Search Results for: time-and-again

It has been one hundred years since the Archangel Alleluia and the mortal Caleb discovered the truth about the god of Samaria. Legend says they left a record of that truth, though no document has ever been found. In time, an underground cult arose, seeking to find again what Alleluia found. But the reigning Archangel Bael called down the wrath of Jovah upon the cult, and hundreds died in a hail of thunderbolts.

Yet some survived.

Among them is Tamar, child of cultists, raised in captivity among the angels. Tamar believes that the Alleluia Files exist. She is determined to find them, and to free the people of Samaria from their fear of Jovah. In her search, she encounters the angel Jared, one of the members of his own kind who have come to question the wisdom of Bael. Together, these two uneasy allies will journey the length and breadth of Samaria, risking their lives and the lives of their comrades, seeking a truth that will alter the face of Samaria forever…

A Wall Street trader leaves the bulls and bears – and comes face-to-face with hungrier dinosaurs. A Roaring ’20s gangster gets roughed up – by real cavemen. A pioneer hitches up his covered wagon on the Oregon Trail – and winds up in a modern shopping mall. And Roger Tyson, who thought the space-time continuum had finally settled down to normal, is flung helplessly from the distant past to the far future, and back again.

Superbeings from the end of time are struggling for control of the universe with aliens from another galaxy. And if a few random humans get caught in one of their time gates, they don’t much care. So Roger and his friends find themselves facing everyone from the cast of the original Mutiny on the Bounty to real pirates of the Spanish Main in a wild quest to their own time and bring everything back to insanity as usual…

Draftsmen can’t fight dragons.

Then again, that’s usually no problem – they generally don’t have to. But Lafayette O’Leary does. When an accidental overdose of self-hypnosis wrenches him out of the dull (but safe) Mrs. MacGlint’s Clean Rooms and Board and deposits him in the feudal, bedragoned world of Artesia, it takes him a little while to catch on, even with the attentions of the beautiful Princess Adoranne. Then he decides that he likes this new life of his – except for the part where he’s supposed to get killed…

Before 12:01 and After is a collection of science fiction, fantasy, mystery and horror stories by Richard A. Lupoff, collecting the best of his short fiction from his long writing career. It contains the following stories:

“Mr. Greene and the Monster”
“BOOM!”
“Incident in the 14th St. BMT”
“After the Dreamtime”
“12:01 P.M.”
“Venus-Ah, Venus!”
“With the Evening News”
“Saltzman’s Madness”
“God of the Naked Unicorn”
“Nebogipfel at the End of Time”
“Mort in Bed”
“Stroka Prospekt”
“Two Sort-Of Adventures”
“Blinky Henderson Again”
“The Digital Wristwatch of Philip K. Dick”
“Snow Ghosts”
“Triptych”
“The House on Rue Chartres”
“The Doom That Came to Dunwich”
“The Woodstock West Killer”
“Easy Living”
“Dogwalker”
“A Funny Thing Happened…”

Legends of the living dead have filled the pages of mythology since time immemorial. If ninety-nine point nine percent of the stories can be explained as hallucinations, tricks of the light, moving shadows or sheer imagination, a hard core of disquieting fact remains.

The vampire lives in the minds of men. When was it born? Perhaps in the dim distance of the remote past when the racial subconscious was being moulded. What keeps the vampire tradition alive in the mind of modern man? The two tiny words of “what if…?”

Leroy Thompson met a girl in a dark country lane. He offered her a lift. He met her again and again, but always by night. Then he looked in the driving mirror and saw only his own reflection… She cast no shadow in the headlights… She screamed and leapt from the car before he reached a bridge that crossed a moonlit stream… What if?

Is there a Destiny? Does Fate impose a limit? What Barrier stands between man and the creation of life?

Since the legendary failure of the ill-fated Frankenstein, man has tried time and time again to pass those limits. He has created androids, clumsy robots of flesh and blood. He has made men of metal and servants of plastic, with wheels for limbs and magnetic tapes for voices. Man has made things by cross breeding the animal kingdom and destroying Nature’s intentions…but man has never yet made man. Or has he?

Forbisher thought that he had the answer. It wasn’t a clumsy Synthetic. It wasn’t an Android, or a Robot, it was a real flesh and blood human being.

The beautiful woman in his arms was the product of a laboratory experiment, not the result of a natural biological process. But how could he prove it?

The Eurasian world of the 24th Century is in the grip of Rajak the Magnificent, one of the most efficiently ruthless totalitarian tyrants ever produced by history. The dreaded security guards are everywhere. The only escape is the time dimension. But what if the Time Vortex breaks down? To what unknown realms – of past, future or probability – will the travellers be transported?

Mike Grafton, on the run from the security forces, finds himself changing places with Benjamin Bathurst, the true life Missing Diplomat of the early 19th Century, who vanished and was never seen again.

What happens to these men, torn from their environments, into unknown realms? Will the Liberationist forces succeed in destroying Rajak the Magnificent? But perhaps the greatest question of all is the possibility of Time Travel: will man ultimately conquer time as he is even know conquering space?

After bitter defeat on the Isle of the One Tree, Thomas Covenant, Linden Avery and the Giants of the Search take ship again. Across the frozen oceans they return to the Land, now perilously close to destruction from the ravages of the Sunbane. Drawn inexorably towards the caverns deep below Mount Thunder, Covenant and Linden Avery prepare to meet their bitterest foe. Even the white gold they carry may not serve against Lord Foul’s powers. For once the wild magic is released, the Arch of Times will crack, and Lord Foul’s conquest of the Land will be assured . . .

That was the strange message left on Cory Maddox’s e-mail – just at the moment when years of work on a revolutionary subspace computer system were about to pay off. Nothing would be the same for Cory again. Suddenly his life was thrown into chaos when the company that controlled his patent was sold out from under him, and instead of imminent watch, Cory was facing immediate poverty. Then along came Alan Stark, who wanted to recruit Cory for a special research project on virtual reality.

Initially thrilled to be involved, Cory quickly discovered that there was nothing virtual about the realities he was working on. Instead, he found that Stark was on the verge of controlling the very fabric of reality itself.

Cory was unsure of Stark’s ultimate goal until he began to recall pieces of another life and found himself in the middle of a battle between two groups of people who could use “rabbit holes” in space and time to jump between different realities, personalities, and lives. Whoever had control of the power to shape reality would have power to become a god – or a devil. But before Cory could combat Stark and his minions, he first had to remember which side he was on.

Throckmorton P. Ruddygore, master wizard, had troubles again – but this time, they were partly of his own making. He’d finally beaten the Dark Baron, stripped him of all magical power, and exiled him from Husaquahr to Earth. But he hadn’t counted on the Baron’s using a computer there to create even more effective spells.
Of course, the Baron couldn’t use those spells. But the forces of Hell soon sent him a second-rank wizard who could – and a demon in the cellar to amplify the spells’ power. And now the Baron was developing a scheme which would surely result in Armageddon before its time!
So once again Marge the fairy and Joe the barbarian were called on to do the dirty work. They had to return to their home world and somehow stop the Baron – if they could…

THE CALL OF THE WELL


For uncounted eons, the Well World had regulated and given order to the universe, and throughout the eternity, Nathan Brazil had been the guardian of the Well of Souls, where the universe’s master control lay. Forever wandering and alone, returning to the Well in times of Danger, Brazil had destroyed and re-created the cosmos several times over. But even he wearied of his endless watch, and had enlisted the aid of space pilot and high-tech thief Mavra Chang the last time the universal order required resetting.


But now the universe faced a threat more grave than mere destruction. An unnamed and utterly alien entity had somehow been released from its ancient prison and was bent on the corruption of the Well World itself. If successful, it would cause chaos beyond mortal understanding.


The Well World needed Brazil and Chang. But when it found them, would they once again answer the call? And though Brazil was immortal, could he even fight the force threatening the Well? For the force was not of this universe – and it had plans for Nathan Brazil…

Maxie’s in trouble! Again. Only, this time it’s serious. Driving a stolen Ferrari Testarossa off a motorway flyover at something approaching Mach 1, with the police in hot pursuit, is no way to make old bones. But it’s child’s play to what follows.

For Maxie, small-time thief and general low-life, has crashed into the Spiral, a strange whirlpool of time and space, where, it seems, almost anything can happen, and anyone appear.

The two Elizabethan alchemists, for instance, who are convinced that Maxie can help them with their magickal endeavours. And the swashbuckling band of spectral pirates who promise Maxie power and riches beyond his wildest dreams – if only he’ll join them.

‘It is there…the relentless pressure of a million craving minds on the barrier of Time – and if it should break…’
From the author of The Body Snatchers and Time and Again, a collection containing:
Such Interesting Neighbours
The Third Level
I’m Scared
Cousin Len’s Wonderful Adjective
Cellar
Of Missing Persons
Something in a Cloud
There is a Tide…
Behind the News
Quit Zoomin’ Those Hands Through the Air
A Dash of Spring
Second Chance
Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket

Ruben Prien is still at work with the Project, still dreaming of altering man’s fate by going back in time to adjust events… to interfere, some might say, with destiny. Once again, his conduit to that bygone era, his messenger to that lost world, is Simon Morley, the man who actually proved himself capable of traveling back and forth in time.

Rube’s purpose in summoning Si back from that earlier world, where he has taken up permanent residence, is no less grand than an attempt to prevent World War I from erupting. It is ironic, therefore, that the man assigned to carry to America the papers that might help avert the Great Catastrophe travels to his meeting on board the Titanic. And it is Si’s task to attempt to ensure his safe passage.

Shangri-La is a protected haven built by the enigmatic Eloi, (genetically-enhanced humans of indeterminate sex), and is now the Antarctic underwater prison of Jan Dorvin, once Sky Lord Captain, sometime dictator of the depleted Earth of the Gene Wars, and her maimed lover, Robin.

Far above them, the struggle against the mighty airships an their commanders continues, as Ashley, a rogue computer personality, once again joins forces with the Machiavellian trickster, Milo Haze, against the remaining rebellious survivors of humanity.

Meanwhile, on Belvedere, a religious commune set in deep space, contact is made with Earth for the first time in years and an unexpected counter is thrown into the game. Milo Haze, Mark Two, is about to enter the equation.

The Zardalu were the greatest menace ever known to the worlds of the spiral arm, enslaving entire races and exterminating others, guided by an unswerving belief in their own supremacy. Then their slaves rose up against them, and for eleven thousand years the Zardalu had been extinct and the spiral arm had known a kind of peace.

But now the Zardalu are back . . .


The search for the Builders, the legendary alien race whose unfathomable constructs continued to perplex scholars and explorers alike, had led Builder expert Darya Lang, adventurer Hans Rebka, and treasure hunters Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial to an unknown Builder artifact far outside the spiral arm. There they found the Zardalu – just a few who had been trapped in stasis all those millennia, held there for purposes known only to the Builders. And in the struggle that ensued the Zardalu had been set loose, transported by Builder technology to to galactic parts unknown – free to ravage any world and any race within their grasp.


The only chance to eliminate the Zardalu threat was to find them and wipe them out before they had time to breed back up to strength and once again threaten civilized beings everywhere. The problem was that no one believed the story. Only Darya Land and her companions had actually seen the aliens – and no evidence existed to support their claims. And so the course seemed clear: get a ship themselves and search out the Zardalu.


But the way would not be easy. Even once they managed to locate the Zardalu, they still had the Builders to deal with. For the closer they got to their quarry, the more clear it became that the Zardalu and their world were closely entwined with the fate – and the plans – of the Builders themselves.

Time was running out for Bob Kinnaird. Without much warning, the Hunter – the green protoplasmic alien that lived inside him and cured all his ills – had suddenly become his destroyer. Day by day Bob grew weaker and weaker, but only specialists from the Hunter’s distant world would know what was wrong with him and, more importantly, how to save him.

But the only way searchers from his planet could find him was to locate his missing spaceship . . . a spaceship that had crashed beneath the ocean years before, its location still very much a mystery. Once again leading an investigation against time – as he had done so many years before – the Hunter knew he had to find comrades and find them fast . . . before someone murdered his best friend.

Set in a post-apocalyptic England, RIDDLEY WALKER tells the tale of one twelve year old boy and his journey through the ruins of civilisation. After the death of his father in an accident, Riddley must become a man. But his inquiring mind and strange ways set him apart from his people, and when he discovers a relic of the old time, he sets in motion a chain of events that may well lead to the end of the world (again).

Written in a remarkable and rewarding language, RIDDLEY WALKER is a tour-de-force of imagination, history and psychology. Challenging and rewarding, this is a book that repays rereading again and again. There’s a reason why the reviews were so good, and why so many authors cite it as an inspiration. It is, quite frankly, a masterpiece.

The Whims of Destiny

Jorian, the one-time unbeheaded king, was now safely retired from a long career of getting into trouble. But his younger brother Kerin lacked such wisdom. The outraged father of Adeliza had caught him in compromising circumstances with the maiden. So Kerin had to be sent at once on a mission by sea to the Far East.

But Kerin’s talent for trouble was not to be denied. First came Belinka, a sprite sent by Adeliza to bring him back safe for her. The ship captain believed Kerin was seducing his mistress. Though innocent this time, Kerin left hastily in a rowboat. That got him to a hermit-wizard’s island – and a voyage on a pirate ship, where the kidnapped princess Nogiri was held captive. Kerin was unable to save her – until he gained the help of the hermit-wizard, who then betrayed him by seizing the girl and fleeing with her to be used as a human sacrifice.

From then on, events became hectic as Kerin managed to save Nogiri again, helped by a wizard who was the enemy of the first one. Belinka was much distressed by what happened then between Kerin and Nogiri – with cause – as they set out again, this time to the Emperor of the Farthest East.

There Kerin discovered more magic, and the Emperor learned that no man should be absentminded when using a powerful spell. But it was later that Kerin discovered the limitations of roller skates.

For three decades science fiction legend Alan Dean Foster has captivated readers around the world, from his debut classic The Tar-Aiym Krang and his inspired scenario for the first Star Trek movie to a host of New York Times bestsellers, including Splinter of the Mind’s Eye and Flinx in Flux.
In this collection of twenty brilliant odysseys of the imagination, Foster once again soars beyond the limits of reality – where the real thrills begin…
NASA Sending Addicts to Mars!: It was the most insane idea in the annals of space travel – and the only one that would work.
Diesel Dream: Sometimes on dark, lonely highways dreams do come true, and this trucker’s hope was the best one of all.
Sideshow: Flinx hadn’t a clue about the alien dancer, but Pip knew trouble when she saw it.
Empowered: A magnificent male discovers the not-so-super part about being a superhero.
The Question: A bold adventurer determines to solve one of life’s profound mysteries.
…and fourteen other amazing stories!

Once the world was not as it has since become. Once it worked in a way different from the way it works now…

Pierce Moffett is a teacher and historian who at midlife feels himself to be standing at a great turning point in the history of the world. As a child, Pierce was no stranger to magic, but those revelations faded with time. Now Pierce’s search for a secret history of the world – one in which magic works and angels speak to humankind – has begun again.

Pierce finds clues offered to him in the unfinished last novel of a writer named Fellowes Kraft and in the real-life histories of the doomed Renaissance heretic Giordano Bruno and the Elizabethan magus John Dee. He will also find the secret history pervading his present in his involvement with two Roses: Rosie Rasmussen, guardian of the dead Kraft’s legacy, and Rose Ryder, who will soon become his lover.

The sequel to Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon’s great classic work of science fiction.


In Last Men in London the author follows up the themes of his earlier masterpiece in presenting a Neptunian ‘last man’s’ views on our twentieth-century world, views informed by the huge dimensions of space and time which separate him from our tiny contemporary world. Once again, Olaf Stapledon has been totally successful in creating a work of such stunning imagination and brilliance that it has taken its place amongst the classics of science fiction.

In the real world, the Mediterranean basin dried up several times, only to refill again. If it hadn’t, what’s really sea bottom would have become the most savage desert in the world. Mild-mannered Radnal vez Krobir likes it that way. When his kingdom’s enemies try to shake down the Barrier Mountains and let the Atlantic in, he has to stop them – or else drown along with everything he holds dear.

Rhavas is a good, holy, and pious man, as befits a member of the clergy. He is also the cousin of the Avtokrator, ruler of the Empire. Hoping someday to become ecumenical patriarch of Videssos, he was reluctantly willing to bide his time in one of the smaller cities on the outskirts of the Empire.

Then civil war broke out, and the Avtokrator had to pull back the troops guarding the borders as he struggled for control of the Empire. Rhavas had to flee for his life as the fierce Khamorth nomads took advantage of the chaos and sacked the city he had come to love. He only survived because he accidentally discovered that he had an unsuspected power: Men often cursed each other – but Rhavas’s curse had the power to kill!

Rhavas had always followed Phos, the god of light and goodness, Videssos’ own god, just as he had always despised Phos’ evil rival Skotos. Those who fall off the Bridge of the Separator during judgment in the afterlife are doomed to dwell in Skotos’ ice and darkness forevermore. But Rhavas has reverenced logic as well as goodness, and knows the power to kill with a curse cannot be an attribute of Phos. As evil swallows up the world, Rhavas, ever the logician, decided that Skotos is actually the more powerful god, and becomes determind to change the official religion of Videssos. But in the end, it is he who will be changed, and neither the world nor he will ever be the same again…