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At the end of The Cyborg and the Sorcerers, Sam Turner was making a life for himself on the planet Dest. He thought he had left the long-lost interstellar war between Earth and its rebellious colonies behind him forever.
“Forever” turned out to be eleven years. That was how long it took for another Independent Reconaissance Unit to respond to the distress call his ship had sent before it was destroyed. And this one made his own berserk killer computer look sane.

The engines died first, then the ship. Hope died. Men lived on. Then men died one by one… Accidents… quarrels… illness… age. One man remained. One man sat in the quietness of the drifting ship and wondered why Death didn’t want him.
The Others found the incredible derelict and approached her cautiously. The last spaceman watched them come and went to greet them. He was too old and tired to have any emotions left. Then they went to work on him. One by one his feelings came to life again. He took an interest in the New World on which he found himself. There was something strangely worrying about the planet. Things looked vaguely reminiscent of other things from long ago… A mountain range reminded him of Earth. A vast stretch of water looked like an ocean he had once crossed. Could the impossible have happened?
Could the incredible be reality?

THE GREKS WERE PEOPLE-HATERS

They came to Earth in their space ship, bearing fabulous gifts – such as machines that did any day job automatically, and fertilizer that made plants shoot up overnight. But they presented their gifts with contempt, and with a look in their eyes that made people feel “creepy”.

Still, because of the brave new world they promised, they Greks could be forgiven anything – until they left and people discovered the machines were breaking down. Then their only choice was to beg the Greks to come back, on their own terms. And they knew the terms would be hard…

When Ben Shepherd left the Navy SEALs, all he wanted was to spend his retirement resting his battered body and finding peace for his wounded spirit.
That all ends when the starry desert night is shattered by an alien ship crashing to Earth near his remote home. The pilot is the last of a conquered civilisation, shot down by extra-terrestrial aggressors. Another war has found Ben, and when he is injected with a serum that gives him superhuman abilities, it’s a war he has no choice but to fight for the sake of the planet.
His body might be healed, but his trauma still weighs heavily on him as he becomes the reluctant leader of the only line of defence against an alien invasion. Will his broken psyche be able to stand the pressure? And what becomes of the Earth if it can’t?

The planet Attica has two continents: Lambda and Delta. The indigenous alien population being restricted to Delta, Earth’s colony was planted on Lambda. Before the arrival of the Daedalus, two sailing ships had set out from Lambda to cross the ocean separating the two continents, and neither had returned. Now a third is on its way, and Mariel Valory and Alex Alexander of the Daedalus have hitched a lift, in order that Mariel might use her talent to try to make contact with the aliens. Unfortunately, it turns out that contact has already been made, and that the aliens are building an empire with the aid of borrowed Terran technology–an empire that’s beginning to crack under its internal strains and eternal challenges. And when Alex and Mariel are marooned by their reluctant hosts, things start to go from very bad to much worse….

After a thousand years in space the earth vessel lands on a remote planet capable of supporting human life, Shakespeare’s Planet.



But due to a systems malfunction Carter Horton is the only crew member to awaken from his long sleep. And on the strange alien planet he finds only the bizarre creature named Carnivore. Soon he discovers that the two of them must leave the planet immediately – or face certain death. But his space-ship is now obsolete and the inner-space tunnel, their only escape-route to safety, has broken down…

Lola Belman was a refugee. She and her younger brother were on one of the last ships to leave Earth as the bombs began to fall; by the time they left lunar orbit, they were orphans. Lola is now practicing as a therapist on Ganymede, and she has a new patient whose past is a mystery.

During those years of chaos, many records were lost and histories forgotten, and it was an ideal time for anyone who wanted to conceal his or her identity. Now there is a small, dangerous group who will stop at nothing to keep Lola from exploring the past and discovering their existence.

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, starship pilots have become the great romantic heroes of the day. When Star-Pilot Grainger is rescued from a shipwreck, he finds himself pressed into reluctant service to fly the Hooded Swan, the prototype of a new kind of interstellar ship. He’s also picked up an alien parasite that’s determined to share his brain. Under these dire circumstances, can Grainger possibly stay out of trouble? Not a chance!

Can it be that of all the billions of probably planets, revolving around strange suns, in far corners of the Universe, ours is the only home of intelligent life?
If life has managed to come into being elsewhere on some bizarre, grotesque world, just how strange and alien will that life be?
What if its own planet is dying?
It would need a new environment, and the questing ships of its explorers would traverse the void. What if they find Earth and decide that it suits their purpose perfectly… except for man? How would the battle be fought and who would win?

GALACTIC THREAT

The awesome forces of the Empire of Earth have destroyed most of the evil conspiracy’s fleet, including the ship bearing the ice-blooded Lady A, when the Family d’Alembert uncover a plot on the planet Newforest, proving that the conspiracy commanded by the mysterious C is even more widespread than they have dreamed.

For Yvette suddenly realises who – or what – C actually is, and she knows the terrifying true meaning of Lady A’s boast that the conspiracy is the Empire!

Revolt of the Galaxy is the tenth and final exciting novel in the enthralling space adventure series whose heroes and heroines are the intrepid Family dAlembert.

A time-traveller on an illegal trip into the past learns a chilling truth about her own destiny…


As a deadly Superflu runs rampant through a polluted, overpopulated Earth, a husband-and-wife scientific team races to scientific team races to salvage a livable future…


On a planet where the laws of physics are strangely twisted, a brilliant scientist’s work undermines an ancient faith and leads to a shattering revelation…


An ore-hauler on Mercury, desperate to save her endangered ship and career, finds a remarkable way out: a wormhole trapped in the hellish flux of magnetic fields and fiery plasma generated by the nuclear furnace of the sun…

Terran Corps scattered their ships outward into the glittering galaxies. Solterra’s prime objective: orbital reconstruction of the far-flung planets. They had tightened up Solterra’s galaxy and had made mankind secure against alien threats – or so Terrans believed.

As Chief Commander, Stephen Strang aggressively explored the cosmos for the glory of his beloved Earth. He could boast that he had moved more planets into orbit around Sol than any other. Strang felt smugly safe against alien “sharks” – until he discovered the vast time-bomb that was planet Vesta’s core. . .

Lieutenant Commander Shaila Jain has been given the assignment of her dreams: the first manned mission to Saturn. But there’s competition and complications when she arrives aboard the survey ship Armstrong. The Chinese are vying for control of the critical moon Titan, and the moon Enceladus may harbor secrets deep under its icy crust. And back on Earth, Project DAEDALUS now seeks to defend against other dimensional incursions. But there are other players interested in opening the door between worlds . . . and they’re getting impatient.

For Thomas Weatherby, it’s been nineteen years since he was second lieutenant aboard HMS Daedalus. Now captain of the seventy-four-gun Fortitude, Weatherby helps destroy the French fleet at the Nile and must chase an escaped French ship from Egypt to Saturn, home of the enigmatic and increasingly unstable aliens who call themselves the Xan. Meanwhile, in Egypt, alchemist Andrew Finch has ingratiated himself with Napoleon’s forces . . . and finds the true, horrible reason why the French invaded Egypt in the first place.

Earl Dumarest, now a vanquished and captive mercenary, is offered the choice of surrender to the fearsome Cyclan or the chance of freedom by the beautiful and ruthless Lady Delphine. The risks are terrifying – but has Dumarest a choice?

Intent on finding the legendary world of Terra – Earth – the planet of his birth; pursued by the brilliant and ruthless megalomaniac race, the Cyclan, whose secret key to Galactic domination only he possesses; trapped on a plague ship hurtling through a universe determined to destroy it, and captained by a madman – Earl Dumarest is tempted by the irresistible but fatal promise of Delphine.

The choice is simple – to abandon his dreams or perish by them, just as they promise fulfilment.



(First published 1976)

The world lay frozen under a thousand feet of ice. Only in the Eight Cities of the Matto Grosso did men still live, hunting the wary ice whales for meat and oil, and following the creed of the Ice Mother which foretold the end of all life in ultimate cold.
But legend told of a city far to the north – fabled New York – whose towers rose above the ice, whose crypts held the forgotten lore that might bring warmth to Earth once again. In the best ice ship in the Eight Cities, Konrad Arflane embarked on the impossible voyable to New York – an odyssey of incredible peril and adventure with a shattering discovery at the journey’s end…

Marooned on the planet Quetzalia after their ship clashed with the irresistable force of gravity, Day One In Paradise is not quite the blissful Utopia fact-finding Nearthlings Francis Lostwax and Burne Newman were expecting.

Tropical fronds turn out to be brain-eating Neurovores who decimate the rest of the scientists’ crew, and a sweeping, majestic river becomes a bubbling cauldron of caustic ‘noctus’ or liquified hate.

Abandoning their craft, the two scientists flee to the Quetzalians, a peace-loving race guided by the precepts of the Ancient Mexicans. Together they vow to rid the planet of the evil Neurovores.

But the technology-free Quetzalians demand that the Nearthlings destroy their machines and with them their lifeline back to the planet New Earth…

Sea Venture, CV for short, is the largest ocean-going vessel ever built by man. It is not a ship but a huge sea habitat housing a scientific research station, an entire city of two thousand permanent residents and a thousand passengers.

For some, CV is the vacation dream of a lifetime; for others, a vision of man’s conquest of the seas; for two men it becomes the arena for a deadly game of cat and mouse.

But for one, CV is something else: a place to stalk its next victim. It is not human, it is not even of Earthly origin. To be touched by it is deadly.

What important are the hopes and dreams, fears and schemes of the people of Sea Venture when they are threatened by a force that could destroy all of human civilization?

The year is 2087. The two great power blocs still face each other, with Britain having adopted the political role formerly occupied by Switzerland.

For 75 years the world has known of the approach of another solar system which will pass between our sun and its outermost planets. The sun of the other solar system is named Helios by astronomers, and it too is found to have planets. Its fifth planet, Achilles, is the one most similar to Earth; and rival rocket ship expeditions are launched by the Euro-American and Communist blocs to explore this transient neighbour…

From here on the story is weird and wonderful, the action lively; the scientific ideas are intriguing and the social satire is amusing.

The galaxy is at war, a war between the oxygen-breathing Terran Federation of worlds and the Ginzoes, chlorine-breathing aliens. Neither side dare attack the others’ habitable worlds for fear of reprisals: the war has become a matter of spaceships firing on each other as they emerge from hyperspace.
An Earth ship is captured in battle by the Ginzoes, and its surviving crew learn that the aliens have gained possession of a newly-developed catalyst. If dropped into the oceans of oxygen planets the catalyst can liberate the chlorine from the sea and convert them to chlorine worlds suitable for the Ginzoes. The catalyst will be used unless the Terran Federation declares peace within fifty days. Fifty days to save Mankind . . . or fifty days to doom!

The star Mira was unpredictably variable. Sometimes it was blazing, brilliant and hot. Other times it was oddly dim, cool, shedding little warmth on its many planets. Gresth Gkae, leader of the Mirans, was seeking a better star, one to which his people could migrate. That star had to be steady, reliable, with a good planetary system. And in his astronomical searching, he found Sol. With hundreds of ships, each larger than whole Terrestrial spaceports, and traveling faster than the speed of light, the Mirans set out to move in to Solar regions and take over.

And on Earth there was nothing which would be capable of beating off this incredible armada – until Buck Kendall stumbled upon . . .

The Ultimate Weapon . . .

General Benjamin Shore was heading for the stars – under forged orders and in defiance of Presidential commands. He was leaving Earth in an untested ship with a crew chosen by necessity. And with nothing but faith to guide him. His only hope was to find habitable worlds in the uncharted regions of space ahead.

Thus began Man’s first mission to the unexplored universe. Shore knew that before him lay danger, probable disillusion – maybe even death. But nothing had prepared him for the nightmare he would face on the planet of the Grey-furs for the menace of the Golden People who had driven all other races from Galactic Centre or for what awaited him if he returned to the world he called home.

‘She is unique. She is legend’ THE TIMES

‘Ursula Le Guin is a chemist of the heart’ David Mitchell, author of CLOUD ATLAS

‘A tour de force’ EVENING STANDARD

Earth-scientist Rocannon has been leading an ethnological survey on a remote world populated by three native races: the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, the elvish Fiia, and the warrior clan, Liuar. But when the technologically primitive planet is suddenly invaded by a fleet of ships from the stars, rebels against the League of All Worlds, Rocannon is the only survey member left alive. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this newly discovered world – and finds that legends grow around him as he fights.

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like new Rome to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own time, flying the revolutionary ship, Hooded Swan. The rain forest of Chao Phrya seems a more hospitable place than the Halcyon Drift or the underground world of Rhapsody, scenes of Grainger’s previous adventures. But the colonists of the jungle planet are crazed and the indigenous population enigmatic; and Grainger must must undertake a mission that requires a lengthy journey on foot through the dense forest. His quest seems awkward, hazardous, and doomed to failure – and that’s before the giant spiders make their appearance!

No human being had ever landed on the hidden planet of Arisia. A mysterious barrier, hanging unseen in space, turned back all ships. Then the word came to Earth, inexplicably but compellingly:

GO TO ARISIA!

Virgil Samms, founder of the Galactic Patrol, went – and came back with the Lens, the strange device that gave its wearer powers no man had ever possessed before. Samms knew that the price of this power would be high. But even he had no idea of the ultimate cost – nor of the strange destiny that awaited the First Lensman . . .

First Lensman is the second self-contained novel in E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s epic Lensman series, one of the all-time classics of adventurous, galaxy-spanning science fiction.