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It was infinitely worse when everyone in the world insisted it couldn’t have happened the way he knew it had. In a world where ESP and telepathy were normal, it was difficult to keep secrets. But Steve’s search for his missing sweetheart brought him to the threshold of one of the greatest secrets of all time. And it was obvious that somebody would stop at nothing to keep him from uncovering it.

What were the oddly sinister symbols along otherwise ordinary roads? What was behind the spreading plague called Mekstrom’s Disease? Why were there “blank” spots where telepathy didn’t work? Who was the elusive enemy with powers even beyond those ESP had bestowed on mankind?

And, most important of all . . . could Steve find that enemy before they made him vanish too?

And then it came to him that what he really wanted was to possess a body of Mekstrom Flesh, to be a physical superman. . .

WIKIPEDIA says: ‘H.P. Lovecraft’s reputation has grown tremendously over the decades, and he is now commonly regarded as one of the most important horror writers of the 20th century, exerting an influence that is widespread, though often indirect.’

H.P. Lovecraft’s tales of the tentacled Elder God Cthulhu and his pantheon of alien deities were initially written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and ’30s. These astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when they were first published.

This electronic tome collects together Lovecraft’s tales of terror, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were originally published. It will introduce a whole new generation of readers to Lovecraft’s fiction, as well as being a must-buy for those fans who want all his work in a single, definitive volume.

Her Imperial Highness Empress Irene is in trouble. She needs to prevent the take over of the universe by the power hungry Mortimer Jones . . .

Mankind was at war with the hideous Gool…and losing. Then, beyond Ganymead, one man fought the searing brain probe of an alien spy…and won. He mastered the power of its telepathic mind-control, captured the secret of its matter transmitters, and learned how to destroy the Gool Overlords. He called intelligence with news of the victory and headed home.

Straight into a barrage of Terran nuclear warheads.

Past missiles, shells, and assassins, he made it home – alone, badly wounded, and branded a traitor by conventional Terran wisdom that said no one could survive the Gool brain probe. No one, that is, except a brainwashed puppet deliberately allowed to survive to serve the Goos as a spy.

But he must survive Earth’s attempts to kill him – because no matter how much his fellow humans want him dead, he knows that he is the only one who can lead them against the Gool and have a chance at victory.

“In the next few days you will master the rules and techniques for every activity, skill, talent, sport and art ever mastered by any human being anywhere. You will be as expert at clipping flints as at architectural drawing. You will be able to juggle, walk a tightrope and add the numerals on the sides of passing freight cars as fast as any idiot savant. You’ll absorb all the information in all the books – the human race’s entire heritage of knowledge…”

This was only the beginning of the experiment that was to turn a petty thief into the mos brilliant and powerful man ever to hold the earth in thrall.

This was only the first step on the path of conquest mapped out for – THE ULTIMAX MAN.

HE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MURDER

It was a set-up … but who was behind it, and why did they want Ban Tarleton out of the United Planetary Navy?

Could it have been something to do with the innocent-looking chunk of rock dug from an asteroid by Tarleton’s best friend – a discovery which caused him to be brutally killed?

The Navy was helpless, under the orders of a greater power. Yet even the Star Lords had a weakness. If Tarleton could discover that secret, he and the populace of the beleaguered world might find freedom once again.

The Earth was in shambles after the final quake had leveled the cities.

For Mal Irish the last hold on reality was the embossed gold coin he had taken from the pocket of the dead man – the man who with his last breath had told him of mastodons buried in ice and men who weren’t human.

Once in possession of the coin, Mal found himself on a mysterious quest which led him to discover even stranger things – the girl who spoke the language of another world, the city under the ocean floor, and the deadly little men who followed him. He was in the power of something beyond his understanding, and he meant to find out its source before it put him to its own unfathomable uses.

Even after the set had been turned off, the TV blared the announcement:

“Citizens of Earth, I am Tersh Jetterax. It is my pleasure to announce to you that a new government has taken over the conduct of all public affairs.”

And thus the US was in the hands of the Monitors, the strangely polite yellow-clad beings whose powers were such that they could render everyone helpless – without shedding one drop of blood.

Who are they? The Russians? An alien race from another planet?

THE DEMONS HAD TO STOP JOHN BRAVAIS

His secret assignment was simply – to save mankind from the savage dog-like ‘things’ that used their hands like men. Yet an unknown number of apparently ‘human’ beings were against him too.

First transformed by surgery into a superman, John Bravais probes ever more deeply into the secret nightmare world of the ‘things’. At last, when only his mind remains – trapped in a vast robot war machine on the moon – only by an immense act of will-power can he give humanity a future.

The world, as Lafayette O’Leary knew it, disappeared in a flash. Perhaps it was his own doing – after all, he had the uncanny gift of creating alternate realities by sheer mental power.

But the result was a nightmare gone out of control. All O’Leary wanted was to find his wife and return to the familiar world of Artesia. Yet no sooner did he manage to extricate himself from one bizarre situation than he was thrust into another, equally threatening…

There was only one thing to do: he had to penetrate the very center of power from which his destiny was being controlled and – take it into his own hands!

It’s a rare day when Terrans meet eye-to-eyestalk with the slimy little sticky-fingers – er, that is to say, the noble alien Groaci. This time the races clash on the planet Popu-Ri, once the home of a mighty interstellar power. Popu-Ri has sunk into decline…but its ancient treasures remain. Though not for long, if the Groaci have their way.

Groaci also finds Popu-Ri just the place to build a galactic warfleet. Still, for the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne to respond would threaten the delicate balance of human/Groaci forces on the cocktail circuit. Therefore the ambassador must keep the lid on by doing nothing. But how to do nothing without seeming an inneffectual pantywaist? Send an observer!

Yep, the Ambassador has it all figured out. But he made one little mistake; he sent Retief…

PLANET AFTER PLANE FELL TO THE REE

A vast and powerful race, the Ree needed breeding room for an ever-increasing population – and their expansion plans took no account of human territory. The farmers and miners of Tip Space were helpless against the Ree invasion. Still the Terran diplomats dithered, holding back the Navy, hoping for a truce.

Retief, already on probation for undiplomatic behaviour, earned himself the assignment parleying with the Ree when he urged force against them. A suicide mission? Perhaps…but Retief is Retief.

Lumbaga is a planet without known virtues – but with some decidedly odd natives. For every Lumbagan is simply an arbitrary assortment of semi-independent organs inspired by a lust for mayhem.

But even the most undesirable chunk of galactic real estate attracts its quota of rival overlords, and the fiendish Groaci had a scheme for absorbing Lumbaga into their sphere of influence. It was working well, too, until it involved Retief, Terran diplomat extraordinary. To his powerful intellect, the machinations of the Groaci were child’s play…

THE COMING OF THE BLIGHT
It seemed as though the world was eroding right under everyone’s feet. Stories disappeared from magazines; the baron’s silver coat of arms, polished in the morning, was pitted with corrosion by afternoon; toadstools were springing up from every corner. And these were but the first signs of the coming plague, a cancerous orgy of patternless vitality seeking to engulf the world…

TO STEM THE TIDE
Carefree Johnny Curlon, indelicately plucked from his fishing boat one evening, is bluntly informed by high powers that he is a man destined for a role in great affairs: only his unique powers can prevent the coming probability crisis that threatens to turn the world into bubbling chaos…

BLINDING LIGHT, NOISE BEYOND SOUND – A JOURNEY INTO NOTHINGNESS…

Imperial Intelligence Agent Brion Bayard was catapulted into nothingness by an unknown force and woke to find himself in a universe not his own. Surrounded by hulking, cannibalistic ape men who called themselves Hagroon, Bayard was soon entrapped in a web of time lines. He found himself running from the Hagroon into the arms of Dzok, the educated monkey man of Xonijeel; transported by Dzok to a universe where Napoleon the Fifth was in power and left there to the tender powers of the beautiful witch Olivia; struggling with the bonds of a fictitious past, always striving to regain his lost universe of Zero-zero Stockholm so he could bring the warning which might save his world from sudden, violent death…

On Venus: An ancient and powerful Venusian race finds its ultimate evolution – but can they accept it?

On Mars: The people of the Fourth Planet are eminently reasonable in all things – except for the cult of the Sacred Martian Pig, for which ‘fanatic’ would be entirely too reasonable a word.

And on Earth: On the unknown world of one or ten centuries from now, the strangest stories of all become haunting, fascinating reality, as we find out that human beings are, after all, the most alien of creatures . . .

Like so many others before him, reluctant Sam MacGregor was sent on a pilgrimage for the Grail Vision by the Dancers: androids grown from the cells of one man, with the powers of hypnotism and illusion – androids who held the tribes of the Republic of California in thrall.

But soon Sam began to doubt his own identity, for he experienced, in close succession, extra-lives in different corridors of time and space.

And he count not know whom his search would destroy: the Dancers . . . or himself.

Don Haig had been content to lie around and drink in the synthetic beauty of the pleasure planetoid Fyon, until a woman came into his life. A woman more beautiful and more perfect than any other female in the galaxy. A woman who brought about a curious change in Don.

For she was a pocket-sized foll – a very strange and miraculous puppet who shed constant tears and held powers that Don never even dreamed of.

But what Don did know was that dangerous alien forces were swiftly focusing on him and his living puppet – and that he had to discover the doll’s super-scientific secret before his own life was smashed into atoms.

‘The gems in this impressive collection have the same power to disconcert as her best novels’ Martin Amis

‘Her worlds have a magic sheen . . . she moulds them into dimensions we can only just sense. She is unique. She is legend’ THE TIMES

North to Orsinia and the boundaries between reality and madness … South to discover Antarctica with nine South American women … West to find an enchanted harp and the borderland between life and death … and onward to all points on and off the compass. Twenty astonishing stories from acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin carry us to worlds of wonder and horror, desire and destiny, enchantment and doom.

Aurelia was a fifteen-year-old girl from a very advanced world. She’d passed Starship building easily enough, but she’d slept through most of celestial navigation. That was how she ended up on a little back-water dump like Earth, where her advanced powers seemed like miracles.

Some thought she was the Messiah.

Some thought she was the Devil.

No one was prepared for the truth.

The fall of the Roman Empire was the denouement of a long and dramatic confrontation between powerful ideological forces and legendary men. R. A. Lafferty captures the true meaning of both, and examines the people, places, ideas and feelings that led to this epic struggle.

Rome’s demise was not a simple case of fierce barbarians sacking and subduing a decadent, crumbling city. The author has skillfully balanced the turmoil and illusions of a mighty, dying Empire against the vitality of the aggressive Huns, Vandals, and above all, the Goths. The result is one of the most perceptive and stimulating historical accounts ever written.

This is history told and read for sheer pleasure: exciting, splendid and complex. The Fall of Rome is a story of the men and women who made things happen, who were as awesome, poignant, and in some cases, as savage as the era itself.

A science fiction thriller from the author of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH.

‘A fine engrossing novel by a master!’ Philadelphia Enquirer

In a time when America’s power has been eroded by energy depletion, and world control has been virtually given over to the Chinese, only one man has the courage to seek new mineral resources among the stars. He is Ben Belson, one of the richest men in the world, a man haunted by the memory of a loveless childhood and driven by needs and desires he can barely understand or control. His dream is to find the means to help America break the stranglehold of the corrupt interests who are keeping it a second class power.

‘Zombies’ is Krillie’s name for them – although Kemlo and Kerowski explain that the men engaged in the Sonic Wave Experiment are risking their lives in the attempt to revolutionise man’s powers of communication through space.

Yet even the leader of the Space Scouts and his friends are shaken at the odd behaviour of some of the S.W.V.s under text conditions thousands of miles out in space. Perhaps after all there are stronger forces at work than the earth scientists had anticipated. Kemlo is determined to find out.

But they have another problem as well. What is the mysterious weakness which haunts Alvin Searle, the stern and dominating figure in charge of the experiment – and can the space-born boys help him overcome it?

Kemlo, with two other boys from Satellite K, are allowed to accompany a small research team setting off to reconnoiter Deimos, a moonlet of Mars.

The research ship has a smooth journey until it encounters a fierce astral storm, but eventually lands safely on Deimos – where some peculiar magnetic forces put all the instruments out of action.

From then on the suspense is terrific. Kemlo and his friends find their way barred by a moving wall of lighted shapes and, scattered, are apparently attacked by transparent figures etched in vivid light. Up to the very end the doubt remains: will the power of the Martian Ghosts triumph or be broken?