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Gene Anderson was born in Oregon, in the twilight post-war years, into the most ordinary circumstances imaginable.

Gene is endowed with powers. He can look into the other worlds that are all around him. He can make things happen. He can hurt and he can heal.

His life changes dramatically when another boy is killed in a tragic accident, and Gene runs away. He is only nine. As he grows to 8’6″ tall, his wanderings take him round the world in search of a remarkable destiny.

In A.D. 2043 the world seemed doomed to suffer the impact of total war on a hitherto undreamed-of scale. The horrors of titanic bombardment and the searing ravages of electronic ray assault were slowly simmering up to a point when the Controllers themselves could not turn back. But it was only a handful of men and women, living and working in the underground dumps of destructive force, who fully appreciated the danger. They feared for their fellow beings; but when the war itself was due to start the blow came, not from a mortal enemy but from a far more terrible foe…

BEYOND THE SEA OF DREAMS

Life had not been kind to Joe and Marge. Now, according to the strangers who met them on a road that wasn’t there, they were due to die in nineteen minutes, eighteen seconds. But the ferryboat that waited to take them across the Sea of Dreams could bring them to a new and perhaps better life.

There lay a world where fairies still danced by moonlight and sorcery became real. Joe could become a mighty-thewed barbarian warrior. Marge could be beautiful and find her magical self.

But there was much more than they realised to this strange land.

This was a world where Hell still strove to win its ancient war and demon princes sent men into battles of dark magic. It was a world where Joe and Marge must somehow prevent the coming of Armageddon.

Ruben Prien is still at work with the Project, still dreaming of altering man’s fate by going back in time to adjust events… to interfere, some might say, with destiny. Once again, his conduit to that bygone era, his messenger to that lost world, is Simon Morley, the man who actually proved himself capable of traveling back and forth in time.

Rube’s purpose in summoning Si back from that earlier world, where he has taken up permanent residence, is no less grand than an attempt to prevent World War I from erupting. It is ironic, therefore, that the man assigned to carry to America the papers that might help avert the Great Catastrophe travels to his meeting on board the Titanic. And it is Si’s task to attempt to ensure his safe passage.

Astronomy professor Aurora ‘Rory’ Bell gets a message from space that seems to portend the arrival of extraterrestrial visitors. According to her calculations, whoever is coming will arrive in three months – on New Year’s Day to be exact.

A crowded and poisoned Earth is moving toward the brink of the last world war – and is certainly unprepared to face invasion of any kind. Rory’s continuing investigation leads her to wonder if it could be some kind of hoax, but the impending ‘visit’ takes on a media life of its own. And so the world waits. But the question still remains as to what, exactly, everyone is waiting for…

The men of the Dorsai were the finest fighting soldiers in the universe, mercenary troops without equal.

Their talents were devastatingly employed on Kultis, where a bloody little war raged between the Western Alliance and Eastern Coalition. But not even the Dorsai could anticipate the dramatic effect of Cletus Grahame’s brilliant mind and the galaxy-shaking theory he called The Tactics of Mistake.

This first book in the Dorsai sequence is the story of how Cletus Grahame risked his life, the fate of three worlds, and ultimately the whole of the Dorsai to prove that a mistake may remake worlds. A classic of science fiction.

Into a future where a depleted fuel supply had the world spiralling down into grinding poverty and constant war came . . . Moondrift. Mysterious white flakes of alien matter that was the perfect fuel – clean powerful, dependable.

But the aliens – or whatever they were – who sent Moondrift seemed to demand a heavy ransom in return. After each Moondrift comes an eerie sound, as pure as a children’s choir, heard all over the world. It mesmerises all who hear it with it’s beauty – and when it is ended, certain people have simply disappeared without warning, never to be seen again.

This is the story of one who disappeared . . .

In the summer of 1921, a disenchanted journalist escapes the rat race for a drive in the country. But Mr. Barnstaple’s trip exceeds his expectations when he and other motorists are swept 3,000 years into the future. The inadvertent time travelers arrive in a world that corresponds exactly to Barnstaple’s ideals: a utopian state, free of crime, poverty, war, disease, and bigotry. Unfettered by the constraints of government and organized religion, the citizens lead rich, meaningful lives, passed in pursuit of their creative fancies. Barnstaple’s traveling companions, however, quickly contrive a scheme to remake the utopia in the image of their twentieth-century world.

In this thrilling second book of the Earthborn trilogy, Lucas and Asha have survived the decimation of Earth at the hands of the invading Xalans and seek safe haven with their enemy’s true foes, the Sorans. They find a lush planet inhabited by a civilization far more advanced than their own, waging a seemingly endless war against a constantly evolving enemy.

The Sorans call the pair of them the “Earthborn” and they’re welcomed as heroes, almost as gods. To an audience of billions, they swear an oath to avenge their fallen planet by aiding the Sorans in their war against Xala. But soon Lucas and Asha find Sora just as dangerous as apocalyptic Earth when they’re targeted by the Fourth Order, a rebel collective who decries them as false prophets and harbingers of further bloodshed.

Their friend and turncoat Xalan scientist Alpha believes he’s located someone who can help them turn the tide of the war for good, stranded on a conquered colony planet. But landing on the new world, Lucas and Asha find themselves hunted by a violent, mysterious beast, known only as the Desecrator, let loose by the Xalans.

Escaping Earth was only the beginning. As Lucas and Asha quickly learn, the universe has worlds and creatures far more dangerous than anything their home planet could have offered, and their continued survival hinges on gaining new allies they never could have imagined.

Kandri Hinjuman was never meant to be a soldier. His brother Mektu was never meant for this world. Rivals since childhood, they are drafted into a horrific war led by a madwoman-Prophet, and survive each day only by hiding their disbelief. Kandri is good at blending in, but Mektu is hopeless: impulsive, erratic-and certain that a demon is stalking him. Is this madness or a second sense? Either way, Kandri knows that Mektu’s antics will land them both in early graves.

But all bets are off when the brothers’ simmering feud explodes into violence, and holy blood is spilled. Kandri and Mektu are taken for contract killers and must flee for their lives-to the one place where they can hope to disappear: the sprawling desert known as the Land that Eats Men. In this eerie wilderness, the terrain is as deadly as the monsters, ghouls, and traffickers in human flesh. Here the brothers find strange allies: an aging warlord, a desert nomad searching for her family, a lethal child-soldier still in her teens. They also find themselves in possession of a secret that could bring peace to the continent of Urrath. Or unthinkable carnage.

On their heels are the Prophet’s death squads. Ahead lie warring armies, sandstorms, evil spirits and the deeper evil of human greed. But hope beckons as well-if the “Master Assassins” can expose the lie that has made them the world’s most wanted men.

Omega: an apocalyptic rumour from the Eastern Front. Omega: something that will alter all the strategic calculations of the Earth’s great military blocs. Omega: the code name for a weapon that may well bring doomsday with it. But if Omega is indeed the agent that will destroy the world, that world is not our own. For this is a timeline in which World War Two never truly ended: a timeline in which Hitler died in a plane crash, Britain joined Germany in its battle against Communist Russia, and the present is an age of intermittent, but deadly, armed conflict between the USSR, the European Alliance, and the USA.

The frontier regions are radioactive wastelands, nuclear winter threatens catastrophe, global confrontation could erupt again any time – and that’s before Omega is taken into account…This is the reality experienced by Owen Meredith when an accident forces his consciousness from the England we know into the mind of his cognate self in that other darker, Europe.

Switching back and forth between being plain Owen Meredith and troubled Major Owain Maredudd, Owen is faced not only with a Cold War going Hot, but with a deep crisis of identity. Who is he? Whose twisted destiny is he treading? Did the ordinary domestic life he remembers ever even take place? Perhaps the universe of Owain and Omega is merely a symptom of mental illness – but if so, why is it so urgently tangible?

Twenty-first-century Moscow. Luther and Jake have a mission – to steal the experimental transferral device from under the nose of the Dream Team.
It’s a bold and dangerous plan that goes fatally wrong. The New York they return to is not the one they left: it’s a nightmare world of violence, paranoia and apartheid on the brink of a devastating war.

Up to the Sky in Ships contains seven undeservedly obscure stories by A. Bertram Chandler, including “Chance Encounter”, the first story in which John Grimes (Chandler’s most famous character) appears and “A New Dimension”, set in an alternate world in which Ned Kelley uses unusual tactics to win Australia’s war for independence.

From the landscapes of prehistory to 40th millennium AD, from post-war England to the full canvas of the inhabited galaxy, Robert Holdstock’s haunting mythic imagination weaves eight stories of arresting power and ingenuity.

Includes the original story from which the World Fantasy Award-winning novel, Mythago Wood, was expanded.

It is a time of great darkness, when the sun is in danger of being forever extinguished, and mankind has been divided into two warring factions: the worshipers of the God of Light and the servants of Eternal Night. Now three unsuspecting travelers are called by prophecy to face a legion of the undead and the powers of the Dark Lord in the faint hope of reclaiming the world for the light.

A chilling day of murder in the midst of post-World War II austerity
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

In the spring of 1946, the redoubtable Lady Bate arrives at The Downs, built by the eccentric Colonel Anstruther years before. The aftermath of war has forced the colonel’s daughter to take in paying guests, but only Lady Bate knows the secret of Mrs Anstruther’s past life and the mystery behind her hermit-like existence.

When Lady Bate is found dead, a chance remark puts detective Arthur Crook on the right track, which he follows – at risk to his life.

The ship was to be seven miles long, a third of a mile in diameter and have a wing-spread of three and a half miles. It would take two and a half centuries to construct. Its announced purpose: to carry humanity away from its ruined world, from the world that had become a perpetual purgatory.

To build this vast ship would require the undivided activity of an entire nation and would mean carrying out a ruthless program of war and conquest, of annihilation and reconstruction, and of education and rediscovery.

But was this starship really what it was claimed to be? Or was there a greater secret behind its incredible cost – a secret so strange that no man dared reveal it?

Though Morgon the Riddle-Master was reunited with his beloved Raederle, his purpose in life and the reason for the stars on his forehead remained a mystery. All around him, the realm shook with war as mysterious shape-changers battled against mankind. Without the missing High One, Morgon must assume responsibility for all his world.

Look down into the streets, the buildings, the parks.

There is your battleground. Down there is the enemy – an enemy who wears no uniform.

He walks behind you in the street, sits with you when you eat, and perhaps swims beside you in a public pool. He may ask you for a light, bow you into a hotel, sell you a flyer, or in another form, leave the smell of perfume on your pillow.

The enemy is young and old, male and female, and he is everywhere. Could such a situation arise – or has it arisen? In this exciting story of the future, the author depicts a world at war. An undercover war, so skilfully manipulated that sixty per cent of the population is unaware of its existence. Yet, daily, the casualty figures climb higher and higher.

Can you say that such a war is impossible? Can you say when you have this all-action novel, that it has not already begun?

Out in the Rolls-Royce, Emmy Arkwright nearly collides with Nat Volck in Beverly Hills. Emmy and Nat are neighbours, yet belong to separate worlds: she is a wealthy, successful fashion designer; he is a doctor who trained during World War Two. But when Nat gets a call one night telling him Emmy has attempted suicide, they become inexorably linked.

Nat – bitter and uncomfortable in his California Cadillac practice – attends Emmy, and watches over her return to memory and to her old life, offering her the stability and security she badly needs.

But was it really attempted suicide – or is someone trying to kill Emmy?

It is a new world, stunned by the horrors that linger in the aftermath of total war. The United States and Soviet Union are squaring off in a different kind of conflict, one that’s fought in the shadows, where there are whispers of strange and mysterious developments. . .

Normal people across the United States have inexplicably gained paranormal abilities. A factory worker can heal the sick and injured. A schoolteacher bends emotions to her will. A car salesman alters matter with a simple touch. A former soldier speaks to the dying and gains their memories as they pass on.

They are the Variants, controlled by a secret government program called MAJESTIC-12 to open a new front in the Cold War.

From the deserts of Nevada to the palaces of Istanbul, the halls of power in Washington to the dark, oppressive streets of Prague, the Variants are thrown into a deadly game of shifting alliances. Amidst the seedy underbelly of nations, these once-ordinary Americans dropped in extraordinary circumstances will struggle to come to terms with their abilities as they fight to carve out a place for themselves in a world that may ultimately turn against them.

And as the MAJESTIC-12 program will soon discover, there are others out there like them, some with far more malevolent goals. . .

Nicholas Van Rijn: Interstellar Merchant Prince one moment, barbarian chattel the next. Marooned half a world and an ocean away from the sole human outpost on a planet whose very water is poisonous to humans; captured by winged barbarians in the midst of a brutal war of extermination, somehow ‘Old Nick’ must scheme, conspire, wrangle and battle his way to survival.

When Odin breathed life into the mortal realms, he also created the Cardinal Wizards: the Northern Wizard as the representative of Good, the Southern as master of Evil, and the Western and Eastern as the keepers of the balance between Good and Evil, each neutral, both sharing the burden of holding their fellow magic wielders in check.
But now the days decreed in ancient prophecy have come upon the mortal realms. The Great War has been fought and a Renshai has proven its Champion.
Yet even as the war’s heroes struggle to place the rightful king of Bearn upon his throne, and the also true Renshai seeks to train a new generation of his warrior race, the word is carried forth on falcon’s wings that the Western Wizard is no more.
And unless Shadimar, the Wizard of the East, can find the one mortal with any hope of surviving the challenge of the Seven Tasks of Wizardry, the worlds of gods and mortals alike will fall….

In a vastly changed world, thirteen centuries from now, Sumner Kagan searches the earth to find the godmind, a malicious being with reality-shaping powers. In this strange and beautiful world – eerily alien, yet hauntingly familiar – Kagan will change from an adolescent outcast to a warrior with god-like abilities and, in the process, take us on an epic and transcendent journey.

Author’s Note: The volumes of this series can each be read independently of the others. The feature that unifies them is their individual observations of science fiction’s sub-genre: “space opera,” which the editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer define as “colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes.”