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Retief returns – to make the galaxy safe for diplomacy!

The diplomat extraordinaire faces his ultimate challenge on the embattled planet Furtheron – to keep the peace and keep himself in one piece!

Voracious Crawlie cannibals want him for dinner – while the wily Creepies are besieging Earth’s embassy. Then greedy Groacians add fuel to the fire, igniting civil war for their own secret ends.

Only a rare diplomat can pull his Corps out of this stew, save his boss’s hide, and preserve the future of the Galaxy!

The world, as Lafayette O’Leary knew it, disappeared in a flash. Perhaps it was his own doing – after all, he had the uncanny gift of creating alternate realities by sheer mental power.

But the result was a nightmare gone out of control. All O’Leary wanted was to find his wife and return to the familiar world of Artesia. Yet no sooner did he manage to extricate himself from one bizarre situation than he was thrust into another, equally threatening…

There was only one thing to do: he had to penetrate the very center of power from which his destiny was being controlled and – take it into his own hands!

Return to the eon-spanning and universe-crossing conflict between humanity and the unknowable alien Xeelee in this collection of stories, available in ebook for the first time!

Baxter’s future history, known as the Xeelee sequence, is an exemplar of the form: it comprises his first four novels – Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux and Ring – and these marvellous linked stories, as well as those in the new collection XEELEE: ENDURANCE.

Contains 21 short stories, all set in the XEELEE universe.

Pel Brown knew nothing about parallel universes, let alone travel between them. Then he stepped through a portal that appeared in his basement – and his life turned upside down.

That first inexplicable doorway took him into a magic world called Faerie, ruled by the evil and mysterious Shadow. Another portal provided escape to a world of science and spaceships – and ruthless space pirates plundering the Galactic Empire.

Imperial forces rescued Pel. They would even send him home – but only after he returned to Faerie and destroyed Shadow. And so, with wizards, spacemen, and swordsmen as his unlikely allies, Pel set out to beard the enemy in its stronghold.

But real life is what happens while you’re making other plans – as Pel learned when he uncovered his malign foe’s true nature…

Ethshar, or “the World” as its inhabitants call it, is the setting for almost a dozen novels by Lawrence Watt-Evans. The dominant nation on the World is the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, while the largest, richest city, where most of the stories are set, is Ethshar of the Spices. The name itself comes from words meaning “safe harbor.” You don’t need to have read any of the novels to enjoy the stories herein; each one should stand alone. And if you’ve read the novels, you will enjoy this return to the world of Ethshar with 11 stories…

The Calling. Sooner or later, it claimed every powerful warlock … a growing magical compulsion to go north to the mysterious land of Aldagmor that nothing could stop. None ever returned.

Hanner the Warlock knew his days were numbered. The Calling pulled at him ceaselessly now, and his ability to resist had begun to crumble. So he determined to find a place where the Calling couldn’t reach him . . . another world, located through a magic tapestry. Every warlock knew that the farther he was from Aldagmor, the weaker the Calling was – and the weaker his magic was, as well, but that was only a secondary consideration. That weakening had given Hanner the idea to find, or make, a place so distant from Aldagmor that the Call couldn’t reach it at all.

Unfortunately, the Call took him anyway. And that’s where his story really gets interesting. Because the Calling wasn’t what everyone believed. And when the warlocks who had been Called over the decades suddenly woke up again beside the object doing the calling – and found themselves without their powers – their world may never be the same!

Storm God’s Fury: The ancient gods used powerful weapons on those who defied them.

Vampire Castle: Something with claws instead of hands was unpicking the lead.

Moonlight Island: The prints on the beach changed from human feet to leopard tracks…

The Mountain Thing: It staggered from the mountain cave … savage … hideous … part man, part beast.

Return of Lilith: Lilith … ghastly night monster from mythology older than history.

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.

In Old Earth’s clandestine world of ambassador-spies, Michelangelo Kusanagi-Jones and Vincent Katherinessen were once a starring team. But ever since a disastrous mission, they have been living separate lives in a universe dominated by a ruthless Coalition – one that is about to reunite them.

The pair are dispatched to New Amazonia as diplomatic agents. Allegedly, they are to return priceless art. Covertly, they seek to tap its energy supply. But in reality, one has his mind set on treason. And among the extraordinary women of New Amazonia, in a season of festival, betrayal, and disguise, he will find a new ally – and a force beyond any that humans have known . . .

Harry Keough, aka the Necroscope, has always considered himself a master of the Mobius Continuum – a dimension existing parallel to all space and time and his personal instantaneous gateway to anywhere in the multiverse. But this is hardly overweening conceit on Harry’s part, for to his knowledge he is not unique; two other intelligences, with powers similar to his, do indeed exist. One such is the long-dead August Ferdinand Mobius himself, the German astronomer, mathematician, and discoverer of the eponymous Mobius Strip which led him to explore, posthumously, his previously conjectural Continuum; and the other is Harry’s son, who has not only inherited his father’s mathematical skill but also the metaphysical talent by means of which the Necroscope converses with dead people in their graves!

Picture Harry’s confusion, then, on returning home via the Mobius Continuum from an adventure in Las Vegas, as he witnesses however briefly a flailing figure hurtling conscious but uncontrolled through the endless midnight of the Continuum. Who could this be – how can it be? – that a helpless, silently protesting other is rushing meteor-like across the Continuum’s Stygian vault? Moreover, if he hasn’t arrived here voluntarily, then what vile murderer has sent his victim on this monstrous journey to the end of life itself? For Harry is sure that this is neither his son’s nor Professor Mobius’ doing.

Who and where is he, this Mobius murderer? It is a mystery that only the Necroscope can ever hope to solve – but at what risk to his own life?

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!

Originally written as a play and performed at the Mermaid Theatre, Easter 1962.

It is the early 20th century. Man is seeking signs of life elsewhere in the universe, but all exploratory ships have been lost without a trace – except for DSP15. Thirty years after leaving earth, and given up for lost, DSP15 suddenly appears on radar screens at the space station at Mildenhall, England. Her crew had been frozen to prevent ageing, and as the ship settles to a landing, Dr Richard Warboys eagerly awaits with other scientists for word of what DSP15 has found. But there is no crew, only a message scratched into a metal surface, signed by the captain: “If this ship returns to Earth, then mankind is in deadly peril – God help you – ” And so Earth becomes accidentally involved in a cosmic battle against a virtually omnipotent alien power, in a story suspenseful and exciting from cover to cover.

Returning to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge after a spell at the nuclear research labs of CERN in Geneva, Professor Isaac Newton is plunged into the centre of a baffling mystery. One of his research students, Mike Howarth, has picked up strange signals on his satellite telemetry equipment, signals that appear to emanate from a passing comet. Not long after he has passed the vital data into Isaac Newton’s hands, Howarth is found dead. Soon after that, it becomes clear that some people in very high places – including the Kremlin and the White House – are more than a little interested in the remarkable events taking place at the Cavendish. But with the arrival of that most majestic of all celestial bodies, Comet Halley, a third and infinitely more powerful superpower enters the scene. And the Comet’s extraordinary intentions – not to mention its devastating methods of communicating them to Earth – promise a new dawn for humanity.

When his brother failed to return from a dangerous mission into the town dominated by Motils, Mathew knew that he must go after him.

it was not only a question of rescuing Don, but of finding out just how far the parasite rulers had advanced in their plans for bringing their master mind, the Controller, down to Earth. If the Controller arrived, the future of the human race would be even darker than its present.

It was not until Mathew made contact with a man who had been delivered from the power of the evil micro-organisms that he learned how close the Controller was, and just now imperative it was to strike a blow now.

Time drifted onto the ruin of the Galactic Federation. The centuries rolled over the wars of the first part of the new millennium, laying their patina of forgetfulness over the adventures of the survivors of the expedition to the Forever Planet. Only in the memory banks of lost and ruined computers was there a record of the withering piece of time, hung in its weird universe, poised in a matrix of forever, which had waited eons to release its makers from their imprisonment on a planet which was their plaything, workshop, laboratory and engine.

No one returned to the planet of the Timepivot.

Not of his own volition.

Over the long years, ships of the Interplanetary Confederation had scoured the empty wastes surrounding Sol, searching desperately for a sister planet; a companion for the isolated worlds of the Solar System. Of the ships that were sent out, many returned. But always the answer was the same.

There were no planets! The worlds of Sol were alone in the Great Dark that swirled across the boundless heavens.

It was not until Steve Rane and Nick Brodine, in the Exploratory Ship Vega, reached across the yawning gulf of light years to Sirius, that they found the strange planet that rotated in its complicated orbit around the twin sun. It was an event transcending all others.

A discovery that plunged the planets of Sol into the greatest race of all time. For whoever controlled the alien planet, controlled the Solar System. And away from the watchful eye of the IPC it would be possible to build the greatest space armada in history and attack the Interplanetary Confederation without warning.

To Steve Rane, the order came from Earth Central. Zero Point has been set for three months hence. The ship of Jupiter must not reach the new planet first.

Earth is enveloped in what seems at first to be to be a harmless cloud of cosmic dust. But it leaves behind a deadly disease, dooming every human being on Earth unless an antidote can be found. Medical experts strive to find this antidote, but have to report failure. At this stage a mysterious woman arrives from Jupiter with the antidote mankind so desperately needs, but she demands in return the services of Doctor Meadows as her mate; he will have to return with her to Jupiter to help regenerate her race, where males are extinct. Meadows reluctantly agrees, and the antidote is given, saving humanity, so Meadows prepares to accept his fate…

Judith Moffett returns to the future with this moving tale of the Hefn occupation of Earth and how it affects the planet’s native humans – two in particular: Pam Pruitt, a talented young woman from Kentucky, and Liam O’Hara, whose unique friendship with the Hefn Humphrey saved his life. The two teens journey to a special place in remote Kentucky, Hurt Hollow, where the painter Orrin Hubbell and his wife, Hannah, found a way to live in peace with the planet during the twentieth century. The prospects of living peacefully seem distant for Pam and Liam, both of whom must find peace with themselves as well as with the Hefn Directive. The marvelous events that befall them en route to Kentucky and in the Hollow itself beautifully depict the subtle ways in which the world shapes them, and the stunning ways in which they change the world.

When the Chester A. Arthur, the world’s first and only coal/steam/paddlewheel-propelled spaceship rose into the skies over Buffalo Falls, Pa., who would have expected what followed?

Will Professor Thintwhistle and his crew be able to return to earth? Will Miss Taphammer ever find them? Will Jefferson Jackson Clay’s foul plot succeed? And what of the King of the Cats?

One star-chained evening in a Manhattan bathroom, Carl Schirmer spontaneously combusts! His body transforms into light, mysteriously snatched from his banal life by an alien intelligence 130 billion years in the future. There, all spacetime is collapsing into a cosmic black hole, the Big Crunch – and a bold, cosmic destiny awaits Carl. Rebuilt from the remnants of his light by extraterrestrials for a cryptic purpose, he awakens in time’s last world, the strangest of all – the Werld.

At the edge of infinity, Carl discovers the Foke, nomadic humans who travel among the floating islands of the Werld. The Foke teach him how to live – and love – at the end of time, and he loses his heart to his plucky guide, the beautiful Evoë. Their life together in this blissful kingdom that knows no aging or disease brings them to rapture – until Evoë falls prey to the zotl, a spidery intelligence who hunt the Foke and eat the chemical by-products of their pain. In order to save his beloved from a gruesome death, Carl must return to Earth – 130 billion years earlier – where he is shocked to discover that the Earth he’s come back to is not the one he left.

Can he meet the harsh demands of his task before the zotl find him and begin ravishing the Earth?

Author’s Note: The volumes of this series can each be read independently of the others. The feature that unifies them is their individual observations of science fiction’s sub-genre: “space opera,” which the editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer define as “colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes.”

Art Blastside in her third daring adventure upon the high seas.

It’s been eighteen months since Art’s baby was born: a pretty child called Africa, with Felix’s dark hair and Art’s grey eyes. Now Art, who dreamed of being like her own loving, wonderful Ma, must face up to the fact that she has absolutely no warm feeling for her child. In fact – Art can’t stand her! What’s wrong with her?

Beyond the family lies an unsettled world too. The French are still waging war, and England has fallen out of love with pirates. Piratomania has been suppressed by the government and Art and Felix are evicted from their cliff-top mansion.

The return of Ebad and the new and improved Unwelcome Stranger prompts Art to regroup her ragtag crew and sail once again across the oceans, through wild weather, bizarre places and riotous sea battles, to return to the Treasured Isle and learn the ultimate true secret behind the treasure and the mystery of why Art can’t love her child.

Artemesia Blastside, 17

Position – the Most Admired Pirate in England.
Partner – Handsome Felix Phoenix.
Enemy – Little Goldie Girl, a Monster.
Heart set – on winning back Lost Treasure Beyond the War-Torn Seas.

At last, Claidi and her beloved Argul are free to get married. But before they can start their life together, Claidi must face her past. They return to her birthplace, the House, to rescue the other slaves – and find that there has been a revolution, sparked by Claidi’s escape. Then the two are urgently summoned by Ironel Novendot of the Wolf Tower, who tells them that Ustareth is alive. Ustareth, the mother of Argul and Venn, the science-sorceress, who has perhaps manipulated each of them for their entire lives. Now she wants them all to visit her – but to what end?

Leaving the Rise, Claidi anticipates a joyful reunion with her beloved Argul.

Instead, her return to the Hulta people meets only mistrust, fury and betrayal. Determined to unravel the lies and deceit which haunt her past and threaten her future, she journeys northward.

But in the strange cities-and even stranger people-she finds, Claidi sees only more mystery and deeper secrets.