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Once the great Glacier enclosed the Raumsdalian Empire. Now it’s broken open, and Count Hamnet Thyssen faces a new world. With the wisecracking Ulric Skakki, the neighboring clan leader Trasamund (politely addressed as Your Ferocity), and his lover, the shaman Liv, Hamnet leads an exploration of the new territory in hopes of finding the legendary Golden Shrine.

But dangers abound. A violent and implacable group known as the Rulers has already killed many, and now they attack again. Riding deer and woolly mammoths and using powerful magic, the Rulers triumph and force the Raumsdalians to flee.

In the spring another battle ends even more badly for Hamnet’s side, but the Glacier is also retreating, so they are able to escape. Meeting a tribe whose desperate living conditions have led them to overcome the Raumsdalian taboo against eating fallen foes, they find unexpected allies. Now, returning to the capital city and its intrigues, Hamnet prepares to lead an army against the merciless Rulers. The world, once so bounded and comprehensible, will never be the same…

THE EPIC FANTASY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND CONTINUES . . .

Kieto’s destiny, set in the heavens, is to conquer the Land-of-Mists, the mysterious island discovered by Kupe, one of the great Polynesian voyagers. But he knows it won’t be easy: the wild native tribes, particularly the Scots and Picts, have two formidable advantages – iron and horses.

But Kieto has heard of a magnificent warrior race, the Maori, who live in another world and from whom he hopes to learn the secret of success in war. The gateway to this world is on the island of giants, and Kieto and his friends, Boy-Girl, Seumas and Dorcha, themselves taken years before from the Land-of-Mists, leave the safety of Rarotonga and embark on an epic voyage of discovery aboard THE PRINCELY FLOWER.

Pursued by sea-fairies, vengeful gods, power-hungry priests and, in Seumas’s case, by a murderously angry son, confronting their worst fears and supernatural horrors, the friends finally face the awesome wrath of the mighty Maori.

THE PRINCELY FLOWERS is the second wonderful volume of THE NAVIGATOR KINGS, set in the richly imaginative world of Polynesian life and myth.

Light on Bottom…

The light was artificial. Believe it if you can. I realise that for a normal person it’s hard. Wasting watts to light up the outdoors is bad enough. Spending the world’s limited power to illuminate the sea bottom, though – well, for a few moments I was too furious to think straight. My job has brought me into contact with people who were careless with energy, with people who stole it, and even with people who misused it; but this was a brand-new dimension!

I was lower now and could see acres and acres of light stretching off to the north, east, and west until it blurred out of sight. Acres and acres lighted by things suspended a few yards above the level bottom, things visible only as black specks in the centre of slightly brighter areas.

Then I got my anger under control, or maybe my fear did it for me. I suddenly realised that if I hit bottom the way I was heading I might never be able to get back to the…

Ocean on Top.

The second volume of the Complete Short Stories of Theodore Sturgeon covers his prolific output during 1940 and 1941, after which he suffered five years of writer’s block. Showcasing Sturgeon’s early penchant for fantasy, the first six selections include whimsical ghost stories, such as “Cargo,” in which a World War II munitions freighter is commandeered by invisible, peace-loving fairies. With the publication of his enduring SF classic, “Microcosmic God,” Sturgeon finally found his voice, combining literate, sharp-edged prose with fascinating speculative science while recounting the power struggle between a brilliant scientist, who creates his own miniature race of gadget makers, and his greedy banker. Voice found or not, every one of the stories here is readable and entertaining today because of Sturgeon’s singular gifts for clever turns of phrase and compelling narrative. As Samuel R. Delaney emphasizes in an insightful introduction, Sturgeon was the single most influential SF writer from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Krells never set out to be a hero. He was the first to admit he was a trader. “In it for the money; I leave thinking to the experts.” But the experts couldn’t solve the problem of Ralcor IX.

Professional fighters and scientific investigators vanished or were mysteriously destroyed. The robot might of an armoured Bellicose 35 was found shredded like tinsel. Krells still refused to think of himself as hero material – but he wouldn’t quit. Martia, his computer girl, and Galor, the despatch man, stayed with him. For some reason the power that had driven every other terrestrial humanoid off Ralcor IX couldn’t dislodge the traders. Krells groped desperately for a reason. Finding one meant the return of his own people and that meant money. Something he couldn’t understand was shielding him from the Unknown Menace. Suppose he accidentally stopped doing whatever it was that protected him…?

Most people would have become neurotic and quit – not Krells. He didn’t seem to have enough intelligence or imagination to know when to worry.

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.

Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t even look at them. The life of Roy Phipps can be summed up in a paragraph: He’s fifty, leads an uneventful, well-organised existence in the house inherited from his parents, earns a modest income writing formulaic detective novels, and remembers, sometimes, his encounters with women. Roy’s only aberration is the other novel he has been secretively also writing for years, the sprawling and florid story of the mad poet Vilmos, a study of murder, angst and alchemic magic. Then one evening Roy meets Vilmos, face to face. Of course, handsome Vilmos’s double, Joseph Traskul, is only a coincidental look-alike. But in those fatal minutes a terrible bond is formed. For Traskul is, at the very least, insane – charismatic, predatory, lawless – a sort of human demon – whose almost supernatural powers, once provoked, will prove unstoppable. As the fiery shadows close in on him, Roy soon understands that he is now fighting for his own sanity. And probably for his life.

‘Her worlds have a magic sheen … She is unique. She is legend’ THE TIMES

‘Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power’ OBSERVER

Among the less-travelled mountains and plains of Central Europe, a little east of Austria perhaps and north of Slovenia, lies the old kingdom of Orsinia. A land of forests and quiet farmlands and towns, with its capital city Krasnoy on the broad Molsen River, Orsinia has always found itself, like all the countries of Europe, subject to forces beyond its borders.

Val Malafrena is an estate in the rural western provinces of Orsinia, far removed from the engines of European politics and content for it to remain so. When Itale Sorde, the idealistic young heir to Val Malafrena, leaves his family home to venture to the bustling capital city of Krasnoy, it is therefore very much against his father’s wishes. Sorde’s intention is to work as a journalist, but he will soon find himself moving from reporter on the great events of the day to active participant in the rising tide of revolution that seems destined to sweep the continent.

Immortal, unchanging, the external survivor, Nathan Brazil had tired of his long duty as the guardian of the Well World and had enlisted Mavra Chang, space pilot and adventurer, as his companion and equal, sharing with her some of the godlike power to control the universe’s destiny.

But over the millennia, Brazil and Chang had become estranged. When they were once again summoned to the Well World, they came as bitter rivals, each racing to be the first to reach the Well of Souls. What they found, however, was a Well World changed in ways it should not have been. Evolution on the Well World seemed to have diverged from its preset course- and that was impossible.

Brail sensed that some force beyond local animosity was at work, and he was determined to find out just what that force was and how it could have changed the elaborate programming of the Well of Souls. But the changes that had so affected the Well World were beginning to change the unchangeable Nathan Brazil – and if the watchman himself could altered, the universe might be left without any guardian at all . . .

Kate N. Shadow was the name empath Kayla John Reed took when she was forced to flee her home planet and join the crew of the Falstaff, a “merchant” spaceship that stretched the limits of legal shipping beyond the breaking point. But even the Falstaff could not remain a haven for much longer, not when the forces of magnate Pelleas Karlson and empathy Yates Keller were out to put an end to all the Free Traders who currently plied the spaceways.

Kate had nearly fallen victim to the Groupmind controlled by Yates in her last devastating encounter with this ruthless enemy. And with her own empathic talents greatly weakened as a result, she knew that she would need to draw on resources far beyond her own to help the rebel troops known as the War Minstrels in their bid to break Karlson’s control of the spaceways. Kate’s only hope lay in finding the Mindstar, a mindstone of legendary proportions which could give its successful wielder infinite power – or suck the very life out of anyone who tried to master it and failed…

Spring comes to the mutant clans. Now, the mutants begin to emerge from their long, hidden sleep. Slowly, quietly, they have slipped into the paths of ordinary life and become caught up in the everyday problems that face all of us, mutant or normal. One career is stalled. Another is threatened by the political need for a scapegoat. The clan must come together again.

Michael, trapped in a loveless marriage and facing the blame for a disaster in which he had no part.

Melanie, separated from clan and family, fighting to prove her worth in the world of normals.

Narlydda, using her fame and wealth as a blind for her mutant identity, trapped in an age of luxury.

Now, from nowhere comes a man who thrusts himself into all their lives – a man who might change the world. Is Victor Ashman the long-awaited, long-sought supermutant – the Mutant Prime? Before his frightening powers can turn the normal world against them all, the clan must find him, identify him, and – if necessary – stop him.

Those mysterious domes on the Moon – what were they? Who built them? Thanks to young Chris Godfrey and his historic rocket-flight they had been photographed from outside the atmosphere; they had been under constant observation by the world’s astronomers – but the answer was as baffling as ever. Until one day every single atomic power station on Earth suddenly and disastrously went out of action. There could only be one explanation – the extra-terrestrial radiation bombardment of appalling magnitude. And only one possible source of it: the domes of Pico.

In the era of “the big squeeze” – when an environmentally ravaged Earth groans beneath the weight of twelve billion people – two men control the destiny of humankind. One was recently senile…the other is going insane.

In the year 2069, with the Earth’s population dangerously out of control, procreation and the medical treatment of terminal illness are the two most heinous crimes against society. But behind the doors of the top secret Biophysical Institute, an old man has been illegally cured of the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease and made artificially younger – to serve the unspecified purposes of Premier Jeremy Beltane, one of the world’s most powerful leaders.

A member of the underprivileged “Wardie” class, Detective Sergeant Harry Ostrov has been assigned to serve as a guardian to the mysteriously rejuvenated nonagenarian – and entrusted with a devastating secret that could topple the unstable “Minder” government. But once within the confines of the Beltane family enclave, the dedicated police officer is dragged deeper and deeper into a lethal mire of scandal, corruption, political outrage, and moral dilemma – sworn to silence even as he observes his nation’s ruler, a man ultimately responsible for the future of civilization, descend steadily into depression, uncertainty . . . and madness.

It is a new world, stunned by the horrors that linger in the aftermath of total war. The United States and Soviet Union are squaring off in a different kind of conflict, one that’s fought in the shadows, where there are whispers of strange and mysterious developments. . .

Normal people across the United States have inexplicably gained paranormal abilities. A factory worker can heal the sick and injured. A schoolteacher bends emotions to her will. A car salesman alters matter with a simple touch. A former soldier speaks to the dying and gains their memories as they pass on.

They are the Variants, controlled by a secret government program called MAJESTIC-12 to open a new front in the Cold War.

From the deserts of Nevada to the palaces of Istanbul, the halls of power in Washington to the dark, oppressive streets of Prague, the Variants are thrown into a deadly game of shifting alliances. Amidst the seedy underbelly of nations, these once-ordinary Americans dropped in extraordinary circumstances will struggle to come to terms with their abilities as they fight to carve out a place for themselves in a world that may ultimately turn against them.

And as the MAJESTIC-12 program will soon discover, there are others out there like them, some with far more malevolent goals. . .

Award-winning author Michael Moorcock continuously astonishes readers and critics alike with each new literary offering. Revered for his eloquent, lyrical prose, his work is a testament to the emotional power of words. Fabulous Harbors is the second of a three-book set, and is a bridge between the novels Blood and The War Amongst the Angels. Comprised of 11 interlocking tales, Fabulous Harbors takes the reader by the hand and guides him into and through Moorcock’s spectacular expanding multiverse – a luminously realized, richly layered world of fantastic invention and lovingly drawn characters.

Here, in the comfort and peace of Sporting Club Square – an obscure and perhaps magical corner of London that seems oddly immune to the normal effects of time – Begg family patriarch Sir Sexton and various family members and friends gather to swap memories, anecdotes and dreams. Come, sit by the fire and listen to the continuing exploits of the brave Sam Oakenhurst, the mysterious and seductive Rose von Bek, old friend and adventure Jerry Cornelius and Elric, the brooding albino prince of ruins, among others.

Haunting and compelling, Fabulous Harbors is an extraordinary achievement from a true star in the literary firmament.

When human genes go wild, reproduction can no longer be left to chance – and it is Robert Wellton, Chief of the Genetics Bureau, the most feared and hated man in the world, who decides who will mate with whom.
But nobody can tell Wellton whom to mate with! He alone knows that the Genetics Program is collapsing, for fewer Normals are found each yer – and his father, who had been Genetics Chief before him, had discovered that not all Deviates are nature’s failures. Some are telepathic and long-lived – like Robert Wellton himself.
Thus is born the plan that Adam Wellton conceived and that Robert Wellton carries on – the creation of a Secret People. Born of Normal mothers, they are all Wellton’s sons and daughters, bearing his improved genes – living hidden in a colony in the Canadian wilderness, protected from the hate and jealousy of civilization by Wellton, who stays in telepathic touch with them.
But disaster strikes when a bitter powerful committee, suspecting the existence of concealed Deviates, begins a relentless search for them. Wellton knows there can be only one result – he Secret People will be hunted down and wiped out!

George was a shoemaker – but not just a simple artisan. He thought a lot, worried too much and questioned everything. But he knew when to keep his mouth shut, and he knew his duty. Life in the Roman Empire was hard these days, and no one could say it might not get harder. Cities to the north of Thessalonica on the Greek peninsula had already fallen to the swarming Slavs and Alars.

The tribes were definitely on the move, bringing their powerful pagan demons with them: bats with gleaming red eyes spied out the city, diving on the militia men as they patrolled the city walls; giant wolves whose howls chilled the soul surrounded the city; and there were rumours of worse. Even the satyrs, centaurs, nymphs and other remnants of the Greek pantheon lurking in the mountains around Thessalonica were frightened. George’s city was a Christian light in a sea of pagan darkness. And now that sea was rising, threatening to wash over him and his little island as if they did not exist and were of no account.

For George, that was just unacceptable. He was a simple artisan – but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t give everything to defend his family, his city and his faith.

A terrible civil war was tearing apart the kingdom of Detina, a land which could no longer be half serf and half free. When the new ruler, King Avram, decided to liberate the blond serfs upon which the northern provinces depended, the north rebelled, taking Grand Duke Geoffrey as their King.


Neither side expected an easy victory. The south was larger and wealthier, but the north had better soldiers and more powerful wizards. Led by officers riding unicorns, supplied by flying carpets, both sides had clashed for three bloody years, as the tide slowly turned against the north.


But the war was far from over: The north had found a far more competent general, and he was determined to hold Peachtree Province. When the southrons attacked, they faced formidable obstacles both natural and manmade, as well as the deadly repeating crossbows of the northern rebels and the sorcerous storm and lightning wielded by the northern wizards.


Still, the very survival of Detina as one united realm was at stake, and King Avram’s forces had no choice but to attack, no matter what the odds, no matter how desperate the situation…

There is a landscape between reality and dreams, a strange and primitive country that exists upon the edge of our waking world. Michael Whitlock knows that country well. His best friend lives there…
It beings with a scatter of earth, thrown over the infant by unseen hands, a haunting attack that is repeated day after day, culminating with an explosive fall of mud that nearly kills the boy. And found in those tons of raw, wet earth: flints, chalk artefacts, and remains of a primitive shrine and the dismembered carcase of a hunting dog.
The Whitlocks’ house, in the Kentish Weald, stands near a chalk-pit, and it is here that their son, Michael creates his preculiar imaginary world, making his camp by the pile of grave-earth from that early attack. Unaware of what is happening to him, the boy touches and uses the strange force that now ebbs and flows in the pit, And when the haunting returns, this time it is more subtle, almost wonderful in its secutive nature. Torn between a fear of the supernatural and greed for the results of Michael’s power, his adoptive parents are helpless. It is left to Françoise Jeury, a psyhic investigator, to piece together the bizarre truth of th epit and the shrine and the oddly silent boy.

Ladies from Hell contains five long stories.

“The Shack at Great Cross Halt” describes a Britain dominated by motorways, juggernauts and a tyranny, in which the unfortunates of society eke out a miserable existence scavenging items that fall off lorries.

“The Ministry of Children” shows comprehensive schools having become terrifying battlegrounds dominated by vicious gangs.

“The Big Fans” concerns an experiment in wind-powered electricity which accidentally unleashes an apocalyptic storm of effects.

“Our Lady of Destruction” ironically depicts a future in which a Stalinist British government taxes ‘non-productive’ people (i.e. artists) at over 100% and assigns them individual Overseers to regulate their work.

“Missa Privata” shows an opera singer in a communist-dominated Britain making a defiant individual gesture which will bring about her own ruin.

These are not stories of spaceships and alien worlds; rather they are studies of imminent social change, written out of passionate concern about the directions in which our society may be heading – stories, in fact, in the great Orwellian tradition. Most importantly, they are stories about people: believable, defiant individuals struggling against oppressive forces.

The world of 2165 needed co-ordinators to link the liaison officers from different broad fields. Natasha was a trained nexus officer who became curious about Building 297.

All her enquiries reached a blank wall . . . literally. Nobody seemed to know what went on inside the tall glass and concrete tower. An important security project of some sort . . . but what?

At last she found a way to enter the building nobody understood only to find a project that had gone unbelievably wrong. The original purpose of Building 297 had long since been forgotten. The operators no longer directed the research in the bleak laboratories, they were in the grip of an unknown power.

The menace in the sinister tower had reached a crucial stage. It threatened to leak through the concrete and engulf the city . . . perhaps far more than the city. Natasha had to understand the incredible new force, to escape from its citadel and rouse the sceptical, complacent population before it was too late.

The arrival of the Stranger offered her a terrible choice. Was he her one hope as a potential ally, or had he in some way engineered the menace in the tower?

The siege was over. The citadel of Avillis had burned, burned through the night, with its terrible Lord and his monstrous children in it. Nothing remained now but broken walls, charred stumps where trees had, grown, tattered lattices open to the sky. But at the heart of the palace the great Cup of Avillis stood untouched: pure gold, crusted with jewels each worth an emperor’s ransom. Small wonder that Kachil, common thief, should covet it. Or Feluce, dapper arrogant climber; riches would mean much to him. But why did Havor of Taon, the hawk, join them to carry the cursed Cup away? For it was Havor who found that the Chalice once stolen could not be lightly cast aside, even in horror and despair. While always, inexorably, half-seen, slipping through shadows, shapes in the mind’s eye, three phantom riders followed after it across the winter-blasted plain.

This chilling tale of flight and inescapable pursuit rises to a confrontation of ghostly powers. Havor thought his story could have only one ending, but the spirit world can summon Forces of Light as well as Dark.

The secret of the three kings – revealed at last

For centuries, interstellar prospectors had searched for the fabled Worlds of the Three Kings, the lost El Dorado of the galaxy. But if any found it, they were never heard from again. The mad cyborg Prophet, Ishmael Hand, discovered the mysterious system, with artefacts indicating a superhuman technology, and he had refused to reveal its location before vanishing forever in history.

Two more recent expeditions have found the Three Kings. A starfaring evangelist – Doctor Karl Woodward, preacher and leader of the starship The Mountain – followed a clue and found it, but never returned. Then a spacegoing salvage team followed Woodward’s trail, and also vanished.

Now a chance encounter between what’s left of the once-mighty human military with an inexplicable alien force has brought an armed expedition to the third planet of the Three Kings, Kaspar. They will join forces with the survivors of the first two expeditions, who have been marooned both by alien powers and by human treachery, as they at last encounter the alien minds behind the mysterious triple planetary system – and face a decision that may determine the fate of the entire human race!

Welcome to the Tomorrow Factory.

On your left, post-human hedonists on a distant space station bring diseases back in fashion, two scavengers find a super-powered parasite under the waves of Sunk Seattle, and a terminally-ill chemist orchestrates an asteroid prison break.

On your right, an alien optometrist spins illusions for irradiated survivors of the apocalypse, a high-tech grifter meets his match in near-future Thailand, and two teens use a blackmarket personality mod to get into the year’s wickedest, wildest party.

This collection of published and original fiction by award-winning writer Rich Larson will bring you from a Bujumbura cyberpunk junkyard to the icy depths of Europa, from the slick streets of future-noir Chicago to a tropical island of sapient robots. You’ll explore a mysterious ghost ship in deep space, meet an android learning to dream, and fend off predatory alien fungi on a combat mission gone wrong.

Twenty-three futures, ranging from grimy cyberpunk to far-flung space opera, are waiting to blow you away.

So step inside the Tomorrow Factory, and mind your head.