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From the vaults of the SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal introduction to the varied work of author, editor and critic, L. Sprague de Camp.

Although arguably best known for his continuation of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, de Camp was an important figure in the formative period of modern SF, alongside the likes of Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. In a career spanning seven decades, he won the HUGO, WORLD FANTASY LIFE ACHIEVEMENT and SFWA GRAND MASTER AWARDs. This omnibus collects three previously out-of-print classics: LEST DARKNESS FALL, ROGUE QUEEN and THE TRITONIAN RING.

Lest Darkness Fall:
The Roman Empire had spread order, knowledge and civilisation throughout the ancient world. When Rome fell, the light of reason flickered out across the Empire. The Dark Ages had begun; they would last a thousand years. Could a man from the 20th century prevent the fall of Rome?

Rogue Queen:
Decades before a certain five-year voyage, L. Sprague de Camp sent a spirited crew to a strange and distant world, where their meeting with its inhabitants created chaos in local politics, upset the balance of power and generally created the most entertaining havoc.

The Tritonian Ring:
The gods of Poseidonis – or Atlantis – were powerful and real. Now they were determined to destroy the kingdom ruled by the father of Prince Vakar, the one man whose mind they could not read. The only way to save the kingdom was to discover that thing which the gods feared most.

Set more than four thousand years in the future, The End of This Day’s Business depicts a truly utopian way of life, a global society in which distinct national cultures are preserved but coexist without competitive nationalism, violence, or war. Women, characterised as the reasonable sex in this society, care for the earth and all it’s creatures. Only one price must be paid for this harmony. It is the subjection of men, who, stripped of their history and deprived of any knowledge of women’s sacred rights, complacently accept their ‘natural’ inferiority.

The plot turns on the desire of one woman, Grania, an artist and leader, to teacher her son what is forbidden for men to know. Risking both their lives, she tells the story of when men dominated, especially of the twentieth-century rise of fascism, and the subsequent world transformation as life-loving women took over from death-loving men.

For her entire life, Melanie Landon has hidden the fact that her half sister, Ann, is a shape-shifter, determined to protect her from a world that simply wouldn’t understand. When a mans hows up asking about Ann – who has been missing for months – Melanie fears the worst, and with good reason. Freelance writer Brody Westerbrook knows about the existence of shape-shifters and intends to include Ann in the book he’s writing.

While Melanie is immediately drawn to the stranger she knows better than to trust him, and she denies his claim. But when Ann finally reappears, looking thin and sick, Melanie realises that exposure is the least of their worries. Protecting her sister has always been an enormous part of Melanie’s life, but as Ann’s health rapidly deteriorates, Melanie must come to grips with the fact that saving her may mean letting go . . .

Superb Art Deco suspense set in the glamorous world of high society New York from ‘An author with a flair for terror’ The New Yorker

‘If you wake up in the night screaming with terror, don’t say we didn’t warn you’ New York Times

Once the dashing, top-hatted twins, Danny and David, who share nice college boy laughs, have the marble, they will do to Griselda what they have done to the others.

Her estranged husband, Con, is a thousand miles away, and can’t save her.

A bloody trail has wound around the so blue marble: years of theft, torture, violence; whispers of secret riches, gold, diamonds, rubies as big as the moon. Soon it would be Griselda’s turn.

But Griselda believes that nothing ever happens to nice people, and that there is no reason to feel nervous at night, not even in the heart of New York, and knowing what she does about the marble . . .

Lieutenant Commander Shaila Jain has been given the assignment of her dreams: the first manned mission to Saturn. But there’s competition and complications when she arrives aboard the survey ship Armstrong. The Chinese are vying for control of the critical moon Titan, and the moon Enceladus may harbor secrets deep under its icy crust. And back on Earth, Project DAEDALUS now seeks to defend against other dimensional incursions. But there are other players interested in opening the door between worlds . . . and they’re getting impatient.

For Thomas Weatherby, it’s been nineteen years since he was second lieutenant aboard HMS Daedalus. Now captain of the seventy-four-gun Fortitude, Weatherby helps destroy the French fleet at the Nile and must chase an escaped French ship from Egypt to Saturn, home of the enigmatic and increasingly unstable aliens who call themselves the Xan. Meanwhile, in Egypt, alchemist Andrew Finch has ingratiated himself with Napoleon’s forces . . . and finds the true, horrible reason why the French invaded Egypt in the first place.

Meek and mild curate Thomas Blades discovered an alternative earth where humanity languished at the base of the food-chain. Over eventful years, Blades defeated the bestial Null master-race and carved out the empire of ‘New-Wessex’. Shedding all former inhibitions, he ascended its throne as unchallenged ‘god-king’.

Exiled in turn by overpowering new enemies – the ‘angels’ – Blades was rescued by his own descendant, Guy Ambassador, after centuries of absence. Under Blades’ strangely charmed leadership, the enigmatic and merciless angels were repulsed and humanity enjoyed a respite of liberty. But now, decades later, the venerable god-king broods in seclusion, refusing to die; the fountainhead of bitter thoughts and deeds.

Meanwhile, Wessex sinks-into anarchy and neglect. Guy Ambassador travels amongst the bickering princedoms and warring states, wavering in the faith that has cost him family, friends and home. All around him the world of New-Wessex is moving towards resolution of its ultimate destiny and reason for being. Forces beyond human comprehension invade the already baroque realm.

The Colony on Rigel IV had been founded seven hundred years earlier but for the past six centuries, they had been forced to exist on the bottoms of the great oceans of the planet, kept there by the tremendously potent weapons of the alien star-race which had swept down out of space and wiped them off the land masses of the new world.

Kerrel Stevens found himself trapped in one of the Shells, unable to remember how he came to be there, aware only that for some strange reason, he held the secret which could release these people from their terrible existence, but that his memory and all of the knowledge which could help in the struggle against the aliens had been erased from his mind.

In the Shells, he finds what he is seeking – others like himself, different from the people who had become used to this life on the sea bottom, where science had gradually given way to superstition and witchcraft – and this chance meeting provides the key which unlocked the amnesia in his mind. For him, it opened the doorway to the surface of this strange, impossible planet, plunging him breathlessly towards the stars- and the unbelievable secret which spelt destruction for the alien star-race.

THE MINDSTONES were the only reason anyone lived on – or more accurately, in – the planet Styx. An unthinkable ice world, Styx only survived as an underground mining colony because of the discovery of the beautiful jewel called Cyrilite, a crystalline stone with unique mind-altering properties.
But to Kayla John Reed, Styx was all the home she’d ever knownuntil her parents were killed in a tragic mining accident. Claiming her father’s Guild seat, the extraordinarily gifted young empathy was forced to flee the planet when she tangled with the Kellers, the wealthiest and most important psi family in the colony.
On the run in a galaxy wary of anyone with mind powers and all too willing to turn her in for the bounty on her head, Kayla found an unexpected haven aboard Falstaff, a “merchant” spaceship that stretched the limits of legal shipping beyond the breaking point. But there were those among the crew with a far more treacherous agenda than simple privateering, and Kayla was soon caught in a planets-spanning struggle between two deadly forces ready to sacrifice anyone who got in their way and determined to use any weapon – even the power of Kayla’s mind – to secure total victory…

An introductory note seems called for to explain to the reader the origin of the following strange document, which I have received from a friend with a view to publication. The author has given it the form of a letter to myself, and he signs himself with his nickname, “Cass,” which is an abbreviation of Cassandra. I have seldom met Cass since we were undergraduates together at Oxford before the war of 1914. Even in those days he was addicted to lurid forebodings, hence his nickname.
My last meeting with him was in one of the great London blitzes of 1941, when he reminded me that he had long ago prophesied the end of civilization in world-wide fire. The Battle of London, he affirmed, was the beginning of the long-drawn-out disaster.

Cass will not, I am sure, mind my saying that he always seemed to us a bit crazy: but he certainly had a queer knack of prophesy, and though we thought him sometimes curiously unable to understand the springs of his own behaviour, he had a remarkable gift of insight into the minds of others. This enabled him to help some of us to straighten out our tangles, and I for one owe him a debt of deep gratitude. He saw me heading for a most disastrous love affair, and by magic (no other word seems adequate) he opened my eyes to the folly of it. It is for this reason that I feel bound to carry out his request to publish the following statement. I cannot myself vouch for its truth. Cass knows very well that I am an inveterate sceptic about all his fantastic ideas. It was on this account that he invented my nickname. “Thos,” which most of my Oxford friends adopted. “Thos,” of course, is an abbreviation for Thomas, and refers to the “doubting Thomas” of the New Testament.

Cass, I feel confident, is sufficiently detached and sane to realize that what is veridical for him may be sheer extravagance for others, who have no direct experience by which to judge his claims. But if I refrain from believing, I also refrain from disbelieving. Too often in the past I have known his wild prophesies come true.

The head of the following bulky letter bears the address of a well-known mental home.

“THOS.”