Search Results for: city

If wishes would only come true; how often has every human being thought that? How wonderful life would be if only we could have everything we ever dreamed of?

But the man who invented the dream-machine turned out to be the worst enemy humanity ever encountered! The dream became as real as the reality – and yet remained a figment of the imagination. And thereby the very foundations of civilization were undermined. Why strive – when you could get it all without effort?

Reality Forbidden is the unusual novel of what came afterwards. Of the world in which only the most rigid of terror kept cities standing, and of the man who dared to escape that world, to find the last place on Earth where dreaming was not prohibited, and where one could not only have one’s cake, but eat it as well!

In the far future, the world has fallen to chaos with the criminal elements controlling the cities and vast police forces ruling the unknown wilderness beyond.

Only one man, unknowingly, holds the key to the state in which society finds itself – a man named Craig.

Craig, however, is an outcast, a pariah, feared by organised crime and despised by the police who, despite themselves, are compelled to use him.

This is the tale of how Craig fights back – against forces unknown – and of his attempts to reinstate himself into a society that has rejected him.

The Best of Philip E. High

Welcome to the Bizarre Imagination of Philip E. High.

-A world without laws where the basest criminal activity flourishes unchecked in a dog-eat-dog society;
-When the crew of a submarine find themselves flung millions of years into the past the consequences are devastating;
-The minds of the entire population of a city are infected by the thoughts of a madman, and become insane themselves – and the contagion is spreading;
-Mankind is facing extinction by an alien race of mind-readers who can anticipate man’s every counter attack.

Here is the first-ever collection of the greatest short stories of one of Britain’s finest-ever SF writers – Philip E. High! Already well know on both sides of the Atlantic as a writer of many exciting adventure novels, these twelve stories reveal High as a true literary craftsman. A major science fiction event that is not to be missed!

A collection of cutting-edge SF stories from one of the grand masters of science fiction, including:

Rule Golden
To protect the galaxy, Aza-Kra came from a world where violence and cruelty ceased to exist. To him, Earth was a jungle.

The Dying Man
In a century that holds the secret of immortality, Claire and Dio find love impossible – until Dio discovers he is mortal.

Natural State
AD 2064. Were the cities doomed? Were the plants and animals and people who lived outside more efficient than any machine that could be built? Alvah Gustad, actor and patriot, leaves New York for an unusual mission.

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?

In the year 2043, the Ngumi War rages. Limited nuclear strikes have been used on Atlanta and two enemy cities, but the war goes on, fought by ‘soldierboys’ – indestructible war machines operated by remote control by soldiers hundreds of miles away.

Julian Class is one of these soldiers, and for him war is truly hell. The psychological strain of being jacked-in to his soldierboy – and the genocidal results – are becoming too much to bear. Now he and his companion, Dr Amelia Harding, have made a terrifying scientific discovery, which could literally take the universe back to square one. Except that for Julian, the discovery isn’t so much terrifying as tempting…

Winner of the Hugo Award for best novel, 1998
Winner of the Nebula Award for best novel, 1998
Winner of the John W. Campbell Award for best novel, 1998

This stunning collection showcases 11 of Haldeman’s best stories. They range through time and space from planets beyond our wildest dreams to a nightmare future Earth all too close to home.

Lindsay and the Red City Blues: A story of revenge – with a heart-stopping twist in the tail.

Blood Brothers: A ‘Thieves World’ story.

You Can Never Go Back: A self-contained story from the original version of ‘The Forever War’, never before published in book form.

And ten more sharp and startling visions of tomorrow.

A missing relative…

Something of value was buried beneath the underwater dome city of Marinia…something that had already cost one man’s life, caused another man’s kidnapping and gravely affected still another man’s future.

Expelled from the Sub-Sea Academy on trumped-up charges, Jim Eden wasn’t about to wait around to prove his innocence. As soon as he leaned that his uncle mysteriously disappeared while mining uranium at the bottom of hazardous Eden Deep, Jim knew what he had to do…and that he had to do it fast.

So he headed for the vast dome city – location of the great mining colony at the bottom of the sea – to pick up any clues to his uncle’s disappearance. But once he had entered the undersea metropolis, the wrong people had his number…and they were determined that Jim would sink forever without a trace.

In McAdam City, Kentucky, people are fed up with big government interfering with their lives, telling them what they can’t do, sticking its nose into their private business, trying to keep them from protecting their legitimate interests from Uncle Sam.
When an invisible barrier is put up to protect McAdam City, everything changes. This “silicone shell” is impervious to anything the army can throw against it. People are dying for the cause of personal freedom in this small Kentucky town, but they’ve finally found a way to fight big government with a digital technology greater than anything in the government’s vast arsenal.
Can one small town declare its independence from the United States?
With the silicone dagger poised at the throat of the republic, just maybe…

The only hope for mankind’s survival after the contamination of the Earth lay in the Pritcher Mass, a psychic forcefield construction out beyond the orbit of Pluto. Created by the efforts of individuals with extraordinary paranormal powers, the Mass was designed to search the universe for a new habitable planet.

Chaz Sant knew he had the kind of special ability to contribute effectively to the building of the Mass, but somehow the qualifying tests were stacked against him. Then he learned that he had become the special target of an insidious organization that fattened on the fears of the last cities of the world. His confrontation with this organization, their real motives and his unexpected reactions, were to touch off the final showdown for mankind’s last enterprise.

So begins one of the most celebrated stories in fantasy literature . . . packed full of mystery, deep themes and incredible prose, meet Severian the Torturer and follow him on his journey across the great world of Urth

Severian is a torturer, born to the guild and with an exceptionally promising career ahead of him . . . until he falls in love with one of his victims, a beautiful young noblewoman.

Her excruciations are delayed for some months and, out of love, Severian helps her commit suicide and escape her fate. For a torturer, there is no more unforgivable act. In punishment he is exiled from the guild and his home city to the distant metropolis of Thrax with little more than Terminus Est, a fabled sword, to his name.

Along the way he has to learn to survive in a wider world without the guild – a world in which he has already made both allies and enemies. And a strange gem is about to fall into his possession, which will only make his enemies pursue him with ever-more determination . . .

Winner of the World Fantasy Award for best novel, 1981
Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1982

Readers can’t stop reading The Shadow of the Torturer:

‘Full of rich characters and great imagination’ Mark Lawrence, author of Red Sister

‘A dark jewel . . . He has a mastery of language not often seen in fantasy writing . . . Couple this with an original and unique, highly imaginative and complex worldbuilding and the high praise is warranted‘ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘This is a picaresque fantasy with a difference, for our hero Severian is no wide-eyed country boy from the shire, but an apprentice torturer, thoroughly schooled in his trade’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘There are certain books that can be considered life-changing experiences. Gene Wolfe is an author who has written one of those for me’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
‘The Book of the New Sun Tetralogy is one of the great achievements in science fiction and is a MUST READ for fans of the genre. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!!’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘In addition to being unique in style, The Shadow of the Torturer is a gorgeous piece of work: passionate storytelling (heart-wrenching in places), fascinating insights into nature and the human condition, beautiful prose’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

‘Genre fiction at its finest. Original, difficult and well-crafted, it is easy to see how Wolfe is regarded as a writer’s writer’ Goodreads reviewer, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

The torturer Severian continues his journey of exile to the city Thrax, carrying with him the ancient executioner’s sword and the Claw of the Conciliator, a gem of extraterrestrial power and beauty which no one man is meant to possess . . .

Winner of the Nebula Award for best novel, 1981

Banished for the sin of mercy, Severian, one of the ancient guild of Torturers, flees from exile. In a mountain wilderness

Severian, the disgraced apprentice torturer, has reached his place of exile – Thrax, the city of Windowless Rooms, where he must take up his post as Lictor, executioner and torturer. However, he flees the city and heads into the mountains. There he meets the Alzabo, in whom those eaten seem to live on, adopts a son only to lose him in battle and discharges an old debt to vengeance. As his exile takes stranger and stranger turns, he encounters fanged aliens who hide behind masks of beauty, and meets the mysterious Dr Talos . . .

The human race is in decline, is withdrawing into protective city shells. Could contact with civilised aliens revive the probing curiosity once the hallmark of human achievement? Are there any such beings in the Universe? If there are, can they be contacted?

The beginnings of an answer, oddly enough, begins to form when Alex Craven sets out in search of his girlfriend Nicole and finds her working in the marshlands of the Angles. Reluctantly he becomes involved in her work. She is experimenting with empathic communication between twins. Eventually, accompanied by one of two particularly gifted twins, he leaves Earth for New Carthage.

In that strange world a shadow-line civilisation is in perpetual slow motion to avoid the intolerable daytime heat. But what lies beyond the shadow line . . . ?

Trapped behind walls of towering ice, First City was a prison from which no one ever escaped. The Trysts ruled with an iron fist: violent death was a common sight on the streets.

Morag MacKenzie was a mind-prostitute who gave erotic thought stimulation, without giving her body. Those who yearned for other escapes visited the Timesmiths, within those hands time could be moulded like clay as they spun dream-visions. But morag has her own dreams, of a world outside the ice walls, a world of space and freedom, and she is determined to find it.

In another world, somewhere in space and time, two countries – Bellogard and Chorny – are locked in perpetual war, conducted by magic. Each of the main members of the two countries’ courts – king, queen, prince, bishop, knight and squire – has their own form of magic, and special ways of moving magically. A war may continue for centuries, until one side succeeds in killing the other side’s king, at which point the whole world vanishes, only to reappear and have the cycle begin again. . .

Pedino is a young Bellogardian who becomes the queen’s squire and, as part of his training, is sent into a seedier part of the city to uncover a Chornian spy. During his adventures he meets and falls in love with a whore, Sara, who turns out to be a Chornian bishop’s squire. Pedino succeeds in killing the other Chornian bishop – a remarkable achievement for a mere squire; but in the manoeuvres which follow Chorny proves to have outwitted its rival, and Pedino’s whole world is threatened with extinction.

There have been many stories modelled on chess games, but none so ingenious and enjoyable as Ian Watson’s latest novel. And, as one would expect from Watson, the story of Bellogard and Chorny is only the beginning. When Pedino and Sara manage to escape the destruction of their universe, they find themselves in a series of even more bizarre worlds operating under still stranger rules, as they seek to discover the purpose of their existence, and the meaning of their universe. Queenmagic, Kingmagic is Ian Watson in sparkling, exuberant form.

Alex Winter and Deborah Tate arrive by hovercraft at the city of Babylon, lying on the river Euphrates in the Arizona desert. He is a sociology drop-out from the University of Oregon at Eugene who wants to become a Babylonian. She has a much stranger ambition. Their minds are babbling in the Greek that has been pumped into them via computer interface at the University of Heuristics. To them, English has yet to be invented and the young king Alexander lies dying in his palace. The city is dominated by the tower of Babel, its spiral roadway curling up towards the heavens and wide enough for several donkey carts. And women sit outside the Temple of Ishtar, waiting for some stranger to drop a coin in their laps. The prospect seems to fascinate Deborah. She wants to become one of the Whores of Babylon.

Charles Spark is an expert on body language, a bestselling author and a consultant (or walking lie detector) much in demand with industry and government. So when the aliens arrive, who better to join the team that will attempt to understand them?

But even though these insectoid aliens – the “Flies” – in their pyramid-ship speak both English and Russian, they seem unreadable. “We have come to your planet to remember it,” they say and at first they seem indeed to be a bizarre group of intergalactic tourists.

When human beings start to interfere, things begin disappearing. The Dome of St Peter’s in Rome is the first to go, followed by downtown Prague, old Mombasa, Münich, the heart of New Orleans.

In an effort to understand what has happened, Spark, and a strange group of pilgrims, embark on a bizarre journey to Mars – where the city of Münich has reappeared in a canyon. And where time, and memory, have become manifest.

Britannia is a land of forests – it is said a man can walk from the walls of Eboracum to the southern sea without leaving the shade of the greenwood – inhabited by wildcats, wolves and bears, as well as by the descendants of the folk who built Stonehenge. Traversing the forests, linking the Roman cities, are the straight Roman roads on which solar-powered aircars travel from the far north of Britain to expressways that link with London, Rome, Constantinople and beyond.

In this world Rome never fell to the Barbarians, the legions never left Britain and now, in the late twentieth century, Rome is the capital of a vast global civilisation.

Outside Eboracum, (or York as we know it), and dominating the city, is the Battle Dome, a vast hemisphere enclosing the artificial landscapes where the Games – as brutal, deadly and colourful as ever – are held. Here the destinies of three young people come together when a jealous feud forces them to flee the Dome and take refuge in the forest. There, Viti, Miranda, and Angus discover that the older Britain that has endured for two millennia, where the assumptions of rational Romans and city-dwellers no longer apply. And it is there they find they must learn new lessons about their world – if they are to survive.

This first volume of A Land Fit for Heroes is a superb, lyrical novel of cultures clashing in a wonderfully evoked alternate world, filled with magic, wonder and haunting sense of place.

Britannia, 1993.
In a world where the Roman legionaries never left Britain a man can walk from the walls of York – or Eburacum – to the southern seas without leaving the shade of the greenwood, inhabited by wildcats, wolves and bears, as well as the descendants of the folk who built Stonehenge. Solar-powered air cars journey along straight roads that connect them to the Roman settlements – and link them to the cities of a global empire.

When a jealous feud forced three young people into the forest, they discovered an older Britain, where the rules of rational Rome no longer applied. But now their sanctuary has been besieged and they are once more on the run. Their destination this time is Stand Alone Stan, a community built around an ancient standing stone high on the Yorkshire Moors. And it is here that their paths must, at last, diverge, and we begin to suspect the very different destinies that await them.

Stand Alone Stan is the second volume of A Land Fit for Heroes.

Landing on a new planet is a danger every time, and Selm II is no exception.

The specialist didn’t like it. There were no cities visable from space, no broadcasts or transmissions on the airwaves – yet the wrecked war machines of an advanced technology littered the rich pastures of the planet. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of crumpled and gigantic weapons of war, a graveyard of destruction stretching almost to the lifeless horizon. But the war wasn’t over…and they weren’t all wrecks.

It’s an emergency. It’s a job for Brian Brand, the mightiest weightlifter in the galaxy. With the brilliant, sensuous Dr Lea Morees at his side he plunges into the war zone, into the steel jaws of…the Planet of No Return!

Police officer Dora Henry is investigating the bizarre murders of three geneticists. Meanwhile, strange things are happening everywhere she turns. Weeds are becoming trees; trees are becoming forests. Overnight a city is being transformed into a wild and verdant place.

And, strangest of all, Dora can somehow communicate with the rampaging flora.

A potential civilization-ending catastrophe is in the making. The nearer Dora gets to a murderer – and to the truth – the more seemingly desperate events begin to entwine. And the answers she seeks today to the salvation of humankind may lie in a far distant future . . . one which is suddenly much closer than anyone imagines.

It was many, many years ago that humans came and settled the world of Newholme – cruelly bending the planet to their will; setting down roots and raising up cities and farms and a grand temple to their goddess.


But now the ground itself is shaking with ever-increasing violence. And the Greatest Questioner, official arbiter of the Council of Worlds, has come to this isolated orb to investigate rumours of a terrible secret that lies buried deep within Newholme’s past – a past that is not dead, not completely. And it will fall to Mouche, a beautiful youth of uncommon cleverness and spirit, to save his imperilled home by discovering and embracing that which makes him unique among humans.

For every living thing on Newholme is doomed, unless Mouche can appease something dark and terrible that is coiled within, and surrender to the mysterious ecstatic revelry that results when the six moons join.

Philip Shane, journalist for the London Sunday Sentinel and undercover agent for the British Government, sets out, at the Prime Minister’s request, to investigate the death of key scientists on the moon. His fellow travellers are Claire Scott, daughter of Sir Fabian Scott, pioneer of Lunar City; Professor Denis Quarles, a one-man Investigating Commission; Gaff Midley, a psychiatrist; the Ferry Rocket Commander and crew.

At Woomera, firing base for the Ferry Rockets in the year AD 2050, Shane is drugged and sabotage occurs. On the Commonwealth Space Station, 1079 miles above the Earth the Ferry Rocket Commander is killed.

Who is responsible, and why?