turn his back on this paradise to complete his quest to find a woman he barely knows.

Lost in space…lost in time. There can be no more terrifying situation for any spaceman to be in, and such was the problem when Commodore Grimes’ Faraway Quest broke free from the mysterious Kinsolving’s Planet.

Because the universe was vast and they had been out beyond the Galactic Lens. Because time is infinite and they had slipped beyond their own epoch. Because in whatever universe they were in they could raise no etheric word, no telepathic beacon, no other star vessel.

But for John Grimes, a veritable Commodore Hornblower of the future space seas, there had to be a way back. The first step was to locate Earth, the launching place for all humanity.

But Earth turned out to be legend and myth and faith – and Grimes’ rebellious crew were to enact roles already fabled before they were born.

On the other side of the sun, opposite our earth, is a world we never see Counterearth. In every way it’s identical to ours…almost!

Albert Einstein, Juan (and Eva) Peron, Babe Didrickson and Sir Oswald Mosley are off on a wild race to Counterearth. It’s all action and excitement against a historical background – in fact against two historical backgrounds – detailed enough to intrigue any history buff. It’s January 1942; Cordell Hull is President of the United States; and the good guys take off in their spaceship, Manta, from the deck of the SS Titanic, steaming back from Liverpool to New York with thousands of New Year’s revellers on board.

HAUNTED BY THE PAST, JOHN PETERSEN WOULD GIVE ANYTHING TO TURN BACK THE CLOCK…OR WOULD HE?

When Lightning blasts off without him, Second Officer John Petersen is finished as far as Trans-Galactic Clippers are concerned. Branded a deserter, stranded on Carinthia and desperate for a job, there are very few places left to go. The Rim Runners would have him – they’ll have anyone who’s still warm and can flash some kind of certificate. But there may be a less than unpleasant alternative…

Private detective Steve Vynalek needs Petersen. Has a fanatical scientist on the planet Wenceslaus really found a way to beat the time travel problem, a way to bring back yesterday? The Presidents of Carinthia and Vynalek are convinced that Petersen is the only man for the job. In the airless wastes of Wenceslaus, Petersen finds himself reliving the past, trapped in a terrible cycle of familiarity – a cycle that only he can break.