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After centuries of fighting wizards, dedicated scientists have found the answer to winning the war: turn magic into science. Reduce it to its final empirical base, to be read and studied.

But to gather such information, the Special Office decides a transmitter must be implanted in a legendary unicorn, the prize talisman of the most powerful magician. Then it can spy upon the highest councils of sorcery and the daily transmissions analyzed.

Wearing this electronic eye in places of his own, Aden enters the Holy City and carries out the mission. But it leaves him vulnerable to the wonders of enchantment, and he wanders the middle ground between two warring forces. As scientific rationality picks up momentum and the enchantment of the enemy crumbles away before it, Aden – and those out to stop him – races to find the unicorn again.

Amon VanRoark heard the prophet speaking in the market place of the decaying city. He called men to the wars, to the fabled Meadows where the armies of Good would meet the forces of Evil in one final Armageddon that would decide the fate of a world already doomed and dying.

VanRoark followed the prophet to the Meadows and there he witnessed the last cataclysmic battle between humanity and the dark powers of Salasar.

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.

Welcome to a haunted world; the world of Keith Roberts’ powerful and unique imagination. These stories show Roberts’ fascination for the curious and unclassifiable; and as ever, his mastery of character and detail. ‘Susan’ introduces the reader to a schoolgirl with awesome psychic powers; but the sensitive treatment turns a shock situation into a brilliant fable, while ‘The Scarlet Lady’, predating Stephen King’s Christine, has the genuine stench of petrol, oil and demons. ‘The Eastern Windows’ chillingly continues the theme; by contrast, ‘Winderwood’ introduces us to a fearsome locale that Roberts insists is real. ‘Mrs. Cibber’ transports the reader, with complete conviction, to the smog-ridden London of the fifties and unfolds the strange tale of a young graphic designer haunted by a woman from the eighteenth century. ‘The Snake Princess’, equally atmospheric, tells the story of a boy’s doomed, bizarre love, while ‘Everything in the Garden’ presents the tour de force of a haunting within a haunting.

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.

‘We reap and we thresh; grain for half the world. We are the Grain Kings raised of old.’

They call them the Grain Kings. Gigantic mechanical monarchs of the wheat-bearing plains that were once the frozen Alaskan wastes. Whole eco-systems in themselves, they can supply the food so desperately needed by the teeming millions of our overpopulated planet. But even now, as the whole world waits in hungry suspense, the great powers battle for control of the prairies and two competing combine harvesters find they are heading on a course of collision. A collision with catastrophic consequences – not only for the hundreds of crewmen aboard each massive machine but for the future survival of all mankind.

AFTER THE APOCALYPSE the hazardous evolution of mankind continues. And in primeval response to the disaster, humanity’s solutions to catastrophe carve the harsh new world in violent patterns of magic and myth, rite and religion. Brave images scar the ancient hills, the clash of swords and the ageless power of sexuality sign-post another, bloodsoaked path to civilisation.

In the year 25,000 AD
When John Martels returned to consciousness he found himself the Delphic Oracle of a world far different from the Twentieth Century. Humanity has risen and fallen three times and was back once again in a semi-primative state.

He shared his oracular powers with a mind and a device left over from the last Rebirth, but the real problem was not rebuilding civilization, it was that another genus of creatures had arisen to claim inheritance of the world – the evolved. Strangely intelligent birds, whose priority was the elimination of the world’s former masters.

The problem of man versus bird, complicated by the question of John’s personal survival, presents a canvas worthy of the diverse talents of the author of A Case of Conscience and Cities in Flight.

Danny Caiden is on the run – from the FBI, the SEC, the Justice Department and the Mob. Only recently, Danny was an average New York copywriter, until he suddenly found he had ESP. His knowledge of the future is astonishing, and the rest of Danny’s powers are just beginning. But someone has plans for Danny: a mysterious group of sinister men bent on world domination. They’ll stop at nothing until they capture Danny . . . or destroy him.

For only Danny Caiden has the power to sabotage their diabolical tyranny. Through no fault of his own, he has found himself at the centre of a shattering psychic struggle for the future of humanity. In the final battle, Danny must master all of his powers, or sacrifice himself – and all mankind – to satanic slavery forever.

The continent lay before them, vast areas of it unexplored, its forests, plains, jungle and mountains teeming with forms of life unknown to modern man.

Here the witch-doctors reigned supreme, using their inexplicable and remarkable powers on men and beasts.

The purpose of the safari was mysterious, its members an oddly assorted group of people unlikely to have any sane objective in common . . .

A gripping story about primal evil: a sinister intermingling of power, politics, modern theology, the dark forces of necromancy, and what proves, all too terribly, not to be superstition.

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. Rogue Queen is an engaging tale of aliens and humans on the loose on a world of appealing strangeness.

The most expensive, the most luxurious resort in the history of man. Where no request, no whim or pleasure, was denied. Where anything was possible – for a price.

SATELLITE CITY

The haven and the playground of only the very rich and the most powerful. It was the most amazing pleasure complex ever built – and it looked down on the Earth from an orbit 22,000 miles high.

Yet, for all its glitter, there was something ominous about Satellite City – no nation or international body had any jurisdiction there, it was a law unto itself; no one knew who owned it; or what went on within its secret council rooms.

Until one man penetrated the wall of secrecy and discovered satellite city’s hidden masters.

POWER!

Perhaps the rarest gift in the world is that ability to read the future, to know what will happen to a person, a group, even a country, and when it will happen!

EXTRASENSORY PERCEPTION

The year is some indeterminate time in the future; Mickey Grant and Anna Enesco are involved in special studies for people who have shown extraordinary ESP talent. Their progress is as frightening as it is incredible.
But when our government sends them on missions that become increasingly dangerous and difficult, are their lives the price of their special pre-knowledge?

Rex Morris belonged to the master class which ruled the entire world by brain power or brutality, depending on which was needed. He should have functioned perfectly in the rigid totalitarian society of the future where every thought, word, and action was controlled by the superstate, where everyone was watched night and day by the Great Eye of the internal security forces.

It was a strange world, but the rewards were great for those who belonged to the right caste. Morris had all the qualifications – yet he didn’t belong. Nonconformity could mean liquidation – but he was prepared to take the risk!

IT SEEMED AS IF EVERYONE WAS A SPY!

The political situation in the 21st century was coming to the boil: one man, a scientist, held what might be the important key to ultimate power in the struggle between the three blocs: West-world, Sov-world, and Common Europe. The scientist, Auguste Bazaine, disappears, and each bloc accuses the other of kidnapping.

There was only one way to settle the difference! So nine men were chosen to fight to the death in a trial by combat organised by the World Court. The winner will put his country on top. But when an American and a Russian meet face to face – the result is not what was expected!

What would the world be like if the Russians discovered how to beat us at our own capitalistic game, and began dumping inexpensive, quality goods on the world market?

In this brand new novel, Mack Reynolds deposits us into just such a future. It is a world where America is rapidly being turned into a second-rate power as its industries go bankrupt. A world that is falling under the wheels of the Soviet juggernaut, peacefully and passively. It is a world where the U.S. has only one way to retaliate – by bringing a little religion into the Soviet Union, a very special religion.

The team from Earth had the task of raising backward planets to the home world’s high level. The situation on Rigel was this:

“The most advanced culture on Rigel’s first planet is to be compared to the Italian cities during Europe’s feudalistic yeas. The most advanced of the second planet is comparable to the Aztecs at the time of the Spanish conquest.”

“These planets are in your control to the extent that no small group has ever dominated millions before. No Caesar ever exerted the power that will be in your collective hands. For half a century, you will be as gods and goddesses!”

But the Rigelians were themselves descended from the lost colonists of old Earth and they could learn their lessons as fast as they could be taught.

In fact, they could even teach their teachers a thing or two. And therein lay the peril the professors from space never dreamed of.

It’s just a fantasy role-playing game. Until the game becomes reality . . .

Friday night is games night. But one special Friday, Paul and his four friends are transported into the heart of their own game, to the strange, bleak land of Xhandarre . . .

Where reality vanishes, and the five players assume new and exciting identities – with new and exciting power.

Where hostile tree dwellers, predatory birds, and flesh-eating werewolves lash out from darkened shadows.

And where the evil sorcerer Avron Kromar holds the key to freedom.

Can Paul and his friends survive their strange, new world? Can they escape its treacherous dangers? And if they can escape, do they really want to return to reality?




(First published in 1985 as by Christopher Carpenter)

Earth was a planet of incompetents, but Simmons was the greatest loser of all. It seemed as if the powers of the Universe were concentrated on grinding his small soul into ultimate insignificance – until the aliens came. To them, Simmons was the most important human on the planet – for only through his mind could they overcome this world.

THE GARMENTS OF CAEAN are forbidden in the Ziode Cluster, their qualities little understood. So when Peder Forbath finds the legendary Frachonard suit on a wrecked Caeanic freighter, he immediately tries it on. To his delight he finds that the garment endows him with undreamed-of powers. But is Peder wearing the suit – or is the suit wearing him?

He was unique. Alone in a world that did not understand him, he tested the super powers of his mind and body. More than a machine, but less than a man, he searched restlessly for the truth. Before his quest was done, he had died and been reborn, had fought his way from a grim dungeon to a royal throne.

Jasperodus, the only super-robot to have been granted consciousness, must decide whether to share his soul-possessing secrets with the other robots or to betray them to save mankind.

In the huge termite-hills of cities that dotted the dead world of Killibol it seemed that nothing could ever change. Each city was enclosed and self-sustaining, in a stasis fixed by the one reality of power: the protein tanks in which organic nutrients could be processed to provide food.

But gang-leader Becmath was a man with a vision: to build an empire for himself without breaking this stasis. His lieutenant Klein recognised Becmath’s genius and stayed faithful to him even when they were forced to travel Killibol’s arid surface in a desperate search for the lost gateway to Earth. He stayed faithful through murder, treachery and countless adventures. Only when Becmath’s schemes reached incredible fulfilment was he able to realise that he had been serving an egomaniac and a monster . . .

From the Garlowe Clusters in the north to the Veils of Darkness in the south, the Star Kingdom sprawled over roughly a fifth of the galaxy. So huge was this realm that those who tussled for power over it seemed unable to appreciate that it faced annihilation by the Patch, a roving region of peculiar pseudo-energy a light-year across which drained the life-force from any living thing it encountered.

The Patch had moved into the Kingdom and was systematically feeding on system after system. Cynically unperturbed by the appalling loss of life, the royal houses merely tried to involve the Patch in their machinations, to the extent that civil war broke out all over again. But in the event, the Patch was to provide the crucial factor in the struggle for absolute power. The Annihilation Factor!