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Space Captain Tabitha Jute is the hero of the solar system. She has defeated the Capellan overlords and liberated the gigantic alien spaceship known as Plenty. Now begins the first human voyage to another star -a journey that will take the strange ship and her motley complement of passengers and crew far into unknown reaches of time and space.

Volume two of the Tabitha Jute sf trilogy: sequel to TAKE BACK PLENTY

The last humans from the planet Snowglade have taken flight from the genocidal mechs aboard the spaceship Argo. As the shop hurtles toward the Galactic Center, hunger and desperation are taking their toll among the refugees, who are beginning to question the leadership of Captain Killeen. Convinced that his people’s only hope of survival lies in the True Center of the galaxy, he is determined to find it, with a will bordering on obsession.


As the crew of the Argo, an even Killeen’s own son Toby, find their faith in their captain’s brilliance tested to the limit, Toby faces his own perilous journey into the unknown, into the mysterious of adulthood. Like the others in this Family of voyagers, Toby’s spine contains microchip implants holding the memories – the legacy – of his race. But just as the technology is designed to save his people may tear Toby himself apart, so his father’s desperate gamble to save the Argo may plunge the ship and its inhabitants into a cosmic fit of all-consuming fire.

A collection of short stories from the award-winning author, Kate Wilhelm. Contains the following:
The Mile-Long Spaceship Fear Is a Cold Black Jenny with Wings A Is for Automation Gift from the Stars No Light in the Window One for the Road Andover and the Android The Man without a Planet The Apostolic Travelers The Last Days of the Captain

What is an orc?

An orc is an 18 stone fighting machine, made of muscle, hide, talon and tusk, with a villainous disposition and a mean sense of humour. And, of course, an orc is a poor dumb grunt – the much abused foot soldier of the Evil Horde of Darkness.

The usual last battle of Good against Evil is about to begin. Orc Captain Ashnak and his war-band know exactly what they can expect. The forces of Light are outnumbered, full of headstrong heroes devoid of tactics – but the Light’s still going to win. Orcs – the sword fodder in the front line – will die by the thousands.

Life’s a bitch.

From the Hugo-winning author of Spin, an exuberant adventure in a post-climate-change America

In the reign of President Deklan Comstock, a reborn United States is struggling back to prosperity. Over a century after the Efflorescence of Oil, after the Fall of the Cities, after the Plague of Infertility, after the False Tribulation, after the days of the Pious Presidents, the sixty stars and thirteen stripes wave from the plains of Athabaska to the national capital in New York City. In Colorado Springs, the Dominion sees to the nation’s spiritual needs. In Labrador, the Army wages war on the Dutch. America, unified, is rising once again.

Then out of Labrador come tales of a new Ajax-Captain Commongold, the Youthful Hero of the Saguenay. The ordinary people follow his adventures in the popular press. The Army adores him. The President is…troubled. Especially when the dashing Captain turns out to be his nephew Julian, son of the falsely accused and executed Bryce.

Treachery and intrigue dog Julian’s footsteps. Hairsbreadth escapes and daring rescues fill his days. Stern resolve and tender sentiment dice for Julian’s soul, while his admiration for the works of the Secular Ancients, and his adherence to the evolutionary doctrines of the heretical Darwin, set him at fatal odds with the hierarchy of the Dominion. Plague and fire swirl around the Presidential palace when at last he arrives with the acclamation of the mob.

As told by Julian’s best friend and faithful companion, a rustic yet observant lad from the west, this tale of the 22nd Century asks- and answers-the age-old question: “Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?”

Welcome aboard the sex-drive void ship . . .

Captain Genro commands the giant spaceship Dragon Zephyr – on board are ten thousand passengers in electrocoma, a smaller number of conscious passengers eagerly utilising the ship’s dream chambers – and a Pilot.

In the context of space travel, the Pilot is merely a biological component in the machine. Always a woman, her function is to launch the ship into the Jump by means of a cosmic orgasm. She is a pariah, shunned by all.

Void Captain Genro should never even have spoken to his Pilot, let alone tried to embark on a relationship with her. When he did so, the result was every space traveller’s nightmare.

A Blind Jump into the Void . . .

The Dag Hammarskjold takes off from Woomera, Australia for the new human settlement on Mars.
Planet Earth is being eaten away by uncontrollable pollution, starvation and disease. Its life expectancy is nil.
This is the last spaceship, its passengers the last people on earth with any hope. But it is never to reach its objective. Five thousand years later its captain wakes up to a new world undiscovered in his time and to a bitter experience he must fight alone.

Zelos seemed an ideal planet for colonization. Possessing one large continent and numerous archipelagos, it had a climate and vegetation comfortably like that of Earth.



Captain James Conrad and his crew of Expendables started on their initial reconnaissance of the planet. For the first time they found human beings already in residence. But this was a society remote from anything they had ever before experienced. For the Emperor of this strange world controlled his domain through the great annual War Games.



Only the fittest could survive – and only they were allowed to procreate. Through this ‘death control’ the population was limited to twenty thousand. There was only one way the Expendables could get permission to establish a colony on Zelos. Risking their own lives, they must compete in the dreaded War Games. And, somehow, they must win.

THE LADY A OFFERS AN ALLIANCE

Devastated by alien invasion, one of the Empire’s far-flung planets – Omicron – is the destination for an astonishing mission. For the first time in many years, top SOTE agents Yvette Babol and Jules d’Alembert agree to co-operate with the treacherous and dangerous Lady A. it is strictly an alliance of convenience.

Together with the Empire’s deadliest enemy and two of her followers, the two SOTE agents set off for Omicron – easily the most distant planet ever settled. With them is Captain Paul Fortier of Naval Intelligence. And what they find on Omicron could lead to intergalactic war…

Before the Glory of Greece, Crete ruled the known world – and kept it enslaved by black magic! The evil of Minos held sway, protected by three unconquerable walls. First is the fleet that they call the wooden wall. Then there is a giant of living brass – he is the second wall. Then there is another barrier about the power of Minos, the Wall of Wizardry. Theseus, the tall Achean, the man they called Captain Firebrand, vowed to scale and destroy all three, and to rid the world of the evil yoke of Crete. But Minos had other defences besides the walls, and many ways to attack as well . . .

The return of Barlennan

Dhrawn was a giant rockball, more than 3,000 times the mass of Earth. Perhaps a planet, perhaps a nearly dead star, the 17 billion square miles of mystery cried out for investigation. But its corrosive atmosphere and crushing gravity assured that no human would ever set foot on its surface.

Those hardy, caterpillar-like Mesklinites, on the other hand, were ideally suited to explore Dhrawn, and their leader certainly knew a good deal when he saw one. So Barlennan, a shrewd sea captain if ever there was one, struck a sharp bargain with the Earthmen for his services in leading the expedition.

But the humans might not have been so pleased with their side of the bargain, if they had known that Barlennan had plans of his own for Dhrawn . . .

The stunning sequel to the classic SF novel Mission of Gravity.

The Magnificent Showboats follows the farcical adventures of Apollon Zamp, owner of the showboat Miraldra’s Enchantment, and his troupe of acrobats, magicians and actors. Zamp is invited by the King of Soyvanesse to travel up the river Vissel to the distant city of Mornune, there to participate in a contest. A rich prize awaits the showboat captain who stages the most spectacular performance and succeeds in entertaining the king.

Tom Jones is naïve, impressionable and very, very willing. His chief talent is conversing with dolphins in the Aquatic Mammals Division of HMS Profundis, a gargantuan submarine destined to roam the ocean depths for a century following the nuclear holocaust.

Years pass and mad captain succeeds mad captain. Eventually the ship falls under the command of one Admiral Prood, a kind, understanding man who finally comes to a startling conclusion. He is God the Father. The Almighty Himself. And all he needs now is a son to sit at his right hand.

Enter the innocent Tom Jones.

Todd Wells is prepared for excitement when he joins his father, captain of the atomic tugboat STORMQUEEN, on a voyage from Antarctica to California. For this is no ordinary journey – they are towing five icebergs, each weighing six thousand million tons, to bring pure water to the drought-stricken areas of the United States.


But when a violent storm erupts and once iceberg threatens to break loose, the excitement turns to terror – as Todd is caught up in the desperate battle to save the iceberg and the lives of the men on the ship.

It is known as the alaraf drive: instantaneous travel between two points of space. Three of special ships have been built using this technology to explore and make contact with the many sentient races inhabiting the universe.

Captain Hûd Ramstam launches his ship, al-Buraq, on a mid-tearing space odyssey with a planet’s god in his cabin – and a planet-destroyer on the loose . . .

What exactly is the vast, superpowerful, worldburning BOLG? Can it be taken out or is it unstoppable? And who precisely is the green-cloaked mystery glimpsed by Ramstam? Can it be al-Kindhr, the Green One, mentioned in Surat 18 of the Qu’ran? Or is it someone older, wiser and more deadly?

Ranstan, a thoughtful and moral man, becomes a fascinated yet reluctant pawn in the hands of the strange forces which arise to fight the deadly destroyer. Ultimately, he is the one man who, in a fearful race against time, can stop the destruction. But what price must he pay for becoming the saviour of intelligent-kind?

In Peril on an Alien Planet…

Alan Green was not a hero – he liked the quiet life as much as the next man. Not that he was exactly afraid of the fearsome hound, Alzo, or his hot-blooded owner, the Duchess Zuni. After all, one expected violence on this primitive planet and a man could manage to stay alive, provided he was alert twenty-four hours a day.

But when he heard of a spaceship about to leave for Earth, Alan persuaded the merchant-captain of a windroller to take him to it. And hence to the peaceful green hills of home.

He had reckoned without the vagaries of the windroller, pirates, the ‘travelling islands’, the rascally captain, and various peculiar local flora and fauna – all of which, it seemed, regarded Alan with unnerving malevolence…

Through the tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs, generations of readers have thrilled to the adventures of Lord Greystoke (aka John Clayton, but better known as Tarzan of the Apes). In this biography Philip José Farmer pieces together the life of this fantastic man, correcting Burroughs’s errors and deliberate deceptions and tracing Tarzan’s family tree back to other extraordinary figures, including Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, the Scarlet Pimpernel, Doc Savage, Nero Wolfe, and Bulldog Drummond.

Tarzan Alive offers the first chronological account of Tarzan’s life, narrated in careful detail garnered from Burroughs’s stories and other sources. From the ill-fated voyage that led to Greystoke’s birth on the isolated African coast to his final adventures as a group captain in the RAF during World War II, Farmer constructs a comprehensive and authoritative account. Farmer’s assertion that Tarzan was a real person has led him to craft a biography as well researched and compelling as that of any character from conventional history.

Hugo and Nebula award winner Anderson incorporates two stories he wrote for the Asimov’s Universe series into this absorbing posthumous novel, a fast-paced space opera that never lets the reader forget that aliens are alien. At a time when nearly immortal humans have colonized the galaxy, various space-faring species commingle freely and the residents of Earth have become as alien to other humans as true ETs, an astronomical event that may affect all existence is about to take place. Unfortunately, only one set of aliens knows what that event is and their ruling dictatorship is hell-bent on keeping it that way. Lissa Windholm, an Earth woman with a spirit of adventure men find attractive, is determined to uncover the mystery and share the knowledge with everyone. Lissa and her partner Karl, a tyrannosaurus-like scientist, make some startling archaeological discoveries on the planet Jonna about beings known as the Forerunners, but a psychologically scarred starship captain and an impressively ancient and profit-minded human rogue have other plans for the relics.

In search of the Aureate Cities, Captain Rovic had brought the Golden Leaper halfway round the World. Weathering hurricanes and mutiny, he meant to do what no other ship’s master had done: circulate the globe and return to riches and glory. Then, on a distant barbarous island, Rovic met a shipwrecked traveler who claimed to have come on an even longer voyage. But who could believe his tale – of a ship that sailed between the stars?

Earthmen and Aleriona have met in space and neither side can afford to let the other get too strong. The Aleriona have captured the human outpost, New Europe, and claim that all the inhabitants were killed. The World Federation on Earth seems committed to peace at any price, but there are those, and ex-navy Captain Gunnar Heim is one of them, who know that appeasement will only lead to further Alerion encroachment, and he passionately believes that there must be a showdown now, before it is too late.

Heim and his crew of volunteers take off from Earth in the Star Fox and start to fit out for their hit-and-run battle.

A dozen years had passed since Mark Fraser and his family had fled to Ganymede, hoping to find the peace and freedom which had eluded them on Earth. Now violence and terror had pursued them to their new-found home: Captain Swayne and his battleship Vega had made landfall on Ganymede and were using its resources to build missiles with which to hold Planet Earth to ransom. For the second time, Mark Fraser was a marked man, running for his life. His only chance of escape was to a third planet: Jupiter. But as Fraser knew only too well, Jupiter itself was the scene of conflict and carnage. And so far no human being had ever breathed its atmosphere and lived to tell the tale!

You can’t go home again. For home is not merely a place, but a situation and when that situation changes, home is no more. Captain Edward Langely of the experimental starship Explorer was to learn this the hard way…

Captain Sir Dominic Flandry was a top man in the Intelligence Corps of the Imperial Terrestrial Navy. He knew that on the outer edges of the empire, civilisation was spread hideously thin. The stars faded towards barbarism, with the great evil Empire of Merseia beyond.

But there were times when Flandry abandoned his senior position of command to go out into the field. Then he operated like the cool and brilliant agent he was, a ruthless, highly-trained professional. And in these three fast-moving adventures Captain Dominic Flandry shows that a space-age secret agent has to stay on top of the job – or succumb to nameless horrors.

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)