Search Results for: alien,-the

Through Katherine MacLean’s artistry and imagination you’ll soar through space, you’ll touch the stars, you’ll bask in the glow of other suns…and you will be one with

– The long-legged lawyer who suspected that he was a Martian
– The boy who became all he characters in his make-believe games
– The sewing-circle ladies who took over the world
– The alien spacemen adrift in a raindrop
– The woman who discovered the terrible secret of immortality

There are other stories in this remarkable collection, but merely to describe them might give away their plots, and that is a dastardly crime punishable by indefinite exile on mysterious, fog-shrouded Planet X!

Occupation of Earth is now in its 27th year, and relations between humanity and the dictatorial Hefn have never seemed shakier. The aliens mission is to save the planet from its human abusers; and the Baby Ban imposed by mass hypnosis has made Earth a cleaner, wilder, less crowded place. But the Ban has now lasted so long, and provoked such hatred, that when a spark is struck the situation explodes into worldwide riots on one side and retaliatory mindwipings on the other. Years of effort by the eco-spiritual Gaians, who mediate between humans and Hefn, have been destroyed.

While the Gaians regroup and brainstorm frantically in an atmosphere of doubt and danger, one obsessed Hefn and one young woman begin a radical experiment. Pam Pruitt has discovered a growing ability to acquire information by non-rational means. Childhood suffering has empowered her, in a way once understood by hunting and gathering peoples – an understanding lost with that lost lifeway – to communicate with mysterious forces through strong dreaming: to function as a shaman on behalf of her community, the human race.

In the early years of the twenty-first century, Earth teetered on the brink of ecological destruction. Then the alien Hefn came, determined to save the dying Earth – and to the Hefn, the ends always justified the means. Humans were given nine years to correct their mistakes – alone, with no recourse to the Hefn’s advanced technology. If by then the Earth’s ecology had not stabilized, the Hefn would solve the problem for good . . . by eliminating humans entirely.

But slowly, against their will, some of the Hefn became deeply involved with their human counterparts. And to the handful of people who came to know them, the Hefn made a great difference: as mentors, researchers, rulers . . . and saviors. But could those few friendships sway the Hefn to help save a despoiled planet – and the human race?

Stranded on a strange planet with a race of alien vampires!

Red O’Reilly, the hero, is among three prisoners being transported by car with a guard and a social worker on a rainy night in contemporary California. Suddenly, in a flash, the car is off the road and into the middle of a jungle – which disappears as the rain ceases, leaving them stranded in a trackless desert!

After a trek across the desert, evidently on an alien planet far from earth, they discover a strange, ruined city inhabited by a race of vampire aliens – whom they must battle for survival.

Seven billion years from now, long after the Sun has died and human life itself has become extinct, alien beings reincarnate humanity from our fossilized DNA drifting as debris in the void of deep space. We are reborn to serve as bait in a battle to the death between the Rimstalker, humankind’s reanimator, and the zotl, horrific creatures who feed vampire-like on the suffering of intelligent lifeforms.

The reborn children of Earth are told: “You owe no debt to the being that roused you to this second life. Neither must you expect it to guide you or benefit you in any way.” Yet humans choose sides, as humans will, participating in the titanic struggle between Rimstalker and zotl in ways strange and momentous.

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.”

One star-chained evening in a Manhattan bathroom, Carl Schirmer spontaneously combusts! His body transforms into light, mysteriously snatched from his banal life by an alien intelligence 130 billion years in the future. There, all spacetime is collapsing into a cosmic black hole, the Big Crunch – and a bold, cosmic destiny awaits Carl. Rebuilt from the remnants of his light by extraterrestrials for a cryptic purpose, he awakens in time’s last world, the strangest of all – the Werld.

At the edge of infinity, Carl discovers the Foke, nomadic humans who travel among the floating islands of the Werld. The Foke teach him how to live – and love – at the end of time, and he loses his heart to his plucky guide, the beautiful Evoë. Their life together in this blissful kingdom that knows no aging or disease brings them to rapture – until Evoë falls prey to the zotl, a spidery intelligence who hunt the Foke and eat the chemical by-products of their pain. In order to save his beloved from a gruesome death, Carl must return to Earth – 130 billion years earlier – where he is shocked to discover that the Earth he’s come back to is not the one he left.

Can he meet the harsh demands of his task before the zotl find him and begin ravishing the Earth?

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.”

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.”

‘She is unique. She is legend’ THE TIMES

‘A tour de force’ EVENING STANDARD

‘A wonderfully mordant analyst of human weakness’ Martin Amis

Earth, like the rest of the Known Worlds, has fallen to the Shing. Scattered here and there, small groups of humans live in a state of semi-barbarism. They have lost the skills, science and knowledge that had been Earth’s in the golden age of the League of Worlds, and whenever a colony of humans tries to rekindle the embers of a half-forgotten technology, the Shing, with their strange, mindlying power, crush them out. There is one man who can stand against the malign Shing, but he is an alien with amber eyes and must first prove to paranoid humanity that he himself is not a creature of the Shing.

‘She is unique. She is legend’ THE TIMES

‘Ursula Le Guin is a chemist of the heart’ David Mitchell, author of CLOUD ATLAS

‘A tour de force’ EVENING STANDARD

Earth-scientist Rocannon has been leading an ethnological survey on a remote world populated by three native races: the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, the elvish Fiia, and the warrior clan, Liuar. But when the technologically primitive planet is suddenly invaded by a fleet of ships from the stars, rebels against the League of All Worlds, Rocannon is the only survey member left alive. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this newly discovered world – and finds that legends grow around him as he fights.

Somewhere in a far galaxy a being inconceivably alien is surging tumultuously from an unimaginable womb.

In a solitary prison cell on the Underworld, the vast prison-satellite in perpetual Earth-orbit, Terra Viridian is tormented by a vision, an imperative which has already driven her to an insane bloodletting.

On an Earth embalmed in peace by a ubiquitous bureaucracy, the Magician weaves his musical spells and tried to close his mind to the thoughts of others.

– just three links in a chain stretching across space and time towards a testing as awesome as it is unpredictable.

The firebird came at night – a magnificent creature whose magical cry seemed to transform objects at random. Gifted with powers of her own, Meguet tried to reach out to the bird. But at moonrise, the firebird became human, a prince cursed by dark magic. Meguet bowed to help him. But then the mystery carried her away, on alien winds, to a land far from her home…

At the edge of the world, the Luxor Desert awaits – a barren land where a sorcerer’s war rages. Where invisible dragons cast shadows over ruined castles. And where Meguet’s own fate depends upon a secret locked away in a tower for centuries…

Long before Paradise was properly colonised and investigated, one young woman was sent to explore the strange new world. Her mission – to find and rescue the discoverer of the planet, a young man obsessed with finding alien species and protecting them from rapacious humanity.

Crispin’s initial reports were positive, but became increasingly infrequent and jumbled. And then they stopped altogether. But his life support systems show green, and his hard-earned knowledge is needed.

Hetty must explore this new idyllic land, learn what she can about its tricks and dangers, and track down someone who may not want to be found, almost certainly doesn’t want help, and might even be dead.

But something is alive on Paradise…

Everything was ordinary. Men worked in factories and fields. Women were shopping. Children were at school. Then came the four-minute warning. Wires hummed madly between heads of governments. Just before the massive retaliation went into the air the world realised that no-one had despatched the first rocket.

The retaliation was checked with seconds to spare. Experts examined the ruined city. There was something else besides radiation. Deadly bacteria from an unknown source spread across the planet. More alien bombs followed the first. But there was no real pattern in the attacks, if they were genuine attacks.

At last the detectors found the alien ships. They were fighting among themselves and earth was the battle-area. Could the remnants of humanity interfere? What would be the result if they did?

Unless life itself is a pathetic cosmic accident, man cannot be the only intelligence in the universe. It is unlikely that man is the highest intelligence. Compared to other planetary systems, our solar system is quite young. Its raw materials have barely been touched. If older intelligences wanted those raw materials only the primitive mind of man would stand in their way. Our so-called defences would perhaps aid the aliens more than aided us…
Ken Andrews was a research worker in electronics. He had a sensitive mind and a vivid imagination. When he has a strange experience with the radar-screen his chief said he had been overworking. His doctor explained it as hallucination, but the so-called delusion persisted. If Ken Andrews was sane his world was in danger…. If he really was in communion with an alien intelligence, could that alien intelligence be trusted? The intriguing thought behind this story is that it could be true. It could happen today or tomorrow …. It might even have happened a few minutes ago in a top-secret research station somewhere in England…

Mike Sterne was a man with problems. His environment included an unknown quantity in the form of an eccentric alien scientist and a determined corps of totalitarian militia with orders to liquidate him.
A rigidly imposed authoritarian social structure can only be undermined by a superior ideology. Sterne encountered that ideology on the other side of an electronic gateway through the X dimensions, a gateway to the infinite universe of the microcosm and the macrocosm.
His enemies also discovered a route through the continuum… but they didn’t reach the same world that Sterne had found.

Man is an intelligent mammal. His intelligence lies in his brain. In mammals the tissues of the central nervous system are irreplaceable. The human brain contains something like 100,000,000,000,000 neurons, but 100,000 are destroyed on average each day of a man’s life. Cosmic rays and general internal and external radioactivity account for most of this destruction.

Hunger and Gradey decided on an illegal experiment. They brought up a small group of children in a strange artificial setting where there was practically no radiation. The setting was improved. The environment grew more shielded as generations passed. At last the Thinkers exploded into a world that had not dreamed of their existence. The world was facing other complications at the moment. An alien had appeared from the other side of the cosmos! Humanity was faced with two potentially deadly enemies; could they be turned against each other, or was one a secret friend?

Alexander Blish was the security chief at Tomloy’s, the new nuclear physics research centre. They were doing things in the plant that had never been done before. They were tapping power sources so terrible that their ultimate conclusions could be heaven on earth or a hell of destruction. Armageddon might be just around the dangerous corner which humanity called tomorrow.

Blish had problems. There were alien forces to consider. There were human traitors who were prepared to sell out the Empire if the price was right. The price could be as high as planetary control.

Wilkie Gordon was Alexander’s second problem. Wilkie was an outworlder with strange wild talents. He could be an invaluable ally or a deadly enemy. Blish had to decide and decide at once. If he made the wrong choice there was just a chance that Gordon could detect the aliens and renegades before they reached the J-Pile…

Dakos was an alien humanoid who hated earth; he detested the planet; its people were anathema to him. He loathed its cities; its countryside was an abomination to him. He lived for one thing only… the destruction of the world which had rejected him.
Dakos was no mean enemy. His hatred was allied to a brilliant mind and a very superior technology. He was a man of action… highly destructive action!
Security agents Blanthus and Croberg were after him, but Dakos covered his tracks with all the cunning of a diabolically clever homicidal maniac.
He could so easily pass as a terrestrial humanoid.
…Are you sure that man sitting beside you in the bus isn’t the alien? What’s in that case?
His clothes? His lunch? His business documents? Or an alien bomb?
This is the story of a world reeling from a war of nerves with a sinister secret enemy.

Abercrombie was a strangely secretive man even for a top atom scientist. He had peculiar, advanced theories of his own which he would communicate to no one. The Government research project was well provided with safety factors. In theory the Pile was safe… but theory and practice are poles apart. There is always room for human error. The only man who did not run was Abercrombie. Was he a hero or a megalomaniac? His body was never found, but inexplicable things happened after the accident. It was as if a presence or an essence lingered over the rebuilt Project Headquarters.

The accident at the Pile and the strange rumours surrounding Abercrombie’s name were all but forgotten when the Aliens appeared. Terrible inhuman intelligences aided by powerful androids and monstrous robots threatened the Earth and Man’s concept of civilised life. Then there was another strange phenomenon at the Pile and Abercrombie was no longer forgotten…

Carl Kovak was an expendable political prisoner as far as the Eastern Totalitarian Government was concerned. He was being sent into orbit in a lead lined capsule to see if it offered adequate protection from cosmic rays. Carl was strapped in and waiting for blast-off when the first bombs fell. The lead saved his body but doubt was splitting his mind. He had believed in the honesty and integrity of the West. But what if the West had started the war?
Finally, after incredible hardships and dangers, Carl Kovak found the answer. Neither East nor West had launched the atomic missiles… they had come from Space! Now alien invaders and savage mutant stalked the earth. Could a handful of human heroes survive against such terrible odds?

Space fiction is no longer fiction in the same way that it used to be. There was an element of distance and strangeness about it a few years back. Now, fact has caught up and threatens to overtake. Science fiction today has become science prediction.

An atom is a miniature solar system in some respects. The clustering molecules resemble galaxies, colloids are, perhaps, tiny models of the whole creation. Man stands midway between the unbelievably small and the unbelievably huge. This is one of the allies of science fiction. We look down into the mysteries of the infinitesimal; we look up into the majesty of the macrocosm.

In all this vastness of stars and planets there must be other life. One day we shall make contact with that life. What will the aliens be like? How will human culture compete with non-human culture? Which will survive?

Mars is our nearest neighbour in the solar system, with the exception of our own satellite Luna. It will be considerably easier to hit the moon of course, but what will we find when we get there? Plenty to interest the scientist, the mining engineer, and the cosmologist. But the Biologist will find only fossilised traces of Lunar life, if he finds anything at all.
On Mars the story will be vastly different. We know that there is vegetation there. We still argue about those enigmatic canals. Are they optical illusion or…? What if…? What if an intelligent civilisation cut those great water courses? What if that civilisation still exists? Is man the only intelligence in God’s great Universe? How will earth’s envoys react when they first encounter non-human intellect for the first time? Will the aliens be friendly, or…?

It should have been routine. Nothing could go wrong. The anode and the cathode were behaving perfectly. The meters and dials were recording accurately. A faint effervescence stirred in the chemical solution.

There was a subtle change in the speed – the experiment seemed to freeze in its tracks – the stream of gentle bubbles hovered motionless. Something inexplicable was appearing in the solution. The scientist peered harder at the vessel…It couldn’t be…It was impossible…It was incredible…but it had happened!

A woman’s face smiled at him from the depths of the glass tank! But the face was translucent, he could see tank and solution despite its contours.

“Hello, Earthman,” said the face from Nowhere.

He clapped a hand to his forehead and collapsed insensible. When he came to, the experiment was back to normal. What had happened? Was it all in his mind? Or had he really made contact with an alien?

In the realm of science things are often far from what they seem. In the science of sociology this is truest of all. Those who seem to control human affairs may only be figure-heads. The real power lies in unsuspected places…sinister…alien…

Mervyn Wayne called at the offices of an apparently normal, respectable, old-established city firm and overheard intrigue of nightmare quality. He found himself a fugitive from an organisation whose ramifications extended everywhere.

Society was being master-minded by someone, or something, so irresistibly powerful that Mervyn’s first reaction was hopeless fear. Gradually, however, he learnt how to distinguish allies from organisation men and began building a counter-group of his own.