Search Results for: time-and-space

Captain Sir Dominic Flandry was a top man in the Intelligence Corps of the Imperial Terrestrial Navy. He knew that on the outer edges of the empire, civilisation was spread hideously thin. The stars faded towards barbarism, with the great evil Empire of Merseia beyond.

But there were times when Flandry abandoned his senior position of command to go out into the field. Then he operated like the cool and brilliant agent he was, a ruthless, highly-trained professional. And in these three fast-moving adventures Captain Dominic Flandry shows that a space-age secret agent has to stay on top of the job – or succumb to nameless horrors.

There had to be a reason why that isolated human colony had been able to survive mankind’s implacable enemies. But nobody had been able to get to the quaintly named Dunroamin to find out.

If they had a secret defence, it could be the answer to a hundred planets’ prayers. And Feliz Gebrod realized as he came in for a crash landing that he’d know the secret sooner than he’d expected.

Except that what he encountered was a life-and-death riddle that had nothing to do with stellar defence. It was this: how can two mutually irreconcilable Utopias occupy the same space at the same time?

One minute I was in New York . . . walking down Sixth Avenue, a private eye on a two-bit job . . .
Next minute I was in New York . . . a crazy town I almost recognised – but Goebbels was speaking in Union square, Hitler invited me to a cocktail party, and aliens from outer space were running the whole show. Fun City it wasn’t . . .

Plucked from his own “time”, a pawn in a Galactic power play, Ron Archer fights his way through a deadly maze of intrigue and conspiracy to an incredible destiny at the end of the star lanes!

Trapped behind walls of towering ice, First City was a prison from which no one ever escaped. The Trysts ruled with an iron fist: violent death was a common sight on the streets.

Morag MacKenzie was a mind-prostitute who gave erotic thought stimulation, without giving her body. Those who yearned for other escapes visited the Timesmiths, within those hands time could be moulded like clay as they spun dream-visions. But morag has her own dreams, of a world outside the ice walls, a world of space and freedom, and she is determined to find it.

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…

Flung across space and time by the sorcery of super-science, John Gordon exchanges bodies with Zarth Arn, Prince of the Mid-Galactic Empire 2000 centuries in the future!

Suddenly John is trust into a last-ditch battle between the democratic Empire World and the tyranny of the Black Cloud regime. Only one weapon – the terrifying Disruptor – can win the struggle for the Empire Forces. But it is so powerful that unless John uses it correctly it could destroy not only the enemy but the cosmos.

Could his 20th Century mind cope with the technology of 200,000 years from now?

Because he was bored with life on a world that had become a museum, Paul Hilder answered a mysterious advertisement, and found himself plunged into a life that was different, dangerous and far from boring.

This is the story of an Earth that existed alongside the one that Paul Hilder knew, and with which he became so involved that the bitter struggle waged on one world threatened to encroach on the other.

And it is the story of Ruth, daughter of the powerful Controller Orstey, and her longing for a peace and happiness that did not exist in her own space and time – a peace she tried to find by passing through the cosmic junction of THE ECHOING WORLDS.

From The SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal sample introduction to Gordon R. Dickson, one of the fathers of military space opera. Unusually, Dickson is as well known for his fantasy as his SF and has been decorated with the Hugo, Nebula and British Fantasy awards accordingly. He has also been short-listed for the World Fantasy Award. This omnibus showcases that versatility, containing the Dorsai! novel Tactics of Mistake, Hugo nominee Time Storm and British Fantasy Award-winner The Dragon and the George.

The chronicle of adventures of the survey ship Sarafand as it journeys through space exploring and mapping newly-discovered planets.

The mission brings them into contact with man startling life-forms and menacing aliens. On one world the Sarafand sends out six survey modules and seven return: one of them is a shape-changing malevolent alien – but which?

On another planet they discover a humanoid civilisation which can move around in time. Suddenly the Sarafand investigators are marooned millions of years in the past.

Finally the Sarafand and its crew are stranded in a distant galaxy where everything – including them – is shrinking inexorably to zero size…

The Bear’s Baby and Other Stories gathers together for the first time six standalone tales by award-winning author Judith Moffett. Featuring aliens intent on halting humanity’s biosphere-destroying behaviour, an alternate USA under the presidency of Davy Crockett, cross-species telepathic communication, angels, dreaming, and climate change – although not all at once! – this is a collection defined by variety, and admirably demonstrates the broad range of Moffett’s skill as a writer.

With new introductions to each story from the author, The Bear’s Baby and Other Stories contains:

The Bear’s Baby
Chickasaw Slave
The Realms of Glory
Ten Lights and Darks
The Middle of Somewhere
Space Ballet

Tiger Clinton, Rex and the Professor are back!

In the new, bigger Spacemaster II, and with experience under their belt from before, they’re ready to tackle whatever the stars have to throw at them. First stop: Mars.

When previously they had found the remains of a civilisation and desolation, this time they find a man – alive, but desperately ill. Can they save him? And can he tell what happened to the Martian cities that lie in ruins around them?

Captain W.E. Johns continues his adventures in space with book two of the Tiger Clinton series, a roaring pulp SF romp, perfect for fans of Star Trek and vintage science fiction!

Since the beginning of time it had worked its will on humanity, and for as long as man could remember, he had struggled against its power. But in the 21st century the battle was won: the sea, mankind’s age-old enemy, had finally been conquered.
Professionals like Walter Franklin now patrolled the infinite savannahs of the oceans, harvesting from the plankton prairies as crop which kept the world fed. But like that other great frontier, space, the sea had not yet yielded up all its secrets. And men like Franklin would never rest until its every fathomless mystery had been challenged . . .

Assembled here are fourteen of Harrison’s best, spanning time and space from the England of old to empires millennia from now. Among the stories included are “The Golden Years of the Stainless Steel Rat,” in which the cops have finally caught up with an aging Slippery Jim DiGriz; “Roommates,” the original basis for the movie Soylent Green; and twelve more galaxy-spanning classics!

From the bestselling West of Eden trilogy to Bill, The Galactic Hero and its sequels, from the Deathworld series to the Stainless Steel Rat books, Harry Harrison’s career is a series of landmarks. Stainless Steel Visions is another: his first major collection of short fiction.

Landing on a new planet is a danger every time, and Selm II is no exception.

The specialist didn’t like it. There were no cities visable from space, no broadcasts or transmissions on the airwaves – yet the wrecked war machines of an advanced technology littered the rich pastures of the planet. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of crumpled and gigantic weapons of war, a graveyard of destruction stretching almost to the lifeless horizon. But the war wasn’t over…and they weren’t all wrecks.

It’s an emergency. It’s a job for Brian Brand, the mightiest weightlifter in the galaxy. With the brilliant, sensuous Dr Lea Morees at his side he plunges into the war zone, into the steel jaws of…the Planet of No Return!

Using the secret motive power of a lost a lost flying saucer, physicist Micael Arnott, three companions and an escaped convict are flung into the void at eight times the speed of light to eventually land, after the oblivion of acceleration, upon a world that is both extraordinary and terrifying.

Their machine disappears and they themselves also vanish one by one, Michael Arnott going first when he is on the verge of explaining the mystery of this far-flung world.

That the planet is inhabited seems obvious from queerly designed spaceships glimpsed at intervals, all of them blazoned with a “Z”, which is not so much an alphabet letter as a symbol of a master-race of scientists.

In their efforts to solve the riddle of the world and system to which they have been hurled, the perplexed travellers gradually realise they are not only involved in an odyssey of space, but in a problem of Time as well. They are forced to the conclusion that, just as the first supersonic airmen paid a penalty of mental blackout for breaking the barrier of sound, so there is also a penalty for exceeding Fitzgerald’s Law – namely that 186,000 miles per second is the ultimate possible speed.

Although largely, and unjustly, neglected by a modern audience, Bayley was a hugely influential figure to some of the greats of British SF, such as Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison. He is perhaps best-known for THE FALL OF CHRONOPOLIS, which is collected in this omnibus, alongside THE SOUL OF THE ROBOT and the extraordinary story collection THE KNIGHTS OF THE LIMITS.

THE FALL OF CHRONOPOLIS: The mighty ships of the Third Time Fleet relentlessly patrolled the Chronotic Empire’s 1,000-year frontier, blotting out an error of history here or there before swooping back to challenge other time-travelling civilisations far into the future. Captain Mond Aton had been proud to serve in such a fleet. But now, falsely convicted of cowardice and dereliction of duty, he has been given the cruellest of sentences: to be sent unprotected into time as a lone messenger between the cruising timeships. After such an inconceivable experience in the endless voids there is only one option left to him. To be allowed to die.

THE SOUL OF THE ROBOT: Jasperodus, a robot, sets out to prove he is the equal of any human being. His furturistic adventures as warrior, tyrant, renegade and statesman eventually lead him back home to the two human beings who created him. Question: Does he have a soul?

THE KNIGHTS OF THE LIMITS: Nine brilliant stories of infinite space and alien consciousness, suffused with a sense of wonder…

After two hundred years colonising earth, the Aleutians prepare to return to space, leaving behind humanity and an earth that have been shaped by their presence, their care, and their cruelty.

In the dying days of Aleutian rule, Catherine has altered her body to appear more alien, and soaks herself in the decadence of their culture. Misha idolises the Aleutians, and begins a love affair with Catherine, both desperate to forget their humanity and embrace the alien.

What will be left for the humans when the Aleutians leave? What will the Aleutians take with them from their time on earth? Could humanity have changed them as much as they changed it?

Dark, violent, political and emotional, PHOENIX CAFÉ is the third book in Gwyneth Jones’ critically acclaimed Aleutians Trilogy.

When Robert Wolff found a strange horn in an empty house he held the key to a different universe. To blow that horn would open up a door through space-time and permit entry to a cosmos whose dimensions and laws were not those known by our starry galaxy.

For that other universe was a place of tiers, world upon world piled upon each other like the landings of a sky-piercing mountain. The one to blow that horn would ascend those steps, from creation to creation, until he would come face to face with the being whose brain-child it was. But what if that maker of universes was a madman? Or an imposter? Or a super-criminal hiding from the wrath of his own superiors…?

Rhialto the Marvellous takes up the personal and political conflicts among a conclave of two dozen magicians of Ascolais and Almery in the 21st Aeon. The shocking appearance of the Llorio the Murtha, a powerful female force from an earlier aeon threatens to unbalance nature by “ensqualming” or feminizing the magicians. This triggers a tremendous struggle for power and the other mages turn against Rhialto. Hoping to reestablish his rightful place, Rhialto travels to other aeons to restore the missing Perciplex which projects the Mostrament, the constitution of the association. In his final adventure, Rhialto must, ultimately, travel to the very ends of time and space to confront an old adversary whom he had wronged and must commit further misdeeds to restore order.

The dream of being a superman came true for Max Quest – and immediately turned into a nightmare.

He was not alone. There were Others with extraordinary powers, and the last thing they wanted was another superman on Earth – especially one working for good instead of evil.

They couldn’t kill him. But they could send him . . . elsewhere.

Elsewhere was the viciously hostile world of Qanar, where Max’s powers didn’t work and sorcery was a more potent weapon than science, where shadows were as menacing as steel. Max Quest still had to save Earth from the corrupt threat of the Others – but he found his destiny intricately linked with that of Qanar as well. And somewhere in space-time was his lost love . . .

A mothballed space fleet, the great ships were silent and shut down. Each up to fourteen kilometres long, they had been circling Jupiter in their hundreds for nearly a millennium.
To the little band of fugitives, they were both their hope for the future and a terrible reminder of the past. Once they had been the slave ships of their time, transporting whole populations of unwilling humans to the star colonies at the behest of the Master System.
Now, reactivated, one might not only help them escape the Master System but take them in search of the five gold rings that were the key to its control and their freedom.
Cautiously, nervously, their craft edged towards the huge empty hull that loomed in the sky before them…

Shangri-La is a protected haven built by the enigmatic Eloi, (genetically-enhanced humans of indeterminate sex), and is now the Antarctic underwater prison of Jan Dorvin, once Sky Lord Captain, sometime dictator of the depleted Earth of the Gene Wars, and her maimed lover, Robin.

Far above them, the struggle against the mighty airships an their commanders continues, as Ashley, a rogue computer personality, once again joins forces with the Machiavellian trickster, Milo Haze, against the remaining rebellious survivors of humanity.

Meanwhile, on Belvedere, a religious commune set in deep space, contact is made with Earth for the first time in years and an unexpected counter is thrown into the game. Milo Haze, Mark Two, is about to enter the equation.

The ability to see other-dimensional rings that float in Earth’s atmosphere was a late mutation of a few space-age humans. Daryl was under the care of the institution for muters, and she had discovered that if you jumped through the right ring at the right time it would land you in another dimensional world and another shape.



Spaceling is the story of Daryl’s desperate efforts to unravel the mystery of why she was being held captive and of what was really going on in a certain alien dimension. Because she was sure it was all bad and that someday everyone would thank her for the revelation.



But instead everyone was engaged in a wild effort to hold her down, to keep her on this Earth, and to keep the world simply intact!

Dorian Hawkmoon… Corum Jhaelen Irsei… Elric of Melniboné. Over the years, Michael Moorcock has captivated readers with his unending versions of the Eternal Champion, the timeless warrior who serves the Cosmic Balance in the ongoing battle that rages between Law and Chaos through the many planes and levels of the multiverse. But what is the multiverse and what are its origins? In this essential novel, Michael Moorcock provides readers these critical answers.
World War Three has come and gone, and humankind has survived its brutal past to assume its place among the stars. Yet their existence is endangered nonetheless, as their entire universe is threatening to collapse. All their hopes rest on the shoulders of Count Renark von Bek, a nobleman of extraordinary psychic abilities and carefully guarded secrets.
Aided by his companions, von Bek will delve into the Sundered Worlds, a mysterious galaxy outside the space-time continuum that has materialized on the edges of known space. Inside this roving galaxy, they will uncover the secrets of the multiverse and embark upon a last desperate gamble to save humankind.
But as they will soon discover, even survival comes laden with danger, as the solutions to their dilemma may also hold the final keys to their destruction