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‘Valentine looked downward. Everything was black, a pool of night rising from the floor. That blackness seemed to be beckoning to him. Come, a quiet voice was saying, here is your path, here is your destiny: night, darkness, doom. Yield. Yield, Lord Valentine, Coronal that was, Pontifex that will never be. Yield . . .’

Valentine is now established as Coronal of Majipoor, about to undertake the grand processional, but filled with inexplicable despond, still shadowed by the dark cloud that had passed across his soul in Labyrinth.

His foreboding proves to be not without foundation as soon he faces a planetary crisis – the shapeshifting Metamorphs are sabotaging the crops upon which Majipoor’s billions depend – and a conflict, about how the suddenly turbulent planet should be ruled, with his protégé and heir-apparent, Hissune.

Only after this crisis has been overcome and the conflict with Hissune resolved can Valentine fulfil his proper destiny and succeed to the title of Pontifex.

Silverberg returns to the world of his greatest triumph – Majipoor – to tell the thrilling story of a young man’s quest into the unknown!

For young Prince Harpirias, the journey into the tundra beyond Majipoor might as well be a death sentence. But it is the only way to escape his dull job in a provincial city. The mission: to rescue a lost party of palaeontologists searching for the remains of a fabled species of dragons. With only a small band of soldiers and one wily Shapeshifter for company, Harpirias must endure blizzards, ice storms, privation and strange beasts.

But when they reach their destination, they discover a shockingly barbaric culture. One mistake, one minor violation of custom, and the prince and his retinue will face endless captivity – or endless death!

Set a thousand years before the reign of Lord Valentine, in a time of ancient mysteries, new wonders and new horrors, this is the fifth book in the Majipoor Cycle, one of the jewels of modern fantasy.

When a plague of madness sweeps over Majipoor, Coronal Lord Prestimion’s quest for a cure brings him face to face with enemies, delusions and forgotten powers.

The Collected Stories Volume 4: Trips (1972 – 1973)

Winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, Robert Silverberg is one of the all time greats of science fiction. A professional writer for more than half a century, his short story output has been prolific and exceptional in quality.

This series of nine volumes will collect all of the short stories and novella-length that SF Grand Master Silverberg wants to take their place on the permanent shelf.

Each volume will be roughly 150,000-200,000 words, with classics and lesser known gems alike. The author has also graced us with a lengthy introduction and extensive story notes for each tale.

Contents:
In the Group
Getting Across
Ms. Found in an Abandoned Time Machine
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame
A Sea of Faces
The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV
Breckenridge and the Continuum
Capricorn Games
Ship-Sister, Star-Sister
This is the Road
Trips
Born with the Dead
Schwartz Between the Galaxies
In the House of Double Minds

Earl Dumarest, trans-galactic soldier of fortune, is still seeking his birthplace, the fabled planet Earth.

On the distant, decadent planet Dradea, he meets the mysterious, mutant woman Veruchia. She selected him from the gladiators’ arena to become her servant. . . and more.

Soon, Dumarest discovers that she too is engaged in a quest – and that the fate of her planet hangs in the balance. Fascinated, compelled, he agrees to help her.

But then he must face bizarre perils which make the gladiatorial arena seem a haven of safety. . .



(First published 1973)

There was only one way out of Harge: to find a singing jewel, the greatest prize on that world of sand dunes. But the jewels were hidden deep in the burrows of Harge’s most vicious predator.

Earl Dumarest could fight humans, could match wits with the implacable Cyclan. But now, in his galaxy-spanning quest for the lost planet Earth, he must face the WEB OF SAND.



(First published 1979)

It was the last planet left for men to conquer – a planet rich in priceless urillium ore, yet no man laid a finger on this wealth that was for the taking.

For the planet Vendor could not be conquered. Space-men tried time and time again, but always the Voices drove them mad and destroyed them. Some intangible power kept men away from that taunting prize – until a scientist on Deneb IV perfected a blanketing device to protect his shop through the barrier. It took him twenty years to do it and every penny he possessed, but at last his voyage to Vendor began.

It was the voyage of a gambler who knew that only two alternatives faced him…illimitable wealth and glory, or failure and death.

But the journey to Vendor brought hazards that neither he nor his crew had foreseen, and before its conclusion a force was unwittingly released that could have swept life from the Universe – the indestructible and horrifying force of THE METAL EATER.

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 . . .

On the airless surface of the Moon the ‘cold war’ continues, with the bases of the major world powers watching each other and waiting . . .

The dedicated personnel of Britain’s Moon Base seemed well-adjusted to their peculiar existence despite a series of mysterious happenings. What bothers them most is the visit of a Royal Commission sent by an economically-worried British Government to investigate expenditure. Travelling with the Commission, but under separate and secret orders, is Felix Larsen, who’s investigations are of quite a different nature.

Larsen, alive to the possibilities of espionage, soon finds himself faced with the inexplicable. Why should one man fall a thousand feet and escape with minor bruises while another dies after falling a mere eighteen inches? Why does a desperate man, bent on suicide and with all the means at hand, find it absolutely impossible to kill himself? What are the strange messages emanating from the Base – and from whence do they come? And what is the fantastic thing that has been conceived in the research department?

Trapped in the economic rat-race of the 21st century Kevin Blake had little going for him but an over-active imagination: an attribute which brought him to the notice of Paul Trevainen, who made Kevin an offer he couldn’t resist. On the face of it the assignment was simple – to find the billionaire’s daughter, bring her back to Earth and collect a dazzling reward. But Crystal was wilful, stubborn and hard to find. The quest forced Kevin to become an advocate in an alien court, turned him into a hunter, and made him the captive of giant, money-hungry frogs, a rebel against established authority, a fugitive, a criminal and in general one of the most harassed young men ever to have longed for adventure.

On several settled worlds of the Earth Confederation, towns had been utterly destroyed by attacking alien vessels – exploded into flaming ruin, and fleeing people reduced to smears of blood and bone.

And so they sent for Captain Kurt Varl, the only man to have fought an alien ship and destroyed it – the only survivor from his crew of thirty souls. And now he would have to lead another ship and crew into battle, knowing that as well as the alien raiders he faced the things that lurked in limbo, existing in four dimensions and capable of transforming humans into things of screaming horror…

On the murky outskirts of our solar system, a lonely star has exploded, emitting monstrous doses of radiation . . .

The year is 1983. The exploding star Briareus Delta, 132 light years away, provokes only mild interest from planet Earth. Suddenly, appalling tornadoes and storms ravage the cities and countryside, leaving death and desolation in their wake. Then mankind realises another terrifying side-effect – every adult in the world has been rendered infertile.

Schoolteacher Calvin Johnson discovers he is one of the select few to have acquired strange psychic powers. Termed ‘Zetas’, these people experience mental flashes of the future – a future of freezing isolation, snow-swept landscapes and bleak, ice-bound cities.

A second ice-age is imminent as man faces the ultimate horror . . . extinction.

George Cringe is a middle-aged school-teacher, married with several children. His marriage, while not a failure, is hardly a great success, and he is somewhat drawn towards a fellow teacher, Jennifer Lawton, who is much younger than he is. For relaxation, George has taken to creating an endless SF saga set on the planet Agenor, where his hero and heroine, Zil Bryn and Orgypp, face various problems, their current one involving an outbreak of psychedelic mushrooms.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, on the planet Chnas, life Zil Bryn and his wife Orgypp. Bryn is currently composing a long weird narrative called Shorge Gringe’s Pilgrimage, set on a strange world called Urth . . .

To get his woman a slice of bread, a man will kill. He does it out of love. To feed and protect his children, a man will conquer the world.

A man wants things safe. If he has to, he will pick up a weapon, and if he can, he will march across the world with it. It’s as simple as that. The need for security and the impulses of love left trails of dead and dying across the face of human history and always, somewhere, have made someone happy and safe, and free to build a future. In this novel, Algis Budrys shows us a hope some of us have not forgotten we have – one that many of us may not be able to stomach.

Their space-yacht, pursued by angry Adderkops thirsting for their blood, has run into serious engine trouble. Picking up the trail of another alien spaceship, they decide to board it and force its crew to take them home. But once aboard, its not so easy to find the crew: they’re faced with cages full of bizarre, other-wordly animals: Tiger apes, Elephantoids, Gorilloids, Caterpiggles, Helmet beasts, Tentacle centaurs. One set of these extraordinary creatures must be the crew, in hiding. But which? Survival depends on finding the right answer…

Like two giants the old enemies faced each other across the reaches of the galaxy – the Terran Empire and the Ythrian Domain. Terra was a Leviathan, encroaching ever further among the stars, promising peace and prosperity – but at the price of freedom. Ythri was smaller, but an empire in its own right, peopled by birdlike beings with a civilisation and intellect that easily matched Terra’s own.

And between the adversaries lay Avalon. One single planet, inhabited by human and Ythri alike. Both sides wanted to claim Avalon, by persuasion or by force, for it was a key world that could turn the tide of the war. But Avalon had developed a unique culture, a powerful blend of human and Ythrian thought. And Avalon had ideas of its own….

Dominic Flandry had a great future ahead of him as saviour of the civilised universe. In later years his talent for swift, decisive action would give him an intergalactic reputation. But at the age of nineteen and straight out of naval academy, he was just another raw ensign.

The mighty Merseian Empire had sworn to wipe the Earth from the face of the universe. The attack had already been launched, but no one knew how or where the ravening power of the savage green skinned aliens would strike. Only Ensign Flandry had the answer, in the form of a code which he might – or might not – be able to decipher.

And so the Merseians were coming after Flandry with every weapon in their terrible arsenal. And just to make things worse, Earth’s own armadas were after him too – for desertion, high treason and other assorted crimes. Even for a future saviour, times were looking pretty tough.

The Terran Empire was faced with disaster. A turmoil of unrest on the planet Diomedes was the first spark that threatened to ignite a chain reaction of insurrection. All the attention of the ruling powers was centred on Diomedes – but Sir Dominic Flandry, bon vivant and interstellar troubleshooter, was one jump ahead. Through a highly unorthodox gambit, Flandry had learned that the Diomedean troubles were a red herring masking the real location of a deadly plan for a galactic civil war that would crush the Empire out of existence.

Time was running out. Only Flandry had the knowledge that could prevent devastation. And when the real trouble began, Flandry was half a universe away.

This is the culmination of the greatest adventure series in the history of science fiction.

With ‘A Stone in Heaven’ Poul Anderson has brought the career of Dominic Flandry full cycle. From the beginning Flandry has piece by piece mortgaged his soul that the long night of galactic barbarism might be held off just a little longer. Now, face to face with his personal long night, Flandry is offered one last chance for love and honour in a universe he has come to believe holds neither…

The legendary Nicholas van Rijn had, of course, been right all along. Just as he had foreseen, the Polesotechnic League – that great empire of merchant princes – had flowered and then crumbled into the vastness of space.

The same fate would befall the Terran Empire that succeeded it. Even heroes like Dominic Flandry lived under the shadow of their eventual extinction – the ever-hungry darkness that would take him and his world in the end.

But for those who came after, those wretched heirs of Terran civilisation, the darkness was no impending tragedy. This time they were facing the reality of…

THE LONG NIGHT

Starfarers is the story of an expedition into the far reaches of the galaxy, where answers to mankind’s greatest questions await.

The saga begins when evidence of an advanced civilization is discovered by SETI astronomers. “Trails” observed in the sky are thought to be from starships travelling at the speed of light, an enigma that spurs scientific minds until this breakthrough is achieved by mankind as well. An expedition is then mounted and an eclectic team of scientists chosen to journey into the sector where the intelligent life is allegedly located.

But because the destination of the starship, Envoy, and her crew is 60,000 light-years away, the time required to reach the point of origin of the signals and return is 120,000 years – longer than Homo sapiens has been on Earth. And though the crew is ready to face the ramifications of such a trek, no one is prepared for what awaits them at the outer edge of the cosmos – or back at the planet they once called home.

Starfarers is a story of patience and immediacy, but most of all of courage. It is a saga for anyone who has ever felt the emptiness of life on Earth and found the missing substance in the spaces between the stars.

Book four in the series which relate the story of Kirth Gersen as he exacts his revenge on five notorious criminals, collectively known as the Demon Princes, who carried his village off into slavery during his childhood.

There is a Hole at the eastern fringe of the known universe. Deep within it hangs a lost star, Mora, with twin planets, Maske and Skay. On wild Maske there is a rocky peninsula inhabited by a clan of warlike dreamers, the Droads. The eldest son, Trewe, is by birthright Droad of Droad. The second son has no choice but to turn his face toward adventure. His name is Jubal Droad…

About two centuries from now, the human race on Earth is in trouble, perhaps even facing extinction, because of the rapid evolution of diseases.

A crew of young men and women travel to the moons of Saturn, to Titan, to investigate the biochemistry of the pre-life conditions there in the slim hope of discovering something that might save Earth. Nearly half of the crew die on the way. They have to do most of their exploration in virtual-reality machinery. The whole story runs at high speed, as they race to find answers across the surface of an alien landscape with death close behind, and gaining.