Search Results for: observers,-the

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.

BY JOHN E. MULLER
The botanist claims that human life depends indirectly on the chlorophyll in the green leaf. The leaf depends on sunlight. But both depend upon the atom. No atoms, no physical matter, no physical universe!
Microscope experts peer closely into the mysteries of the human body, into the mysteries of the green lead, into the mysteries of the chemical elements. It is hardly feasible to subject an atom to microscopic examination. But what if it was possible? What if a new technique of observation was discovered? A strange, revolutionary “seeing” without recourse to the photon.
The microscope might reveal scientific impossibilities which would shake the universe to its foundations. Smallness hold more terrors than greatness.

The fifth title in the popular Harpur and Iles series.

Sarah Iles’ latest young lover, Ian Aston, and the seedy gangland club he frequents both possess the intense attraction of the forbidden. When one night at the Monty they witness a fatal knifing, they unwittingly learn far too much for their own good of a deadly plot that could, if successfully executed, rearrange the city’s criminal power structure.

Immediately, the unfaithful wife and petty criminal become targets of both police and underworld observation. In Come Clean Bill James once again explores that no-man’s-land of law enforcement, where human concern and naked expediency stand perennially at odds with each other.

A child in danger, an isolated house in the depths of winter – and a killer on the loose…
‘Don’t miss … guaranteed unputdownable’ Observer

Snow-covered fields and moors stretch away on all sides of Herondale House. Despite rumours of an escaped killer on the run, Deborah Lindsay knows that she must control her fear – she has a young charge, 13-year-old prodigy Carreen, to care for.

But the isolated Yorkshire farmhouse already holds the terrible secret of one death – and after an increasing number of sinister ‘accidents’, Deborah begins to wonder how long it will be before evil strikes again…

‘A splendidly romantic first thriller’ Times Literary Supplement

The first of the new meteors landed on the earth in November, 1940. It was discovered by a farmer in his field near Brookline, Massachusetts, shortly after daybreak on the morning of the 11th. Astronomically, the event was recorded by the observatory at Harvard as the sudden appearance of what apparently was a new star, increasing in the short space of a few hours from invisibility to a power beyond that of the first magnitude, and then as rapidly fading again to invisibility. This star was recorded by two of the other great North American observatories, and by one in the Argentine Republic. That it was comparatively small in mass and exceedingly close to the earth, even when first discovered, was obvious. All observers agreed that it was a heavenly body of an entirely new order.

Robotic minds made interstellar travel possible, but human minds still controlled the destination and purpose of such flight. Conflict develops only when a programmed brain cannot evaluate beyond what is visible and substantial, whereas the human mind is capable of infinite imagination – including that which is unreal.

Such was the problem at the singularity in space in which the ALTAIR STAR and a hundred other vessels had come to grief. At that spot, natural laws seem subverted – and some other universe’s rules impinged.

For Buchanan, the station meant a chance to observe and maybe rescue his lost vessel. For the robotic navigators of oncoming spaceships, the meaning was different. And at Singularity Station the only inevitable was conflict.

When the American bomber crashed in the jungles of enemy-held Sumatra, the survivors faced the perils of a completely unknown world…and the RAF colonel who had flown with them as observer seemed to compound their danger by going mad – stripping to a loincloth and throwing away his weapons except for his knife. But for Colonel John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, the hazards of wild beasts and a remorseless enemy were a familiar and joyously accepted challenge – a chance to return to his true identity of Tarzan of the Apes.

Gathering a motley crew of allies of many nations, Tarzan worked a terrible vengeance on the occupying Japanese, led an epic trek to the coast – to a final ocean rendezvous with enemies human and inhuman.

In the wake of an extinction-level meteor impact, a small group of human survivors manages to leave the barren Earth and establish a new home on the moon. From Tycho Base, they’re able to observe the devastated planet and wait for a time when return will become possible. Finally, after millennia of waiting, the descendants of the original refugees travel back to a planet they’ve never known, to try to rebuild a civilisation of which they’ve never been a part. But after so much time, the question is not whether they can rebuild an old destroyed home, but whether they can learn to inhabit an alien new world – Earth.
Winner of the John W. Campbell Award for best novel, 2002

When shy, psychic bookworm ‘Cookie’ Orbach watches television, she sees things. But not the things that you or I would see. Cookie sees The Grid – a strange, shifting landscape where human forces battle against an enemy they dare not kill. Her employer, the mysterious Dataplex Corporation, pays her well to watch this war, and asks only that she report her observations but take no direct action, which suits her passive demeanour just fine.
But Cookie’s quiet life is about to be shattered. Her two very different worlds are threatening to merge in a way that shouldn’t really be possible. Everything is about to change. And we do mean everything…

A collection of science fiction short stories from the master author of THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS.

In 1941, Roy Sabre’s girlfriend Betty mysteriously disappears.

Ten years later he has constructed a time-machine and his first trip is to go back to find her.

But his arrival is observed and his machine attacked and damaged as it departs – instead of returning to 1951, it travels to the far future where mankind has disappeared and the Earth is under the control of machines controlled by insects.

Roy finds that several other time-travellers, due to damage and malfunction, have been cast forward to the same time . . .

Stories included:
– “Wanderers of Time”
– “Derelict of Space”
– “Child of Power”
– “The Last Lunarians”
– “The Puff-ball Menace”

This is the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy – a monumental saga which goes beyond anything yet created by this master among today’s imaginative writers. An entire solar system is revealed, and with it a world disturbingly reflecting our own, Helliconia: an Earth-like planet where dynasties change with the seasons .
Events and characters and animals stream across the pages of this gigantic novel. Cosmic in scope, it keeps an eye lovingly on the humans involved. So the 5,000 inhabitants of the Earth’s observation station above Helliconia keep their eyes trained on the events of Oldorando and may long to intervene though the dangers are too great. So we on Earth have them all in our vision in one of the most consuming and magnificent novels of scientific romance.

Presenting acclaimed essays from one of contemporary science fiction’s most imaginative wordsmiths, this collection shows that Robert Silverberg’s nonfiction is as witty and original as his fiction and full of acute observations and matter-of-fact insights. Whether he is discussing science fiction, history, cultural effects, science, or writing, Silverberg is always exploring new territories. As in his fiction, no cultural icon escapes his scrutiny, including fellow writers such as Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, H. P. Lovecraft, and Isaac Asimov. Delightfully wicked commentaries on the concepts of thoughtcrimes, space exploration, the ancient Antikythera Computer, and the universal translator in science fiction fill these essays, many of which were originally published as columns in Asimov Science Fiction magazine.

A missing child – and she might not be the last victim…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club


Angela Toni, only nine years old, has been missing for several days, and it is Wilfrid Hersey’s son Ben who is under suspicion. Hersey meets Detective Arthur Crook, whose blood boils at thought of a child killer.

But as Crook digs deeper he discovers that the night Angela disappeared was also the night an unidentified man was found in Hangman’s Alley, a shortcut the child would have taken on her way home. And another murder will take place before Crook finally uncovers the truth.

‘Grips steadily, like a conscientious ant’s jaws’ Observer

‘Arthur Crook in rumbustious form’ Sunday Telegraph

At ten, David Shaw, a silent and observant little boy already fluent in half a dozen languages, was being dragged through the capitals of Europe by a diplomat father and a beautiful scatterbrained mother. At twenty, in the midst of the troubled 1960s, David abruptly disappeared from his Ivy League college – to be reborn as Jan Van Zee, amiable Dutch drifter, making his way around Europe and working as an occasional courier for a syndicate of smugglers.

At thirty he is cruelly betrayed and left for dead by the syndicate, and now lives only for revenge against an apparently all-powerful and invulnerable foe. Reverting to his true identity, David returns to America to claim his vast inheritance, and sets out to execute a consummate vengeance against each of the syndicate’s three bosses

The palace was several hundred years old, a sort of haphazard medieval city containing church buildings, stables, army barracks – and the offices and homes of the ministers of the Revolutionary Government, in a Communist satellite country somewhere in Europe. The palace rose starkly and threateningly out of the marshes, its three great gilt domes reminding observers of the glittering monarchies that once resided there. But all was changed, all was forbidding.

“We stand too high to be human, Katarin”, says the President of the country to his tempestuous, unloving wife. The revolution, which made him absolute ruler, has also taken him away from Katarin, dehumanizing him and his power-ridden ministers. Katarin, in defiance of the restrictions that bind her life, takes a lover, finding herself liberated even as she senses that the consequences are sure to be disastrous.

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.

The Far Traveler was hardly the sort of starship to use in the study of lost space colonies. Lost colonies were likely to be desperate, eccentric and otherwise unappreciative. And The Far Traveler was a rich woman’s toy, constructed of gold and directed by an omniscient, dictatorial and feminine computer known as Big Sister.

John Grimes had become that golden vessel’s captain. A captain in name only because nobody could talk back to Big Sister or the haughty beauty who owned everything aboard. But Grimes was a man of many resources and lost space colonies were placed that did not observe the civilized rules. You could be sure, therefore, that the man known as the Commodore Hornblower of Outer Space would be likely to come through okay, even if the ladies – mechanical and physical – never expected him to!

This volume includes Vance’s first published story (“The World-Thinker”) and a selection of other stories including the novella “Telek”.
Contents: The World-Thinker, Dream Castle (“I’ll Build Your Dream Castle”), Seven Exits from Bocz, The God and the Temple Robber (“The Temple of Han”), Telek, Men of The Ten Books, D.P., Noise (“Music of the Spheres”), The Absent Minded Professor (“First Star I See Tonight”; “Murder Observed”), The Devil On Salvation Bluff, Where Hesperus Falls, The Phantom Milkman, A Practical Man’s Guide, The House Lords, The Secret

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 explosion was painfully bright against the dark backdrop of the moonless New Mexico sky. To those who looked up at that precise moment – and there were many who happened to look up – it was as though a new star had momentarily blossomed in blue-white incandescence.’

Only three human beings would ever know that the blinding flash in the sky on that night in 1982 was an exploding flying saucer. Only they would learn the truth about THOSE WHO WATCH – about the alien observers who came into this world in a crash landing from the stars. THOSE WHO WATCH is the strange, seductive story of three accidental colonists from outer space whose chance encounter with Earth brought revelation to three earthly counterparts – and triggered interplanetary conflict. It is a remarkable story by one of science fiction’s most remarkable writers.

It’s a rare day when Terrans meet eye-to-eyestalk with the slimy little sticky-fingers – er, that is to say, the noble alien Groaci. This time the races clash on the planet Popu-Ri, once the home of a mighty interstellar power. Popu-Ri has sunk into decline…but its ancient treasures remain. Though not for long, if the Groaci have their way.

Groaci also finds Popu-Ri just the place to build a galactic warfleet. Still, for the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne to respond would threaten the delicate balance of human/Groaci forces on the cocktail circuit. Therefore the ambassador must keep the lid on by doing nothing. But how to do nothing without seeming an inneffectual pantywaist? Send an observer!

Yep, the Ambassador has it all figured out. But he made one little mistake; he sent Retief…

University Challenge is one of the world’s top quiz shows, enjoyed by millions, both participants and observers. But Discworld fans may feel that not many questions cover the real questions in Life, for example, Who or what could be seen as the inspiration for the near-tragic accident from which nanny Ogg is saved only be a special willow-reinforced hat made for her by Mr Vernissage of Slice? And give a plausible origin for Mrs Rosie Palm, proprietor of the famous House of Negotiable Affection in the Shades.
Each Faculty at the Unseen University has provided a set of questions, and answers are included for those who are not sure how the poisonous effects of quicksilver fumes are an occupational hazard of magic-users.
The questions have been compiled by Mr David Langford, who knows quite as much – and arguably more – about the Discworld as its Creator, and Terry Pratchett has provided an Introduction.

A millionaire … murdered as she was about to be saved…

‘A new Ellery Queen book has always been something to look forward to for many years now’ Agatha Christie

‘Ellery Queen is the American detective story’ New York Times

The son of a police detective, Ellery Queen is no stranger to death, and has seen more than his fair share of dead bodies. Yet the thought of seeing a living person sliced open makes him ill. So when a doctor invites him to sit in on an operation, Queen braces himself.

The patient is a millionaire in a diabetic coma. To prepare her for surgery, the hospital staff has stabilised her blood sugar level and wheeled her to the operating theatre – but just before the first incision, the doctors realise she is dead, strangled while lying unconscious.

Now Ellery Queen moves from observer to detective in his most mysterious case yet.

Beyond the eccentric orbits of Pluto and Neptune lies a vast, empty wilderness. There is nothing but the silence of space between the fringes of the Solar System and our nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri. The outer worlds of the Home System were only inhabited by Service and Scientific Personnel. Life for them was a constant routine war against an almost impossibly hostile environment.
Then something in deep space began to affect the fringe of the Solar System. The isolated Observers in their living domes were helpless. They could do nothing except report on the increasingly bewildering phenomena. As the strange effects worsened, several domes were abandoned. The menace from Beyond continued to encroach on the civilised planets as it head steadily earthwards…
What was the rational, scientific explanation for the thing that looked like an eye? Was it merely motiveless and purposeless, or was it guided by something sinister and more dangerous? Were men fighting a Cosmic Accident or an enormous Intelligence from out there…?

Jonga and Krull had a routine job in the solar system defence organisation. Week after week and year after year they checked the asteroids. 23rd century astronomy had accurately charted 2,812 of those miniature worlds, compared with the 1,539 that are known to-day.
Suddenly a new asteroid appears, and a survey expedition under Squadron-leader Gregg Masterson, is sent out to investigate. They expedition fails to return, and when the watching asteroid observation corps make another anxious check, they find that the mysterious planetoid has disappeared as mysteriously as it came. A second expedition is launched under General Rotherson himself. An expedition that finds the wreckage of the survey ships, and the bodies of every man except Gregg Masterson.
Where is the missing Squadron leader?
Who is the terrible ageless asteroid man? So strong that he can control the destinies of a planet. What is the beautiful Princess Astra of Altain doing in the labyrinth below the surface of the asteroid?