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It started as a harmless practical joke. But then the real nightmare begins…John Straker is the neighbourhood bogeyman. Hideously disfigured, he hides himself away from the rest of the world – until the night when a group of children set fire to his house and reduce it – and its owner – to ashes.

Mr Bad Face has been well and truly laid to rest. Or so the children think…

They’re grown up now and they’ve struggled hard to leave the bad dreams behind. Then, without warning, a figure from the past casts his shadow across the present. Mr Bad Face is back – and he wants revenge.

The daughter of rich but neglectful parents, Terisa Morgan lives alone in a New York City apartment, a young woman who has grown to doubt her own existence. Surrounded by the flat reassurance of mirrors, she leads an unfulfilled life-until the night a strange man named Geraden comes crashing through one of her mirrors, on a quest to find a champion to save his kingdom of Mordant from a pervasive evil that threatens the land. Terisa is no champion. She wields neither magic nor power. And yet, much to her own surprise, when Geraden begs her to come back with him, she agrees.Now, in a culture where women are little more than the playthings of powerful men, in a castle honeycombed with secret passages and clever traps, in a kingdom threatened from without and within by enemies able to appear and vanish out of thin air, Terisa must become more than the pale reflection of a person. For the way back to Earth is closed to her. And the enemies of Mordant will stop at nothing to see her dead.

From the SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal sample introduction to the fantastic imagination of Theodore Sturgeon, one of the great names in science fiction.

Highly acclaimed for his short fiction, Sturgeon is nevertheless best known for his 1953 novel, MORE THAN HUMAN, and for scripting the STAR TREK episode ‘Amok Time’, which introduced the Vulcan mating ritual, the pon farr. This omnibus contains three of his finest works: THE DREAMING JEWELS, TO MARRY MEDUSA and VENUS PLUS X.

Out of body, out of time…

Though basically a skeptic, William Reynolds had known out-of-body experiences in the past. But never before had he floated past the boundaries of Baltimore . . . and across the borders of time. And now, with the fires of Civil War looming on the horizon, the astonished graduate student was hobnobbing with none other than the dark poet Edgar Allan Poe. But their meeting of minds was to have chilling consequences. For a desperate Confederacy planned to use them both to remold the world – and to change history…for the worse.

Into a world where monsters ruled…

To make it his own, he had only the power in his limbs and his desire to wrest this primeval land from the beasts. He was Varnum, last vestige of strength in the jaded race of men. Adrift in a land untouched by technology, he found himself with the chance for which all men dream – to shape history!

She was haunted by Thunder and Plagued by Dreams… strange, dark dreams of a world beyond time and space, a land of magic and mystery. But Charley know it was more than a dream – for her friend Sam shared her visions.
Suddenly, the dreams become a reality…as a raging storm sweeps Charley and Sam to the fantastic land of Akahlar, where unicorns and griffins run free, an enchantress commands a den of unearthly pleasures, and a wizard warns of a terrifying, inescapable event:
The changewinds are coming…savage, purple – tinged storms that alter the shapes of man and beast alike. Soon, all creatures must look to the skies – and beware…

I’m Sam Horowitz. My wife Brandy and I are private eyes – and belly-up broke. This is why we agreed to trace Martin Whitlock, a hotshot banker who’d skipped town over $2,000,000 in laundered drug money. Not our usual sort of case, but even filthy mob lucre pays bills.
The trail led from a posh mansion to a hick burg called McInerney, Oregon – and to G.O.D. Inc: the geeks who hawk overpriced garbage on late night TV. That’s where we found our man…too often. There were three Mary Whitlocks, same prints. But one was female. One was dead. We got busted. That wasn’t the worst.
The mob rip-off was only one move in a caper to take over crime – not the Mafia but something bigger. A hell of lot bigger. Because McInerney, Oregon wasn’t just off the map…It was off the edge of the Earth.
And Brandy and I were being taken for a ride – into The Labyrinth of Dreams.

In this final volume of the Dancing Gods series, Ruddygore and his heroes must face an ancient evil seeping forth from the Sea of Dreams.

Long dormant evil is rising to challenge reality as we know it and it will destroy Earth and the magical world of Husaguahr if left to its own devices.

The Rules require the Great McGuffin to challenge and stop the evil forces, but McGuffini is lost in Hell and Ruddygore must, once again, depend on the skills Marge and Joe (and Joe’s estranged son, Irving).

In Husaquahr, the world of magic beyond the Sea of Dreams, the battle had been won. All seemed peaceful. But Throckmorton P. Ruddygore, master sorcerer, knew better. Far to the south, on the River of Dancing Gods, the Dark Baron plotted with a Demon Prince to wage the final war that would bring about Armageddon.

Someone had to make the dangerous trip into the unknown to spy on the conspirators. And so Ruddygore called again on the services of his erstwhile human helpers- Joe, who had become a superbarbarian hero with an enchanted sword, and Marge, now changed to a flying fairy woman.

But could two fragile people from the Earth Prime – even with some magic ingredients- survive in this new, bitter struggle to good versus evil?

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.

Life on Earth was intolerable – and yet Man had stayed there, his dreams and potential suffocating under the dead weight of bureaucracy.

The stars were attainable – thanks to the Infall Drive – but only a few heard the call of deep space. Some had already gone to colonise a new world. The second ship was ready at last. Ready to escape the Earth’s prison; ready to seek refuge in deepest space. But it wasn’t only freedom that awaited it…

Maxie’s in trouble! Again. Only, this time it’s serious. Driving a stolen Ferrari Testarossa off a motorway flyover at something approaching Mach 1, with the police in hot pursuit, is no way to make old bones. But it’s child’s play to what follows.

For Maxie, small-time thief and general low-life, has crashed into the Spiral, a strange whirlpool of time and space, where, it seems, almost anything can happen, and anyone appear.

The two Elizabethan alchemists, for instance, who are convinced that Maxie can help them with their magickal endeavours. And the swashbuckling band of spectral pirates who promise Maxie power and riches beyond his wildest dreams – if only he’ll join them.

‘East of the sun and west of the moon…’


…you may find a freighter carrying ivory to Huy Braseal, mammoth tusks to Tartessos and Ashkelon, spices from Cathay to Lyonesse. Another world, of infinite strangeness and high adventure, yet never far from our own; round a corner, through a door into a harbourside inn and you may find yourself there.


Steve Fisher had been there once, had sailed the cloud archipelagos on a desperate quest to Hispaniola. Or had he? The memories have faded…was it only a dream? Then, in Bangkok, as he struggles to arrange a shipment of vital supplies to the endangered paradise of Bali, Steve finds himself catapulted back into that world, through the eerie gates of the Spiral – and into terrible dangers. For our there is something that wants him stopped, at any costs.

Shadows from the past, from the present – and from somewhere that is neither, where myths and legends and terrifying archetypes stalk the world. Entangles by old loves and ancient hatreds, with witches and warlocks to help him and the original Bogeyman on his trail, Steve must fight to reconcile past and present in an epic battle of wits which leads him from the sleazy sex bars of Bangkok to the mist-shrouded islands of the South Seas…

Ben is a struggling New York advertising copywriter, stuck in a dull marriage. Then one day he finds a Woodrow Wilson dime, which leads him into a parallel world of his dreams where he runs his own ad agency and shares life with a dazzling red-haired bombshell.

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.

Cephapples can seriously damage your health…

A cephapple is a dreambean – a programmed hallucination. Quinjinn is a reviewer of cephapples. When he is persuaded to sample one particular dream, it is so real that he cannot get it out of his mind, and so hideous that he cannot remember its climax. Horrified when his young daughter is exposed to it as well, Quinjinn resolves to find the tree on which this cephapple grew, and to destroy it before it can poison any other minds.

His interstellar quest becomes a bizarre journey through a cold and alien galaxy and exotic distant planets – and into the deepest recesses of his own mind.

This collection of fact and fiction was inspired by the time science fiction writer Lucius Shepard spent with Missoula Mike, Madcat, and other members of a controversial brotherhood known as the Freight Train Riders of America. Shepard rode the rails throughout the western half of the United States with the disenfranchised, the homeless, the punks, the gangs, and the joy riders for the magazine article ‘The FTRA Story’. ‘Over Yonder’ and ‘Jailbait’. In ‘Over Yonder’, alcoholic Billy Long Gone finds himself on an unusual train. As Billy travels his health improves and his thinking clears, and he arrives in Yonder – an unlikely paradise where a few hundred hobos live in apparent peace and tranquillity. But every paradise has its price, and in Yonder, peace and tranquillity breed complacency and startling deaths. ‘Jailbait’ is a hardcore tale of deception, lust, revenge, and murder in the seedy underbelly of rail yards and train hopping. Madcat, who functions best in a whiskey-induced haze, must decide between solitude and companionship when he meets up with Grace, an underaged runaway. Grace, in turn, seeks the security of an older man and the life about which only young girls can dream.

Curtis MscKinnon is an intemperate, naïve fool. Sure of his invulnerability as an American expatriate, he comes to Borneo to play at being disreputable. His illusions and charm make him a dangerous man: soon enough, he is in trouble and forced to hide in the jungles of Kalimantan.

He discovers a drug once used to the Punan Dayak, a lost race remembered as ‘the dream wanderers’. Seribu aso does not, however, alter the perceptions of only the user. It changes the concrete reality of the land itself. MacKinnon has awoken the spirits of Kalimantan, the guardians of an unspoilt land. And he has no idea how powerful they are…

With its echoes of Altered States and Heart of Darkness, Kalimantan has all the enthralling dark magic and superb story-telling that have made Lucius Shepard one of the most acclaimed fantasists today.

Wylie’s final novel, published posthumously, focuses on man’s destruction of the world through his unheeding and willful poisoning of the atmosphere, the land, the seas and rivers, and finally the human race itself.

Cut off suddenly, unexpectedly, from interstellar trade, the colony of Erin found itself confined to the slow in-system shuttles and asteroid miners that were the only spaceships left at Muldoon Port. The human population slowly dwindled, unable to thrive in Erin’s marginal ecosystem.
Jay Hara grew up on isolated Erin, longing for the legendary days when the Godspeed ships spanned he galaxy, and a young man’s dreams could take him to the stars. So when an old, sick spacer named Paddy Enderton shows Jay some very strange devices and tells him that he has found a Godspeed base out in the asteroid belt, Jay was eager to believe.

For millennia, humankind and the other intelligent races had studied the bizarre and unfathomable constructs of the legendary beings known as Builders. But for all that study, they were still no closer to figuring out who – or what – the Builders had been, or where they had gone. Then, on the world called Quake, in the midst of the violent planetary upheaval that was Summertide, a small group of humans and aliens witnessed the culmination of all those years of watching and waiting: the planet Quake opened up, and something came out – and it looked as if, at long last, the discovery of the Builders themselves was at hand.


All her life, Darya Lang had dreamed of finding the Builders, whose artifacts she had single-handedly catalogued for the rest of the universe. Troubleshooter and adventurer Hans Rebka had his own dreams of unraveling the mystery of those artifacts. To Louis Nenda and the Cecropian Atvar H’sial, the Builder artifacts represented a once-in-a-lifetime shot at untold wealth. And close behind them came the others: Councilor Julius Graces, who did not trust anyone to make first contact unassisted; the slavesJ’merlia and Kallik, who craved only a reunion with their masters; and the embodied computer E.C. Tally, charged with finding out just what the rest were up to.


The trail that began at Quake led to unexpected Builder artifacts full of traps for the unwary and answers for those who knew how to ask the questions. But the biggest question of all would remain an enigma, while their search unleashed the greatest threat to civilization ever imagined…

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.

The year is 1998, and the nightmare is close at hand.

The world economy has gone into a mega-crash. Most of the population has been plunged into abject poverty. Anarchy and violence stalk the streets. All power is in the hands of Dryco, headed by paranoid tycoon Thatcher Dryden, and his monstrous wife, Susie.

But on the desperate streets of the Lower East Side miracles are happening. A Messiah seems to have risen from the people and is healing the sick, teaching children, raising the dead.

Dryco’s New Projects Manager, Joanna, is sent to check him out. Thatcher’s got a plan for world domination, and a genuine Messiah could be the key he’s looking for. And even if he’s fake, he may have his uses.

But soon, Joanna finds herself trapped in a crisis of conscience, between the relative security of a Dryco job and the dream of healing a sick world.

Following the Timelock, the Quester, de Maringy, finds himself on the parallel universe of Borea. Borea – ice-planet – is a ravaged arena of psychic combat between the Warlord of the Plateau, Armandra and the Wind-Walker. This is the sequel to “The Clock of Dreams” and “Spawn of the Winds”.