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Astronomy professor Aurora ‘Rory’ Bell gets a message from space that seems to portend the arrival of extraterrestrial visitors. According to her calculations, whoever is coming will arrive in three months – on New Year’s Day to be exact.

A crowded and poisoned Earth is moving toward the brink of the last world war – and is certainly unprepared to face invasion of any kind. Rory’s continuing investigation leads her to wonder if it could be some kind of hoax, but the impending ‘visit’ takes on a media life of its own. And so the world waits. But the question still remains as to what, exactly, everyone is waiting for…

Secretive, enigmatic beings, they came to Earth to live among humanity in quiet, aristocratic isolation. But now, after years of silence, the “gods” have decided to share their art.

Across the vast galactic void come great ships bearing the fruits of an incomprehensible alien culture – paintings and sculpture of such raw, visceral power that their unveiling plunges the Earth into violent chaos, and sends the visitors fleeing from their adopted planet. But some remain behind – to face death at the hands of rampaging mobs, to witness the outcome of the grand cosmic game, and to assist in the creation of one last, potentially universe-shattering masterpiece that will illuminate the awesome, final destinies of god and man.

They were visitors from out of space.

They had slept for 15,000 years. But they were men. Nevertheless it was a fantastic experience for Wes Chase to discover them while on a casual fishing trip.

It was a long time before they were able to explain to Wes why they were on earth and what they needed. It was even longer before Wes conquered his horror and decided he could help them in their mission to bring peace to the universe.

When Wes finally found the daring answer to their problems, he realised that he would have to leave his own life behind and go with them into the future and the winds of time.

As Kartin says, ‘You can’t have houses in space.’ What then are those mysterious objects that have suddenly appeared far out on the planet routes? What connection do they have with ‘the Shy Six Hundred’, as Kemlo calls them, those strange, Earth-born visitors to Satellite K who are so chary of having their photographs taken?

Kemlo and his Space Scouts decide that the time has come for a little detective work and the boys are soon hot on the trail – a trail which is to lead them from the comfort and security of the satellite to a battle to the death twenty million miles out into the void.

The Terridae believed the lost Earth was heaven and utopia combined. In their artificial planet, they moved slowly through the universe in search of it. And in their eyes, the rediscovery of Earth was to be the Event.

Now they said the Event was coming! Earl Dumarest – who was born on Earth and knew the truth – was an unwelcome visitor among them. If they knew of Earth’s whereabouts, they were not telling him.

But another Event was already on its way. A Cyclan ship was rapidly approaching the Terridae’s world, confident that this time Dumarest would fall into their heartless clutches.

Dumarest was not ready to flee – but if he stayed there would be no Earth for him, only a long, lingering doom.





(First published 1982)

When a young British couple, who make jigsaw puzzles, are hired by an ageing Norwegian to take nude photos of themselves in a sculpture park in Oslo, they are drawn into a web of occult Nazi horror. Even more horrifying will be the fate of the whole world some years later if alien visitors achieve their secret aims.

However, the aftermath of events in that Oslo park will provide Anna Sharman with a key to unlock those aims.

Anna is a rebel within Britain’s intelligence service at a time when most of the world appeases the aliens because of the gifts they bring – and if she must lose her own body in order to discover the truth, she will do so.

Kemlo and Krillie, together with Krillie’s sister Krinsetta, set out for a visit to S Belt in Kemlo’s space scooter. They are attacked by three boys from S Belt, who kidnap Krinsetta. Kemlo gives chase, and both his and the other craft are forced down, off course, on to the Zones of Silence, part of a large area known as the Dead World where the slightest whisper is magnified into a roar…

The inhabitants of the Zones have no audible form of speech, but use instead a highly developed system of thought transference. These creatures are friendly, but too friendly: they attempt to drug the minds of visitors with thought impulses compelling them to stay on the Zones. Kemlo is able to resist this powerful impulse, but…

When racial hatred turns to murderous menace . . .

First a rocket ship loses its engines on take-off and is destroyed. On board – an important extra-terrestrial visitor.

Next someone slams into the sealed vehicle used for transporting aliens around in the lethal atmosphere of Earth.

Then the vital controlled environment for the Tau Cetian delegation is sabotaged. Oxygen leaks in, and the aliens are half burnt alive.

Even if it means brutal murder, The Stars Are For Man League is determined to shatter the harmony between Earth and civilizations on other planets – and to keep mankind supreme among the alien life forms. Only one man can stop them – a man who unknowingly nurses a viper in his bosom . . .

First published in 1965.

This classic of Gothic horror follows Laura, a woman haunted by a girlhood dream of a beautiful visitor to her bedroom. Now, a decade later, Laura finds Carmilla, who appears to be her own age, on the side of the road after a carriage accident. The two recognize each other from the same childhood dream and become fast friends. Soon after, Laura begins to experience mysterious feelings and is once again haunted by nightmares. She finds Carmilla strangely irresistible and longs to be with her.

But as the two friends grow closer, Laura’s health begins to fail. It becomes apparent that her enchanting companion is harboring a sinister secret. To free herself from Carmilla’s grasp, Laura and her family must fight for their lives.

The Custodians tells of a visitor to a French monastery, and of one specially built tiny room which is constructed precisely on the intersection of mysterious force fields, so that anyone who enters is able to foresee the future. Paradise Beach is the story of a wall-screen whose image of the sea attunes itself to the individual perceptions of the onlooker. Piper at the Gates of Dawn is set towards the end of the next millennium when the stories about the coming of the mysterious white bird of kinship become associated with the travels of an old story-teller and his young nephew, whose pipe seems to have a magical quality. Finally, The Hertford Manuscript tells of the remarkable discovery of a seventeenth-century book with some pages purporting to be the journals of a nineteenth-century time traveller.

Honolulu: Port of Call is a unique collection of short stories of the Hawaiian islands brought together by Joe Gores: thirteen tales by legendary writers including Jack London, Herman Melville, W. Somerset Maugham, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad and Joe Gores himself.

Yet these are tales chosen to entertain, rather than literary gems. They paint a picture of a Hawaii before the high-rise buildings went up; an era of missionaries and merchants, sailors and whalers, of the drama of East meeting West before, finally, urbanisation and the tourist buck killed off the Polynesian way of life almost completely.

Gores brings us a flavour of that lost way of life; a breath of the romance that still draws Western visitors to the islands in search of the exotic and, perhaps, of an innocence long lost.

Leah Frothen has returned home. But she can scarcely catch her breath before she is summoned by regent Darien Serlast, the man who made her a spy. Leah is reluctant to take on a new assignment, but Darien has dangled the perfect lure to draw her in…

Leah finds she enjoys the challenges of opening a shop catering to foreign visitors, especially since it affords her the opportunity to get to know Mally, the child she abandoned five years ago.

But when the regent asks her to spy on ambassadors from a visiting nation, Leah soon learns that everyone-her regent, her lover, and even her daughter-have secrets that could save the nation, but might very well break her heart.

Utopia had been completely separated from the rest of the galaxy for 300 years. It had taken six decades to finalise the agreement and conditions that would permit a visitor from the Other Worlds to come there. Hardy Cronyn from Washington IV was the first arrival.

The sensuous, young beauty who was to be his guide greeted him with a kiss. But it only took moments for Cronyn to learn the rules: no marriage. It was illegal. The two million inhabitants of Utopia were immortal. If there were marriage, there would be the desire for children, and that was seldom allowed.

The only deaths were accidental; petty crime was non-existent. Cronyn believed Utopia was paradise – until he discovered one paralyzing fear that consumed them all – PAIN! For if life was eternal pain would last a long, long, time…

She lost her memory – will she lose her life?

Superb crime fiction from ‘A star in our galaxy of crime writers’ FINANCIAL TIMES

‘The mistress of unease’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

Mrs Anderson is starting to forget where she has put things, what she has bought, or even eaten. Living alone in a rambling mansion, she is isolated from the town.

But Mrs Anderson has a visitor. A young man comes every night, through the dining room window. He helps himself to food and money, and has even made himself comfortable in the attic. A young man who enjoys power, he might take over the whole house and make it his. It’s a place where no one will think to look for him, where no one will find him – no matter what he’s done.

For eons, the Amplitur had searched space for intelligent species, each of which was joyously welcomed to take part in the fulfillment of the Amplitur Purpose. Whether it wanted to or not. When the Amplitur and their allies stumbled upon the races called the Weave, the Purpose seemed poised for a great leap forward. But the Weave’s surprising unity also gave it the ability to fight the Amplitur and their cause. And fight it did, for thousands of years.

Will Dulac was a New Orleans composer who thought the tiny reef off Belize would be the perfect spot to drop anchor and finish his latest symphony in solitude. What he found instead was a group of alien visitors – a scouting party for the Weave – looking for allies among what they believed to be a uniquely warlike race: Humans.

Will tried to convince the aliens that Man was fundamentally peaceful, for he understood that Human involvement would destroy the race. But all too soon, it didn’t matter. The Amplitur had discovered Earth…

‘Nobody but Dorothy Hughes can cast suspense into such an uncanny spell, and she’s never done it better’ San Francisco Chronicle

‘An excellent novel . . . A sympathetic study of the development of a criminal’ New York Times

It’s carnival time in Santa Fe, and three out-of-town visitors are drawn together in the heat, the smells and the colour of the festival . .

Sailor, a hood from Chicago, is there to confront his boss, Sen, a crooked politician, to try to get money for what he knows about the murder of Sen’s wife, killed supposedly during a robbery gone wrong.

Following them both is Mac, a man from the same side of the tracks as Sailor, but who has made very different choices. He’s a cop now, and wants Sailor to testify against Sen and put him away.

The three strangers collide, retreat and advance through the streets of New Mexico, moving ever closer to a charged and unexpected outcome . . .

The Potters of Firsk includes the majority of Vance’s ‘Magnus Ridolph’ stories, previously collected in The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph. In the VIE edition this book is titled Gadget Stories.
Contents: Planet of the Black Dust, Dead Ahead (“Ultimate Quest”), Hard Luck Diggings, Sanatoris Short-cut, The Unspeakable McInch, The Howling Bounders, The King of Thieves, The Sub-standard Sardines, To B or Not to C or to D (“Cosmic Hotfoot”), Spa of the Stars, The Enchanted Princess (“The Dreamer”), The Potters of Firsk, The Visitors (“Winner Lose All”), Plagian Siphon (“The Uninhibited Robot”; “The Planet Machine”), Dover Spargill’s Ghastly Floater, Sabotage on Sulfur Planet, Three Legged Joe, Four Hundred Blackbirds, Sjambak, Parapsyche, Sail 25 (“Gateway to Strangeness”; “Dust of Far Suns”).

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.