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The barbarians in their long ships waiting at the edge of the Galaxy waited for the ancient Terran Empire to fall, while two struggled to save it: ex-Admiral McCormac, forced to rebel against a corrupt Emperor, and Starship Commander Flandry, the brilliant young officer who served the Imperium even as he scorned it.

Trapped between them was the woman they both loved, but couldn’t share: the beautiful Kathryn – whose single word could decide the fate of a billion suns.

“Five of our worlds are missing”. That was the essence of the report that shocked the galactic Nomads at their annual meeting. For each of the mighty star-ships reported vanished was a world of its own – a man-made, self-sustaining city-state housing thousands of people. The Nomads themselves were an unplanned by-product of man’s conquest of the stars. They were the gypsies of the distant future, the restless rovers of outer space. But to Joachim of the peregrine tey represented a way of life that was to be dearly defended. So it fell to him to make his own world-ship the bait in a cosmic trap set to catch the galaxy’s unknown foemen!

Trapped in the economic rat-race of the 21st century Kevin Blake had little going for him but an over-active imagination: an attribute which brought him to the notice of Paul Trevainen, who made Kevin an offer he couldn’t resist. On the face of it the assignment was simple – to find the billionaire’s daughter, bring her back to Earth and collect a dazzling reward. But Crystal was wilful, stubborn and hard to find. The quest forced Kevin to become an advocate in an alien court, turned him into a hunter, and made him the captive of giant, money-hungry frogs, a rebel against established authority, a fugitive, a criminal and in general one of the most harassed young men ever to have longed for adventure.

For countless years the enigmatic city of Klagan had rested beneath the racing moons of ancient Mars. Forbidden, guarded, sheltered in the cup of the Blue Mountains and surrounded by waterless desert. It rested there, a place of a thousand rumours and whispered fantasies, and gave birth to muttered tales of incredible wealth and riches.

To this city came Halmar, the guide; Lorna, the dancer from Venus; and the man called Smith. Defying the ban of the Terran Authorities, the fanatical Drylanders, and the harsh desert, they reached the crystal walls of the strange city. There they found a tremendous mystery, the deserted artefacts of a vanquished civilisation – and found themselves snared in an incredible trap.

For Klagan was more than a city. It was. . .
What it was and how the intrepid adventurers solved the incredible secret of the mysterious city makes this an exciting tale of science and plausible speculation, action and human motivations.

“Welcome to the circus of Chen Wei! A spectacle of marvels culled from a thousand worlds! Things that will fill you with rapture!”

There could be little to surprise Dumarest. But Chen Wei’s circus was special. It held Melome – the girl-child whose song could bring back forgotten data from the logs of lost spaceships and true visions of mythical Terra. She was surely the key to Dumarest’s next step – but that circus was more than an entertainment. It was a deadly trap . . .





(First published 1983)

All the signals seemed set at “go.” For Earl Dumarest had found people who believed in the legendary Earth. He had found the coordinates of the Sun and its attendant planets. And he would have the starship with a faithful crew of colonists for whom Earth was the paradise of their dreams.

But before he could reach that ideal moment, Dumarest would have to fight his way out of a demonic Cyclan trap as well as unravel a very tricky web of planetary conspiracy.

Only if he could achieve those desperate goals would he be able to set out on what he hoped would be the final lap of his long galactic trek . . .




(First published 1982)

It was touch and go for Earl Dumarest when the slavers of the Matriarchy of Onorldi struck his work camp. Had he not captured the Matriarch herself during the fight, it might have spelled his doom when the slavers triumphed.

Because, even though the odds had turned heavily against him, he was able to strike a bargain. The Matriarch’s child daughter Iduna had disappeared into the mind-trap of the Tau. If he could follow, find her, and return with her, he would have his freedom and a chance to locate the lost Earth he sought.

But Dumarest had to outwit her monster playthings, outfight her hideous horrors, and outdream her satanic fantasies . . .




(First published 1979)

Earl Dumarest, now a vanquished and captive mercenary, is offered the choice of surrender to the fearsome Cyclan or the chance of freedom by the beautiful and ruthless Lady Delphine. The risks are terrifying – but has Dumarest a choice?

Intent on finding the legendary world of Terra – Earth – the planet of his birth; pursued by the brilliant and ruthless megalomaniac race, the Cyclan, whose secret key to Galactic domination only he possesses; trapped on a plague ship hurtling through a universe determined to destroy it, and captained by a madman – Earl Dumarest is tempted by the irresistible but fatal promise of Delphine.

The choice is simple – to abandon his dreams or perish by them, just as they promise fulfilment.



(First published 1976)

2018 AD. The time of the Cold Peace, worse even than the Cold War. The bureaucratic regimes that rule from Washington and Moscow are indistinguishable in their passion for total repression. But in the West, a few dedicated individuals still struggle to find a way out of the trap of human history. Behind the screen of official research their desperate project is nearing completion . . .

The Virgin of Zesh

In which a beautiful woman, a mind-drunk poet, and a super-sober scientist must fight for their lives on a planet occupied by weird cultists from the Earth and bizarre varieties of humanoids from all over the galaxy.

The Wheels of If

In which a young lawyer is trapped in a sense-shattering shuttle among alternative worlds of possibility, and lands at last in an America that has been colonised by Norsemen and divided between two great warring empires – one white, one Indian.

Outside the walls of the starport Novorecife, Earthmen on the warrior planet Kishna are on their own. So when he is chosen to lead the first ersuma (Earth-tourists) through the sorcerer-kingdoms of this “protected” medieval world, Fergus Reith must first learn to speak Durou; must take the chemical oath against imparting technical information; and must above all else learn to handle a broadsword! All these skills are needed when Reith finds himself and his ersuma trapped as pawns in a deadly war between a sorceress and a sterile kingdom under three moons . . .

The Hostage of Zir is the third of L. Sprague de Camp’s Krishna book – interplanetary romance in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian Tales.

Former Air Force officer and NSA agent Ron Moosic thought he had been assigned to be the Security Director for a nuclear power plant – but the power plant was only a cover for a top secret project sending observers back in time.

And terrorists had taken control of the project and sent two of their own back to change the past. Moosic was sent downtime in pursuit, with two considerable handicaps: like all time travelers, he would change upon arrival into a person who was alive at the time – he could find himself changed into a young boy or a woman – and if he stayed too long, his memories would vanish and he would be trapped in the past.

But Moosic quickly discovered that both he and the terrorists were only pawns in the time game, maneuvered by warring humans and… ex-humans in a future struggle that would either conquer the Earth or destroy all life on it…

While backpacking in Alaska, Victor Gonser, a 35 year old PhD in political science, finds himself trapped in the body of a 13 year old Tlingit Indian girl. A little later he is forced from there into the spectacularly beautiful body of an 18 year old blonde. He finds that the switches are part of a skirmish for Earth by two alien races…And that is just the beginning.

Reality wasn’t what it used to be. Life after life, as man, woman, and child, Cory Maddox was trapped in an endless cycle of ever-changing realities, on the run from his ruthless companions and from the shadowy figures that seemed to exist outside the increasingly unstable matrix.

As each new world proved increasingly bizarre, Cory wanted nothing more than to find the way home. Fragments of knowledge – a mysterious UFO crash, alien technology, glimpses of a computer that was controlling his fate – all pointed toward Matthew Brand, the virtual reality genius. But Brand had vanished long ago, into, or perhaps beyond, the borders of reality.

To break the cycle of cyber-reincarnation, Cory had to find Brand – before the actions of his enemies destroyed reality altogether . . .

After The Knights of the Limits, here is a second collection of endlessly inventive stories by Barrington J. Bayley; dark fables resounding with sombre undertones – love used as a weapon, God assassinated by the ingenuity of man, the secret of death revealed, the inexplicable explained! Tales which will be pondered on, and remembered.
Contains the following:
Sporting with the Chid
The God-Gun
The Ship that Sailed the Ocean of Space
The Radius RidersMan in Transit
Wizard Wazo’s Revenge
The Infinite Searchlight
Integrity
Perfect Love
The Countenance
Life Trap
Farewell Dear Brother
The Seed of Evil

The third book of The Eternal Champion trilogy.

John Daker is the Eternal Champion, trapped in a dimensionless plane outside of time, defender and destroyer of justice, a hero whose quest for justice leads only further into darkness.

Haunted by the memories of too many battles waged during countless lifetimes, he searches for the beautiful Ermizhad – and for the key that will allow him to step off the wheel of infinite incarnations. His is a voyage on a dark ship piloted by a blind helmsman, through the slave stalls of the Cannibal Ghost Women and the tunnels of doom to a monstrous confrontation with the Evil that could plunge the world into the final night of oblivion.

Two monstrous armies stand opposed: Vormulac Unsleep’s undead legions out of Turgosheim, and Wratha the Risen’s Renegades, masters of the last great aerie of the Wamphyri. The spoils of war will be revenge, territory, and human flesh! And blood, of course – the sweet blood of Sunside’s Szgany. For the blood is the life, and when life or land are threatened there’s only one course of action for a vampire: battle to the death!

Trapped in the middle: Nathan Keogh, Necroscope. And the espers of Earth’s E-Branch, Trask and Zek, Goodly and Chung: Guardians of the Gate against a vampire invasion of Earth! The Necroscope holds the keys; he is the only one who can close the Gates to end the crimson carnage of the Bloodwars!

But the past holds many a secret, and the future was ever a devious thing!

Tarra Khash is a Hrossak, a barbarian from the steppes beyond the River Luhr. A fearless adventurer, Tarra roves Theem-hdra in search of his next fortune, his next drink, and warm, willing females to share his bed. The Hrossak is a most fortunate man, for he has faced more than one god during his travels and – so far – has escaped unscathed.

Seeking to avenge the murder of a beautiful young woman of the half-mystical Suhm-yi race, Tarra joins forces with her husband, now the last of his kind. Each worships a moon-god, and together their faith and Tarra’s weapons wreak a terrible vengeance on those who stole the treasure of the Suhm-yi.

Eager for wealth, Tarra is trapped by a wily old man who has lured him into plumbing the depths of a treasure-filled cavern guarded by golden statues of the Great God Cthulhu. But Cthulhu’s treasure is not easily plundered, and Tarra nearly loses his life to the monstrous forces of the Elder God.

Many men have met the lamia Orbiquita, but none have lived to tell of her extraordinary powers of love-making – until Tarra Khash, who treats her as a woman wants to be treated and thus earns her forgiveness and his life. Alas, others who assume her to be weakened by her love for Tarra Khash are not so lucky!

Harry Keogh, the Necroscope, the man who can talk to the dead, the Earth’s greatest vampire hunter, has been searching for his wife and infant son, gone missing during Harry’s war against the vampires. This obsession has left him open to subtle influence by an ancient vampire, Radu. Entombed in amber, trapped in undeath, Radu plans for his resurrection and plots the destruction of other vampires who might challenge his supremacy.

Thus, Radu’s enemies are now Harry’s – and Harry cannot properly defend himself. His powers – his deadspeak and his ability to transport himself through the Mobius Continuum – are locked away in the recesses of his vampire-clouded mind.

But Harry is not without allies, living and dead. E-Branch, the psychic spy organisation, is worried about Harry. So is Harry’s long-dead Ma, and the ancient philosopher and prophet Nostradamus, whose centuries-old quatrains make eerie sense in the modern world.

Right now, Harry Keogh doesn’t even know he’s the Necroscope. But Earth’s teeming dead won’t let him forget them for long – and won’t let him forget that Radu and his vampire kind are humanity’s deadliest enemies.

DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES…Except to Harry Keogh, Necroscope. And what they tell him is horrifying.

In the Balkan mountains of Rumania, a terrible evil is growing. Long buried in hallowed ground, bound by earth and silver, the master vampire schemes and plots. Trapped in unlife, neither dead nor living, Thibor Ferenczy hungers for freedom and revenge.

The vampire’s human tool is Boris Dragosani, part of a super-secret Soviet spy agency. Dragosani is an avid pupil, eager to plumb the depthless evil of the vampire’s mind. Ferenczy teaches Dragosani the awful skills of the necromancer, gives him the ability to rip secrets from the mind and bodies of the dead.

Dragosani works not for Ferenczy’s freedom but world domination. he will rule the world with knowledge raped from the dead.

His only opponent: Harry Koegh, champion of the dead and the living.

To protect Harry, the dead will do anything – even rise from their graves!

The fourth volume of new adventures set in H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands. David Hero has been trapped in the Dreamworld for many years; long enough, he thought, to have battled most of its monsters. But in the service of King Kuranes he sees greater perils than any he has yet encountered.

The Zardalu were the greatest menace ever known to the worlds of the spiral arm, enslaving entire races and exterminating others, guided by an unswerving belief in their own supremacy. Then their slaves rose up against them, and for eleven thousand years the Zardalu had been extinct and the spiral arm had known a kind of peace.

But now the Zardalu are back . . .


The search for the Builders, the legendary alien race whose unfathomable constructs continued to perplex scholars and explorers alike, had led Builder expert Darya Lang, adventurer Hans Rebka, and treasure hunters Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial to an unknown Builder artifact far outside the spiral arm. There they found the Zardalu – just a few who had been trapped in stasis all those millennia, held there for purposes known only to the Builders. And in the struggle that ensued the Zardalu had been set loose, transported by Builder technology to to galactic parts unknown – free to ravage any world and any race within their grasp.


The only chance to eliminate the Zardalu threat was to find them and wipe them out before they had time to breed back up to strength and once again threaten civilized beings everywhere. The problem was that no one believed the story. Only Darya Land and her companions had actually seen the aliens – and no evidence existed to support their claims. And so the course seemed clear: get a ship themselves and search out the Zardalu.


But the way would not be easy. Even once they managed to locate the Zardalu, they still had the Builders to deal with. For the closer they got to their quarry, the more clear it became that the Zardalu and their world were closely entwined with the fate – and the plans – of the Builders themselves.

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…