Search Results for: for-anything,-a

This is the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy – a monumental saga which goes beyond anything yet created by this master among today’s imaginative writers. An entire solar system is revealed, and with it a world disturbingly reflecting our own, Helliconia: an Earth-like planet where dynasties change with the seasons .
Events and characters and animals stream across the pages of this gigantic novel. Cosmic in scope, it keeps an eye lovingly on the humans involved. So the 5,000 inhabitants of the Earth’s observation station above Helliconia keep their eyes trained on the events of Oldorando and may long to intervene though the dangers are too great. So we on Earth have them all in our vision in one of the most consuming and magnificent novels of scientific romance.

VAMPIRES NEVER REST

And neither does Harry Keogh, the world’s greatest vampire hunter, the Necroscope, the man who can talk to the dead. Right now, he’s desperately searching for his wife and son, who disappeared in the midst of Harry’s war against the undead monsters that plague mankind. Others will have to carry on that fight until the Necroscope has been reunited with his beloved family.

But it’s not that easy to leave the vampire war behind. The bloodsuckers know that the Necroscope is their deadliest enemy and will do anything to destroy him.

Harry struggles to locate his missing family, not realising that he has become a pawn in the battle between two powerful vampires. When one has slain the other, the Necroscope will be the next to die!

When the girl from the asylum drowned in the lake that night, she thought it was the end of her life, but she was wrong.

With robots at fifty thousand dollars a unit, it was far more economical to use corpse labour – all it took was a two-thousand dollar animating pack in the brain, and a zombie worker, under the direction of a helmeted controller, could do just about anything except think.

Or so everyone said. But in the zombie dorms at night, with only the walking dead or roommates, things were not as they should have been. The girl from the asylum seemed to have more mental ability, not less, and someone was trying to kill her. Kill a dead girl?

Maybe there was more to heaven than an afterlife of manual labour in the company of a bunch of stiffs!

Winner of the Nebula Award for best novel, 2005
Winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award 2004

Unknown to anyone, two creatures have wandered the Earth for generations. The aliens have no knowledge of each other, but share a residual memory of a mysterious, sunken relic – and an affinity for deep water. One, the changeling, has survived by adaptation, taking the shapes of many different organisms. The other, the chameleon, has survived solely by destroying anything or anyone that threatens it.

Now, finally brought up from the bottom of the sea by marine biologist Russell Sutton, the relic calls to them both . . . to come home. For all these generations there have been two invincible creatures on Earth. But the chameleon has decided there’s only room for one . . .

An expedition to Mars is decided on and Chris, Serge, Morrey and Tony are chosen to man it. Unlike their expedition to Venus, this is not a desperate last-minute venture; it is a sober, carefully planned affair. Chris and his friends have no reason to expect anything beyond the normal risks of space travel – except for the experiences of the Dutchman Van der Veen. He is the only man who has ever penetrated beyond the Le Prince layer, which blots out radio communication with the earth – and he returned in a state of mental collapse. When he hears of the new expedition he has another breakdown, and when at last he is able to describe his experiences he speaks of strange and terrifying voices that assailed him in outer space.

Will Chris and his friends also here these voices, and what will they find on Mars?

The story of Dr. Hartwell (Reanimators) continues, but now he has company. Weird company: a witch, a changeling, a mad scientist, and a poet trapped in the form of a beast. These are not heroes but monsters…monsters to fight monsters. Their adventures rage across the globe, from the mountains and long-forgotten caves of Antarctica to the dimly lit backstreets of Innsmouth that still hold terrifying secrets. The unholy creatures released upon the world via the ill-fated Lake expedition to Antarctica must be stopped. And only the weird company stands in their way.

Continuing in the fashion of Reanimators, The Weird Company finds Lovecraft expert Pete Rawlik taking some of the most well-known of H. P. Lovecraft’s creations and creating a true Frankenstein monster of a story-a tale more horrific than anything Lovecraft could have imagined…

‘Murder on Christmas day’ is the newspaper headline no one wanted to read…

A true classic from the golden age of crime fiction.

‘Brilliant’ PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

When a small-town schoolteacher is discovered dead, beheaded, and tied to a T-shaped cross on December 25th, Ellery Queen is intrigued enough to take a closer look. But when he arrives, Queen is met with too few clues and too little evidence to produce a satisfactory verdict, even for a master sleuth such as himself, and so returns home, defeated.

But when an identical murder occurs – followed by several more – Queen discovers a horrific connection to a strange cult. This is a disturbing puzzle unlike anything he’s encountered before, and it will take all of his powers of deduction to uncover the killer.

As she says of herself, Jay is a ‘chancer’. But she finds she is out of her depth when she meets the beautiful artist, Jilaine Best.

Jilaine has everything – looks, talent, and wealth – even so her life is imperfect. In adolescence she lost her mother in circumstances both mysterious and painfully unpleasant. Now, unable to conceive, Jilain’s one wish is for a baby – even if another woman gives birth to it.

Jay can’t resist this opportunity – she tells Jilaine that she, Jay, is pregnant. And so the great lie begins.

It seems easy enough – for there conveniently is the handsome young cab driver, only too willing to make love with her… But the spun web is already tangling. Can anything result from it but danger – and destruction?

Four-BEE was an utopian city. If you didn’t mind being taken care of all your long long life, having a wild time as a “jang” teen-ager, able to do anything you wanted from killing yourself innumerable times, changing bodies, changing sex, and raising perpetual hell, it could be heaven.

But for one inhabitant there was always something askew. He/she had tried everything and yet the taste always soured. And then he/she succeeded in committing the one illegal act – and was thrown out of heaven forever.

But forever is not a term any native of that robotic utopia understood. And so he/she challenged the rules, declared independence, and set out to prove that a human was still smarter than the cleverest and most protective robot.

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.

Bleys Ahrens is now a political power on the planet Association, home of the Friendlies. His people – his Others, not Dorsai or Friendly or Exotic, but hybrids – are in place in all the new worlds and are ready to take his message to the greater human public. But within his inner circle is Henry McLean, Soldier of God, and a True Faith-Holder.

Henry fears for the soul of his nephew Bleys, and while he guards, he also watches and judges. And beyond Bleys Ahrens’ control is Hal Mayne: the one man in all the human worlds who might successfully challenge Bleys in his bid for power.

For Hal Mayne is the true culmination of the Cycle’s grand design. Bleys would give anything to convert Hal Mayne to his cause – or failing that, to destroy him.

Once, at the height of Earth’s fabled history, there was a city called Ferrin. Compared to Ferrin, all the cities of Earth that ever were or would be – from imperial Rome to towering New York before to the city called R afterwards – paled into insignificance. But in the long twilight centuries that followed the fall of Ferrin memories faded and men’s ambitions waned, and by the time that the young man Thel heard of Ferrin, no one was sure it was anything but a myth.

But part of an abandoned highway still passed near Thel’s home – and when a starry fragment from Ferrin came into Thel’s possession, he knew there could be no rest for him until he had followed the ruined roadway that still spanned time and space to find the truth about the Rise and Fall of Ferrin – and also of all humanity’s hopes.

Did she hold the key to ecstasy – or to horror?

The people of Gwethym were highly intelligent, rational beings. They worshiped the goddess Neith, not because they believed in such a golden-haired being, but because they recognised the need for religion as a counterbalance to human passions.

So when trouble struck their planet, when they discovered an energy leak which was slowly destroying their world, the Gwethymians turned to science for their answer. If their world was to be saved, the solution must come from the logicians.

Or so they thought, until one day a woman, in the image of their goddess Neith, walked across the waters of the harbour and into their city! Then their trouble was two-fold. Would there be anything left to save of their world if they waited for the scientists? And if they didn’t, if they put their trust in this goddess whom logic told them could not even exist, would they just be sealing their doom that much quicker?

Mars is our nearest neighbour in the solar system, with the exception of our own satellite Luna. It will be considerably easier to hit the moon of course, but what will we find when we get there? Plenty to interest the scientist, the mining engineer, and the cosmologist. But the Biologist will find only fossilised traces of Lunar life, if he finds anything at all.
On Mars the story will be vastly different. We know that there is vegetation there. We still argue about those enigmatic canals. Are they optical illusion or…? What if…? What if an intelligent civilisation cut those great water courses? What if that civilisation still exists? Is man the only intelligence in God’s great Universe? How will earth’s envoys react when they first encounter non-human intellect for the first time? Will the aliens be friendly, or…?

They took her identity – they wanted her life – but they couldn’t take her spirit.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

When Julia Ross, a jobless and penniless young woman, is sent to meet a prospective employer, she is oblivious to the trap that awaits her. As she rings the bell to 30 Henriques Square, the door opens on a London household ruled by a woman dressed in red with murderous intentions. For Julia is exactly what she needs – someone with no family, no connections, who will not be missed…

Two days later, Julia awakes in a different house in different clothes and with a new identity. And no one will believe anything she says.

But the woman in red hadn’t reckoned on a secret admirer even Julia didn’t know she had – and the indefatigable sleuth Arthur Crook.

Paul Carlton Savage died for the first time on July 20, 1969 in Vietnam…and then his troubles really began. Before he knew what hit him, Savage was approached by The Hunter and offered a deal…a deal he was in no position to turn down: immortality in exchange for his services in The Hunter’s continuing war against The Bromgrev.
Suddenly Savage found himself pitted against The Bromgrev – an enemy he had never seen…an enemy who could be anyone, anywhere, at any time…an enemy determined to destroy all who opposed him and anything that got in his way.
In this raging intergalactic war between Good and Evil, Savage was in a peculiar position. He couldn’t decide which side to join…and time was running out!

If an alien creature can so perfectly imitate a human being that not only is it physically and mentally indistinguishable from a man but it actually believes itself to be one, what do you do with it? Is it human?

This is the question which confronts Alex Stordahl, supervisor of the harsh planet Marilyn. Initially nobody had suspected anything unusual about the largely reptilian animal life. Then Stordahl discovered the amorphs – shapeless in their natural state, but possessing a unique defence mechanism: when closely approached by a possible aggressor, they could adopt the form least likely to be attacked by the creature.

When it transpires that the creatures are harmless they are quickly absorbed into the colony to provide extra labour. The the ruthless owner of the development corporation arrives from Earth. He wants to test the amorphs, and brings with him a group of four brilliant, but totally egotistical men. And trouble soon starts…

“. . . and they all moved to the true start, the true airport, the place that was written on the tickets, the place they should all have been at, the place that would lead them to what they expected, the place with speeding planes; the place with organization behind it; the place where officials walked around in splendid hats with badges on; the place where the beginning of their journey was, and perhaps if they had known they would have jumped off the bus screaming or would have bitten ff their own tongues in order to bleed to death or they would have looked at one another merely in doubt and horror, but as they knew nothing of the future, and no person on earth knows anything much of the future which accounts for the extremely low suicide rate, they all sat and moved forwards to the point in time and space which could only logically and positively be called the start of their journey which was called Super Tour.”

The city of Clarges is a near-utopia, surrounded by barbarism throughout the rest of the world. Abundant resources and the absence of political conflict lead to a pleasant life that should be stress-free. However, nearly everyone is obsessed with a perpetual scramble for status, called slope. Medical technology has led to a great lengthening of the human lifespan, but, in order to prevent the Malthusian horrors of over-population, it is awarded only to those citizens who have made notable contributions.
The Grayven Warlock was one of those accomplished few, but he has become a fugitive after a feud with another Amaranth resulted in the latter’s death. Masquerading as his own relict, using the name Gavin Waylock, he lives in obscurity, looking for the accomplishment that will reinstate him among the immortals. However, Waylock’s dramatic stratagems may result in changes to society far beyond anything he had intended…

Starduster

Yes, I’m Max Andrews. I’m one of the guys who fought and bled and worked to get to Mars. I figure what I gave up in those early years gave me the right to pilot the next big jump.

I’ve lied and stolen for that right. I’d have killed, too, but I didn’t have to. Instead, I let a woman give her life so I could have my chance, my door to space.

You think I’d stop at anything, now?

I’ll be on that rocket, blasting away on America’s biggest adventure, the hop out into the stars themselves.

Only Fred Brown could have written this deeply moving science fiction novel about one man’s epic, life-long struggle to open mankind’s pathway to the stars.

The alien ruins that dotted Earth’s landscape were an enigma.

Archaeologist Rond Heshke dismissed as a ridiculous hoax the photographic evidence which suggested that the ruins disobeyed the laws of time. The Titanium Legions believed that the ruins had been left behind by an invading force from space, which had been repelled in a past age and whose imminent return was feared.

It was not until the Titanium scientists perfected their time machines that the truth began to emerge piece by piece: that the builders of the ruins belonged not to the stars but to Earth’s own future, and that the dreaded confrontation was indeed shortly due – not with aliens, but in a form more horrifying, more calamitous, than anything imaginable…

For Earth was to be the victim of an extraordinary cosmic accident. Time itself was about to collide! Mankind’s leaders became even more fanatical, pressing on with new plans, determined at all costs to survive…

For Karadel, being a shape-shifter has always been a reality she couldn’t escape. Even though she’s built a safe life as a rural veterinarian, with a close-knit network of shifter and human friends who would do anything for her, she can’t help but wish for a chance at being normal.

When she’s not dealing with her shifts or caring for her animal patients, she attempts to develop a drug that will help shifters control their changes – a drug that might even allow them to remain human forever.

But her comfortable life is threatened by two events: she meets an ordinary man who touches her heart, and her best friend is forced to shift publicly with deadly consequences.

Now Karadel must decide whom to trust: her old friends or her new love.

Nobody beats Bar Holliday.
He was paid to find the Terraformable worlds, new planets for his corporation to plunder. Up until the day he came upon Peace Victory, an abandoned generation ship hovering ominously above a definitely habitable planet, he believed nobody ever could.
Nobody beats Bar Holliday.
…because he was never satisfied with anything lower than first place, because he was always the oddball, in charge of his own welfare, his own destiny…a man determined to make his mark in the world and win games at any cost.
NOBODY EVER BEATS BAR HOLLIDAY.
…because he only took the wrong chances at the right times. But on the planet Patmos, where everything looked safe, but nothing was, Bar Holliday had at last met his match!

In the unfettered freedom of Russia’s new-found venture-capital frenzy, Max Borodin can organise anything – so long as the readies are ready. That’s why he’s Moscow’s most successful businessman.

But Max’s life has its downside: his wife, Tanya, nags him, his mistress, Sonya, exhausts him; his brother Evgeny needs him – to help extricate him from yet another shady business fiasco. Then there are always the country’s friendly mafia, keen to lend a helping hand with the profits of Max’s Universal Manufacturing Company – producer of documents, historical and otherwise, to suit every conceivable occasion.

Satire rarely comes more sulphuric than this. Let’s Put the Future Behind Us is the wittiest job of fictional surgery on New Russia since its iron curtain was amputated.