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‘Suddenly out of the darkness, out of the night, there swooped something with a swish like an aeroplane. The whole group of us were covered for an instant by a canopy of leathery wings, and I had a momentary vision of a long, snake-like neck, a fierce, red, greedy eye, and a great snapping beak, filled, to my amazement, with little, gleaming teeth.’

Desperate for adventure, journalist Ed Malone joins a scientific expedition to the South American jungle led by the larger than life figure of Professor Challenger. But you should be careful what you wish for. After climbing to the summit of a mysterious plateau in the Amazon rainforest the explorers find themselves trapped in a world lost in time, inhabited by carnivorous dinosaurs, giant fish-lizards and murderous ape-men.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s thrilling tale of adventure and crypto-zoology became a template for an industry of creature features that came in its wake.

Helena, second in command of the Empire Of Earth’s security forces (and daughter of its head), has disappeared. She knows the identity of SOTE’s two most highly trained operators and their lives are now in danger . . . they have to find her before she can reveal their identities.

Getaway World is the fourth book in the Family d’Alembert series.

MARS: THE SKULL OF A PLANET PICKED CLEAN BY THE WIND OF TIME

North Beyond the desert of Meroe, past the ancient cliffs of the dust-locked continents, past the dry wharfs of a city that was old when Earth was new, the caravan crept into the unmapped waste called Umbra. It was into this shadowed land that the lost nation of the People had ridden and vanished-in a time beyond memory. It was here that the outworlder Ryker followed the golden-eyed Valarda and found the Child-of-Stars.

Destined to fulfill an ancient prophecy, the warrior Sargon strode through the gates of Chalsadon – the last refuge of a once-proud empire. Only Sargon, a Barbarian and an Outsider, could stem the slaughter. Only he could wield the deadly golden maul, covered with the dust of centuries. Only he was fated to test the necromancy of Shadrazar, the beautiful Black Lord of Chaos. But Sargon was mortal . . .

The legends of a fabled land of the lost have floated for centuries around the bazaars of North Africa and the sand-surrounded oases of the vast Sahara. They tell of treasure caravans that have never returned, of weird monsters forgotten by time, of savage peoples surviving out of antiquity.
Eric Carstairs had heard these tales but until he met Professor Potter he did not really believe them. But the famous palaeontologist had the location of the entrance to the Underground World pinned down, and wanted only a man of courage to fly him there.
Carstairs and Potter took the chance – and pierced the pit to Zanthodon, a world within the world, where cavemen and cave-beasts roamed side by side with dinosaur-monsters of millions of years ago.

With their homeworld in ruins, ten thousand brave colonists set out for the stars. Among them is Marianne O’Hara – who survived a baptism of cataclysmic fire to emerge as the last hope of her doomed race. But madness, mysterious deaths and irreversible sabotage threaten their mission – propelling the crippled starship Newhome blindly toward an unimaginable future, and hurtling Marianne toward an astonishing confrontation that could mean the end or the transcendent rebirth of humankind.

When the starship Meteor crash-landed on a strange world orbiting a solitary sun in the vast darkness outside the galaxy, her crew of Earthmen had no idea of what to expect. The planet was Earthlike in gravity, air, animal and vegetable life – but what of the native races they glimpsed from a distance?

What kind of culture would evolve on a planet whose sky was dominated by the glow of an entire galaxy – and with no other stars save its own dim sun? What kind of gods would they worship?

The Earthmen had to find the astounding answers to these questions on a planet split by a world-wide war.

A dozen years had passed since Mark Fraser and his family had fled to Ganymede, hoping to find the peace and freedom which had eluded them on Earth. Now violence and terror had pursued them to their new-found home: Captain Swayne and his battleship Vega had made landfall on Ganymede and were using its resources to build missiles with which to hold Planet Earth to ransom. For the second time, Mark Fraser was a marked man, running for his life. His only chance of escape was to a third planet: Jupiter. But as Fraser knew only too well, Jupiter itself was the scene of conflict and carnage. And so far no human being had ever breathed its atmosphere and lived to tell the tale!

The twenty-year Earth-Mars war was finally over. What was left of Earth – its crumbled cities, its ruined farmlands – were firmly and completely under the rule of the Martian Archon. And this powerful planetary ruler was taking no chances: he intended to reduce the Terrans to a society of primitive agricultural tribes in less than a generation!

But for David Arnfeld, ex-spaceman and Earth Base Commander, there was something in the whole set-up which did not ring true. Why had both sides muffed countless chances to end that awful war in the first year or two? And why had the two planets gone to war in the first place?

In the back of Arnfeld’s mind an idea was growing…perhaps there was yet a chance to save the doomed population of Earth. But if his idea was true, and proof was available, he had to work fast. Too many people were involved in this War of the Two Worlds to let one man upset their plans.

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.

In the huge termite-hills of cities that dotted the dead world of Killibol it seemed that nothing could ever change. Each city was enclosed and self-sustaining, in a stasis fixed by the one reality of power: the protein tanks in which organic nutrients could be processed to provide food.

But gang-leader Becmath was a man with a vision: to build an empire for himself without breaking this stasis. His lieutenant Klein recognised Becmath’s genius and stayed faithful to him even when they were forced to travel Killibol’s arid surface in a desperate search for the lost gateway to Earth. He stayed faithful through murder, treachery and countless adventures. Only when Becmath’s schemes reached incredible fulfilment was he able to realise that he had been serving an egomaniac and a monster . . .

Are there aliens among us? Are the chariots of the gods returning? If so – are they for us or against us?

John Brunner, award-winning author and science fiction writer extraordinary, takes the questions now on everyone’s mind, and gives one possible answer in this startling novel.

Here is an edge-of-the-seat story of the man who discovers that the vanguard of the aliens are indeed amongst us – and that the human species has but a few hours left before our time runs out.

It’s a science fiction thriller you won’t be able to put down.

Suppose… a man who was blasted into our time from the future arrived without any clothes?
Suppose… a man who craved the love of beautiful women got too much of it?
Suppose… a conscientious young realtor refused to rent a floor in an office building because it didn’t exist?
On such faintly horrifying, delightfully absurd speculations are some of these stories founded. With a keen satiric touch William Tenn uses his insight into contemporary life as a springboard into an absolutely believable, if slightly wacky, future.

A time-traveller on an illegal trip into the past learns a chilling truth about her own destiny…


As a deadly Superflu runs rampant through a polluted, overpopulated Earth, a husband-and-wife scientific team races to scientific team races to salvage a livable future…


On a planet where the laws of physics are strangely twisted, a brilliant scientist’s work undermines an ancient faith and leads to a shattering revelation…


An ore-hauler on Mercury, desperate to save her endangered ship and career, finds a remarkable way out: a wormhole trapped in the hellish flux of magnetic fields and fiery plasma generated by the nuclear furnace of the sun…

Parsloe’s Planet was in its death throes. A world of mobile cities, the populace had moved frantically from radiation site to radiation site – for without this life-giving radiation the inevitable result would be insanity and death.

Now the radiation was failing. Soon it would be no more. The planet was going to die.

But into the chaos and agony of the dying planet comes Douglas Marsden: an outcast, a renegade – and the only man who can save the stricken world.

A mind-shaking glimpse into the future of the earth: a brilliantly imagined, horrifyingly plausible glimpse into a world where the social elite, the Uppers, live in absolute luxury, boosting themselves with ‘Joy Juice’.



The ‘Joy Juice’ is the vital life fluid extracted from the workers, the second class citizens whose life is a constant search for and movement from one trip, one hallucination to the next. It is only when the workers are tripping that the Uppers can extract the ‘Joy Juice’.



But what happens when the good trips turn into bad ones? When pleasant dreams become nightmares?

Arthur C. Clarke has been one of the most influential commentators on – and prophets of – the communications technology which has created the global village. Now, drawing partly on his own sometimes very personal writings, he provides an absorbing history and survey of modern communications.

The story begins with the titanic struggles to lay transatlantic telegraph cables in the nineteenth century. Fighting against widespread scepticism, lack of funds, technical disasters and setbacks – and against the Atlantic itself, above and below the surface – the pioneers achieved the seemingly impossible and by 1858 Britain and America were linked by Telegraph.

Nearly a century later, as the first transatlantic telephone cable was being laid, the technology that would rival and perhaps even supersede it was undergoing its painful birth as scientists developed the communications satellite precisely as Clarke first described in his famous 1945 article Wireless World, ‘Extra-terrestrial Relays’, reprinted in this book.

The rivalry between cable and satellite continued through the decades. Communication satellites (Comsats) performed even beyond the most optimistic expectations, but cable fought back with the development of the transistor. Then, in one of the most dramatic and unexpected breakthroughs in any technology, the potential of cable systems was transformed. The development of fibre optics technology meant that once more the seabeds of the world began to be draped with the newest and most sophisticated artefacts of human engineering.

It is an enthralling story, filled with extraordinary events and people, and Arthur C. Clarke brings all his storytelling flair and scientific expertise to bear on it. The result is a superb combination of history, comment and challenging speculation.

Earth is destroyed in a collision with the rogue planet Bronson Alpha, with about a year of warning enabling a small group of survivors to build a spacecraft and escape to the rogue planet’s moon. Continuing the story of When Worlds Collide, the novel tells of the survivors’ progress on their new world, Bronson Beta, and their conflict with other groups of survivors.

A runaway planet hurtles toward the earth. As it draws near, massive tidal waves, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions wrack our planet, devastating continents, drowning cities, and wiping out millions. In central North America a team of scientists race to build a spacecraft powerful enough to escaped the doomed earth. Their greatest threat, they soon discover, comes not from the skies but from other humans.

Rob Merlin was the best engineer who had ever lived. That was why “The King of Space” had to have him for the most spectacular construction project ever – even though Rob was a potentially fatal threat to his power…


Thus begins a breakthrough novel by the former President of the American Astronautical Society, about an idea whose time has come: a shimmering bridge between Earth and space that mankind will climb to the stars!

Visit Earth, the birthplace of man!

From the holiday planet of Paradiso one could go on many exciting tours and excursions – Mars, Venus, the Moon, even the most distant and alien worlds were accessible to the inquisitive holidaymaker, courtesy of Starways Inc. – the giant combine which owned Paradiso and over half of the galaxy.

But of all Starways illustrious trips, there was really only one which interested Ram Burrell – the one which Starways seemed to actually discourage people from taking… the trip to planet Earth. And once Burrell had got himself a ticket for the journey, he began to discover why Earth had become the least visited planet in the galaxy, and why Starways worked so hard to keep it that way…

They had conquered Mars! Earth was next.

And in the council chambers at Washington, Earth’s leaders gathered to face the peril.

Mars had gone down to defeat in one hour and thirty-four minutes. And now a fleet of creatures from outer space was headed towards Earth.

All eyes turned to Eldin Raigmore, President of the United States – the one man to be trusted above all others. One by one the elite were dispatched on missions of last-minute strategy. They went with confidence, inspired by the swift, sure mind of Raigmore.

Civilization rested in his hands. And he was a secret member of the invader race!

Mercury Shell, Venus Shell, Earth, Mars, Asteroid, Jupiter, Saturn. Each shell concentric, studded with artificial planets, each planet embedded in its shell, spinning like a ball-bearing. The whole Zeus-created in the service of Man but now beyond his control.
Now mathematics and space physics, converging, suggested another shell, its existence hidden from Man. A shell of utter darkness, cold and silence where only extreme mutants could survive.
To find that shell, the three were journeying again: Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry and Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotic. Together, daring the all-seeing, all-sensing hostility of Zeus.

What happened to Walter Cardish, epicenter of a freak storm in the Lake District? The source of the strange lightning that struck him was a complete mystery, but only until its curious mental effect on Cardish became apparent.