Search Results for: galaxies

The interstellar wormholes failed and silence fell across a third of the galaxy. And when Karl Woodward’s starship The Mountain found a lost colony, a stranded criminal mob struck, determined to seize his ship.

The Corps Galactica, the Galaxy’s police force, had pledged itself to a policy of non-interference with the backward Zarathustra Refugee Planets.

Langenschmidt, the Corps chief on the planet Cyclops, was content with this ruling. After all, if the refugee planets could form their own civilizations from scratch, logically they would come up with cultures suited to their own needs.

However, when the case of Justin Kolb came to his attention, Langenschmidt was forced to rethink the problem. Kolb’s accident with the wolfshark revealed to the Corps’ medicos the leg-graft that had been performed on him. It was a perfect match – only its gene-pattern wasn’t Cyclopean, and limb-grafting wasn’t practised on Cyclops.

Where had the leg come from, who had been the unknown repairmen, and wasn’t this something that might be violating galactic law?



(First published 1965)

THE DAUGHTER OF KAIFENG

The world was haunted. Every sunset the natives went home, locked their doors, and pulled down the window blinds. Ghosts didn’t scare Kennedy. As an agent of FATE, it took more than superstition to shake him. But Epidoris was the real thing. Monsters did appear in the darkness, people did vanish at night – a whole MALACA barracks had vanished, garrison, weapons and building.

That’s what brought Kennedy to Epidoris. That and one thing more – a creature of the infamous Dr. Kaifeng had turned up. A beautiful woman, a princess she called herself – but Kennedy had seen her before – lying in a processing vat on a Kaifeng planetoid of warped genetics. Between the scientific machinations of the galaxy’s most perverted mind and the spectral realities of a disputed world there had to be a meaning that boded no good for Terra – and that’s where Kennedy came in.

One man’s fight against interplanetary chaos.

Three novellas featuring Medic Calhoun and the imperturbable Murgatroyd. A physician in the Interstellar Medical service travels the galaxy with no human companionship, and is responsible for the health care, not of people or groups, but of WORLDS!

Torn from the Twentieth Century by the super-science of a master being from an alien galaxy, four adventurers find themselves at Carcasilla, EARTH’S LAST CITADEL, a billion years from now. It is there that the mutated remains of humanity are making their final stand.

The Empire’s boldest agents – Jules and Yvette d’Alembert – blast off against the most dangerous conspiracy in the Galaxy. But even the lightning-powers inherited from their triple-gravity planet are no match for their adversary, the beautiful and ruthless star-warrior called…Lady A.

Who will stop the planetary marauders?

For 6000 years the great Carina Empire ruled the galaxy – but slowly, under the remorseless erosion of centuries, the Empire faded as its Imperial bloodline ran out in weaklings who paid tribute to the wild, untamed Barbarians of the Rim. Finally came the day when the Barbarian legions struck at Carina itself, destroying in a single day and night the mightiest empire in galactic history.

In the ages that followed, the rest of the empire decayed, its individual suns and worlds losing contact, isolated Star-Kings fighting to hold their own cultures together . . . and failing. Ironically, only the Barbarians themselves remained the only coordinated power among the Near Stars. Their fleets drifted the star-trails, looting and destroying everything in their way.

One world alone stood against the dark night of savagery that was engulfing the galaxy – Parlion, the planet of the Star Magicians. And at last came the final battle for civilization in the stars.

Fifteen billion years from now, Earth is a dying planet, its skies darkened by the ashes of burned-out galaxies, its molten core long cooled. The sunless planet is nearing the day of final gravitational collapse in the surrounding galaxy. Mutations and evolution have led to a great disparity of life-forms, while civilization has resorted to the primitive.
Young Deyv of the Turtle Tribe knew nothing of his world’s history or its fate. He lived only to track down the wretched Yawtl who had stolen his precious Soul Egg. Joined by other victims of the same thief – the feisty Vana and the plant-man Sloosh – the group sets off across a nightmare landscape of monster-haunted jungle and wetland. Their search leads them ultimately to the jeweled wasteland of the Shemibob, an ageless being from another star who knows Earth’s end is near and holds the only key to escape.

In the distant future, when science has evolved into an art indistinguishable from magic, Kirin the thief finds himself forced down on an alien planet. Gathering allies, he must defeat the Witch Queen – who plans nothing less than the conquest of the entire galaxy!

Set in the far future, Space Chantey chronicles the adventures of Space Captain Roadstrum and his crew, on a journey through galaxies resonant with myth and peril as Roadstrum valiantly battles to return across the cosmos to Big Tulsa, the Capital of the World, and to his wife and young son Tele-Max.

Solid land inside a cloud of ‘star dust’ – where no solid land should be. And the weird voices – where are they coming from?

Forced down on a minor star galaxy, Kemlo and his friends of Satellite Belt K discover a secret of Space which gives scientists information for which they have been searching for years.

Dumarest has traced the lost planet of Earth to one remote corner of the galaxy, but he still lacks its precise co-ordinates.

Somewhere on the cyber-dominated police-world of Technos lives the mysterious woman who can help him. And the only way to find her is to become a slave . . .



(First published 1972)

From the landscapes of prehistory to 40th millennium AD, from post-war England to the full canvas of the inhabited galaxy, Robert Holdstock’s haunting mythic imagination weaves eight stories of arresting power and ingenuity.

Includes the original story from which the World Fantasy Award-winning novel, Mythago Wood, was expanded.

Earth: expensive, elite graveyard to the galaxy. Ravaged 10,000 years earlier by war, Earth was reclaimed by its space-dwelling offspring as a planet of landscaping and tombstones. None of them fully human, Fletcher, Cynthia, and Elmer journey through this dead world, discovering human traits and undertaking a quest to rebuild a human world on Earth.

Join John Carmody of Earth on an unforgettable adventure on the weirdest planet in the galaxy. Just when Carmody had given up understanding this weird world and decided simply to accept whatever happened, it was the Night of Light. All the citizens of Dante’s Joy slumbered on that night – to awake, if at all, in a world even more bizarre and more unearthly than before…

On the far planet Wing IV, a brilliant scientist creates the humanoids – sleek black androids programmed to serve humanity.

But are they perfect servants – or perfect masters?

Slowly the humanoids spread throughout the galaxy, threatening to stifle all human endeavor. Only a hidden group of rebels can stem the humanoid tide…if it’s not already too late.

Like a great, lethal snake, plague creeps through the galaxies. No conscious entity can halt its progress, and life is slowly draining from planet after planet.

Only one super-intelligence is capable of preventing cataclysm. To do it, he must penetrate far beyond infinity – to the formless, deathless creature out to kill the universe.

The spaceship landed on the planet Earth to bring it the message of a new religion and a new way of life that would fit the terrestrial barbarians to take their place in the great community of the Galaxy.

Their motives were beyond reproach. Their objectives were honourable. It was not their fault that humanity distrusted their motives, repudiated their objectives – and did its best to drive the missionaries back into space . . .

‘Behold these annals from the Discovery and on through the World-Taking.
This is the tale as told by Terrans, who walk the earth.
Then read.’

THE EARTH BOOK OF STORMGATE POUL ANDERSON’S MIGHTY EPIC OF FUTURE HISTORY

The full length story forming the core of the chronicle of the expansion of earthmen into the inhabited galaxy . . . from the Earth Book kept in the Stormgate archive of the great winged race of Ythri.

The Painting was dramatic, passionate, a work of genius. But Earl Dumarest was blind to its power.

For there, in the background, were the features of cratered Luna, satellite of Earth, the fabled planet that Dumarest had sought through countless galaxies.

Dumarest had to find the artist, had to talk to him. His trail led to Ath – and to the ominous forces of the Cyclan.




(First published 1978)

Scar: a harsh, inhospitable world with a vicious and shifting population of prospectors, drawn from every corner of the galaxy by rumours of a miraculous golden spore.

To this violent planet come two more travellers, ready to try their luck among its lethal jungles: the cruel, mocking Lord of Jest – and Dumarest, driven by destiny on his endless search for Lost Earth . . .



(First published 1970)

Unable to exceed the speed of light, he found ways around the law of nature, twisting space and time to his bidding. But the lure of FTL speeds could would not be forgotten…and the crew of the Flying Cloud – casts-offs from the great civilisations of the galaxy – found themselves breaking through the barriers of the past to discover new worlds – worlds from which they could never return!

To the men of the starship Quetzal their task seemed routine: to establish diplomatic relations and enter into trade negotiations with the people of a newly discovered planet. Since to all appearances the folk of Gwydion were the most thoroughly amiable in all the galaxy – words for such concepts as war, theft, anger, murder and jealousy did not even exist in their language – there could hardly be a problem. But as the season changed on Gwydion, so did the people…

Dorian Hawkmoon… Corum Jhaelen Irsei… Elric of Melniboné. Over the years, Michael Moorcock has captivated readers with his unending versions of the Eternal Champion, the timeless warrior who serves the Cosmic Balance in the ongoing battle that rages between Law and Chaos through the many planes and levels of the multiverse. But what is the multiverse and what are its origins? In this essential novel, Michael Moorcock provides readers these critical answers.
World War Three has come and gone, and humankind has survived its brutal past to assume its place among the stars. Yet their existence is endangered nonetheless, as their entire universe is threatening to collapse. All their hopes rest on the shoulders of Count Renark von Bek, a nobleman of extraordinary psychic abilities and carefully guarded secrets.
Aided by his companions, von Bek will delve into the Sundered Worlds, a mysterious galaxy outside the space-time continuum that has materialized on the edges of known space. Inside this roving galaxy, they will uncover the secrets of the multiverse and embark upon a last desperate gamble to save humankind.
But as they will soon discover, even survival comes laden with danger, as the solutions to their dilemma may also hold the final keys to their destruction