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For over 100 years, the machine called Colligatarch had ruled the Earth. Its predictions of the future have proved so accurate that humans accepted its recommendations as the best course of action – until a young engineer in Phoenix begins to travel without authorization, enter secret places, assume aliases, and display super-human feats of strength. Is it because he has fallen in love? Or has he instead fallen into an interplanetary plot?

Pip and Flinx: Book Ten.

Never have the cares of the universe lain so heavily on Flinx’s shoulders, nor the forces against him seemed so invincible. Pursued by a newly revealed sect of doomsday fanatics and hunted by factions inside and outside the Commonwealth, he is expected to single-handedly avert a looming galactic crisis (or bear responsibility for the consequences.) Flinx can be forgiven for feeling a slight touch of melancholy.

According to his ship’s Al, there’s only one solution for what ails Flinx – a vacation. But with increasing number of enemies chasing him with ever greater enthusiasm, Flinx must find a getaway shrouded in obscurity. It seems that Jast, a planet smack in the middle of nowhere, is prefect, but trouble can find Flinx anywhere. What he doesn’t know is that his vacation paradise is a danger zone of the highest magnitude. And by the time he learns the truth, it may be too late.

In the late twentieth century, Admiral Julian 3rd can get no rest, for he knows his future. He will be reborn as his grandson in the next century to journey through space and make an ominous discovery inside the moon; he will live again in the dark years of the twenty-second century as Julian 9th, who refuses to bow down to the victorious Moon Men; and as Julian 20th, the fierce Red Hawk, he will lead humanity’s final battle against the alien invaders in the twenty-fifth century. The Moon Maid is Edgar Rice Burroughs’s stunning epic of a world conquered by alien invaders from the moon and of the hero Julian, who champions the earth’s struggle for freedom, peace, and dignity.

An urgent message from Pellucidar, that world of primitive men and primeval jungles that lies inside the crust of the Earth, called on Tarzan of the Apes for assistance.

Tarzan, used to the dangers of darkest Africa, heeded the call to Pellucidar, where all his skill in the jungle, all his talents with beasts and primitive men, would be put to the extreme test. For in that land at the Earth’s core, under the eternal day of the Central Sun, his terrific talents were needed just to stay alive – let alone to fulfil the mission that had called him there!

Twelve thousand years in the future, mankind has survived two enigmatic, civilisation-destroying setbacks. Now a third holocaust is anticipated by the people of the island refuge of Ongladred. They fear destruction from invading barbarians of the Angromain Archipelagoes, the reappearance of a semi-mythical sea creature and the devious intervention of the neo-human Parfects.

The imminent disaster is very much the concern of Ingram Marley, a government spy sent to keep surveillance over Stonelore – a secluded haven and the centre of free thought on Ongladred – and Gabriel Elk, Stonelore’s master and resident genius. While panic and fear rage outside, deep inside Stonelore the mysteries of life are pursued – reanimation of the dead, the invention of powerful laser weapons and the secrets of ‘old earth’ knowledge.

Amidst harrowing dangers of sea battles and land invasions, beneath the shattered moons, Ingram Marley’s world is about to change beyond his wildest imaginings.

In the middle-distant future, Andrew Blake, discovered on a distant planet huddled inside a capsule, is brought back to Earth suffering from total amnesia. Over 200 years old, he thinks and acts like a man but becomes frighteningly aware of two alien beings that lurk within his body – a strange biological computer and a wolf-like animal. With the latter in control he breaks out of hospital to look for his past.

Yellowstone National Park sits on a hot spot: a plume of molten rock coming up from deep inside the earth capable of volcanic eruptions far greater than any that have occurred in times past. It has been silent for many years, providing false security for a nation unprepared for the full force and fury of nature unleashed.

Then explosions send lava and mud flowing far beyond Yellowstone toward populated areas. Clouds of ash drift across the country, nearly blanketing the land from coast to coast. The fall-out destroys crops and livestock, clogs machinery, and makes cities uninhabitable. Those who survive find themselves facing the dawn of a new ice age as temperatures plummet worldwide.

Colin Ferguson is a police lieutenant in a suburb of Los Angeles, where snow is falling for the first time in decades. He fears for his family, who are spread across America, refugees caught in an apocalyptic catastrophe in which humanity has no choice but to rise from the ashes and re-create the world…

Arpazia is the aging queen who paces the halls of a warlord’s palace. Cold as winter, she has only one passion-for the mysterious hunter who courts the outlawed old gods of the woodland. Coira is the princess raised in the shadow of her mother’s hatred. Avoided by both her parents and half forgotten by her father’s court, she grows into womanhood alone . . . until the mirror speaks, and blood is spilled, and the forest claims her.

The tragic myth of the goddess Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, stolen by the king of the underworld, is woven together with the tale of Snow White to create a powerful story of mothers and daughters and the blood that binds them together, for good or ill. Black queen. White maid. Royal huntsman. Seven little folk who live in the forest. Come inside, sit by the fire, and listen to this fairy tale as you’ve never heard it told before.

Once upon a time there was a mirror, and a girl as white as snow. . .

Mindplayers are tomorrow’s psychoanalysts, linked directly to their patients using sophisticated machinery attached to the optic nerve. In one-to-one Mindplay contact, you can be inside someone else’s head, wandering the landscapes of their consciousness. Allie is a sensation-seeking young woman, obtaining illicit thrills from her shady friend Jerry Wirerammer. But Allie goes badly astray when Jerry supplies her with a “madcap” – a device that lets you temporarily and harmlessly experience psychosis. There’s something wrong with Jerry’s madcap, and the psychosis doesn’t go away when it’s disconnected. Allie ends up undergoing treatment at a “dry-cleaner”, and she is faced with a stark choice – jail, for her illegal use of the madcap; or training to become a Mindplayer herself.

During training Allie becomes familiar with the Pool – a cohesive, though shifting mental landscape jointly constructed by a number of minds; and more disturbingly encounters McFlor, who has been mind-wiped, so that his adult body is inhabited by a mind only two hours old. And as a fully-fledged Mindplayer Allie has to choose between the many specialist options open to her – Reality Affixing or Pathosfinding; Thrillseeking or Dreamfeeding.

Thirty billion people from throughout Earth’s history have been resurrected along the great an winding waterways of Riverworld. Most began life anew – accepting without question the sustenance provided by their mysterious benefactors. But a rebellious handful burned to challenge the unseen masters who controlled their fate

Now, these adventures of Riverworld have penetrated the great tower which rises from the amazing planet’s north polar seas – and within it is the mighty computer which controls the resurrection of billions of human beings. It is inside this giant tower that Sir Richard Burton, Alice Liddell Hargreaves, Peter Frigate and Li Po meet their greatest challenge – and their deadliest foe.

The incredible secret behind the Riverworld is about to be unveiled . . .

The final chapter of humanity’s future has begun and one man, Nigel Walmsley, has been alive through it all. An ancient scientist from the distant past, Walmsley had been marooned inside an anomaly of time and space. From here he recalls Earth’s desperate struggle against the mechs, a violent artificial intelligence dedicated to total annihilation.


In a strange space-time continuum called the Esty, the last few survivors from humanity’s ravaged planets have taken refuge, readying themselves for a final stand against their ruthless executioners.


Three generations of men stand between the mechs and total oblivion for the human race: Toby Bishop, a young warrior-in-training; Killeen Bishop, Toby’s father and leader of the last remnants of humanity; and Killeen’s own father, long believed dead, but now mysteriously returned to his family.


As the mechs continue to carve their swathe of destruction through the galaxy, these three men hold the sole hope for the survival of the human race.

The Penheniot Experimental Research Village was a top-secret community with an elaborate defence system to keep away prying eyes. Inside the walls men rushed ahead with practical experiments to develop a means of time travel, while outside the everyday world fell victim to more and more plagues, strikes and rioting.

The world was on the brink of chaos. Could the small band of scientists and chrononauts at Penheniot Village find a safe method of escape into the future before the violence and death outside destroyed them too?

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk – a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world’s artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they’d been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside – more than a hundred million years per day on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.

Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who’s forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.

Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans…and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth’s probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun – and report back on what they find.

Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

The largest spaceship ever made is hurtling overhead, falling. Six people are trapped inside with no escape. If it strikes the Earth it will explode with the force of an atomic bomb; what can be done?

The mighty 2,000-tonne Prometheus is the largest piece of space hardware ever launched – a joint Soviet-American project to harness solar energy before the power resources of the world run out. But politically and technically the project is doomed, and the nerve-racking predicament of the crew of six shrinks to nothing beside the horrifying destruction which threatens hundreds of thousands of people if no way can be found to move the satellite from it’s ever-decreasing orbit towards Earth . . .

Skyfall is a tale of incredible terror, giving a foresight of the global disaster which could one day become reality.

‘Tis the season for treachery: The Earl of Somerset is throwing a lavish Christmas feast, a revel above all others to celebrate the holiday. But the Dark Powers have chosen this joyous time to launch a massive offensive. An army of land-hungry trolls has laid siege outside the Earl’s fortress, while a nest of venomous traitors waits to hatch its deadly plan from the inside.

Now Sir James, the brave Dragon Knight, must fight a battle unlike any he has ever known – a battle no man, knight or dragon can win. Not even if he is all three in one.

Dive into adventure in the last unknown territory on Earth – the sea. Join Robby Hoenig and a cast of characters as unusual as any ever met on a distant planet . . .

In the third Robby Hoenig adventure, Secret Under the Caribbean, the key to a baffling puzzle – and the truth about a mysterious monster – are locked inside a sunken Spanish ship . . .


Gordon R. Dickson’s Robby Hoenig adventures are timeless young adult stories in the tradition of Arthur C. Clarke’s Dolphin Island.

Time Switch at the Zoo.

One day Martin Naumchik, reporter for Paris Soir, visited the Berlin Zoo. He was standing outside the spacious cage housing the newly-acquired Brecht Biped, Fritz, when the world seemed to lurch.

Then he was no longer outside the cage looking in, but inside looking out. He was no longer Martin Naumchik. He was Fritz, the Biped, that strange celestial animal from a world eighteen light-years away.

At the same time, Fritz, who had lived almost all his life in Hamburg Zoo, also felt the lurching motion. And found himself standing outside his cage in the body of Martin Naumchik, looking at the frantic Biped inside, who was beating with both hands on the glass.

Time was running out for Bob Kinnaird. Without much warning, the Hunter – the green protoplasmic alien that lived inside him and cured all his ills – had suddenly become his destroyer. Day by day Bob grew weaker and weaker, but only specialists from the Hunter’s distant world would know what was wrong with him and, more importantly, how to save him.

But the only way searchers from his planet could find him was to locate his missing spaceship . . . a spaceship that had crashed beneath the ocean years before, its location still very much a mystery. Once again leading an investigation against time – as he had done so many years before – the Hunter knew he had to find comrades and find them fast . . . before someone murdered his best friend.

Dorian Hawkmoon, the last Duke of Koln, swore to destroy the Dark Empire of Granbretan. But after his defeat and capture at the hands of the vast forces of the Empire, Hawkmoon becomes a puppet, co-opted by his arch nemesis, the ruthless Baron Meliadus, to infiltrate the last stronghold of rebellion against Granbretan: the small but powerful city of the Kamarg. He has been implanted with a black jewel, through which the Dark Empire can control his every decision. But in the stronghold of the Kamarg, Hawkmoon discovers the power inside him to overcome any control, and his vengeance against the Dark Empire is filled with an unrelenting fury.

Poul Anderson’s stories are classics from the golden age of science fiction and beyond. A master storyteller, Anderson wrote tales ranging from the immediate to the distant future, from Earth to far-flung galaxies, from hard science fiction to fantasy – all the elements stirred and blended as only Anderson could!

ADMIRALTY is the fourth volume of The Collected Works of Poul Anderson and collects his best works from a writing career that spans over 50 years.

This volume contains 23 stories including:

Goat Song (Hugo and Nebula winner)
Operation Changeling
The Adventure of the Misplaced Hound
Delenda Est
Lodestar
The Pugilist
Marius
Inside Straight

Plus the revised version of ‘Black Bodies’ and an afterword by Poul Anderson discussing ‘Eutopia’

Ships occasionally disappeared in hyperspace, regrettable sacrifices to the luxury of faster than light travel. But now one of the lost ships has been found and the wreckage is enough to terrify even the most cold-blooded witness.

The lucky ones on the lost ship are dead. The others have been turned inside-out in gruesome parody of human beings and they are still alive. The disgraced Captain Kurt Varl is chosen to command a suicide mission to discover the cause of these disasters.

The enemy is unknown and the only way Varl can solve the mystery is to use himself as bait!

The year is 2381. The place is Urban Monad 116 of the constellation Chippitts. The population of this one-thousand storey super-structure is 800,000+ and always growing. After two centuries of ruthless, selective breeding, the essence of life is to be blessworthy and to multiply; to afford one’s neighbours any type of sexual fulfilment and, above all, to avoid the evil of frustration.

But, within this seemingly blissful vertical world there are individuals who feel such perverse desires as a longing for privacy, a wish to descend from the heights, to walk on earth and bask in the sunshine. These rebel throwbacks to an earlier Earth are dangerous, disruptive elements. And they must be destroyed – if they do not destroy themselves first . . .

THE WIZARD KNIGHT springs from the myths, legends and literature of times past.
A teenager passes from Earth to a magical realm of seven worlds, where he is given a hero’s adult body and named Able. Though forced to act as a man, inside he is still a boy, even as he sets off to find his destined sword and become a knight.
In his quest he battles giants, meets gods, heroes and a sorceress (who repeatedly tries to seduce him), and serves the mercurial dragon king Arnthor in a was that could end everything.

The Glory that was – or the Glory that wasn’t?

Knut Bulnes had considered Vasil IX, World Emperor of the 27th century, to be a harmless eccentric until Imperial decree completely sealed off Greece behind a force wall and people of Greek descent suddenly began disappearing from the rest of the world – including the wife of Bulnes’s friend Wiyem Flin.

Bulnes reluctantly agreed to help Flin find his wife, and the two managed to get inside the force wall only to find themselves in the Classical Greece of Socrates and Euripides – and the target of a man-hunt not only by the soldiers of Perikles, but also by the unpleasant characters with machine guns.