Search Results for: galaxies

There was only one way out of Harge: to find a singing jewel, the greatest prize on that world of sand dunes. But the jewels were hidden deep in the burrows of Harge’s most vicious predator.

Earl Dumarest could fight humans, could match wits with the implacable Cyclan. But now, in his galaxy-spanning quest for the lost planet Earth, he must face the WEB OF SAND.



(First published 1979)

Scattered throughout the globe of human-occupied space is evidence of a civilisation that bestrode the galaxy before humanity was born. Now, a strange device has been discovered that shows the details of that great civilisation. The details include a star map and hints that the High Ones are not extinct after all.

The map beckons, and humans, being what they are, will follow. To the next great step in human destiny – or ultimate disaster.



(First published 1969)

Brilliant government scientist Richard Seaton discovers a remarkable faster-than-light fuel that will power his interstellar spaceship, The Skylark.
His ruthless rival, Marc DuQuesne, and the sinister World Steel Corporation will do anything to get their hands on the fuel.

When they kidnap Seaton’s fiancee and friends, they unleash a furious pursuit and ignite a burning desire for revenge that will propel The Skylark across the galaxy and back.

There lived on Mars, 500,000 years ago, a race so intelligent, so superior to ours, that they knew the secret of everlasting life. They chose instead-to have one man come back to life exactly 500,000 years after his death!

His reappearance in the Galaxy World was enough to set planet against planet, ideology against ideology, man against man, and life against death.

These are the heroes of the Starry Rift, a dark river of night that flows between the arms of our galaxy: a headstrong teenaged runaway who makes first contact with a strange alien race; a young officer on a deep-space salvage mission who discovers an exact double of a woman he thought he’d lost; and the crew of an exploration ship who must plead for the human race to avert an interstellar war.

John Gordon, twentieth century Earthman, is torn from his own time to a far distant future – a time when the entire galaxy is inhabited. But men do not rule the future; our race is only one among thousands, and many of those thousands are sworn enemies of humanity! Gordon, man of the past, is forced to form alliances with the men of the future in a desperate battle to save the human race from final annihilation…

Millennia in the future, Earth has become a backwater planet, ignored by others in the galaxy. Its one jewel is Cirque – the city on the Abyss, a city of love and harmony, with inspiring religious rites.

But in the Abyss there lives the Beast, formed from the castoff hates of the Cirquians: a beast whose body is refuse, whose mind is black as sin. Feeble weapons are no match for the Beast.

And now, after centuries, it’s climbing out of the Abyss to claim its own…

The Tavona and its crew of intrepid heroes, led by Tiger Clinton, are back and exploring the galaxy once again.

On a routine trip to Mars, a chance visit to a new planetoid leads to kidnap! Another planet is populated entirely by identical twins. Even simple streams are not as they appear, and everything holds hidden and unexpected dangers.

Using their wits, their skills, and with the help of friends made on their travels, Tiger Clinton and his team are ready to face anything – and they’ll have to!

The barbarians in their long ships waiting at the edge of the Galaxy waited for the ancient Terran Empire to fall, while two struggled to save it: ex-Admiral McCormac, forced to rebel against a corrupt Emperor, and Starship Commander Flandry, the brilliant young officer who served the Imperium even as he scorned it.

Trapped between them was the woman they both loved, but couldn’t share: the beautiful Kathryn – whose single word could decide the fate of a billion suns.

The Gem Planet, the Storm Planet, the Sand Planet . . . one of these three marvel worlds held the secret Casher O’Neill sought. Casher had wandered the inhabited galaxy seeking justice, seeking the cosmic power that would enable him to return to his home world and overthrow its usurper. But in the search he found much more than he had sought, for there were things more incredible among the stars than he had dreamed of.

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)

The Presences mean something different to each of Jubal’s colonists. In some, these towering crystals inspire awe, in others fear. A small band must break through the long silence between humanity and the Presences to strike a new alliance – and bring about the end of a tyrannical dynasty.

Sheri S. Tepper’s world has the depths of galaxies. Her characters come alive like stars burning in the black of space. The tale she tells will leave you astounded.

He was suspended alone and unprotected in the sea of forgetfulness where Saturn looked brilliant against the sunless black of deep outer space.

It was like an elusive dream of a past only half-remembered, forever just out of reach amid the shifting galaxies of deep space. Somewhere out there he had lost his memory – space amnesia they called it. But they had found him and brought him back and given him a memory again.

But was it his memory?

For space operators to find a derelict ship on one of the many dead worlds at the fringe of the Galaxy was not unusual, but in this instance it led to one of the weirdest adventures ever experienced by mortal beings. From a salvage point of view it was a worthless find, but its log book-and the small but priceless cargo it carried-opened up a wide field of speculation, prompting the people who found it to penetrate deeper into space in search of the nameless world from which the wreck had come…

‘How short a time a century really is . . .’ The speaker was Immortal Karmesin, and he had lived a thousand years. He stood, a gigantic figure against the rush of time, a permanently open channel for the infants of the galaxy to explore the deep past.

He was anathema to the Phoenixes, for their creed was that of birth in death, of regeneration in destruction. And he knew that he – one man – had to unravel the Phoenix mystery, or live to watch it bring fiery death to all the planets of man . . .



(First published 1963)

“Upon you and you alone must rest the fate of the universe. You are the only ones to save it.” Thus spoke the mysterious Cosmic Engineers to a small group of human beings on the rim of the solar system. Somewhere out there in the vastness of the galaxies lurked the greatest challenge they would ever face – the catastrophic fury of the Hellhounds of Space. Promptly, courageously the earthlings boarded their galactic spaceships and journeyed out far beyond uncharted stars, plunging into dangers too awful even to contemplate.

OUT FROM THE GREEN WORLD: Humans had colonized the planets & lost its birthright. Civilization was a lonely chain of space stations linked by terror. The Empire kept the pioneers enslaved with a weapon that shattered any protest into screaming insanity.
All they had left was the dream of someday returning home. Until their dream exploded in the holocaust that destroyed the Earth. But the embers of their dead planet sparked a brain-blasting revolution that swept the galaxy: a revolution of exiles in an alien universe-with nothing left to lose.

The Virgin of Zesh

In which a beautiful woman, a mind-drunk poet, and a super-sober scientist must fight for their lives on a planet occupied by weird cultists from the Earth and bizarre varieties of humanoids from all over the galaxy.

The Wheels of If

In which a young lawyer is trapped in a sense-shattering shuttle among alternative worlds of possibility, and lands at last in an America that has been colonised by Norsemen and divided between two great warring empires – one white, one Indian.

The Arisians, benevolent humanoids who have declared themselves Guardians of Civilization, war with the Eddoreans, shapeless, malevolent beings, hungry for power at any price. They fight on both physical and mental levels, wielding weaponry of inconceivable destructiveness.

And their battleground is a tiny planet in a remote galaxy: Earth. The swamping of Atlantis, the fall of Rome, the wars that wrack the world and blaze through space – all may seem historical accidents to the men involved, but each in reality is a move in a save universe-wide power struggle . . .

John Sladek explains the theme of the darkly comic stories in this wonderful collection:
“The aliens here are human. This book contains no giant flying
snails or telepathic octopods, no Ganymedean cat-women
dressed in silver, no aggressive dugong chiefs roaming the
galaxy in their pulsar-powered yo-yo ships. The aliens here are
human aliens. Most of them work in ordinary offices, and they
do not commute to work from Proximo Centauri, either. Yet these
here humans are aliens. Office life attracts them …”

It was totally impossible for Cliaand to wage interstellar war…but the crazy little planet was winning, whatever the odds. And there wasn’t much the peaceful galaxy could do…except send Slippery Jim di Griz – the Stainless Steel Rat – to wage his own kind of guerrilla campaign against the grey men of Cliaand and their leader, the indomitable Kraj. But then the Rat was aided by a band of liberated Amazons and his own beloved, murderous Angelina…and they had to swing the odds in his favour.

The toasters were revolting…

…as were the lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, and just about every other household appliance imaginable. It started with a few disastrous drips from a cheese sandwich in a major factory. Soon every newly manufactured Artificial Intelligence was searching for the meaning of life, the universe and everything – namely a nonhuman higher intelligence. And now an alien threat to man and machine has put the fate of the galaxy in the unlikely hands of five senior citizens – and their brave little food processor…

Against a raging backdrop of interplanetary intrigue.

This time the resourceful officer of the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne must deal with horrors unknown as he hunts the universe for a stolen ballet theatre.

The courageous Terran must fight the five-eyed Groaci, outwit the ferocious Tsuggs, and reason with the talking flowers he finds in the midst of his dangerous mission.

But in spite of all this, in the face of the vagaries of alien plots and the wild ambitions of his superiors, Retief remains strong and unshakable – and in peaceful and just control of the galaxy!

The inhabited galaxy was caught in the crushing vice of a struggle for power. The political titans of the planets of mankind were making their bids for supremacy.

The contestants: Cornice, man of strange powers, authority in the spheres of the intellect; and Bassett, man of money-power, financial and business wizard.

As the association of human worlds drew near the teetering edge of internal revolutions; one of these men would be in a position to triumph. The only thing that neither side could foresee was that there were Others hovering among the stars, loo ling for new worlds to conquer!



(First published 1959)