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Change the Sky is a collection in which you will find:

– A man who has spent his life searching for the world of his dreams and got exactly what he wanted
– A women who found the people around her so boring she changed them
– A righteous minister who preached an old-fashioned Christmas and started an energy crisis – 2000 years in the future

Like so many others before him, reluctant Sam MacGregor was sent on a pilgrimage for the Grail Vision by the Dancers: androids grown from the cells of one man, with the powers of hypnotism and illusion – androids who held the tribes of the Republic of California in thrall.

But soon Sam began to doubt his own identity, for he experienced, in close succession, extra-lives in different corridors of time and space.

And he count not know whom his search would destroy: the Dancers . . . or himself.

Before the dawn of man . . .

. . . there was a covenant between the land and the sea people – a covenant long forgotten by those who stayed on shore, but indelibly etched in the minds of others – the dolphins of Altair.

Now the covenant had been broken. Dolphins were being wantonly sacrificed in the name of scientific research, their waters increasingly polluted, their number dangerously diminished. They had to find allies and strike back. Allies willing to sever their own earthly bonds for the sake of their sea brothers – willing, if necessary, to execute the destruction of the whole human race . . .

Earth was a weird and dire place after the plagues.

The few humans who survived could not bear the touch of each other; they lived in the enormous, endless caverns hacked out of the bowels of the earth for the bombs that never came.

And on one man rested the hopes of the world, though he did not know it. Sam Sewell only knew he had to journey, despite forbidding perils from the darkness of the past, into the ultimate fastnesses of the unknown to rescue the timeless wisdom of the witch Desponia . . .

Don Haig had been content to lie around and drink in the synthetic beauty of the pleasure planetoid Fyon, until a woman came into his life. A woman more beautiful and more perfect than any other female in the galaxy. A woman who brought about a curious change in Don.

For she was a pocket-sized foll – a very strange and miraculous puppet who shed constant tears and held powers that Don never even dreamed of.

But what Don did know was that dangerous alien forces were swiftly focusing on him and his living puppet – and that he had to discover the doll’s super-scientific secret before his own life was smashed into atoms.

After the Gorgorian barbarians conquer the civilized kingdom of Hydrangea, their leader Gudge makes himself king, marries Hydrangean Princess Artemisia and settles down to a highly satisfactory life of drinking and debauchery.

Royal triplets, separated at birth because of a Gorgorian superstition that multiple births suggest the mother’s infidelity, receive very different upbringings. The only girl, Avena, is brought up in the palace as Prince Arbol, heir to the throne and a fearsome swordsman. One brother, Wulfrith, is raised by a shepherd; although a young ewe is his favorite companion, his size makes him a fearsome battler. The other brother, Dunwin, reared by the outlawed wizard Clootie, develops into a talented magician.

War and wizardry, dark deeds and derring-do, matters of state and matters of the heart, and a dragon who thinks she’s a sheep. . . . This modern fantasy is the ultimate saga of flashing swords, high magic, and hopeless dynamic confusion – an event fans of the genre will not want to miss.

Pel Brown knew nothing about parallel universes, let alone travel between them. Then he stepped through a portal that appeared in his basement – and his life turned upside down.

That first inexplicable doorway took him into a magic world called Faerie, ruled by the evil and mysterious Shadow. Another portal provided escape to a world of science and spaceships – and ruthless space pirates plundering the Galactic Empire.

Imperial forces rescued Pel. They would even send him home – but only after he returned to Faerie and destroyed Shadow. And so, with wizards, spacemen, and swordsmen as his unlikely allies, Pel set out to beard the enemy in its stronghold.

But real life is what happens while you’re making other plans – as Pel learned when he uncovered his malign foe’s true nature…

Pel Brown has troubles in his basement. But it’s not water leaking in – it’s magic. Sword-carrying barbarians are spilling through, demanding that Pel help them defeat Shadow, a dark force taking over their world.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, a spaceship has crashed in Amy Jewell’s backyard, and the aliens want Amy’s help against the Shadow seeking to conquer their world. When Pel and Amy go through the basement portal into the world of magic, the Shadow attacks and traps them inside.

Now Pel and Amy find themselves entangled in escapades that will make them into heroes … or corpses.

A SINGLE SPELL

Tobas had been lucky to find a wizard to take him on as apprentice. But then the wizard died suddenly and unexpectedly after teaching Tobas only a solitary spell, and the youth was too old to find a new master. How could he earn a living when all the magic he could do was light fires?

A DESTINY UNFOLDING

In the Small Kingdoms there were dragons to be slain, princesses and gold to be won, magic castles, witches who knew the secret of immortality, and other treasures. But how could a wizard with a single, simple spell hope to find them and win them?

Lafferty’s Nine Hundred Grandmothers collects the following stories:

Nine Hundred Grandmothers
Land of the Great Horses
Ginny Wrapped in the Sun
The Six Fingers of Time
Frog on the Mountain
All the People
Primary Education of the Camiroi
Slow Tuesday Night
Snuffles
Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne
Name of the Snake
Narrow Valley
Polity and Custom of the Camiroi
In Our Block
Hog-Belly Honey
Seven Day Terror
The Hole on the Corner
What’s the Name of that Town
Through Other Eyes
One at a Time
Guesting Time

It was the End of Summer of the year 2035. The Global Village that was the World was ruled by a Kangaroo Court of Compassionate Aldermen who ordered assassinations when it was deemed to be for the common good. As a sign of their openness, they were always experimenting to find new ways of looking at the World. Most of these experiments would would fail; some of them would succeed to an extent; and others would succeed only too well, and so would have to be crushed in the shell for the good of the World.

The Lynn-Randal Experiment raised three children together almost from infancy. Of these three, Lord Randal was human (though somewhat enhanced and tampered with). Axel belonged to the gargoyle-faced ‘Golden People’ (‘God believes they are the most beautiful creatures he ever made,’ a theologian said, ‘and there will be hell to pay when he founds out that we don’t agree.’). And the third child was Inneal who often elicited the comment ‘she’s really something different, isn’t she!’ Yes, she was. All of these were super-mega-persons, which meant that they might be able to change the world itself. But why did they begin to change the Ocean first?

When these three were just short of ten years old, they were merged with children of three other experiments, and formed with them a Magic Dozen. Immediately they began to have an astonishing effect on the World. And the fave of the children themselves hung in the balance.

Was the experiment too successful? Was their effect on the World too dangerous? Would their group be, as other groups had been, adjudged to be a ‘Serpent’s Egg‘ that had to be crushed in the shell for the good of the world?

The Three Days of Summerset, the End of Summer, would give the answer.

An essential short story collection from the author of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT – now a major Netflix drama

Containing:

Far From Home
The Other End of the Line
The Big Bounce
The Goldabrick
The Ifth of Oofth
The Scholar’s Disciple
Far From Home
Close To Home
Rent Control
A Visit From Mother
Daddy
The Apotheosis of Myra
Out of Luck
Echo
Sitting In Limbo

This is an essential collection from the author of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, THE HUSTLER and THE COLOUR OF MONEY.

In the sleepy English village of Midwich, a mysterious silver object appears and all the inhabitants fall unconscious. A day later the object is gone and everyone awakens unharmed – except that all the women in the village are discovered to be pregnant.
The resultant children of Midwich do not belong to their parents: all are blonde, all are golden eyed. They grow up too fast and their minds exhibit frightening abilities that give them control over others and brings them into conflict with the villagers, just as a chilling realisation dawns on the world outside . . .
The Midwich Cuckoos is the classic tale of aliens in our midst, exploring how we respond when confronted by those who are innately superior to us in every conceivable way.

When Jod Wyler and his gang of Whirleebirds decided to invade the new satellite, where now lived Kemlo, Kerowski, Krillie and all our other friends from Satellite K, there were one or two points which he entirely overlooked.

One or two very important points…

Everyone knows the story of the Marie Celeste. Kemlo and Kerowski hardly expected to find an aerial Marie Celeste adrift in the void.

But caught, with others, in the worst astral storm of their experience, they had other things to think about for the moment. And after that there was yet another, one still more important…

Kemlo, with two other boys from Satellite K, are allowed to accompany a small research team setting off to reconnoiter Deimos, a moonlet of Mars.

The research ship has a smooth journey until it encounters a fierce astral storm, but eventually lands safely on Deimos – where some peculiar magnetic forces put all the instruments out of action.

From then on the suspense is terrific. Kemlo and his friends find their way barred by a moving wall of lighted shapes and, scattered, are apparently attacked by transparent figures etched in vivid light. Up to the very end the doubt remains: will the power of the Martian Ghosts triumph or be broken?

Kemlo, captain of Space scouts, and his young friend Krillie receive a visit from two Earth children, Dane and Lesa, Krillie’s cousins. Lesa is quite prepared to be thrilled by all that she sees on Satellite Belt K, but Dane sneers at everything – especially at the mechanical horse in the games-room. he boasts of his own prowess, and is heard by their science engineering master from Earth, who determines to teach him a lesson and at the same time to evolve, with the help of Kemlo and the other troop leaders, a new mechanical wonder, a New World Pegasus, a horse that can gallop in Space…

Kemlo and Krillie, together with Krillie’s sister Krinsetta, set out for a visit to S Belt in Kemlo’s space scooter. They are attacked by three boys from S Belt, who kidnap Krinsetta. Kemlo gives chase, and both his and the other craft are forced down, off course, on to the Zones of Silence, part of a large area known as the Dead World where the slightest whisper is magnified into a roar…

The inhabitants of the Zones have no audible form of speech, but use instead a highly developed system of thought transference. These creatures are friendly, but too friendly: they attempt to drug the minds of visitors with thought impulses compelling them to stay on the Zones. Kemlo is able to resist this powerful impulse, but…

Kemlo and his friend Krillie, who have set out from Satellite Belt K on a Space trip, find themselves off course and eventually land upon a planet about which very little is known except that odd things happen there, so that it has become known as the Crazy Planet.

The people upon it, whose language is laughter, are friendly; but others, from Earth, are also marooned upon it, and they are very far from friendly, not only to the laughing People but to Kemlo and Krillie too. Their wicked plans, however, are foiled by Kemlo, who is later responsible for helping his new friends against a mass attack of the murderous wood beasts…

Harry Keough, aka the Necroscope, has always considered himself a master of the Mobius Continuum – a dimension existing parallel to all space and time and his personal instantaneous gateway to anywhere in the multiverse. But this is hardly overweening conceit on Harry’s part, for to his knowledge he is not unique; two other intelligences, with powers similar to his, do indeed exist. One such is the long-dead August Ferdinand Mobius himself, the German astronomer, mathematician, and discoverer of the eponymous Mobius Strip which led him to explore, posthumously, his previously conjectural Continuum; and the other is Harry’s son, who has not only inherited his father’s mathematical skill but also the metaphysical talent by means of which the Necroscope converses with dead people in their graves!

Picture Harry’s confusion, then, on returning home via the Mobius Continuum from an adventure in Las Vegas, as he witnesses however briefly a flailing figure hurtling conscious but uncontrolled through the endless midnight of the Continuum. Who could this be – how can it be? – that a helpless, silently protesting other is rushing meteor-like across the Continuum’s Stygian vault? Moreover, if he hasn’t arrived here voluntarily, then what vile murderer has sent his victim on this monstrous journey to the end of life itself? For Harry is sure that this is neither his son’s nor Professor Mobius’ doing.

Who and where is he, this Mobius murderer? It is a mystery that only the Necroscope can ever hope to solve – but at what risk to his own life?

In luck and out of luck, John Grimes was a living legend of the spaceways. He had been an officer of the service, he had been the victim of a mutiny, he had discovered lost worlds, he had served under strange masters and on strange ships, but he had never turned space pirate. Until this adventure.

How it happened was a complex story to begin with, but typical Grimes luck. How he became the terror of the star lanes developed, as usual, from his own efforts to make an honest living and other’s efforts to use him for devious diversions.

This is a story of the loot of the stars, of how Grimes graduated from operator of a space courier ship to master of a fleet of dreaded carriers of the skull and crossbones!

Being lost in space was no new experience to John Grimes, whose career as an interstellar officer had brought him into many such dilemmas. But being lost inside a colossal alien spacecraft had no precedent.

Complicating the matter was the discovery that the very universe was not their own but an alternate and that their captor seemed to be the omnipotent force of that entire other cosmos.
As Grime’s only companion was the comely policewoman, Una Freeman, the fate that the Alien God selected for them required the creation of a Garden of Eden. But there were two serpents in this one – both of them bicycles!

Commodore John Grimes was finally getting his space wings back. On his old ship, Faraway Quest, Grimes was to venture forth to the very Rim of the known worlds, seeing … The Outsider.

“The Outsider’s Ship … is a storehouse of science and technology … we, and the Federation, and the Shaara Empire, and probably quite a few more, have sent expeditions. Every one has ended disastrously.”

So, it is out to the Rim and find The Outsider. But the mystery ship is not always easy to find. And other worlds, too, yearn for the treasures of the alien technology. What Commodore Grimes finds at the Rim, and what finds him there, sends him racing through time tracks, surrounded by enemies and temporary friends, trying endlessly to discover the secret dangers of … The Outsider.

Lost in space…lost in time. There can be no more terrifying situation for any spaceman to be in, and such was the problem when Commodore Grimes’ Faraway Quest broke free from the mysterious Kinsolving’s Planet.

Because the universe was vast and they had been out beyond the Galactic Lens. Because time is infinite and they had slipped beyond their own epoch. Because in whatever universe they were in they could raise no etheric word, no telepathic beacon, no other star vessel.

But for John Grimes, a veritable Commodore Hornblower of the future space seas, there had to be a way back. The first step was to locate Earth, the launching place for all humanity.

But Earth turned out to be legend and myth and faith – and Grimes’ rebellious crew were to enact roles already fabled before they were born.