Search Results for: to-the-ultimate

Fifteen billion years from now, Earth is a dying planet, its skies darkened by the ashes of burned-out galaxies, its molten core long cooled. The sunless planet is nearing the day of final gravitational collapse in the surrounding galaxy. Mutations and evolution have led to a great disparity of life-forms, while civilization has resorted to the primitive.
Young Deyv of the Turtle Tribe knew nothing of his world’s history or its fate. He lived only to track down the wretched Yawtl who had stolen his precious Soul Egg. Joined by other victims of the same thief – the feisty Vana and the plant-man Sloosh – the group sets off across a nightmare landscape of monster-haunted jungle and wetland. Their search leads them ultimately to the jeweled wasteland of the Shemibob, an ageless being from another star who knows Earth’s end is near and holds the only key to escape.

Steve Matuckek Book 1

In a war waged against Black Magic, the fact that Steve is a werewolf and his wife is a highly skilled witch is not unusual. But their adventures prove very unusual, even for their world, when they are given the task of neutralizing an enemy’s ultimate weapon – the world’s most powerful demon.

Leon Vardis’ whole life was keyed to revenge.

If it couldn’t be wreaked on the peasants who had burned his mother as a witch on the primitive planet of Rhome, then it could, most gloriously could, be let loose on the contemptuous sophisticates who rescued him from certain death, toyed with him for their own amusement and then, uncaring, cast him aside on the metropolitan planet of Joslen.

But first his apprenticeship – as peasant farmer on Pharos, as space mercenary on more planets then you’d care to name. Then independence, as a stellar trader. And at last an opportunity to act as Fate, slowly, and with ironically sophisticated enjoyment, For in the hypnotic jewels of far Shergol lay the seeds of a truly cosmic vengeance.

Leon’s saga was complete. The ultimate leveller had been unleashed on the galaxy.

Scattered throughout the globe of human-occupied space is evidence of a civilisation that bestrode the galaxy before humanity was born. Now, a strange device has been discovered that shows the details of that great civilisation. The details include a star map and hints that the High Ones are not extinct after all.

The map beckons, and humans, being what they are, will follow. To the next great step in human destiny – or ultimate disaster.



(First published 1969)

The Vorsters
Were the blue-robed worshippers of the atom, symbolised by the Cobalt-60 reactors that glowed blindingly on every alter in their fast-growing churches.

The Harmonists
Were the green-robed heretics, a breakaway faction condemned as icon-adorers, who believed that their creed was truer to the code of Vorst, the Founder.

At the beginning of the 22nd century, Earth colonies were established on Mars and Venus. But the ultimate dream – to travel to the stars – was still an impossibility. A few enlightened men believed that the Vorsters and the Harmonists could solve this seemingly insurmountable problem, if they could only forget their differences and work together. But the hatred between the two factions was too deep to be reconciled – until a conflict on Venus between a Vorster priest and his Harmonist opponent resulted in some totally unexpected developments . . .

IT SEEMED AS IF EVERYONE WAS A SPY!

The political situation in the 21st century was coming to the boil: one man, a scientist, held what might be the important key to ultimate power in the struggle between the three blocs: West-world, Sov-world, and Common Europe. The scientist, Auguste Bazaine, disappears, and each bloc accuses the other of kidnapping.

There was only one way to settle the difference! So nine men were chosen to fight to the death in a trial by combat organised by the World Court. The winner will put his country on top. But when an American and a Russian meet face to face – the result is not what was expected!

Who can resist the Final Trip?

Earth in the twenty-third century is adorned with corpses as suicides ravage a dehumanised population, compelled to live, or merely exist, in segregated complexes. Despite the technical wizardry of the Church of the Epiphany and the dictates of the unseen rulers, more and more people seek the ultimate exit. One man probes the social disease, but he too fights that dreadful and permanent seduction. If he succumbs, the victory of the Oppressors would be complete.

Earth was a planet of incompetents, but Simmons was the greatest loser of all. It seemed as if the powers of the Universe were concentrated on grinding his small soul into ultimate insignificance – until the aliens came. To them, Simmons was the most important human on the planet – for only through his mind could they overcome this world.

Robot evolution has advanced to the point that intelligent robots have liberated themselves from servitude, defending themselves from servitude, defending themselves against the humans who work to exterminate them using super-machines.

The ultimate hope of the most powerfully intelligent robots lies in the attainment of human consciousness. And they are willing to steal men’s souls if they must, to get this final elusive quality for themselves.

Only one free robot, Jasperodus, has been granted true consciousness – a soul – by his maker, now long dead. Brought into the soul research project by force, Jasperodus faces a moral dilemma: to release his secret and bring about the final downfall of humanity to a new race of super-robots, or to keep his own kind forever from the light of consciousness. And the mechanized armies of the humans press ever forward, seeking the robot hideout.

The star Mira was unpredictably variable. Sometimes it was blazing, brilliant and hot. Other times it was oddly dim, cool, shedding little warmth on its many planets. Gresth Gkae, leader of the Mirans, was seeking a better star, one to which his people could migrate. That star had to be steady, reliable, with a good planetary system. And in his astronomical searching, he found Sol. With hundreds of ships, each larger than whole Terrestrial spaceports, and traveling faster than the speed of light, the Mirans set out to move in to Solar regions and take over.

And on Earth there was nothing which would be capable of beating off this incredible armada – until Buck Kendall stumbled upon . . .

The Ultimate Weapon . . .

He was ‘The Visitor’ . . .
in a society revolutionised and troubled by a transportation device that let you walk through a door and be anywhere in the world – instantly.

He was ‘The Visitor’ . . .
at a time when unauthorised travel had caused the violent deaths of countless millions and the survivors were quaking in fear.

He was ‘The Visitor’ . . .
in a world where the invasion of privacy was the ultimate crime and where his obsession with visiting places where he had no right to be led him on a perilous adventure towards his own destruction.

MUST THE UNIVERSE DIE WITH THEM?

The Starfolk, arrogant masters of vast stretches of the cosmos beyond the Earth’s sphere of influence, were determined to complete the extermination of the mind-reading mutants of Regnier’s planet.

But to the mutants themselves, the terror of the Starfolk was nothing compared to the greater dread that gripped their spirits – the obsession that the universe itself was doomed. This obsession ripped into their minds, overwhelmed them, and plunged them into horrifying hysteria.

The message of room reached the ears of the Starfolk themselves, forcing the to a fateful decision. They would allow an Earthman, archeologist Philip Gascon, to visit Regnier in an attempt to unravel its secrets. What he found would either contain the key to the ultimate destiny of the universe – or the date of the doomsday.

A daring novel of mankind’s strange and startling destiny. . .

Here is a novel to equal Arthur C. Clarke’s great work, Childhood’s End. It tells with frightening clarity of a desperately stricken Earth – wracked by overpopulation and plagued by famine and despair.

It tells, too, of a new breed of men and women – twenty-first century lotus eaters caught up in a mysterious euphoria which will ultimately threaten all life on this planet: the drug-induced world of ‘happy dreams’. Do these ‘happy dreamers’ herald the end of the human race – or the next extraordinary step in the evolution of Man?


First published in 1963.