Search Results for: stay

Krells never set out to be a hero. He was the first to admit he was a trader. “In it for the money; I leave thinking to the experts.” But the experts couldn’t solve the problem of Ralcor IX.

Professional fighters and scientific investigators vanished or were mysteriously destroyed. The robot might of an armoured Bellicose 35 was found shredded like tinsel. Krells still refused to think of himself as hero material – but he wouldn’t quit. Martia, his computer girl, and Galor, the despatch man, stayed with him. For some reason the power that had driven every other terrestrial humanoid off Ralcor IX couldn’t dislodge the traders. Krells groped desperately for a reason. Finding one meant the return of his own people and that meant money. Something he couldn’t understand was shielding him from the Unknown Menace. Suppose he accidentally stopped doing whatever it was that protected him…?

Most people would have become neurotic and quit – not Krells. He didn’t seem to have enough intelligence or imagination to know when to worry.

The son of a Civil War veteran, Edgar Rice Burroughs was a prolific writer for the early pulp magazines. Famous the world over as the creator of Tarzan – and in SF circles for his Martian tales featuring John Carter – Burroughs is a household name. But John Carter wasn’t the only Earthman to champion another world. This omnibus collects PIRATES OF VENUS, LOST ON VENUS and CARSON OF VENUS – the first three of Burroughs’ classic pulp tales of Carson Napier on the waterworld of Amtor – better known to us as Venus.

PIRATES OF VENUS: The shimmering, cloud-covered planet of Venus conceals a wondrous secret: the strikingly beautiful yet deadly world of Amtor. In Amtor, cities of immortal beings flourish in giant trees reaching thousands of feet into the sky; ferocious beasts stalk the wilderness below; rare flashes of sunlight precipitate devastating storms; and the inhabitants believe their world is saucer-shaped with a fiery center and icy rim. Stranded on Amtor after his spaceship crashes, astronaut Carson Napier is swept into a world where revolution is ripe, the love of a princess comes at a dear price, and death can come as easily from the blade of a sword as from the ray of a futuristic gun.

LOST ON VENUS: Napier’s adventures continue in this pulse-pounding sequel to PIRATES OF VENUS. Here the intrepid and wry explorer takes on a savage world in order to rescue the princess from her sworn enemies. Napier’s epic quest for Duare takes him through the streets of the City of the Dead, into the terrifying Room of the Seven Doors, and face to face with fantastic and perilous creatures. LOST ON VENUS brims with the action, suspense and wit unique to the Master of Adventure.

CARSON OF VENUS: Carson Napier, first Earthman to reach Venus, had to keep alert every instant of his stay on that world of mist and mystery. For its lands were unmapped, its inhabitants many, varied and strange, and he had taken an obligation to restore a native princess to her lost homeland. On terrible oceans where dreaded sea-monsters dwelled, in deep forests where terror haunted every branch, and behind the walls of eerie cities where power-mad chieftains plotted uncanny schemes, CARSON OF VENUS is fast-paced science fiction adventure.

In the second century AD, a Greek nobleman is travelling and living abroad in Germany while carrying on an affair with a military man’s wife. When discovered, he takes an emergency business trip to save his life and packs amongst his belongings certain items that lead the people he encounters to think him a Norse God, a fortuitous point of view which he does little to dispel. Forced to keep up the pretence of being a god while staying one step ahead of his lover’s jealous husband, Photinus must juggle the severity of his situation with the enjoyment of being a God.

Former Air Force officer and NSA agent Ron Moosic thought he had been assigned to be the Security Director for a nuclear power plant – but the power plant was only a cover for a top secret project sending observers back in time.

And terrorists had taken control of the project and sent two of their own back to change the past. Moosic was sent downtime in pursuit, with two considerable handicaps: like all time travelers, he would change upon arrival into a person who was alive at the time – he could find himself changed into a young boy or a woman – and if he stayed too long, his memories would vanish and he would be trapped in the past.

But Moosic quickly discovered that both he and the terrorists were only pawns in the time game, maneuvered by warring humans and… ex-humans in a future struggle that would either conquer the Earth or destroy all life on it…

Life on Earth was intolerable – and yet Man had stayed there, his dreams and potential suffocating under the dead weight of bureaucracy.

The stars were attainable – thanks to the Infall Drive – but only a few heard the call of deep space. Some had already gone to colonise a new world. The second ship was ready at last. Ready to escape the Earth’s prison; ready to seek refuge in deepest space. But it wasn’t only freedom that awaited it…

Dr Ezawa had made some remarkable discoveries about the Voodoo beliefs that persisted in the Louisiana bayou country – like how to create zombies by injecting corpses with the dirt from old slave graveyards.


The eyes of the awoken dead blazed with a brilliant green luminosity, and before they burned out, strange visions and superhuman abilities tormented them.


The poet Harrison didn’t want to remain a guinea pig. He wanted to find out the truth behind the scientists’ sinister manipulations – and he wanted to stay alive.


But when he escaped and began to test his growing powers on the superstitious Cajun swamp dwellers, another terrifying world began to unfold before his green eyes…

There were problems with the Form Change process. One or two malfunctions at first: people emerging from the tanks in an incorrect form or completely unchanged.

For three years it had been getting worse. Now there had been deaths, and on the Space Farms panic was setting in. People were refusing to go into the tanks. Yet out in the Cloudlands, they needed continuous small form corrections just to stay effective. As the faults increased, their society was on an exponential curve to disaster.

Behrooz Wolf, down in the Inner System, was sent for. But far gone in despair, he was in no state to help. He himself was going mad. Like a hallucination, the Dancing Man would come capering across his field of vision. Dressed in skin-tight scarlet, he danced up to him, mouthing gibberish, then skipping backwards, tantalisingly, out of sight.

While, hidden in the Kernel Ring, Black Ransone bided his time, waiting for the disintegration of the empires, waiting to inherit the universe.

When Spencer Gill, Jack Turnbull and Angela Denholm were taken by the Castle in Scotland – when they played Sith of the Throne’s monstrous multidimensional game to stay the execution of Earth, and won – they made a deadly, devious enemy of the alien master of The House of Doors.

Now Sith is back, and his game is more deadly yet. In worlds that are known, and others beyond imagining . . . in mad machine worlds, and some that can only be the product of a diseased mind – indeed, in one such that is a diseased mind – Sith’s new game will be played out to the bitter end. For the game is rigged, The House of Doors inscrutable as ever, and its doors all designed to lead Gill and his companions ever deeper into worlds of uttermost terror . . .

After Richard Garrison lost his sight in a terrorist explosion, he developed vast mental powers that more than compensated for his blindness. He mastered the Psychomech machine, then used it to conquer his enemies and restore his dead love to full and vibrant life. Psychomech also revealed to Garrison the Psychosphere, a startling reality where mental powers reigned supreme and could influence people and events on Earth.

Once he was nearly godlike – or demonic, if one dared become his enemy – but now Garrison’s mental abilities grow weaker with each use. He tries desperately to conserve his energies, but he has begun to have strange visions of a mind so different from his own as to be other human, and knows he must stay alert and strong.

Charon Gubwa has invaded the Psychosphere. Twisted and evil, sexually and mentally warped, physically corrupt, Gubwa’s desires are simple: More. More drugs. More sex. More power. More of the Earth under his dominion.

Richard Garrison must battle Gubwa in the Psychosphere and on Earth. And he must win, no matter the cost to himself or those he loves, or all mankind will be lost.

The orphan had always known she wasn’t what people described as ‘normal’. Whether merely precocious or a mutant freak, she had always been able to link minds with an equally weird mutated lion and skip into the worlds of the fourth dimension.



What the heck, it sure beat staying in school on Earth – that is until she realized that some of her fellow dimension-hoppers from other planets had more in mind than just a romp in the swamp.



They were launching an inter-dimensional war of imperialism, and she alone held the secret which could save her home world – if she could only escape the truant officer long enough to pull it off!

The Best Mislaid Plans

Wizardly schemes, Jorian knew went oft a-gley. But this time the wizard’s plan seemed simple. Since ancient prophecy foretold that the clocks would save Iraz, Jorian must repair the great tower clocks that his father had built.

If everything went well, Karadur could then plan the rescue of Jorian’s beloved wife, Queen Estrildis from Xylar.

And Jorian would be appointed Clockmaster of Iraz, a position that would require him to break a pirate siege, placate an amorous priestess, and stay at least one step ahead of the Royal Guard of Xylar – where he was still wanted as the star sttraction of a royal beheading!

Just when it looked as if Ethan Fortune might be able to breathe a warm sigh of relief at getting away from the icy world of Tran-ky-ky, he was ordered to stay right where he was.

It seemed the scientists at the outpost of Brass Monkey had spotted something odd – an isolated and ominous atmosphere hot spot far to the south.

Only Ethan, along with the huge, hell-raising Skua September, had the local knowledge and the persuasiveness to get the Tran to mount an expedition. Only the giant icerigger Slanderscree could cope with the conditions.

Knowing you’re wanted may warm the cockles of the human heart but Ethan knew at once that the rest of him was going to be exposed to freezing cold, considerable danger and a whole lot more of the adventures that kept coming his way…

When human genes go wild, reproduction can no longer be left to chance – and it is Robert Wellton, Chief of the Genetics Bureau, the most feared and hated man in the world, who decides who will mate with whom.
But nobody can tell Wellton whom to mate with! He alone knows that the Genetics Program is collapsing, for fewer Normals are found each yer – and his father, who had been Genetics Chief before him, had discovered that not all Deviates are nature’s failures. Some are telepathic and long-lived – like Robert Wellton himself.
Thus is born the plan that Adam Wellton conceived and that Robert Wellton carries on – the creation of a Secret People. Born of Normal mothers, they are all Wellton’s sons and daughters, bearing his improved genes – living hidden in a colony in the Canadian wilderness, protected from the hate and jealousy of civilization by Wellton, who stays in telepathic touch with them.
But disaster strikes when a bitter powerful committee, suspecting the existence of concealed Deviates, begins a relentless search for them. Wellton knows there can be only one result – he Secret People will be hunted down and wiped out!

The countryside is hundreds of feet deep in snow, and a small community is managing to exist in the bell-tower of a church, just above the snow level. For sustenance they make journeys to the shops of the village far below by tunnels. They also stay alive by hunting the ferocious and telepathic bear-like animals known as Pals.



The individuals in the small group are brilliantly portrayed, in turn defeatist, boastful, querulous, selfish and generous. They are obsessive, they argue; but when danger threatens, as it often does, they immediately band together in their common fight for survival.

Keston Ochiltree’s visit home had been short and disastrous. His newborn nephew had proved to be one of the Hopeless Ones and had only served to remind him of the present plight of mankind. Keston knew that the decision he was being called on to make might mean a new start for humanity or the end of their underwater civilization.

Each day found more Hopeless Ones being born: pitiful creatures with webbed hands and feet. More important, the inhuman Zammu were pressing their attack in a fierce struggle between species. Most important, the silver sky was lowering. The shimmering sky-level would soon shrink until they had all burned in the gaseous beyond.

So Keston’s decision might mean everything. Should he stay in the Emperor’s shark-cavalry to fight the Zammu? Or should he join Professor Lansing in an illegal attempt to find what lay beyond the silver sky?

A Story of the People of the Sea

The adventure begins when Johnny, who has run away from home and hidden aboard an intercontinental hovership, is shipwrecked in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. Stranded on a raft, and in an apparently hopeless situation, he is propelled by a pack of dolphins towards an island in the Great Barrier Reef, a famous centre for Dolphin Research.

Professor Kazan, the director of research, shares Johnny’s bewilderment as to the reason for the dolphin rescue operation and arranges for Johnny to stay on the island to assist in unravelling the mystery. In the chapters that follow, Johnny learns how to communicate with dolphins, explores the coral reef, goes skin-diving at night, survives a fearful hurricane, unearths a horrifying underwater conspiracy, and, in an intensely exciting final episode, makes a dangerous 100 mile tip on surfboard towed, turn and turn about, by his two closest dolphin friends.

Videssos was beset by enemies. A pretender held the throne – a despot who cared little that barbarian hordes and rival realms carved away at his empire, so long as the wealth and booty of the land satisfied his unbridled appetites.

Few stood against him. And those few soon found their heads on pikes.

Only one name held hope for freedom: Maniakes. And from his exile on the very edge of the civilised world, young Maniakes took up the challenge, rallied his forces, and sailed off to topple the tyrant.

But that tyrant would use every means at his disposal – fair or most hideously foul – to destroy the crusading upstart. And even if Maniakes could stay alive, he would till have to pull together a battered, divided land as well as fend off a host of enemies – and thwart the former friend who had become his empire’s most deadly foe!

Hesta Web, with her hot red hair and her tough, guarded coldness, is trapped with a mother who hates her and a father who is mostly away earning money on an oil rig. When Hesta discovers that her mother and her mother’s lover have had rampant sex in Hesta’s bed, she absconds with her friend Janey to the seaside.

It is the last day of the season, sun bright and sea sparkling. The bars and shops are open, the funfair spins round with shrieks and shouts. As night falls, the illuminations go on. But when Janey catches the last train to London, Hesta stays behind. She falls in with the gothic-looking, unpleasantly attractive Skilt and his subject colony of junkies and beggars. In a rotting hotel on the front, among the broken marble balustrades, the mouse-eaten rooms and the bonfire in the ballroom, Hesta takes up her new life. She hears drugged legends told beside the fire, the rumours of ghosts and the strangeness of the sea.

For now the season has ended, the seaside is deserted, the illuminations are switched off, this place is very strange. Does Skilt know its secret? Should Hesta be wary of the blond man who watches her from the pier? And what happens when the lights go out?

It’s dark.

Muzic Inc had become a music industry giant by staying one step ahead of the game, but for some reason APs (totally cybernetic rock stars) had failed to ship gold.
That was where Glorianna O’Toole came in. The Crazy Old Lady of Rock and Roll was well into her sixties, but with her producer they hoped to synthesize an AP that would really take off.
Glorianna hated everything Muzic Inc had done to the rebel music of her youth, but for the sake of a steady supply of designer dust she was prepared to try and rekindle the revolutionary music spirit of the 1960s.
Meanwhile, at street level, the wire wizards had come up with a new piece of technology: a portable trip machine that made Owsley acid look like a vitamin supplement…

College student Nicholas Dal shares the family talent, or curse – he is an empath, a man who experiences the emotions of other people. Too-powerful emotion can induce seizures, so to stay sane he must live alone and dull his senses with vodka.

This, in itself, would be enough for anyone to bear, but Nicholas ias also haunted by a secret from his family’s past in Russia. Now someone is looking for him and he fears the worst. To further complicate things, a relationship is forming with a young woman, Jack, and his feelings for her threaten to break through his isolation.

Will Nicholas risk his love, his sanity – his life – to be with Jack?

British Science Fiction award winner Ian Watson graces us here with a brilliant new collection of short stories and essays.

Though he dazzles the reader with his footwork in the kaleidoscope intensity of his vision, each piece is plainly the work of a master craftsman. Whether he is dealing with a future culture where whales control us (“The Culling”) or taking a hilarious poke at the matter of government funding (“The President’s Not for Turning”), his concepts are clear and undeniably logical.

True to the highest ideal of science fiction, Watson carries present tendencies of our society to possible conclusions in “Roof Gardens under Saturn,” and points a warning finger at the consequences of alienation from the environment.

In an innovative style which borders on the experimental, Watson explores in “The Pharaoh and the Mademoiselle” the horrors of fascism.

Ian Watson’s writing stays with us. He entertains and he makes us think. If in some future and better world politicians were to take advice form writers, Watson should be one of them.

In every mouse’s long life, there comes a time when ancestral voices tell him to move on. Pedlar, a yellow-necked mouse, has reached that point. Told to leave the Hedgerow and go on a long journey, the adventurous mouse says his farewells and sets out for a far-distant country knows as The House. Reaching his destination, Pedlar enters a strange new world inhabited by many warring tribes: the Stinkhorns of the cellar, the great Savage Tribe in the kitchen, the library Bookeaters, the Invisibles, the Deathshead and the rebellious 13-K Gang.

During his stay, Pedlar witnesses a momentous truce, in which the tribes come together at an Allthing meeting and decide to rid themselves of the greatest pests in The House, the greedy, stupid nudniks – the humans. And so the Great Nudnik Drive is set in motion, a time of considerable anxiety for the nudniks, when clocks strike twenty and inanimate objects seem to have a life of their own. Ranged against the mouse tribes are the nudniks’ allies: the two cats, Eyeball the Burmese blue and Spitz the ginger tom; the Headhunter, a barbarian human child; and Little Prince, the Headhunter’s cannibalistic pet white mouse. The House becomes a hotbed of riot and discord, until Pedlar finally comes up with a solution. The outcome of this heroic struggle has gone down in the annals of mouse history, a history tens of thousands of days long, and the whole remarkable tale is recorded here, between these pages.

Carson Napier, first Earthman to reach Venus, had to keep alert every instant of his stay on that world of mist and mystery. For its lands were unmapped, its inhabitants many, varied, and strange, and he had taken an obligation to restore a native princess to her lost homeland. On terrible oceans where dreaded sea-monsters dwelled, in deep forests where terror haunted every branch, and behind the walls of eerie cities where power-mad chieftains plotted uncanny schemes, “Carson of Venus” is fast-paced science fiction adventure.

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!