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After laboring for thousands of years, the people of Earth, fleeing ecological disaster, have built a new, clean, stable world on a worldwide platform erected over the entire land surface of the Earth. Everything is going well–except for Carl Magner, the man who’s been having bad dreams. He shouldn’t be having dreams at all, because dreams have been banished from the society of the Euchronian Millennium, but somehow he is, and his dreams are showing him the “Underworld.” The real surface of the Earth, the Underworld that the Euchronian Millennium has left behind, still maintains life, human and otherwise, life that’s adapted to a world without sky or sun, still evolving in response to extreme environmental challenges. Dreams are only dreams, but they’re a provocation nevertheless, not merely for Carl Magner, but for the whole of Euchronian society. Can Heaven be truly Heaven, if Hell still festers in its entrails?

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds such as New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots have become the great heroes of the day. Grainger has become a legend in his own time, flying the prototype vessel of a new starship…. Having escaped from his contract with Charlot, Grainger is hounded by the Caradoc Commpany, who wants to extract everything from his brain about his former employer. But Charlot has other plans, and Grainger suddenly finds himself back on the Hooded Swan, leading a rescue mission for the Swan’s sister ship in the bizarre Nightingale Nebula. This last voyage proves costlier than the previous ones, as Grainger must risk not only his life – but his very soul!

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots that link the cosmos are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own lifetime. The atmosphere of Mormyr is so dense that the surface is unreachable, which made it the ideal place for the alien Gallacellans to hide an ancient spaceship. Now they want it back. Grainger refuses, but when the Hooded Swan answers a mayday call, Grainger and his crew are trapped by a madman, who forces them to pursue the salvage anyway. Success will mean Grainger’s freedom from Titus Charlot, owner of the Hooded Swan; failure will mean the death of the inhabitants of an entire planet. And then the Gallacellans appear!

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-utopian worlds like New Alexandria to the vermin-infested slums of Old Earth, the Star-Pilots are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own time. Pharos is paradise – or so it appears. But the champions of commerce want to package and sell the planet, and the conservationists want to stop them. Grainger’s employer, Titus Charlot, is enlisted to negotiate a settlement, but the game is rigged. Charlot needs the Star-Pilot’s help, but there seems to be nothing he can do – until the planet’s ecosystem takes a hand, and “paradise” suddenly turns deadly!

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like new Rome to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own time, flying the revolutionary ship, Hooded Swan. The rain forest of Chao Phrya seems a more hospitable place than the Halcyon Drift or the underground world of Rhapsody, scenes of Grainger’s previous adventures. But the colonists of the jungle planet are crazed and the indigenous population enigmatic; and Grainger must must undertake a mission that requires a lengthy journey on foot through the dense forest. His quest seems awkward, hazardous, and doomed to failure – and that’s before the giant spiders make their appearance!

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, starship pilots have become the great romantic heroes of the day. When Star-Pilot Grainger is rescued from a shipwreck, he finds himself pressed into reluctant service to fly the Hooded Swan, the prototype of a new kind of interstellar ship. He’s also picked up an alien parasite that’s determined to share his brain. Under these dire circumstances, can Grainger possibly stay out of trouble? Not a chance!

In the far future Earth is dying. Society has reverted to a more primitive life, much like the Middle Ages. Two men, Matthew and his brother John, who calls himself “Firefly,” set out to find the time traveller, the one person who can give purpose to their existence, the one individual who can still access past technology. The Firefly, he who lights his own way, seeks the age of Man’s greatness, the time when the human race once owned the stars, when great cities stood in places that have now become rust-bowls.

The planet Attica has two continents: Lambda and Delta. The indigenous alien population being restricted to Delta, Earth’s colony was planted on Lambda. Before the arrival of the Daedalus, two sailing ships had set out from Lambda to cross the ocean separating the two continents, and neither had returned. Now a third is on its way, and Mariel Valory and Alex Alexander of the Daedalus have hitched a lift, in order that Mariel might use her talent to try to make contact with the aliens. Unfortunately, it turns out that contact has already been made, and that the aliens are building an empire with the aid of borrowed Terran technology–an empire that’s beginning to crack under its internal strains and eternal challenges. And when Alex and Mariel are marooned by their reluctant hosts, things start to go from very bad to much worse….

The fourth landing of the Daedalus Mission confronts Alex and his companions with a colonial culture seemingly modeled on a classic Utopian dream, but all of its inhabitants are infected with a mysterious alien parasite, and they no longer seem entirely human. Are they being controlled by the parasite, or has the parasite merely enabled them to transform themselves? Can the visitors from Earth avoid infection themselves, and what will the consequences be if they cannot? For once, the risks of the contact seem potentially far greater than any possible reward – but that still leaves the visitors with the necessity of passing judgment and deciding what to do, in an exceedingly awkward situation.

They call them the “rat-catchers.” They’re the crew of the spaceship Daedalus, which an economically destitute Earth has dispatched on a mission to re-establish contact with its far-flung, long-lost colonies in space. Alex Alexander, the ship’s biologist, together with his staff, must help solve the mysteries of human and alien ecosystems that he encounters light-years from home.

Dendra is a stable world, covered by a huge, unchanging forest-except that nothing living can really be free of change. The planet has no seasons, but its animal life still undergoes life-cycles involving birth, maturation, metamorphosis, and death. The Earth colony sent to tame the world has failed, at least in the terms expected of it, and seems beyond redemption; but the crew of the Daedalus still has to find out exactly why and how the program has gone wrong. Provided, of course, that they can survive the investigation itself!

They call them the “rat-catchers.” They’re the crew of the spaceship Daedalus, which an economically destitute Earth has dispatched on a mission to re-establish contact with its far-flung, long-lost space colonies. Alex Alexander, ship’s biologist, must help solve the mysteries of human and alien ecosystems that he encounters light-years from home. The planet Floria initially appears to be one of the few Earth colonies that’s actually prospered since its initial settlement. But underneath the surface of the society, the “Planners” keep a strict, repressive rule over the Florians, while the police are apparently attempting to assert their own authority. But is either group actually what they seem?

They call it Asgard, the Home of the Gods. Beneath its artificial shell are at least three vast cave-systems, each one the size of an Earth-like world; and beneath those, possibly many more. No one knows how many layers there might be, and no one knows what secrets might be buried down at the “center”–if there is a center. At some time in the distant past, Asgard had suffered a terrible catastrophe. Now its outer layers are cold, its builders presumed dead. Explorers and exploiters from a hundred different worlds and races are scavenging among the ruins–but deep down, there might still be light, warmth, life…and perils unknown. Mike Rousseau was one of the first humans to come to Asgard, decades earlier. Now he’s challenged by both friends and foes–and it’s hard to tell them apart on this icebound planet. He might also be the one man who can solve the biggest puzzle in the galaxy…if only he can stay alive!

Be glad you’re human . . .

Not that it wouldn’t be fun to be one of Richard Wilson’s visitors from outer space. But the trouble is, no matter how mentally superior, or how gorgeous, or how horrible – you’d never win . . . not against the wacky, witless, illogical, neurotic, inebriated and (happily) fallible denizens of Earth.

A collection of ten short science fiction stories by Richard Wilson, containing:

Those Idiots from Earth (1957)
The Inhabited (1953)
The Hoaxters (1952)
Lonely Road (1956)
Love (1952)
Honor (1956)
88 Beats 266 (1957) (a.k.a. “Succes Story”)
Don’t Fence Me In (1956)
Press Conference (1953) (a.k.a. “Visitor from the Void”)
It’s Cold Outside (1956)

Earth, can you spare a city?

The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth! Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local townspeople, a crackpot professor. But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his days on the smallest-and the nuttiest-planet in the galaxy!

The mysterious spaceship hovered over Washington and the whole nation was alerted. A small craft detached itself from the ship and came down to earth the occupants emerged-a host of lovely ladies from outer space who invade a USA already dominated by women. It’s as exciting as it is deft and entertaining.

Set in the imaginary French province of Poictesme during the first half of the 13th century, FIGURES OF EARTH follows the earthly career of Dom Manuel the the swineherd, who rises to power by playing on others’ expectations – his motto Mundus Vult Decipi, meaning “the world wishes to be deceived.”

Revenge was all Leadford could think of as he set out to find the unfaithful Nettie and her adulterous lover. But this was all to change when a new comet entered the earth’s orbit and totally reversed the natural order of things. The Great Change had occurred and any previous emotions, thoughts, ambitions, hopes and fears had all been removed. Free love, pacifism and equality were now the name of the game. But how will Leadford fare in this most utopian of societies . . . ?

A troubled insomniac in 1890s England falls suddenly into a sleep-like trance, from which he does not awake for over two hundred years. During his centuries of slumber, however, investments are made that make him the richest and most powerful man on Earth. But when he comes out of his trance he is horrified to discover that the money accumulated in his name is being used to maintain a hierarchal society in which most are poor, and more than a third of all people are enslaved. Oppressed and uneducated, the masses cling desperately to one dream – that the sleeper will awake, and lead them all to freedom.

A young Viking sets off on a quest to rescue his kidnapped bride and, along the way, discovers an earthly paradise. Somehow he must turn his back on this paradise to complete his quest to find a woman he barely knows.

The tale tells that in times long past there was a dwelling of men beside a great wood. Before it lay a plain, not very great, but which was, as it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even when you stood on the flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in the offing, though as for hills, you could scarce say that there were any; only swellings-up of the earth here and there, like the upheavings of the water that one sees at whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swift but deep stream.

The tale of the House of the Wolfings in its struggles against the legionaries of Rome then advancing into Northern Germany.

Telling the story of a dying Earth, The Night Land begins with a man from the 17th century who, mourning the death of his true love, is given a vision through the eyes his future incarnation. In that distant time Earth is only dimly lit by the remaining glow of the dead Sun. The last millions of the human race cluster together inside the Last Redoubt, a huge metal pyramid, and are set upon by mysterious forces from the dark outside. Leaving the protection of their refuge means certain death, but our narrator makes mind contact with a survivor in a forgotten Lesser Redoubt. He must journey alone through the evil darkness to find her, knowing that she is the reincarnation of his past precious love.

A manuscript is found: filled with small, precise writing and smelling of pit-water, it tells the story of an old recluse and his strange home – and its even stranger, jade-green double, seen by the recluse on an otherworldly plain where gigantic gods and monsters roam.

Soon his more earthly home is no less terrible than his bizarre vision, as swine-like creatures boil from a cavern beneath the ground and besiege it. But a still greater horror will face the recluse – more inexorable, merciless and awful than any creature that can be fought or killed.

Being an account of their Adventures in the Strange places of the Earth, after the foundering of the good ship Glen Carrig through striking upon a hidden rock in the unknown seas to the Southward. As told by John Winterstraw, Gent., to his Son James Winterstraw, in the year 1757, and by him committed very properly and legibly to manuscript.

The tale recounts the visit to Earth of a giant being from a planet circling the distant star Sirius, and of his companion from the planet Saturn.