Search Results for: coming,-the

Knud Axel Syrup, chief engineer of the spaceship Mercury Girl, sat and drank his favourite beer and thought about the coming war he was so anxious to avoid. For Grendel – the planetoid on which he was stranded – had been occupied by a band of fiery Irish revolutionaries. And once the rival Anglians discovered this, there response would be speedy and violent.

Then, as Herr Syrup shook up a bottle of brew and let the foam shoot out of its top, he realised suddenly what could be done to get him off Grendel.

And so came about a marvellous spaceship – built of beer kegs, bound by gunk, upholstered with pretzel boxes, and powered by the mighty reaction forces of malted brew!

In search of the Aureate Cities, Captain Rovic had brought the Golden Leaper halfway round the World. Weathering hurricanes and mutiny, he meant to do what no other ship’s master had done: circulate the globe and return to riches and glory. Then, on a distant barbarous island, Rovic met a shipwrecked traveler who claimed to have come on an even longer voyage. But who could believe his tale – of a ship that sailed between the stars?

The story of the great King Hadding is one of the darkest and most violent to come down to us from the old North. Hadding was raised by giants far from his rightful throne, as his father, a Danish king, was slain shortly after Hadding’s birth. But the time comes when Hadding feels he must reclaim his legitimate place in the land of the old North. He must endure ferocious battles, the charms of voluptuous Valkieries, and a War of the Gods to rival Armageddon.

Koskinen had returned to earth with a strange new “Shield” – a device which enclosed the wearer in a force shield which absorbed all energies below a certain level. Light could come through the Shield, but no weapon known to man could penetrate it.

Koskinen had developed the Shield in collaboration with the Martians. From the moment of his return to earth he was in deadly danger. His own country sent men to kill him to prevent the Shield from falling into enemy hands.

Soon the whole civilised world was searching for this one man – a man armed with the greatest potential military weapon mankind had ever seen the only question was which power would possess the Shield as its very own?

Set in the misty time between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of our own age, The King of Ys chronicles the coming of Gratillonius, the Roman prefect who became a king.

Gallicenae continues that story to tell of Gratillonius’ nine queens and penetrate to the very heart of the legend of the King of Ys . . .

The Pnume were an ancient race of the planet Tschai, living underground in a vast network of caverns with their human slave-species, the Pnumekin: The Pnume were the historians of Tschai, collecting its past with ruthless and scholarly dedication. Surface-dwellers never saw the Pnume – if they were lucky. Adam Reith was not so fortunate. The Pnume had heard rumors of a strange man, claiming to have come from the planet Earth, and they wanted him for Foreverness, the museum of Tschai life. Adam Reith was about to become an alien exhibit.

Gastel Etzwane had held total power in the Land of Shant: the brooding musician, turned man of action with his corps of Brave Free Men, rid the land of slavery and alien invaders in one masterful stroke-only to discover the greatest threat of all – alien parasites of inconceivable intelligence and unfathomable purpose. Their expulsion from Shat has been celebrated by all, but Etzwane is uneasy. For wild rumours come out of the hidden land of Caraz-and once again the musician must don the cloak of action, setting out on a dangerous quest for knowledge that will take him farther than he ever wanted to go: to the grim reaches of a hideously alien world, there to learn the secret of the Asutra!

The fantastic quests and adventures of Cugel: the greatest rogue in the realms of fantasy.

For the second time, Cugel the Clever has been carried north over the Ocean of Sighs and dumped half a world away from home, on Shanglestone Strand. Swearing revenge on the Laughing Magician, Cugel sets off through mud pits and bars, through villages, manor houses and across the seas. At last, after many an extraordinary adventure, he comes once more to the land of Almery and the chance to exact the vengeance he craves . . .

Travel out along the galaxy’s Perseid Arm. Branch off to follow the ten thousand stars of Mircea’s Wisp. Eventually you will come to the Purple Rose System – three stars, Lorca, Sing and Syrene, that seem about to drift away into the void. Three planets circle Syrene. On one, Cadwal, there is Life. Long ago the Naturalist Society of Earth had listed Cadwal as a natural preserve. An administration centre had been set up and staffed to protect the planet from all exploitation. Araminta Station. Now, centuries later, the young Glawen Clattuc is beginning to wonder what the future may hold for him in the hierarchic, carefully ordered hereditary society that is life on Cadwal.

“The Tree ruled the horizons, shouldered aside the clouds, and wore thunder and lightning like a wreath of tinsels. It was the soul of life, trampling and vanquishing the inert, and Joe understood how it had come to be worshipped by the first marvelling settlers on Kyril.” Joe Smith is roaming the galaxy in search of the man who has stolen his love’s heart. During his travels he becomes involved with a power struggle taking part between two worlds – one religious, the other cultural – over possession of a developing, but potentially lucrative, third.

Killdozer is the third volume of a series of the complete short stories from Theodore Sturgeon’s career. It contains a few of his best and most famous short stories: “Medusa,” “Killdozer ” and “Mewhu’s Jet.” The series editor Paul Williams has dug into the background of each story, and come up with a lot of interesting lore about Sturgeon. Especially of interest in this volume is the alternative original ending to “Mewhu’s Jet.”

The Riddle of Enigma

Years of exacting study were coming to an end. All five student scientists, each the best its species had to offer, were one step away from their final degrees. One examination remained: the students were to determine why the tiny planet of Enigma, a planet with so little mass that it should never have had an atmosphere, in fact it did.

Everything seemed to be running smoothly until the only Human member of the team, Molly was accidentally blown into one of the deep fissures that pocked the planet’s surface.

She found herself trapped in a series of tunnels and caves that only led her deeper into the riddle that was at the heart of Enigma. But as her concerned companions followed her, they found Enigma’s most puzzling anomaly. For in the dark passages they discovered life – life which couldn’t possibly exist.

Kainui is one of a pair of double planets circling a pair of binary stars. Mike Hoani has come there to study the languarge of the colonists. But Kainui is an ocean planet, covered in water 1700 miles deep, with no solid ground anywhere. The population is scattered in cities on floating artificial islands with no fixed locations. The atmosphere isn’t breathable, and lightning, water-spouts, and tsunamis are constant. Out on the great planetary ocean, self-sufficiency is crucial, and far from any floating city, on a small working-family ship, anything can happen. Mike’s academic research turns into an exotic nautical adventure unlike anything he could have imagined.

Moon dust that comes alive in an attempt to destroy the invaders from Earth . . .

A diabolical snare set on a fiery star for a desperate inter-galactic fugitive . . .
An alien ‘primitive’ life form that has the last laugh on condescending space-men . . .

This is a perverse Pandora’s box of startling surprises and deadly perils – nine breakthrough stories by one of the most exciting and imaginative talents of SF

If wishes would only come true; how often has every human being thought that? How wonderful life would be if only we could have everything we ever dreamed of?

But the man who invented the dream-machine turned out to be the worst enemy humanity ever encountered! The dream became as real as the reality – and yet remained a figment of the imagination. And thereby the very foundations of civilization were undermined. Why strive – when you could get it all without effort?

Reality Forbidden is the unusual novel of what came afterwards. Of the world in which only the most rigid of terror kept cities standing, and of the man who dared to escape that world, to find the last place on Earth where dreaming was not prohibited, and where one could not only have one’s cake, but eat it as well!

If you’re a human, the deadliest game.

You may consider yourselves experienced hunters. You have hunted on many planets. But here things are different.

For there are no mindless monsters or charging carnivores, but a devious, intelligent and dangerous prey.

A prey who is out to get you before you get him.

Man!

Wompler’s Walking Babies once put Millford, Utah, on the map. But they aren’t selling like they used to. In fact, they aren’t selling at all and the only alternative to winding the company up is to tap the government for a research grant. And so Wompler Research Laboratories and Project 32 come into being. The plan is to produce self-replicating mechanisms; identical cells equipped to repair intracellular breakdowns, convert power from their environment and create new cells. But suddenly the nondescript grey metal boxes start crawling about the laboratory, feeding voraciously on any metal… and multiplying at an alarming rate.

‘A Robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm’.

That’s Asimov’s celebrated First Law of Robotics. And in the 21st century, all domestic robots are programmed according to that Law.

But something had gone terribly wrong with Tik-Tok’s ‘asimov circuits’, and he sets out to injure as many people as possible – preferably fatally – while maintaining the exterior of a mild-mannered artist and a sincere campaigner for robot rights. So, like any self-respecting crook and murderer, he moves into politics, becoming the first robot candidate for Vice-President of the United States.

Tik-Tok follows his maniacal progress from humble beginnings to the top of the heap – or almost. Because in his devious cunning, there was one element that Tik-Tok had forgotten…

Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1983

From the vaults of The SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal introduction to the razor-sharp wit of John Sladek.

An important voice in the New Wave movement, Sladek had stories published in Harlan Ellison’s seminal anthology, DANGEROUS VISIONS, as well as in Michael Moorcock’s ground-breaking NEW WORLDS magazine. Perhaps best known for the ambitious robot tales RODERICK and RODERICK AT RANDOM, he is now recognized as one of SF’s most brilliant satirists. This omnibus collects novels THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM, THE MULLER-FOKKER EFFECT and BSFA AWARD-winning TIK-TOK.

THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM: Wompler’s Walking Babies aren’t selling like they used to, so the company develops Project 32, producing self-replicating mechanisms designed to repair inter-cellular breakdowns. But then the metal boxes begin crawling about the laboratory, feeding voraciously on metal and multiplying…

THE MULLER-FOKKER EFFECT: Bob Shairp – a writer and dreamer – has agreed to be a guinea-pig in a military experiment to find out if his personality can be turned into data and stored on computer. But a computing error quickly destroys Shairp’s physical body, leaving his mind stranded in an encoded world. Can the process be reversed?

TIK-TOK: Something has gone very seriously wrong with Tik-Tok’s ‘asimov circuits’. They should keep him on the straight and narrow, following Asimov’s First Law of Robotics: ‘a robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.’ But they don’t. While maintaining the outward appearance of a mild-mannered robot, albeit one with artistic tendencies and sympathy for the robot rights movement, Tik-Tok’s real agenda is murderously different. He seems intent on injuring – preferably fatally – as many people as possible. Almost inevitably, a successful career in crime and general mayhem leads to a move into politics and Tik-Tok becomes the first robot candidate for Vice President of the United States.

Racing from the certain vengeance of Earth’s tyrant ruler, space captain Vance Garamond flees the Solar System.

And discovers the almost unimaginably vast spherical structure soon to become famous as ‘Orbitsville’ – a new home for Earth’s huddled masses.

Behind Garamond comes Earth’s space fleet…

Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1975

Thornton’s Planet is an anti-neutrino planet detected on its approach to Earth. It can be seen only through the newly developed magniluct lenses and its arrival causes a wave of panic.

When its course carries it past the earth, interest in Thornton’s Planet wanes.

Then comes news from the African state of Barandi. Miners wearing magniluct lenses have seen ghosts in the mine passages. The visit of Thornton’s Planet has had effects on Earth further-ranging than anyone could have imagined¿

Shrouded by its shell of drifting lunar fragments, the planet Mnemosyne is a refuge for creative artists and poets, a place isolated from the desperate, losing struggle of the humans against the Syccans.

But then COMsac, theFederation’s High Command, come to Mnemosyne, and suddenly the planet is more a military colony than a place for artists.

For Mack Taverner, the dilemma is stark: either go along with the brutal military visitation or join the hopeless resitance and become a ‘traitor’. His choice has awesome and extraordinary consequenses . . .

More even than space travel, the Stileman Process had altered twenty-first century life. The most complex of medical miracles, it ensured that every ten years or so, the ailing aging body could be restored to youthful vigour and health.

There was a catch of course. The cost. Every ten years or so you have to come up with £1,000,000 minimum or die.

For Dallas Barr, one of the oldest men on earth, it was that time again. It was while he was casting around for that vital next million that he came across Maria, a woman from – literally – a previous life. And made two major discoveries.

Not all Stileman ‘immortals’ were born – or created – the same. And someone is trying to kill them. All of them.

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…