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Earl Dumarest continues his desperate search for his birthplace, and seems to be coming close to the mythical planet Earth.

But his attention is temporarily diverted, as he is unexpectedly involved in a hunt for a nebulous ghost world in another galaxy.

It is rumoured that in this fabulous land lies the mysterious Castle of Heart’s Desire, where every wish is fulfilled. If Dumarest can find it, then maybe – just maybe – he will be able to return to the planet of his birth.




(First published 1976)

Only Earl Dumarest himself believed that there was ever a planet called Earth. He had been seeking it a long time – but nobody else at the crowded galactic centre believed in it. During his quest he had acquired some bits of information – a Terrestrial zodiac, and authentic painting of Luna, a general series of hints that he was getting closer.

The he learned of a man on Elysius who knew where Earth was, and who had the special coordinates that would take a starship directly to it. Though the man was dead, his widow knew where the data lay. But she demanded a price from Dumarest – a chore that involved a mining expedition which would bring her back a fortune . . . and for him the information he sought.

But the Terra Data would not be so easily come by!




(First published 1980)

The Terridae believed the lost Earth was heaven and utopia combined. In their artificial planet, they moved slowly through the universe in search of it. And in their eyes, the rediscovery of Earth was to be the Event.

Now they said the Event was coming! Earl Dumarest – who was born on Earth and knew the truth – was an unwelcome visitor among them. If they knew of Earth’s whereabouts, they were not telling him.

But another Event was already on its way. A Cyclan ship was rapidly approaching the Terridae’s world, confident that this time Dumarest would fall into their heartless clutches.

Dumarest was not ready to flee – but if he stayed there would be no Earth for him, only a long, lingering doom.





(First published 1982)

In relentless pursuit of Earl Dumarest come the emotionless minions of the Cyclan. Seeking the body-switching formula which would make them masters of the universe, they must seize Dumarest alive to gain his secret.

It all comes together on the world of the Guardians, where in the great temple of their fanatical faith, the true co-ordinates of Earth are listed. There Dumarest will battle the Cyclan . . . while the fate of all humanity hangs in the balance.




(First published 1985)

From the opening reared a head, wide, flat, huge. Below it stretched a body beautiful with iridescent scales of gold edged with ruby. Nictitating membranes lifted over enormous eyes, deep, limpid pools of ancient wisdom, catching and reflecting the light of the miniature sun, turning the glowing orb into a scatter of stars shimmering in an ebon sea. From open jaws a forked tongue flickered with a soft susurration. Its scent was dry, acrid, tinged with that of living fur on a summer’s day. The head rose higher, swaying over the three men on the ledge, the sinuous length of the body almost filling the passage through which it had come. From it radiated an impression of incredible age.

“A serpent,” whispered Thagamista. “A creature from the beginning of time. Somehow surviving to find this place and feast on those who well here. It was inevitable they should think it a god.”

THE SLEEPING CITY continues the dynamic saga of the Chronicles of Malkar, E.C. Tubb’s newest fantasy hero!

Between the frozen wastes of the night side and the searing inferno of the dayside, the Twilight Belt held all that was Human on the tiny world of Mercury, Hell Planet of the Solar System. A strange world, airless, subject to the alien distortions of Einsteinian mathematics, Mercury was both a promise and a challenge, for here could be found torrents of cheap power essential to the ships and men in space. Lee Correy, Commander of the Station, plunges into the frigid wastes in a desperate race against time to find and rescue both his brother and the essential component of the beam control. Fighting impossible conditions and incredible alien life he is up against the enigmatic mystery of the sand devils; a dead man who walked, and a machine that could not fail-but did.

Here is a story of the future, of the planets and the men who will colonise them, of the way they will live and the problems they will face. With mystery, adventure, exciting action and scientifically correct detail. A story of what might well be in the days to come . . .

Captain Baron, space pilot, is forced to abandon his ship, waiting for a rescue that does not come. Eventually he dies in space, his body frozen and perfectly preserved. Five years later, he is found, and two doctors, Le Maitre and Whitney, restore him to life using an experimental surgical technique.

Returning to Earth, Baron finds that he has been declared legally dead, his commission rescinded, and all his possessions reverted to the State. His only asset is the novelty and notoriety of being a Resurrected Man, and when this is ruthlessly exploited by others, he commits murder and becomes a fugitive from the police. Inspector McMillan enlists the help of Dr. Whitney to track him down, but their task is complicated by the fact that Baron is no longer quite human . . .

Far from Earth, on a ship carrying the 13th and 14th generations of descendants from the original crew, life is short. You are born, learn the tasks needed to keep the ship running, help breed and train the next crew – and your death is ordered by the computer in charge.

Gregson, chief of the psych-police, makes sure the computer’s death-sentences are carried out quickly and painlessly. His duty is a sacred trust. He knows the intricacies of the system, how it works . . . and how it can be subverted.

He is growing old. Rebellious.

He also knows his name will soon come up in the computer for elimination.

And he has no intention of carrying out his own death-sentence!

On the airless surface of the Moon the ‘cold war’ continues, with the bases of the major world powers watching each other and waiting . . .

The dedicated personnel of Britain’s Moon Base seemed well-adjusted to their peculiar existence despite a series of mysterious happenings. What bothers them most is the visit of a Royal Commission sent by an economically-worried British Government to investigate expenditure. Travelling with the Commission, but under separate and secret orders, is Felix Larsen, who’s investigations are of quite a different nature.

Larsen, alive to the possibilities of espionage, soon finds himself faced with the inexplicable. Why should one man fall a thousand feet and escape with minor bruises while another dies after falling a mere eighteen inches? Why does a desperate man, bent on suicide and with all the means at hand, find it absolutely impossible to kill himself? What are the strange messages emanating from the Base – and from whence do they come? And what is the fantastic thing that has been conceived in the research department?

For Mark Carodyne, all of life was a gamble. For money, for sport, for knowledge, for danger. That’s why he had come to Krait for the skimming races he knew would make him rich. Or broke.

Or dead.

Krait. It was dominated by the pulsing quivering kaleidoscopic Omphalos that filled the sky above. An unmeasurable mass that was said to have the power to swallow whole planets – even galaxies. Indeed, seven ships had been sent to explore its mysteries and none had returned.

Now there were those who believed that Krait was about to come into its path. And Mark Carodyne had agreed to gamble his life to obtain the scientific data that might save the planet from destruction. One man. In a single ship. Skimming the edge of the unknown . . .

“Destiny awaits the world of Metelaze. Mighty will be our future. To us will come the races of the galaxy. To us will come the wealth of a universe.

“Too long have we rested beneath the Terran heel. Very soon now we shall strike off the chains of our oppressors. Metelaze shall be free!”

This sort of propaganda was always common among the demagogues of backward planets that had received help from Terra. But Metelaze was different. For there the promise held out was that secrets of the ancient pre-galactic science were becoming available, that an offer was being made that “could not be refused.”

To Cap Kennedy fell the task of finding out. Were there really unknown scientific marvels available on Metelaze? Who was behind these offers of total power and absolute wealth? What, in fact, was the monster of Metelaze?

And how could such a monster out of time and space be stopped?

On the Eve of the Fourth Millennium a slowly-building civilization, struggling out of the rubble of the Drowning, was crushed beneath the sceptre of a powerful and repressive Church. But on the Eve of the Fourth Millennium the sound of a magical pipe was heard, and the air was filled with songs of freedom and enlightenment. And on the Eve of the Fourth Millennium the Boy appeared, bringing the gift of sacrilege, a harbinger of the future, heralding the arrival of the White Bird of Dawning. It is the coming of a New Age. A glorious future bearing the presents of the past!

They came to destroy! The treacherous Falcons, uniformed in the black leather tunics of the fanatic Secular Arm, descended on Corlay to burn and kill. Commanded by Lord Constant, ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, they were determined to crush the religious heresy of Kinship. But a new dream rose from the ashes. When four Kinsmen escaped the carnage of their beloved land, each helped to fulfill the miracle that had been foretold: the coming of the Child of the Bride of Time.

The first coming was the Man:
The second was Fire to burn Him;
The third was water to drown the Fire;
The fourth is the Bird of Dawning.

Twenty years have passed since the martyrdom of the Boy-piper at York, twenty years in which his legacy, the movement of Kinship, has challenged the tyranny of the Church Militant in Britain’s seven island kingdoms.

Now his namesake, Tom, bearing the Boy’s own pipes and perhaps himself imbued with the spirit of the White Bird, is wandering Europe in company with the girl, Witchet. But disaster overtakes them and Tom, in a fury of vengeance, breaks his vow of Kinship.

A terrible path lies before him, one that transcends his own world. As he travels it, Tom must come to understand the true nature of the wild White Bird, of The Bride of Time and her Child, and of the Song the Star Born sang.

Earth, 2000 years after the holocaust which drove man deep underground; a ghostly, deserted planet peopled only by the diligent robots who, century after century, silently harvest grain which no man will eat. Up into this eerie world comes Mel, a questioning young Roamer who has disobeyed the Law which says he must never venture into or beyond the Lost Levels. Together with three companions, and a companion not of this earth, Mel takes on the awesome task of freeing human beings from the tyranny imposed upon them by their remote ancestors; of justifying the agonized cry of Barney as he died in a Forbidden Level; ‘I am a man! Everything is for Man!’

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.

The Custodians tells of a visitor to a French monastery, and of one specially built tiny room which is constructed precisely on the intersection of mysterious force fields, so that anyone who enters is able to foresee the future. Paradise Beach is the story of a wall-screen whose image of the sea attunes itself to the individual perceptions of the onlooker. Piper at the Gates of Dawn is set towards the end of the next millennium when the stories about the coming of the mysterious white bird of kinship become associated with the travels of an old story-teller and his young nephew, whose pipe seems to have a magical quality. Finally, The Hertford Manuscript tells of the remarkable discovery of a seventeenth-century book with some pages purporting to be the journals of a nineteenth-century time traveller.

He could see from above that this planet was inhabited. He emerged from the ship – to find himself lassoed and captured by a beautiful redhead mounted on a strange, bird-like creature. That was the first shock; the second was to realise that this world of women looked on him as a monster. For while the women of Atlantis had waited for the coming of the Men, they were certain that this creature who had landed on their planet could not possibly be a man.

In the beginning was World War III…

Out of the flames was born a new civilization, a new humanity dedicated to one world rather than to many nations, to once peace rather than many wars. Never again on Planet Earth would one group of humans “defend” themselves against another group equally convinced that all their actions were “defensive”. Never again on Planet Earth.

But cycles repeat themselves endlessly; Earth is only the beginning of the human story. Next comes planet against planet, and then the stars themselves. Through it all the impersonal forces of historical necessity will tend to force that story into the pathways of tyranny, stasis, and war. And in the end they must prevail. But ever will humankind win free once more…

Dominic Flandry had a great future ahead of him as saviour of the civilised universe. In later years his talent for swift, decisive action would give him an intergalactic reputation. But at the age of nineteen and straight out of naval academy, he was just another raw ensign.

The mighty Merseian Empire had sworn to wipe the Earth from the face of the universe. The attack had already been launched, but no one knew how or where the ravening power of the savage green skinned aliens would strike. Only Ensign Flandry had the answer, in the form of a code which he might – or might not – be able to decipher.

And so the Merseians were coming after Flandry with every weapon in their terrible arsenal. And just to make things worse, Earth’s own armadas were after him too – for desertion, high treason and other assorted crimes. Even for a future saviour, times were looking pretty tough.

“If it pleased Ruethen of the Long Hand to give a feast and ball at the Crystal Moon for his enemies. He knew they must come. Pride of race had slipped from Terra, while the need to appear well-bred and sophisticated had waxed correspondingly. The fact that spaceships prowled and fought, fifty light-years beyond Antares, made it all the more impossible a gaucherie to refuse an invitation from the Mersian representative. Besides, one could feel delightfully wicked and ever so delicately in danger.”

It is the common fate of empires to grow old and jaded: Rome, Byzantium, Britain, America, and so on to the Empire of Terra itself, each has near the end succumbed to the same weary “sophistication” that allows a warlord of Merseia to make a mock of a race whose star-conquering ancestors found the Merseians a race of pre-technic barbarians huddled in stone piles – and saved them from extinction. Flandry himself has come to understand that there is no more point to all his victories than that a few trillion of his fellow creatures may live out their lives before the coming of the Long Night of galactic barbarism. That he will not have shortened that coming Dark Age one bit – only postponed it. That the barbarians always win in the end, and are always followed by a new round of civilisation.

This is the culmination of the greatest adventure series in the history of science fiction.

With ‘A Stone in Heaven’ Poul Anderson has brought the career of Dominic Flandry full cycle. From the beginning Flandry has piece by piece mortgaged his soul that the long night of galactic barbarism might be held off just a little longer. Now, face to face with his personal long night, Flandry is offered one last chance for love and honour in a universe he has come to believe holds neither…

After Armageddon the People of the Sea created a new kind of civilisation, on based on the integrity of Life and the moral as well as pragmatic necessity of conservation. But the Sky People live by a different vision, and they have come to enforce it…

The third volume in Anderson’s saga about humanity’s strife-ridden future among the stars. The complex rivalry between human and machine has continued for years. Events come to a head on Prospina, where the human poet Jesse Nicol finds his fate intertwined with that of the android Venator.