Search Results for: in-the-beginning

Psychiatrist John Cunningham is secretly also “Jack Cannon”, author of popular horror novels. Under hypnotic regression, John’s patient Tony reveals a bizarre and horrifying tale of a “past life” lived on Tyneside in the 1950s, involving two schoolboys and a weird creature with paranormal powers lurking in caves beneath Tynemouth Castle. As John regresses Tony through earlier lives as far back as the 14th century it begins to seem that the local legend, captured in folksong, of a malevolent Lambton Worm may have had a basis in fact: that it was, in fact, the salamander of alchemical belief, summoned by an alchemist known as Raymond Lully, and possibly still locked below Tynemouth Castle And while John Cunningham is exploring Tony’s multiple personalities, he begins to experience personality problems of his own, as Jack Cannon beings to assert his own individuality.

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.

Ian Watson’s latest collection shows the same range and apparently inexhaustible fund of ideas that have characterized all his previous books. No other contemporary figure in SF is so prolific or inventive a writer of short stories. In the title story we immediately encounter a phantasmagoric vision of a society increasingly dependent on recycling its usable material; other brilliant inventions include a planet inhabited by lemur-like aliens who bafflingly produce marvellously finished stone carvings without apparently having the tools to do so (‘The Moon and Michelangelo’); people fighting their way through the various levels of what appears to be a real-life version of a computer adventure game (‘Jewels in an Angel’s Wing’); and a zoo in which are caged the extensions into our universe of four-dimensional hyberbeings (‘Hyperzoo’). And that is only the beginning: there are fifteen stories in all, each one a state-of-the-art example of short science fiction at its finest.

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.

Earthly medicine – helpless in the face of a plague from space.

Unexpectedly, long thought lost, the first manned Jupiter probe has returned – but only a madman would have tried to land it at Kennedy International! The result is the biggest air disaster in history. And that’s only the beginning: now comes The Jupiter Plague.

THE TRILOGY CONCLUDES…



In West of Eden and Winter in Eden, Harry Harrison, an acknowledged master of imaginative fiction, broke new ground with his most ambitious project to date. He brought to vivid life the world as it might have been, where dinosaurs survived, where their intelligent descendants, the Yilanè, challenged humans for mastery of the Earth, and where the human Kerrick, a young hunter of the Tanu tribe, grew among the dinosaurs and rose to become their most feared enemy.



Now, in Return to Eden, Harrison brings the epic trilogy to a stunning conclusion. After Kerrick rescues his people from the warlike Yilanè, they must regroup and consider their future. They find a safe haven on an island and there begin to rebuild their shattered lives. But with fierce predators stalking the forests, how long can these unarmed human outcasts hope to survive? They need weapons, but they only effective weapons lie in the hands of the technologically superior Yilanè. The small band of humans has no choice but to confront their face head-on.



And, of course, Kerrick cannot forget Vaintè, his implacable Yilantè enemy. She’s been cast out from her kind, under sentence of death, but how long will her banishment last? For her strange attraction to Kerrick has turned into a hatred even more powerful than her inbred instincts – an obsession that compels her to hunt down Kerrick and kill him. In a world completely unlike her own, two great cultures struggling for mastery of the Earth face the same problem that faces us today: how to coexist on the same planet completely unlike ourselves – or mutually perish.

An uneasy truce is broken by the British, who refuse to believe that the might of the British Empire can be bested by their former colony. They begin building a road across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where Mexico is at its narrowest. This will enable them to bring in colonial troops from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic to attack the United States along the undefended Gulf coast.

When the Americans attack the road, the war bogs down in futile jungle warfare. Only a brilliant plan by General Robert E. Lee enables the United States to broaden the war and attack the British forces where they least expect it – very close to home.

Chuck and Jerry, two fun-loving students at an American College discover a faster-than-light space drive and smuggle it into the football team’s plane. They, together with the lovely Sally Goodfellow, crusty Pop and loveable old John view with horror a practical joke gone awry as the plane screams off to Titan, a frozen moon of Saturn.

But that’s only the beginning. When loveable old John’s true and awful identity becomes known, a wild battle across the Universe and through centuries ensues, catapulting friends and deadly foes into the midst of a yarn spun from the grandest tradition of the classic space opera.

Unexpectedly, long thought lost, the first manned Jupiter probe has returned – but only a madman would have tried to land it at Kennedy International! The result is the biggest air disaster in history. And that’s only the beginning . . .

It was a changed world. No longer did the black monks of the Christian Church own half of England and extend their deadly domain over their flock. No longer did the murderous Ragnarssons and their Viking hordes ravage the shires unopposed. Now, in the year 867 AD, those who wished to be Christian were free to worship without the heavy yoke of the ever-hungry Church. Those who did not could follow the Asgarth Way, the Norse religion that paid homage to the gods of Asgard: Othin, Thor, Frey…and Rig. Rig, the patron – perhaps the father? – of Shef Sigvarthsson. Whose new weapons and battle strategy had defeated both the battle-hardened Vikings and the Frankish knights of Pope Nicholas’ failed Crusade.

While enemies plotted, Shef left England by ship, to avoid the wedding of his ally, Alfred of Wessex, to his childhood love, Godive. Shipwrecked on the Frisian Coast he begins a journey that will keep him away from England for months and years, and add more legends to his already myth-shrouded life.

In One King’s Way Harry Harrison Continues the story of Shef Sigvarthsson, god-chosen warrior and mystic. From the Vikings of the North Sea to the scheming priests of Germany, from the frozen northern lands to the snow-covered Finnish tundra, he fights his way towards overwhelming kingship. While his supernatural allies and enemies engage in a shadowy battle for his future. This is historical fantasy of the highest order, from a giant of the genre.

He wears the guise of a Necromancer: the black cloak, the broad-rimmed hat, the gauze mask painted with a death’s head. But raising the dead is the least of his Talents. He is a wild card that threatens the True Game itself. Demon, Doyen, Dragon and Tragamor, Sorcerer, Seer, Armiger and King – take your places. Let the Game begin.

The son of Mavin Manyshaped is back.
Let the Players of the True Game beware.
A giant stalks the mountains. The Shadowpeople gather by the light of the moon. The Bonedancers raise up armies of the dead. And the Wizard’s Eleven sleep, trapped in their dreams.
Players, take your places. The final Game begins.

For Mavin, coming of age as a shape-shifter is both exhilarating and terrifying. Recklessly headstrong, she is to become notorious in the lands of the True Game. With her brother, she leaves their home – a place of slavery and fear – only to have the boy’s powers of beguilement lead them into danger. Rescued by the Wizard Himaggery, the shape-shift and man of magic make a vow. When twenty years have come and gone, they will meet again.

But Himmagery has vanished, leaving only a letter of love behind for Mavin to find. If he were dead, she would know it: sorcerers could trace the scent of his trail, necromancers raise his bones from the dust. But he has disappeared – beyond the power of wizardy.
And so the search of Mavin Manyshaped begins.

This is the first volume of Sheri S. Tepper’s acclaimed The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped

For Mavin, coming of age as a shape-shifter is both exhilarating and terrifying. Recklessly headstrong, she is to become notorious in the lands of the True Game. With her brother, she leaves their home – a place of slavery and fear – only to have the boy’s powers of beguilement lead them into danger. Rescued by the Wizard Himaggery, the shape-shift and man of magic make a vow. When twenty years have come and gone, they will meet again.

But Himmagery has vanished, leaving only a letter of love behind for Mavin to find. If he were dead, she would know it: sorcerers could trace the scent of his trail, necromancers raise his bones from the dust. But he has disappeared – beyond the power of wizardy.

And so the search of Mavin Manyshaped begins.

This is the second volume of Sheri S. Tepper’s acclaimed The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped.

For Mavin, coming of age as a shape-shifter is both exhilarating and terrifying. Recklessly headstrong, she is to become notorious in the lands of the True Game. With her brother, she leaves their home – a place of slavery and fear – only to have the boy’s powers of beguilement lead them into danger. Rescued by the Wizard Himaggery, the shape-shift and man of magic make a vow. When twenty years have come and gone, they will meet again.

But Himmagery has vanished, leaving only a letter of love behind for Mavin to find. If he were dead, she would know it: sorcerers could trace the scent of his trail, necromancers raise his bones from the dust. But he has disappeared – beyond the power of wizardy.
And so the search of Mavin Manyshaped begins.

This is the final volume of Sheri S. Tepper’s acclaimed The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped

Bright the sun burning,
Night will come turning,
Mothwings go spinning,
End and beginning,
Eye of the star,
Where Old Gods are.

Players, take your places!
The Land itself calls Game!

ALLIANCE CENTRAL: the world once called Earth. Nothing breathes upon it but man and the wind, and the wind is tamed beneath great domes. From here humanity rules a vast stellar empire.
FIRSTISM: the belief that the universe is made for humanity. Therefore be fruitful, and multiply, and replace all other creatures with humankind and its domesticated beasts, and replace all other green things with plants useful to human life…
HERMES SECTOR: the remote frontier system where colonists are abruptly wiped out by an alien visitation. As a deadly threat to the countless billions of humans swarming outward from Alliance Central, the aliens must be identified.
One planet alone in Hermes Sector was spared. But that planet is Dinadh, the strangest and most secretive of all populated worlds. Firsters are not welcome on Dinadh, nor Firster technology. The only people from Alliance Central qualified by blood to visit Dinadh are a lone woman and her severely disabled five-year-old son. Their journey to Dinadh marks the beginning of a terrifying ordeal pitching mother and son beyond the shadow cast by human civilization.
Astounding sights, extraordinary aliens and colossal dangers await them…

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.

An accomplished student and heiress to a great title, Genevieve has been brought up as a Proper Young Lady, carefully instructed in the Covenants. She must soon take up the time-honoured responsibilities of womanhood: that is to marry a nobleman of her father’s choosing and bear a child at the age of thirty.

But Genevieve remembers all the stories and the secret knowledge learned from her mother, now long dead, and she yearns to heed the call of the sea – though she has never even seen the vast waters that cover most of the surface of her home planet of Haven.

And she begins to uncover bitter truths about the seemingly backward planet of Haven . . .

He was Clear Blue Lou, perfect master of the Clear Blue Way, at one with the law of muscle, sun, wind and water governing Aquaria. She was Sunshine Sue, always in a hurry in a world that was too slow, Queen of Word of Mouth. Their meeting had been arranged – but by whom? and why? Beyond the beginning of where the world ended, beyond the highest peaks of its primeval majesty, lay a radio active hell and the lairs of the black sorcerers, the Spacers. The black scientists had not forgotten man’s old dream of touching the stars: they wanted the Age of Space reborn. But they needed a little help.

Set in an imaginative alternate version of modern Los Angeles, “Earthquake Weather” begins with the murder of the Fisher King of the West, Scott Crane. His body is taken to the magically protected home of the Sullivans, and their 13-year-old adopted son, Koot, a boy destined to be the next Fisher King. But for now, he must aid in reuniting Scott Crane’s body and spirit, and restoring him to life.

Tad Dameron’s assignment was routine enough: escort Bjonn, the alien from Farhome, on the final leg of his journey to Earth – and learn what he could about the alien’s culture.
But from the beginning Dameron realized that there was something strange and ominous about Bjonn – something in his eyes and the way he spoke, even the way he help himself, that forewarned of danger.
Then Bjonn was gone, slipped away to mingle with Earth’s teeming millions, and with him the beautiful Dian, Dameron’s woman. When next he surfaced, Bjonn was heading a new religion – one which threatened to subvert all humanity. Dameron found himself embarked upon the most dangerous, most isolating job of his career in an attempt to halt the…
ALIEN MENACE

The last humans from the planet Snowglade have taken flight from the genocidal mechs aboard the spaceship Argo. As the shop hurtles toward the Galactic Center, hunger and desperation are taking their toll among the refugees, who are beginning to question the leadership of Captain Killeen. Convinced that his people’s only hope of survival lies in the True Center of the galaxy, he is determined to find it, with a will bordering on obsession.


As the crew of the Argo, an even Killeen’s own son Toby, find their faith in their captain’s brilliance tested to the limit, Toby faces his own perilous journey into the unknown, into the mysterious of adulthood. Like the others in this Family of voyagers, Toby’s spine contains microchip implants holding the memories – the legacy – of his race. But just as the technology is designed to save his people may tear Toby himself apart, so his father’s desperate gamble to save the Argo may plunge the ship and its inhabitants into a cosmic fit of all-consuming fire.

“. . . 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.”