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In the late twentieth century, Admiral Julian 3rd can get no rest, for he knows his future. He will be reborn as his grandson in the next century to journey through space and make an ominous discovery inside the moon; he will live again in the dark years of the twenty-second century as Julian 9th, who refuses to bow down to the victorious Moon Men; and as Julian 20th, the fierce Red Hawk, he will lead humanity’s final battle against the alien invaders in the twenty-fifth century. The Moon Maid is Edgar Rice Burroughs’s stunning epic of a world conquered by alien invaders from the moon and of the hero Julian, who champions the earth’s struggle for freedom, peace, and dignity.

An urgent message from Pellucidar, that world of primitive men and primeval jungles that lies inside the crust of the Earth, called on Tarzan of the Apes for assistance.

Tarzan, used to the dangers of darkest Africa, heeded the call to Pellucidar, where all his skill in the jungle, all his talents with beasts and primitive men, would be put to the extreme test. For in that land at the Earth’s core, under the eternal day of the Central Sun, his terrific talents were needed just to stay alive – let alone to fulfil the mission that had called him there!

In the middle-distant future, Andrew Blake, discovered on a distant planet huddled inside a capsule, is brought back to Earth suffering from total amnesia. Over 200 years old, he thinks and acts like a man but becomes frighteningly aware of two alien beings that lurk within his body – a strange biological computer and a wolf-like animal. With the latter in control he breaks out of hospital to look for his past.

Thirty billion people from throughout Earth’s history have been resurrected along the great an winding waterways of Riverworld. Most began life anew – accepting without question the sustenance provided by their mysterious benefactors. But a rebellious handful burned to challenge the unseen masters who controlled their fate

Now, these adventures of Riverworld have penetrated the great tower which rises from the amazing planet’s north polar seas – and within it is the mighty computer which controls the resurrection of billions of human beings. It is inside this giant tower that Sir Richard Burton, Alice Liddell Hargreaves, Peter Frigate and Li Po meet their greatest challenge – and their deadliest foe.

The incredible secret behind the Riverworld is about to be unveiled . . .

Poul Anderson’s stories are classics from the golden age of science fiction and beyond. A master storyteller, Anderson wrote tales ranging from the immediate to the distant future, from Earth to far-flung galaxies, from hard science fiction to fantasy – all the elements stirred and blended as only Anderson could!

ADMIRALTY is the fourth volume of The Collected Works of Poul Anderson and collects his best works from a writing career that spans over 50 years.

This volume contains 23 stories including:

Goat Song (Hugo and Nebula winner)
Operation Changeling
The Adventure of the Misplaced Hound
Delenda Est
Lodestar
The Pugilist
Marius
Inside Straight

Plus the revised version of ‘Black Bodies’ and an afterword by Poul Anderson discussing ‘Eutopia’

Ships occasionally disappeared in hyperspace, regrettable sacrifices to the luxury of faster than light travel. But now one of the lost ships has been found and the wreckage is enough to terrify even the most cold-blooded witness.

The lucky ones on the lost ship are dead. The others have been turned inside-out in gruesome parody of human beings and they are still alive. The disgraced Captain Kurt Varl is chosen to command a suicide mission to discover the cause of these disasters.

The enemy is unknown and the only way Varl can solve the mystery is to use himself as bait!

The year is 2381. The place is Urban Monad 116 of the constellation Chippitts. The population of this one-thousand storey super-structure is 800,000+ and always growing. After two centuries of ruthless, selective breeding, the essence of life is to be blessworthy and to multiply; to afford one’s neighbours any type of sexual fulfilment and, above all, to avoid the evil of frustration.

But, within this seemingly blissful vertical world there are individuals who feel such perverse desires as a longing for privacy, a wish to descend from the heights, to walk on earth and bask in the sunshine. These rebel throwbacks to an earlier Earth are dangerous, disruptive elements. And they must be destroyed – if they do not destroy themselves first . . .

The Glory that was – or the Glory that wasn’t?

Knut Bulnes had considered Vasil IX, World Emperor of the 27th century, to be a harmless eccentric until Imperial decree completely sealed off Greece behind a force wall and people of Greek descent suddenly began disappearing from the rest of the world – including the wife of Bulnes’s friend Wiyem Flin.

Bulnes reluctantly agreed to help Flin find his wife, and the two managed to get inside the force wall only to find themselves in the Classical Greece of Socrates and Euripides – and the target of a man-hunt not only by the soldiers of Perikles, but also by the unpleasant characters with machine guns.

What happens to a man whose entire personality undergoes a sudden and profound change? Stephen Marsh is a successful management consultant, happily married and with a daughter at university. Then one day he becomes cold to his wife, is unable to relate to his daughter, is uninterested in his job and his friends. The old Stephen Marsh seems to have been replaced by an intrusive newcomer equipped with new memories and new attitudes. The deuteron-Marsh recalls a previous half-century of life as a writer who shied away from human contact, nurturing a secret which separates him from other people. Incapable of giving love or companionship, the new Marsh struggles to continue his predecessor’s lifestyle, torn between a longing for solitude and the bounds of ordinary obligation and affection.

Earth’s Elite – or its outcasts?

For a selected, genetically-fitted few among the teeming millions of the twenty-first century, to become a Messenger for the Hulm Institute is to escape the prison that is life, that is earth.

A Messenger is Noble!

A Messenger is One of the Chosen.

A Messenger is a Forerunner of a Time in which Fear and Disease will Disappear Forever.

And inside a Messenger’s head is murder, impotence and despair.

It was carnival time on Earth. Prosperity was at its peak; science had triumphed over environment; all human needs were taken care of by computers, robots and androids. There was nothing left for humans to do but enjoy, themselves . . . to seek pleasure where they found it, without inhibitions and without thinking of the price.

Then an android died – in a senseless, brutal murder. And young Derry Horn was shocked out of his boredom and alienation. His life of flabby ease had not prepared him for a fantastically dangerous mission to outlying, primitive stars – but now, at last, he had a reason for living. And even when he found himself a prisoner of ruthless slavers, even when he learned the shocking truth about what the androids really were and where they came from . . . even when he saw all the laws of the orderly, civilised universe he knew turned upside-down and inside-out . . . he fought on.

For that universe had to be shattered and reborn – even if Derry Horn and the Earth he had irrevocably left behind died in the process!



(First published 1968)

Whether or not he had wanted to turn back at the last minute, he couldn’t have – the wave of dirty, hungry people carried him helplessly along in their fervour reach the temple. Like dope addicts, he told himself, they don’t even care about themselves, only about the thing that is inside the temple!

He remembered the day ten years ago when his older brother had been made a Warden of Asconel, a prosperous and happy planet, and he and his other brothers had left in the interests of their people. Now they returned to a world where a fanatical cult had usurped the Warden’s chair, and men and women were offering themselves up as human sacrifices to Belizuek – whoever or whatever that being from beyond the galaxy was . . .

I’ll find out, he told himself grimly, when I enter these doors . . .



(First published 1965)

Howson was a runt. Twisted, ugly, crippled. The kind of guy people just didn’t want to know.

But when he took a deep breath, braced himself and projected his thoughts thousands of miles into space, they were all over him. Howson’s telepathic powers were like nothing they’d ever known before . . . and he became the greatest curative telepathist in the world.

But when they put him to work chasing people’s nightmares deep down inside their minds, could they be expected to cope with what the runt found in there? More importantly, could Howson?


First published in 1964.

Mindplayers are tomorrow’s psychoanalysts, linked directly to their patients using sophisticated machinery attached to the optic nerve. In one-to-one Mindplay contact, you can be inside someone else’s head, wandering the landscapes of their consciousness. Allie is a sensation-seeking young woman, obtaining illicit thrills from her shady friend Jerry Wirerammer. But Allie goes badly astray when Jerry supplies her with a “madcap” – a device that lets you temporarily and harmlessly experience psychosis. There’s something wrong with Jerry’s madcap, and the psychosis doesn’t go away when it’s disconnected. Allie ends up undergoing treatment at a “dry-cleaner”, and she is faced with a stark choice – jail, for her illegal use of the madcap; or training to become a Mindplayer herself.

During training Allie becomes familiar with the Pool – a cohesive, though shifting mental landscape jointly constructed by a number of minds; and more disturbingly encounters McFlor, who has been mind-wiped, so that his adult body is inhabited by a mind only two hours old. And as a fully-fledged Mindplayer Allie has to choose between the many specialist options open to her – Reality Affixing or Pathosfinding; Thrillseeking or Dreamfeeding.