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Whenever disaster wipes its bloodstained hands on the pages of human history man asks why?
Before the dawn of science primitive man believed in the intervention of weird supernatural powers. Omens were consulted. Oracles were read. Did these things bode good or evil?
Science has explained many of the olden day terrors in terms of ergot poisoning, static electricity, delusion and hypnosis. Some stubborn facts remained unexplained and inexplicable.
Do ghost armies march across the sky while their physical counterparts bleed and die below them? At what strange frontier do fact and fiction blend?
To the terrified watchers below, the thing in the sky looked like a man, carried by a gigantic eagle. But as it descended they could see no space between the man and the bird.

They woke up to the smell of danger. No one could see it. None of them could hear it. But it was there. Lurking… intangible… inaudible… invisible. The space around them was alive with it. They breathed it into their lungs. It crept through the pores of their skins. It was the dreaded presence of X the Unknown.

At first it was just another hoax, another UFO story, but the sightings went on increasing.
It couldn’t be an alien, there had been so many false alarms, dramatic news-columnists had shouted ‘wolf’ so many times, that John Citizen shrugged his shoulders and said ‘nuts’ at the very mention of the word space-ship. Then one of them landed…
The things they did were not exactly friendly. In fact by the time they’d finished, they had made an old-time Viking raid seem like a social call from the vicar…
Many other attacks followed. Day after day and night after night the alien ships screamed in on their mission of death. The earth struck back. But no one could track the aliens to their lair.
They seemed to come from Nowhere. They weren’t Martians. They weren’t Venusians, and they weren’t from another system.
That left only one place where they could have originated… yet the truth was so fantastic that none of the earth governments would take it seriously until it was almost too late.
The enemy came from within! From the gigantic caverns at the earth’s core.

Astra City was a technological 40th century masterpiece. It represented the challenge of society to the raw untamed planet where it raised its gleaming towers in a far-flung corner of the galaxy. Beyond the force field encircling Astra City lay mystery and terror in the form of the weird primeval Greek beasts.
There were other mysteries surrounding Astra City. Mysteries like those the one-eyed Twen discovered in the labyrinth below the modern city. A labyrinth whose age would only be calculated in centuries… but which was believed to have been erected by the distant Masters themselves. Hidden in its depths Twen discovers a forbidden document of the millennial age, which involves her with a secret society who know the dreadful truth about the colonists. They are Androids… and their dawning intelligence leads them into head-on conflict with the rapidly decaying human race.

The Eurasian world of the 24th Century is in the grip of Rajak the Magnificent, one of the most efficiently ruthless totalitarian tyrants ever produced by history. The dreaded security guards are everywhere. The only escape is the time dimension. But what if the Time Vortex breaks down? To what unknown realms – of past, future or probability – will the travellers be transported?

Mike Grafton, on the run from the security forces, finds himself changing places with Benjamin Bathurst, the true life Missing Diplomat of the early 19th Century, who vanished and was never seen again.

What happens to these men, torn from their environments, into unknown realms? Will the Liberationist forces succeed in destroying Rajak the Magnificent? But perhaps the greatest question of all is the possibility of Time Travel: will man ultimately conquer time as he is even know conquering space?

Dan Bellamy was down and out. It seemed that he had reached the end of the road… and then he met the stranger. Who was the mystery man? Why were his amber eyes so powerful? Above all why did he call himself Melchizdek?
The stranger took him to a house, and then the mystery deepened. What was going on in the hidden laboratory? Why were M.I.5 so interested? These men were different. They possessed uncanny mental powers. They had a weird control over matter that was outside any known physical laws. Then Bellamy asked himself the $64,000 question. Was he one of them? And if he was, what were they?
Mutation is well-known, though still only partially understood, biological phenomena. Atomic radiations cause strange changes in the genes and chromosomes of plants and animals. They might also change men…. To find out just how strange these changes would be, you must read “Dawn of the Mutants”. A superb science fiction story – that might be fact.

The world of 2165 needed co-ordinators to link the liaison officers from different broad fields. Natasha was a trained nexus officer who became curious about Building 297.

All her enquiries reached a blank wall . . . literally. Nobody seemed to know what went on inside the tall glass and concrete tower. An important security project of some sort . . . but what?

At last she found a way to enter the building nobody understood only to find a project that had gone unbelievably wrong. The original purpose of Building 297 had long since been forgotten. The operators no longer directed the research in the bleak laboratories, they were in the grip of an unknown power.

The menace in the sinister tower had reached a crucial stage. It threatened to leak through the concrete and engulf the city . . . perhaps far more than the city. Natasha had to understand the incredible new force, to escape from its citadel and rouse the sceptical, complacent population before it was too late.

The arrival of the Stranger offered her a terrible choice. Was he her one hope as a potential ally, or had he in some way engineered the menace in the tower?

Dolores Foster was walking home from work when she noticed an oddly shaped glittering something at the edge of the pavement. She stooped, fascinated, and picked up a metallic brooch or badge of unusual lightness. The metal was engraved with peculiar semi-geometrical patterns and she thought it was vibrating as she held it…

Captivated by the unusual qualities of her find she wore it at a cocktail party that evening. Either the stranger who approached her and began asking incredible questions was drunk or reality as she knew it could never be the same again…

The finding of the brooch led her to the fringe of a terrifying organisation: a group known simply as “The Engineers”: men who played with the fabric of the three-dimensional world as if it were made of putty.

Dolores had to learn an entirely new set of survival data as she followed one of the Engineers into a new dimension and saw how human society was masterminded.

She had to decide whether to oppose the terrible truth she had discovered or join the strange beings who looked like men…yet ran the solar system as though it were a fairground!

The sea has always been a symbol of uncontrolled power and infinite movement. Its rhythms are the rhythms of Life itself… for Life began in the primeval oceans…

Roger Adams was a man who dreamt of the untold wealth lying beneath the inscrutable waves of the Atlantic deeps. His mind filled with visions of Lost Continents, sunken galleons and the limitless possibilities of undersea farming. He same his meagre capital into a neck-or-nothing gamble and fought desperately against time and rude to turn his dreams into reality.

The unexpected stowaway added to his problems and then his diving began to pay dividends. The Atlantic Deeps gave up some of their secrets… but each enigma led to greater riddles. Then came the discovery that pointed to world-shaking consequences. Hidden beneath the great rollers lay supernatural forces so immense that the Kraken and other monsters of popular mythology were harmless toys beside it.

The force which had submerged continents was stirring once more…

Inexplicable electro-magnetic disturbances threw the Avon’s passengers and crew into confusion as their ship was dragged off course. Collision with a huge asteroid seemed inevitable and the Avon was abandoned.
Ferdin escaped in a life capsule and landed – more dead than alive – on the unexpected planetoid. To his surprise, a powerful pseudo-grav generator and a vast atmosphere and humidity plant simulated terrestrial conditions with uncanny accuracy.
The asteroid was inhabited and strangely in-habited at that! There was Rosper – a remote, aloof, scientific genius, whose past held strange secrets. There was his beautiful unbelievably innocent daughter, Darmina, who knew no other home but the strange asteroid; and above all there was a creature called Canbail – apparently some strange life-form indigenous to the asteroid! A particular gestalt involving Ferdin and many others took place under the calculating supervision of the Leira Mark 2, the most frighteningly potent of Rosper’s inventions.

The anatomy of fear is the unknown. The essence of terror is contained in the phrase “What if?” Suppose the dead should return? Are there invisible phychic entities hovering on the fringe of the physical world? Can the power of evil manifest itself in tangible form and launch world shattering violence against humanity?

The most gripping fear lies within the human mind. Lana Davis was a normal, healthy, sane young woman to all outward appearances but the Unknown was laying siege to her mind. By day her work kept the worst of the Terror at bay, but at night it returned. Time passed and Fear grew greater…Fear was embodied in a mysterious effigy which stood beside her bed . . . Fear lurked in a weird voice on the telephone.

Lana Davis ran screaming into the night – unable to face Fear any longer. The stranger who found her apparently knew more about her problems than she did; Lana found herself involved in a macabre new environment where Fear had expelled reality leaving the stranger as the only link with the world she had once known. Dark supernatural powers contended with insanity for Lana’s very soul, as she hovered on the brink of unreality and annihilation.

Oliver Marland was an ordinary crew man on a routine flight before disaster overtook the 5X5. The strange sequence of events affected the minds of the entire ship’s company – Marland alone was capable of getting them home safely.

The changes had come to Oliver in a different way. They had set him apart from the others. He was feared and distrusted – not without reason! This was the paradox; they needed him – he needed them; but both sides feared the other too much for compromise.

The only chance of breaking the deadlock lay with the unknown inhabitants of the planet they had been sent to survey – and the natives were not renowned for their generous amiability!

Henderson was a brilliant nuclear physicist until the night he staggered home a pathetic wreck of his former self, raving wildly about flying saucers and a strange being named Ravan. No scientific nation could afford to lose a genius of Henderson’s capacity and Parnell Scott, an experimental psychiatrist, was given the job of restoring Henderson’s sanity. Scott gradually infiltrated Henderson’s apparent fantasy and found himself involved in research that produced frightening results.

According to ancient legends there had once lived a strange, tyrannical ruler named Ravan, who had possessed a vimana or ‘flying car’. Bur Henderson knew nothing of the legends!

Parnell Scott worked desperately against time, sinister foreign agents intent on keeping Henderson insane, and something as old as human history yet as new as tomorrow and more dangerous than nuclear energy.

Heredity is dependent on the complex patterns of genes and chromosomes, which are particularly vulnerable to radiation. An error in a biological research unit led to the birth of a thing so bestial and so powerful that it became a target so Security.
As it grew, its strategic potential developed until whispers of its monstrous power filtered out to the rest of the world. Other nations were interested and one intrepid agent reached the secret bunker where the powerful thing was kept. His interference shattered a safety device and the thing escaped.
It strode across the world with the fury of a tornado. Nothing seemed able to stand in its path. Mighty cities were shattered like ant-hills as the mutant monster continued its rampage. Dazed, disorganised humanity strove desperately to strike back before it was too late…

Beyond the eccentric orbits of Pluto and Neptune lies a vast, empty wilderness. There is nothing but the silence of space between the fringes of the Solar System and our nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri. The outer worlds of the Home System were only inhabited by Service and Scientific Personnel. Life for them was a constant routine war against an almost impossibly hostile environment.
Then something in deep space began to affect the fringe of the Solar System. The isolated Observers in their living domes were helpless. They could do nothing except report on the increasingly bewildering phenomena. As the strange effects worsened, several domes were abandoned. The menace from Beyond continued to encroach on the civilised planets as it head steadily earthwards…
What was the rational, scientific explanation for the thing that looked like an eye? Was it merely motiveless and purposeless, or was it guided by something sinister and more dangerous? Were men fighting a Cosmic Accident or an enormous Intelligence from out there…?

Kerrigan was a legend of his own life-time. He was the kind of electric personality around whom strange stories accumulate like iron filings dancing towards a magnet. When Kerrigan failed to return from a special mission in 2178 the stories grew wilder. Some of his crew refused to believe he was dead, others went to look for him. By 2180 it was as fashionable to go to Lunar Base to look for Kerrigan as it had been fashionable to hunt monsters in Loch Ness two centuries before.

His brother Harry was open minded about the stories, even a little sickened by the transport companies who were cashing in on Kerrigan’s disappearance. Then Harry met Susan Croft and his opinions of the transport companies changed a little. Susan was a telepath and she believed that Kerrigan was trying to contact her. Lunar, however, is a big, empty, dusty place and it was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. Then one day they saw Kerrigan, or something that looked like Kerrigan…

Abercrombie was a strangely secretive man even for a top atom scientist. He had peculiar, advanced theories of his own which he would communicate to no one. The Government research project was well provided with safety factors. In theory the Pile was safe… but theory and practice are poles apart. There is always room for human error. The only man who did not run was Abercrombie. Was he a hero or a megalomaniac? His body was never found, but inexplicable things happened after the accident. It was as if a presence or an essence lingered over the rebuilt Project Headquarters.

The accident at the Pile and the strange rumours surrounding Abercrombie’s name were all but forgotten when the Aliens appeared. Terrible inhuman intelligences aided by powerful androids and monstrous robots threatened the Earth and Man’s concept of civilised life. Then there was another strange phenomenon at the Pile and Abercrombie was no longer forgotten…

Sally McQuire worked for an unusual organisation. She was an undercover agent for the I.P.F., but her friends knew her only as a scatter-brained night club dancer. Then came the Thing. At first there were just off paragraphs in provincial papers. A cow disappeared. Fish stopped biting. Finally Jon Vardo, a shepherd, vanished without a trace. The I.P.F. put Sally on the track. She discovered a strange common denominator linking the events. There was a mathematical and geographical sequence. Sally arranged to be at the next danger zone, and then she too vanished. This is a story of humanity at its best, locked in a life and death struggle with a cruel, cold culture of Beings from the Beyond. This is a story of humanity fighting against incredible odds and fantastic weapons. Can the mind of man hold its own against deadly, sinister Intelligence from beyond the stars?

Carl Kovak was an expendable political prisoner as far as the Eastern Totalitarian Government was concerned. He was being sent into orbit in a lead lined capsule to see if it offered adequate protection from cosmic rays. Carl was strapped in and waiting for blast-off when the first bombs fell. The lead saved his body but doubt was splitting his mind. He had believed in the honesty and integrity of the West. But what if the West had started the war?
Finally, after incredible hardships and dangers, Carl Kovak found the answer. Neither East nor West had launched the atomic missiles… they had come from Space! Now alien invaders and savage mutant stalked the earth. Could a handful of human heroes survive against such terrible odds?

Uma, a beautiful but frightened dancing girl, sells a strange bronze statuette of Nataraja, the dancing Siva, to Dr Chris Anderson, while he was visiting a bazaar in Pollachi, Southern India. He travels back to Kerala and puts the statuette on the bedside cabinet in his hotel room. His sleep is tortured by fantastic nightmares in which he seems hosts of ancient Indian gods and demons, in all their splendour and horror.

He wakes in terror to hear a faint voice whispering in the darkness. The bronze statuette is glowing with unearthly light and there is a smell if incense.

Can a human soul be imprisoned in bronze by the power of weird, unearthly dark magic?

Can Dr Chris Anderson release the psychic prisoner? Who is Uma, the mysterious dancing girl?

If a man from the mid-1920s had picked up today’s paper he would have mistaken it for a science fiction magazine. In the same way, if a man from the mid-1960s could be confronted with a national daily from thirty years hence he would shake his head and regard the whole thing as preposterous. Stop. Think. Wonder. Tomorrow’s commonplace was today’s miracle. Today’s commonplace was yesterday’s miracle. Most things change. Some change faster than others. Human nature changes most slowly of all. The sword has given way to the gun, but the hand that holds the gun is neither braver nor more cowardly than the hand that held the sword. The gun gives place to the heat ray and the energy blaster, but the hand still belongs to a hero or a coward. The greatest drama of the world is human drama. People are still fundamentally people. Spacemen are people. They will still have our human problems a hundred years hence. This is a story of people in the future facing our basic problems in a more complex environment.

BY JOHN E. MULLER
The botanist claims that human life depends indirectly on the chlorophyll in the green leaf. The leaf depends on sunlight. But both depend upon the atom. No atoms, no physical matter, no physical universe!
Microscope experts peer closely into the mysteries of the human body, into the mysteries of the green lead, into the mysteries of the chemical elements. It is hardly feasible to subject an atom to microscopic examination. But what if it was possible? What if a new technique of observation was discovered? A strange, revolutionary “seeing” without recourse to the photon.
The microscope might reveal scientific impossibilities which would shake the universe to its foundations. Smallness hold more terrors than greatness.

Space fiction is no longer fiction in the same way that it used to be. There was an element of distance and strangeness about it a few years back. Now, fact has caught up and threatens to overtake. Science fiction today has become science prediction.

An atom is a miniature solar system in some respects. The clustering molecules resemble galaxies, colloids are, perhaps, tiny models of the whole creation. Man stands midway between the unbelievably small and the unbelievably huge. This is one of the allies of science fiction. We look down into the mysteries of the infinitesimal; we look up into the majesty of the macrocosm.

In all this vastness of stars and planets there must be other life. One day we shall make contact with that life. What will the aliens be like? How will human culture compete with non-human culture? Which will survive?

Darryl Whitesmith was engaged upon a new line of research at the Horological Central Institute. He was familiar with the famous saying of Minkowski: “From henceforth space in itself and time in itself sink to mere shadows and only a kind of union of the two preserves an independent existence.”

But he had no idea to what extent that saying would be borne upon him. It was difficult for Darryl’s mind to make the transition from subjective to objective time, but once that transition had been made there was no turning back. It began as a simple experiment, an experiment which concerned space-time, relativity and the four dimensional continuum.

Whitemith’s first indication that something was wrong was when the clock on the wall raced backwards in a blur of speed to fast to follow. The laboratory faded, day and night blended into a welter of greyness.

He was back in the Jurassic Age – but not for long. The machine was still dragging him back into the remote epochs of the Past…