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Before the Glory of Greece, Crete ruled the known world – and kept it enslaved by black magic! The evil of Minos held sway, protected by three unconquerable walls. First is the fleet that they call the wooden wall. Then there is a giant of living brass – he is the second wall. Then there is another barrier about the power of Minos, the Wall of Wizardry. Theseus, the tall Achean, the man they called Captain Firebrand, vowed to scale and destroy all three, and to rid the world of the evil yoke of Crete. But Minos had other defences besides the walls, and many ways to attack as well . . .

Bonnar had created the Green Queen thoughtlessly – all part of a day’s work. But when his brain-child became a full-grown Frankenstein’s monster, embodied in the girl he loved, Bonnar was terrified. For now she threatened to shatter the whole carefully balanced social structure of Viridis – as well to undermine that radioactive world’s atomic shield!

Only Bonnar could end the holocaust and turn the all-too-grim reality back to the illusion he had originally intended. But to do that he had to destroy the girl he loved – or be destroyed by her.

The narrator of Nebula Maker stands on a hill and sees a vision that leads him to the birth of the universe. He witnesses the creation of the nebulae and the formation of galactic communities as well as the flowering of the personalities of the nebulae. The establishment of pacific and militaristic camps and their relationship leads to events of cosmic strife, not unlike the history of our world in the twentieth century.

The ruins of the Well-Built City and the village of Wenau are not all the world has to offer-there is also the Beyond, a dark land between life and death, populated by flying demons, restless ghosts, invisible terrors, and ravenous trees. Cast out by the people of Wenau after finding a cure for their sickness, former physiognomist Cley sets out to brave the dark mountains and seas of the Beyond in order to find the woman he doomed on his quest to destroy the Well-Built City. As Cley journeys deeper into the unknown, he is accompanied by an invisible companion-the demon Misrix, who is searching for his own humanity.

In the beginning, before Man and the insect Thranx became allies, in the days when the reptilian AAnn were just occasional raiders of the Thranx colony worlds, one young Thranx agricultural expert lived a life of quiet desperation.

A dreamer in a world of sensible well adjusted socialised beings, Ryo buried himself in his work of reclaiming marshland until…

Until he met the Aliens.

Grotesque two legged creatures, unpleasingly soft skinned, gross in their appetites, alarming in their movements, all in all pretty revolting species, yet his curiosity overcame his queasiness and he befriended them.

And discovered they were called Man.

The Elder Isles – an ancient land where chivalry and the realm of fairie exist side by side. A land of mystery, strange beauty, high adventure and arcane magic. Kings are at war, opposing magicians devise ever more cunning stratagems. It is a land where princesses and changelings both can become embroiled in political rivalries and the quest for the grail.

The Gollancz Black Books have proved to be an immensely successful formula for getting well loved stories into the hands of people who also love well made books. Jack Vance’s Complete Lyonesse is a perfect addition to the series and contains Madouc the novel for which Vance won the World Fantasy Award.

It is the 21st century and Earth is overcrowded, underfed and teetering on the brink of worldwide chaos. Their best and last hope rests among the stars, in finding another world able to sustain human life. Enter Colonel Jerry Cornelius, hero and adventurer extraordinaire. Along with his wife Cathy and good friend, Professor Frank Marek, he will brave the madness of space and the dangers of an alien world.

But there is more to this new world than meets the eye. Secrets are buried here, in its earth and in its history. Uncovering them could hold the keys to planet Earth’s salvation as well as its past. But time is against Jerry Cornelius. His friend has gone mad, his wife has gone missing, and with each tick of the clock planet Earth draws closer to its end.

Bereft of friends, loved ones, and all he has ever known, Jerry Cornelius will hold the fates of two worlds in his hands. A solution will require all his legendary strength, intelligence and courage … and even that might not be enough in the end.

Kurt Vonnegut cites Theodore Sturgeon as the inspiration for his character Kilgore Trout. This volume includes 12 stories from 1953, considered Sturgeon’s golden era. Among them are such favorites as the title story, “The Silken-Swift,” “A Way of Thinking,” “The Dark Room,” “The Clinic,” and “The World Well Lost,” a story known for being very ahead of its time in advocating gay rights.

“When Kinsolving’s Planet crosses your path, beware!”

Commodore John Grimes would have done well to heed this warning. But the evil magic of Kinsolving draws him on, pulling him on a journey through the universes. Is Grimes a swiftly facing literary ghost, doomed to disappearance for the inadvertent theft of a meerschaum pipe? Or, is he a flesh and blood Commodore, sailing the spaceways from world to world, enjoying dangerous voyages to momentary safe ports?

It does not matter what role is the “true” John Grimes for none can protect him from the grasp of Kinsolving’s Planet, an abandoned colony which reaches out for man, for the target, John Grimes, who is inexorably sucked toward his final destiny …

They had slept in safety while destruction raged above them. When they awoke and emerged from their places of refuge, the world had changed – totally.

For man soon discovered that he was no longer the dominant species on Earth. Now there were other creatures, not only ready to dispute the point but well prepared to prove it.

It was later, much later, that the bulk of mankind discovered they had forfeited their birthright, traded their home, the planet Earth – for a spaceship.

Arthur Cleveland Finch was an eminently practical man. Naturally he didn’t believe that the carnelian cube was a “dream-stone” with supernatural powers. But, of course, if he were going to wish himself into another world, he would choose one where everything was perfectly rational.

Finch got his wish – with a bang! And he soon discovered that one man’s rationality can easily be another man’s nightmare. He awoke a poet in a strange place where status meant everything and a man could be tried for umpteen kinds of crimes for reciting a poem in public.

So, being optimistic as well as practical, Finch tried again – and again. And the worlds kept getting wilder, more improbable, and funnier – but more dangerous, too. The question was, could Finch find Utopia¿ before losing his skin?

It was the End of Summer of the year 2035. The Global Village that was the World was ruled by a Kangaroo Court of Compassionate Aldermen who ordered assassinations when it was deemed to be for the common good. As a sign of their openness, they were always experimenting to find new ways of looking at the World. Most of these experiments would would fail; some of them would succeed to an extent; and others would succeed only too well, and so would have to be crushed in the shell for the good of the World.

The Lynn-Randal Experiment raised three children together almost from infancy. Of these three, Lord Randal was human (though somewhat enhanced and tampered with). Axel belonged to the gargoyle-faced ‘Golden People’ (‘God believes they are the most beautiful creatures he ever made,’ a theologian said, ‘and there will be hell to pay when he founds out that we don’t agree.’). And the third child was Inneal who often elicited the comment ‘she’s really something different, isn’t she!’ Yes, she was. All of these were super-mega-persons, which meant that they might be able to change the world itself. But why did they begin to change the Ocean first?

When these three were just short of ten years old, they were merged with children of three other experiments, and formed with them a Magic Dozen. Immediately they began to have an astonishing effect on the World. And the fave of the children themselves hung in the balance.

Was the experiment too successful? Was their effect on the World too dangerous? Would their group be, as other groups had been, adjudged to be a ‘Serpent’s Egg‘ that had to be crushed in the shell for the good of the world?

The Three Days of Summerset, the End of Summer, would give the answer.

Using the secret motive power of a lost a lost flying saucer, physicist Micael Arnott, three companions and an escaped convict are flung into the void at eight times the speed of light to eventually land, after the oblivion of acceleration, upon a world that is both extraordinary and terrifying.

Their machine disappears and they themselves also vanish one by one, Michael Arnott going first when he is on the verge of explaining the mystery of this far-flung world.

That the planet is inhabited seems obvious from queerly designed spaceships glimpsed at intervals, all of them blazoned with a “Z”, which is not so much an alphabet letter as a symbol of a master-race of scientists.

In their efforts to solve the riddle of the world and system to which they have been hurled, the perplexed travellers gradually realise they are not only involved in an odyssey of space, but in a problem of Time as well. They are forced to the conclusion that, just as the first supersonic airmen paid a penalty of mental blackout for breaking the barrier of sound, so there is also a penalty for exceeding Fitzgerald’s Law – namely that 186,000 miles per second is the ultimate possible speed.

Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice, an entry in the Poictesme series, is an epic fantasy voyage as well as an erotic fable. Cabell himself wrote: “This fable is, as the world itself, a book wherein each man will find what his nature enables him to see; which gives us back each his own image; and which teaches us each the lesson that each of us desires to learn.” Jurgen was banned for decades because of its explicit content. It was, and remains, a ground-breaking early fantasy novel.

In the darkness of World War Two, a murderer strikes…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

‘No author is more skilled at making a good story seem brilliant’ Sunday Express

‘He stood very still for a moment. He said he had a sixth sense that warned him of danger. The fact that more murderous attempts had been made on his life did not affect his belief in his instinct. He said that in his profession a man had to harden himself to take risks. That was what his clients paid him for, “and,” he would add, “they pay damn well.” ‘

Death in the Blackout takes place in the heart of World War II and opens as a bomb drops uncomfortably close to detective Arthur Crook’s London flat, setting off a mysterious chain of events.

If wishes would only come true; how often has every human being thought that? How wonderful life would be if only we could have everything we ever dreamed of?

But the man who invented the dream-machine turned out to be the worst enemy humanity ever encountered! The dream became as real as the reality – and yet remained a figment of the imagination. And thereby the very foundations of civilization were undermined. Why strive – when you could get it all without effort?

Reality Forbidden is the unusual novel of what came afterwards. Of the world in which only the most rigid of terror kept cities standing, and of the man who dared to escape that world, to find the last place on Earth where dreaming was not prohibited, and where one could not only have one’s cake, but eat it as well!

Judith Moffett returns to the future with this moving tale of the Hefn occupation of Earth and how it affects the planet’s native humans – two in particular: Pam Pruitt, a talented young woman from Kentucky, and Liam O’Hara, whose unique friendship with the Hefn Humphrey saved his life. The two teens journey to a special place in remote Kentucky, Hurt Hollow, where the painter Orrin Hubbell and his wife, Hannah, found a way to live in peace with the planet during the twentieth century. The prospects of living peacefully seem distant for Pam and Liam, both of whom must find peace with themselves as well as with the Hefn Directive. The marvelous events that befall them en route to Kentucky and in the Hollow itself beautifully depict the subtle ways in which the world shapes them, and the stunning ways in which they change the world.

Until the coming of the People of Asa, the world of Man went its own, often quarrelsome, way along the road of human advancement. There were many pitfalls on the road, conflict and misery often going hand-in-hand; but there was happiness as well. It was, for us and millions more, a happiness interrupted by the terrible advent of the worst scourge ever visited on Man – an alien invasion of the Earth’s surface by beings of diabolical power.

Rising from the deeps, wielding weapons hitherto beyond mortal conception, the Asans wrought havoc on a fearful scale. Picked out from our fellow men, we witnessed scenes of appalling chaos, experiencing as well a measure of the seeming magic of which these beings were capable. Only when all seemed lost did the fortunes of mankind change, and that in a manner we none of us dared to hope…

Michael Moorcock edited and produced the magazine New Worlds from 1964 to 1973. Within its pages he encouraged the development of new kinds of popular writing out of the genre of science fiction, energetically reworking traditional themes, images and styles as a radical response to the crisis of modern fiction. The essential paradox of the new writing lay in its fascination with ‘entropy’ – the universal and irreversible decline of energy into disorder. Entropy provides the key both to the anarchic vitality of the magazine and to its neglect by critics and academics, as well as its intimate connection with other cultural experiments of the 1960s. The fiction of the New Worlds writers, who included Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard and Moorcock himself, was not concerned with the far future and outer space, but with the ambiguous and unstable conditions of the modern world. As Ballard put it: ‘The only truly alien planet is Earth.’

The Entropy Exhibition is the first critical assessment of the literary movement known as ‘New Wave’ science fiction. It examines the history of the magazine and its background in the popular imagination of the 1960s, traces the strange history of sex in science fiction and analyses development in stylistic theory and practice. Detailed attention is given to each of the three principal contributors to New Worlds – Aldiss, Ballard and Moorcock. Moorcock himself is most commonly judged by his commercial fantasy novels instead of by the magazine he supported with them, but here the balance is at last redressed: New Worlds emerges as nothing less than a focus and a metaphor for many of the transformations of English and American literature in the past two decades.

The Plaintiff, Universal Patents, Inc., was heartless.

The judge, Rex “Spider” Speyer was merciless.

Ellen Welles’ case seemed hopeless.

Unless her lawyer could locate the mad creator of FAUST – the robot-inventor who’d given Universal Patents its stranglehold on the world economy – she was sure to die for patent infringement, a capital crime in the twenty-first century.

Quentin Thomas, Ellen’s lawyer, already knew that the judge was a psychopath, and he quickly learned just how dirty Universal could play…

In the Well-Built City, Master Drachton Below’s power is absolute, and he will not hesitate to use it. His primary method of control is through his physiognomists, who are trained to read a person’s face and body, perceiving that person’s past and secrets-and even events yet to come. These seers are the judges and jury. Now Drachton has found something that could extend his reign for eternity: a fruit that bestows immortality. To investigate its whereabouts, Below sends cold, collected physiognomist Cley to the remote mining town of Anamasobia. One at a time Cley interrogates the townspeople, performing his usual fact finding without issue. That is, until he meets the beautiful and bright Arla, who harbors a secret that could potentially turn Cley’s world upside down-and topple the Well-Built City itself.

A Kafkaesque journey into the unknown, The Physiognomy is an award-winning trip through a land where the line between reality and imagination is constantly blurred.

After laboring for thousands of years, the people of Earth, fleeing ecological disaster, have built a new, clean, stable world on a worldwide platform erected over the entire land surface of the Earth. Everything is going well–except for Carl Magner, the man who’s been having bad dreams. He shouldn’t be having dreams at all, because dreams have been banished from the society of the Euchronian Millennium, but somehow he is, and his dreams are showing him the “Underworld.” The real surface of the Earth, the Underworld that the Euchronian Millennium has left behind, still maintains life, human and otherwise, life that’s adapted to a world without sky or sun, still evolving in response to extreme environmental challenges. Dreams are only dreams, but they’re a provocation nevertheless, not merely for Carl Magner, but for the whole of Euchronian society. Can Heaven be truly Heaven, if Hell still festers in its entrails?

Between the frozen wastes of the night side and the searing inferno of the dayside, the Twilight Belt held all that was Human on the tiny world of Mercury, Hell Planet of the Solar System. A strange world, airless, subject to the alien distortions of Einsteinian mathematics, Mercury was both a promise and a challenge, for here could be found torrents of cheap power essential to the ships and men in space. Lee Correy, Commander of the Station, plunges into the frigid wastes in a desperate race against time to find and rescue both his brother and the essential component of the beam control. Fighting impossible conditions and incredible alien life he is up against the enigmatic mystery of the sand devils; a dead man who walked, and a machine that could not fail-but did.

Here is a story of the future, of the planets and the men who will colonise them, of the way they will live and the problems they will face. With mystery, adventure, exciting action and scientifically correct detail. A story of what might well be in the days to come . . .

Rachel thought she was facing the battle of her life when her son was diagnosed with leukemia. Then the Ancient Gods rose and brought the apocalypse with them. Some people accept their new deities, others wage war for the future of humanity.
Desperate to protect Adam from enemies both mythical and biological, they flee the city hoping to find shelter in the mountains. Instead, they discover mutations, grotesque plants and animals warped by the changing world. When Adam’s cancer cells begin to mutate as well, the Rachel is forced to choose between his life and their freedom.