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Prince Zarkon is back! This thrilling new case from the top-secret files of the crime-fighting organization known as Omega begins in London with a strangely simple and bewildering crime. It’s just a warehouse robbery, but the perpetrators are no ordinary criminals. They are the diabolical Blue Men.

Sinister, invulnerable to conventional weaponry, and entirely blue, these evildoers can walk unharmed through clouds of deadly gases. Even gunfire doesn’t stop them – bullets bounce off their bodies as though they’d struck the steel side of a battleship. Bold and brazen, the chilling culprits carry out their crimes again and again, making headlines around the world. London is panicked . . . and Scotland Yard is stumped.

Straight from Knickerbocker City comes Prince Zarkon and the Omega Men to the rescue. The lord of the unknown and nemesis of all villains, Zarkon soon discovers the malignant mastermind behind the mysterious Blue Men. It is the aptly-named Vulture, a brilliant but deranged, unscrupulous, and embittered scientist who is determined to leave the bloody stain of his extraordinary genius upon the world. As the band of Blue Men multiplies, until it terrifyingly outnumbers the Omega Team, it looks as if our superhero has finally met his match.

Filled with electrifying suspense, this is a Zarkon adventure beyond compare . . . and one of the strangest pursuits in the annals of criminology.

It meant little to Robert Fairlie, a serious and dedicated young philologist, that the United States and Soviet Russia were at odds about the Moon. He had little interest in the first rocket landings or the bases that the two nations had established there. And he neither knew nor cared why the Americans would not agree to mutual inspections of these bases.

Yet the Americans had reason enough: and quite unexpectedly, because of his specialised knowledge of languages, he found himself sharing the burden of an incredible secret. For what the American base had yielded was astounding evidence that space had already been conquered many centuries before by a people who had once spanned the stars. There had been machines and destructive weapons beyond the comprehension of present-day scientists which, if knowledge of them fell into the wrong hands, could plunge the world into unutterable chaos.

Fairlie’s trip to the closely-guarded rocket base in New Mexico turned out to be only the first step on a fantastic journey amid the unexplored stars to the home-world of the space-conquerors of long ago.

It was a journey into the appalling reality of stellar space still haunted by the past cosmic struggle whose scale in space and time dwarfed the rivalries of tiny Earth’s quarreling nations.

With the Great War over, the Renshai have won back the Fields of Wrath. As the survivors limp homeward, Tae Kahn–Subikahn’s father–fears that a far larger and fiercer wave of enemy soldiers is headed toward them.

One Kjempemagiska and an army of their man-sized servants nearly defeated the entire Continent. This time, Tae is certain the ranks will include hundreds of these strong, magical, island-dwelling giants. The only hope for the peoples of the Continent is to regather their war-weary troops and convince the few magical beings of their own world to assist them.

It becomes a race against time as Tae, his friends, and his family struggle to convince the Continental generals of the danger; attempt to turn reluctant, antagonistic mages and elves into allies; spy on the giant Kjempemagiska sorcerors; and seek some means to defeat an enemy powerful beyond contemplation.

Twelve thousand years in the future, mankind has survived two enigmatic, civilisation-destroying setbacks. Now a third holocaust is anticipated by the people of the island refuge of Ongladred. They fear destruction from invading barbarians of the Angromain Archipelagoes, the reappearance of a semi-mythical sea creature and the devious intervention of the neo-human Parfects.

The imminent disaster is very much the concern of Ingram Marley, a government spy sent to keep surveillance over Stonelore – a secluded haven and the centre of free thought on Ongladred – and Gabriel Elk, Stonelore’s master and resident genius. While panic and fear rage outside, deep inside Stonelore the mysteries of life are pursued – reanimation of the dead, the invention of powerful laser weapons and the secrets of ‘old earth’ knowledge.

Amidst harrowing dangers of sea battles and land invasions, beneath the shattered moons, Ingram Marley’s world is about to change beyond his wildest imaginings.

The city of Clarges is a near-utopia, surrounded by barbarism throughout the rest of the world. Abundant resources and the absence of political conflict lead to a pleasant life that should be stress-free. However, nearly everyone is obsessed with a perpetual scramble for status, called slope. Medical technology has led to a great lengthening of the human lifespan, but, in order to prevent the Malthusian horrors of over-population, it is awarded only to those citizens who have made notable contributions.
The Grayven Warlock was one of those accomplished few, but he has become a fugitive after a feud with another Amaranth resulted in the latter’s death. Masquerading as his own relict, using the name Gavin Waylock, he lives in obscurity, looking for the accomplishment that will reinstate him among the immortals. However, Waylock’s dramatic stratagems may result in changes to society far beyond anything he had intended…

Until the coming of the People of Asa, the world of Man went its own, often quarrelsome, way along the road of human advancement. There were many pitfalls on the road, conflict and misery often going hand-in-hand; but there was happiness as well. It was, for us and millions more, a happiness interrupted by the terrible advent of the worst scourge ever visited on Man – an alien invasion of the Earth’s surface by beings of diabolical power.

Rising from the deeps, wielding weapons hitherto beyond mortal conception, the Asans wrought havoc on a fearful scale. Picked out from our fellow men, we witnessed scenes of appalling chaos, experiencing as well a measure of the seeming magic of which these beings were capable. Only when all seemed lost did the fortunes of mankind change, and that in a manner we none of us dared to hope…

To see the stars.

This was the great and paradoxical dream. To stand and look upward into space, at the myriad pin-points of light, forever out of reach, just as their forebears on Earth had in the long gone days before the building of the planetary shells.

Mars, Jupiter, Saturn… Shell had succeeded shell, each studded with its captive caged worlds, each progressively populated by men who could look up only into a sky of artificial luminaries and space debris.

Always Zeus, man-created prime mover, was at work beyond them, the giant space machines forming and working the next shell.

Uranus, Neptune, Pluto…The last shell.

Again they journeyed: Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry and Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotic, to reach the outer shell, to return to the past when Man could see the stars.

Whether or not he had wanted to turn back at the last minute, he couldn’t have – the wave of dirty, hungry people carried him helplessly along in their fervour reach the temple. Like dope addicts, he told himself, they don’t even care about themselves, only about the thing that is inside the temple!

He remembered the day ten years ago when his older brother had been made a Warden of Asconel, a prosperous and happy planet, and he and his other brothers had left in the interests of their people. Now they returned to a world where a fanatical cult had usurped the Warden’s chair, and men and women were offering themselves up as human sacrifices to Belizuek – whoever or whatever that being from beyond the galaxy was . . .

I’ll find out, he told himself grimly, when I enter these doors . . .



(First published 1965)

Time after time, life after life, Cory Maddox was being incarnated into worlds he found both familiar and strangely different. And only in this latest incarnation did Cory bring along knowledge, skills, and memories of his previous existence – memories of cold betrayal that promised nothing he saw or felt could be trusted. Nor could he trust his companions who, like himself, kept moving from life to life trying to escape the endless cycle.

But it was only with the help of those companions that Cory could develop the technological means to peer beyond the veil of reality – to the shadowy figures whom he was sure were manipulating reality . . . if what he was experiencing actually was reality.

Time was running out. His memories gave him an advantage over the others, but he would have to act quickly and surely if he were to discover the truth – before truth itself could no longer be trusted . . .

Kate Wilhelm has a reputation as one of the 20th century’s finest SF writers. Winner of the Hugo Award for Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, she has produced an impressive body of work in the fields of SF and crime, and – along with her late husband, Damon Knight – has had a profound influence beyond her writing, through the Milford and Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshops. This omnibus contains novels The Clewiston Test and Welcome, Chaos and story collection The Infinity Box.

THE CLEWISTON TEST: Anne Clewiston would soon be hailed as a miracle worker. She had almost perfected the formula for a drug which would banish all pain from the world. The Lab tests went on; the caged apes were thriving, all the results positive. The next step – humans. Then, one night, a chimpanzee went berserk…

THE INFINITY BOX: A man’s eerie ability to enter – and control – the mind of a vulnerable young woman turns into a sexual nightmare…A hack writer with fading skills finds his soap operas foretelling the future…His retirement present, a watch, takes a man back into his own past…American soldiers attack the wrong country – their own!

WELCOME, CHAOS: Lyle is asked to spy on Saul Werther, who is thought to be a drug dealer. She finds him charming but realises she has been set up…Saul has developed a major breakthrough in the medical world which he is keeping secret, and Lyle has been sent there to uncover his secrets…

The conquest of a galaxy is relatively easy providing the aggressor has the necessary technology and, more important, a safe method of overcoming possible opposition without bleeding to death in the process. The Asdrake employed mutated micro-organisms which directly attacked the brain of the planet’s intelligent life – they liked this method. They could fight if they had to but were inherently lazy. This method had worked successfully on twenty-two occasions – why should it fail on planet 5/6/9. Sector 88. Sun System 46. “Tseudec” (Native name: “Earth”).

Casualties from the epidemic were astronomical yet, in complete paradox, failed to kill a single human being – the side effects took care of that. And those side effects were beyond even the Asdrake’s imagination. The survivors on Earth found undreamed complications in rebuilding the world with the use of their new psychic powers – and perhaps more important, were they new powers at all, and if not who had removed them thousands of years ago?

For three decades science fiction legend Alan Dean Foster has captivated readers around the world, from his debut classic The Tar-Aiym Krang and his inspired scenario for the first Star Trek movie to a host of New York Times bestsellers, including Splinter of the Mind’s Eye and Flinx in Flux.
In this collection of twenty brilliant odysseys of the imagination, Foster once again soars beyond the limits of reality – where the real thrills begin…
NASA Sending Addicts to Mars!: It was the most insane idea in the annals of space travel – and the only one that would work.
Diesel Dream: Sometimes on dark, lonely highways dreams do come true, and this trucker’s hope was the best one of all.
Sideshow: Flinx hadn’t a clue about the alien dancer, but Pip knew trouble when she saw it.
Empowered: A magnificent male discovers the not-so-super part about being a superhero.
The Question: A bold adventurer determines to solve one of life’s profound mysteries.
…and fourteen other amazing stories!

Yellowstone National Park sits on a hot spot: a plume of molten rock coming up from deep inside the earth capable of volcanic eruptions far greater than any that have occurred in times past. It has been silent for many years, providing false security for a nation unprepared for the full force and fury of nature unleashed.

Then explosions send lava and mud flowing far beyond Yellowstone toward populated areas. Clouds of ash drift across the country, nearly blanketing the land from coast to coast. The fall-out destroys crops and livestock, clogs machinery, and makes cities uninhabitable. Those who survive find themselves facing the dawn of a new ice age as temperatures plummet worldwide.

Colin Ferguson is a police lieutenant in a suburb of Los Angeles, where snow is falling for the first time in decades. He fears for his family, who are spread across America, refugees caught in an apocalyptic catastrophe in which humanity has no choice but to rise from the ashes and re-create the world…

Meek and mild curate Thomas Blades discovered an alternative earth where humanity languished at the base of the food-chain. Over eventful years, Blades defeated the bestial Null master-race and carved out the empire of ‘New-Wessex’. Shedding all former inhibitions, he ascended its throne as unchallenged ‘god-king’.

Exiled in turn by overpowering new enemies – the ‘angels’ – Blades was rescued by his own descendant, Guy Ambassador, after centuries of absence. Under Blades’ strangely charmed leadership, the enigmatic and merciless angels were repulsed and humanity enjoyed a respite of liberty. But now, decades later, the venerable god-king broods in seclusion, refusing to die; the fountainhead of bitter thoughts and deeds.

Meanwhile, Wessex sinks-into anarchy and neglect. Guy Ambassador travels amongst the bickering princedoms and warring states, wavering in the faith that has cost him family, friends and home. All around him the world of New-Wessex is moving towards resolution of its ultimate destiny and reason for being. Forces beyond human comprehension invade the already baroque realm.

The modern mind usually associates witchcraft with the middle ages. We think of witches as Shakespeare depicted them in Macbeth. We see them as secret, black and midnight hags, doing a deed without a name. We close our eyes and immediately the vision of a cauldron filled with foul ingredients appears before us; here are the fenny snake, adder’s fork, wool of bat, scale of dragon and tooth of wolf.

But this does not go far enough back. There was witchcraft in the world long before medieval times. The Witch of Endor who practiced her strange arts in the reign of King Saul is familiar to all students of the Old Testament. The writings of Homer abound with references to witchcraft and sorcery. The very earliest human societies had witch doctors, medicine men, shamans and priests of the black art.

Perhaps so ancient and widespread a cult has some basis in fact. There are powers beyond science. Ancient occult laws will still hold good. It is not wise to cross the path of a being whose age is measured in centuries and whose dark powers can alter the stars in their courses.

‘Her worlds have a magic sheen … She is unique. She is legend’ THE TIMES

‘Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power’ OBSERVER

Among the less-travelled mountains and plains of Central Europe, a little east of Austria perhaps and north of Slovenia, lies the old kingdom of Orsinia. A land of forests and quiet farmlands and towns, with its capital city Krasnoy on the broad Molsen River, Orsinia has always found itself, like all the countries of Europe, subject to forces beyond its borders.

Val Malafrena is an estate in the rural western provinces of Orsinia, far removed from the engines of European politics and content for it to remain so. When Itale Sorde, the idealistic young heir to Val Malafrena, leaves his family home to venture to the bustling capital city of Krasnoy, it is therefore very much against his father’s wishes. Sorde’s intention is to work as a journalist, but he will soon find himself moving from reporter on the great events of the day to active participant in the rising tide of revolution that seems destined to sweep the continent.

Art Blastside in her third daring adventure upon the high seas.

It’s been eighteen months since Art’s baby was born: a pretty child called Africa, with Felix’s dark hair and Art’s grey eyes. Now Art, who dreamed of being like her own loving, wonderful Ma, must face up to the fact that she has absolutely no warm feeling for her child. In fact – Art can’t stand her! What’s wrong with her?

Beyond the family lies an unsettled world too. The French are still waging war, and England has fallen out of love with pirates. Piratomania has been suppressed by the government and Art and Felix are evicted from their cliff-top mansion.

The return of Ebad and the new and improved Unwelcome Stranger prompts Art to regroup her ragtag crew and sail once again across the oceans, through wild weather, bizarre places and riotous sea battles, to return to the Treasured Isle and learn the ultimate true secret behind the treasure and the mystery of why Art can’t love her child.

For Al Larson it all began with his death in a fire-fight in Vietnam. He woke from this certain death to find himself alive – in a body and a world that was not his own! Transformed into an elven warrior, he became an unsuspecting pawn of the Norse gods, claimed as a weapon by both the forces of Chaos and of Law. Faced with challenges that would take him to Hel and back, Al made a place for himself in a land of swordsmen and spell-casters, and, after slaying one god, he found himself leagued with sorceresses and a master thief in the endless battle against Chaos.

But when Al and Shadow the thief slew the Chaos dragon, they unleashed a magical force beyond anyone’s power to contain. And Al and his companions would be forced to work a desperate magic to flee back to a twentieth century America which was not quite the one from which Al had originally come. But Chaos would not let Al, Shadow, and the Dragonrank mages Silme and Astryd escape so easily, and, a mortal man once again, Al would find himself caught in a desperate fight to save everyone he held dear, as Chaos pursued him into the heart of New York City.

THE MINDSTONES were the only reason anyone lived on – or more accurately, in – the planet Styx. An unthinkable ice world, Styx only survived as an underground mining colony because of the discovery of the beautiful jewel called Cyrilite, a crystalline stone with unique mind-altering properties.
But to Kayla John Reed, Styx was all the home she’d ever knownuntil her parents were killed in a tragic mining accident. Claiming her father’s Guild seat, the extraordinarily gifted young empathy was forced to flee the planet when she tangled with the Kellers, the wealthiest and most important psi family in the colony.
On the run in a galaxy wary of anyone with mind powers and all too willing to turn her in for the bounty on her head, Kayla found an unexpected haven aboard Falstaff, a “merchant” spaceship that stretched the limits of legal shipping beyond the breaking point. But there were those among the crew with a far more treacherous agenda than simple privateering, and Kayla was soon caught in a planets-spanning struggle between two deadly forces ready to sacrifice anyone who got in their way and determined to use any weapon – even the power of Kayla’s mind – to secure total victory…

Innumerable explanations have been put forward for the phenomena, known popularly as U.F.O’S and Flying Saucers. Eminent psychologists explain them as purely mental phantasmagoria – symptomatic of mankind’s age-old desire for “saviours from the sky”.

Enthusiastic arm-chair cosmonauts regard them as irrefutable proof that super intelligences from Out There are watching the Earth. A few un-scrupulous publicity seekers and practical jokers cash in on the public’s curiosity and weird stories of little green men and pink ants go the rounds.

Amateur military tacticians decide that the saucers are either out new secret weapons or the experimental weapons of some alien power.

Interest rises and falls. The Great Debate continues.

There are some other possibilities . . . and the implications of some are so horrifying that mere monsters from Beyond would be a pleasant anti-climax. This mature, challenging novel is not recommended for those who like to think of the everyday world in terms of permanence and security with humanity safely established at the head of creation.

Elspeth Jermyn came dangerously close to the truth, and slowly but surely gathered a small group of helpers together. They worked in strictest secrecy against the Saucer Phenomena and the invidious menace behind it . . . if they failed, life would have no real meaning.

Once, Xhea’s wants were simple: enough to eat, safety in the underground, and the hit of bright payment to transform her gray-cast world into color. But in the aftermath of her rescue of the Radiant ghost Shai, she realizes the life she had known is gone forever.

In the two months since her fall from the City, Xhea has hidden in skyscraper Edren, sheltered and attempting to heal. But soon even she must face the troubling truth that she might never walk again. Shai, ever faithful, has stayed by her side-but the ghost’s very presence has sent untold fortunes into Edren’s coffers and dangerously unbalanced the Lower City’s political balance.

War is brewing. Beyond Edren’s walls, the other skyscrapers have heard tell of the Radiant ghost and the power she holds; rumors, too, speak of the girl who sees ghosts who might be the key to controlling that power. Soon, assassins stalk the skyscrapers’ darkened corridors while armies gather in the streets. But Shai’s magic is not the only prize-nor the only power that could change everything. At last, Xhea begins to learn of her strange dark magic, and why even whispers of its presence are enough to make the Lower City elite tremble in fear.

Together, Xhea and Shai may have the power to stop a war-or become a weapon great enough to bring the City to its knees. That is, if the magic doesn’t destroy them first.

Pinnacle City is many things to many people. To some it is a glittering metropolis, a symbol of prosperity watched over by the all-star superhero team, the Pinnacle City Guardians. Beyond the glitz and glamour, there is another city, one still feeling the physical and economic damage of the superhero-villain battles of generations past. The lower class, immigrants, criminals, aliens, sorcerers, and non-humans alike call this city home, looking to make a living, which is becoming increasingly difficult as the two sides of the city seem prepared to boil over into a violent conflict.
Private investigator Eddie Enriquez, born with the ability to read the histories of objects by touch, still bears the scars of his time as a youthful minion for a low-level supervillain, followed by stints in prison and the military. Though now trying to live a straight-and-narrow life, he supports a drinking problem and painkiller addiction by using his powers to track down insurance cheats. When a mysterious woman enters his office asking him to investigate the death of prominent non-human rights activist Quentin Julian, a crime the police and heroes are ignoring, he takes the case in the hopes of doing something good.
Superhero Kimberly Kline has just hit it big, graduating from her team of young heroes to the Pinnacle City Guardians with the new codename of Solar Flare. With good looks, powers that include flight, energy manipulation, superhuman strength, durability, and speed, as well as a good family name, the sky is the limit for her. Upbeat, optimistic, and perhaps a little naïve from the upper-crust life she was raised in, she hopes to make her family, and the world, proud by being the greatest superhero she can be . . . but things aren’t always as they seem.

“LAMB HOUSE is in Rye, an ancient town of East Sussex, England. It is very much a real place, even a famous one, yet The Haunting of Lamb House is as elusive to review as it must have been to write. It is safe to say that no one but Joan Aiken could have written it, not only because she was born in Rye and has the town in her bones as it were, but also because she has the power — shown in her other books — of evoking strange, often eerie events of the past and making other times, places and people vividly alive. This book goes further: She has taken the real history of Lamb House and interwoven happenings that are purely imaginary, working so skillfully that even those who have lived there can hardly tell which is which!”

So wrote novelist Rumer Godden, who also lived in Lamb House. She went on:

“For those who do not sense such things, The Haunting of Lamb House is a most skillful and intriguing interweaving of fact and fiction; to those who do, it is a memorable evocation. In either case it is a little masterpiece.”

Lamb House in Joan Aiken’s birth town of Rye in Sussex is said to be haunted. This is her story of what might have happened to cause the haunting: using the imagined diary of an earlier Mayor of Rye, Toby Lamb, whose father built the handsome Georgian house, and later episodes that might have occurred during the occupancy of two of its famous literary tenants – Henry James and E.F. Benson.

Joan Aiken was born in another haunted house owned by her father Conrad Aiken: Jeake’s House, just around the corner in Mermaid Street, Rye, which she also wrote about in Return to Harken House.

“Joan Aiken has written a clever book, kindling a whole world of feeling out of small macabre details, presenting to the senses a series of apprehensions of reality which seem to touch a completeness beyond themselves. An impressive achievement; I shivered as I admired” Robert Nye, The Guardian

“Joan Aiken’s artful web of truth and fancy is divided into three histories of haunting – the first employs Aiken’s considerable skill in a vivid evocative rendering of the old town of Rye when the house was built…followed by the twenty years of Henry James’ residence. The end is worth waiting for…where E.F.Benson encounters hideous apparitions and even an exorcism in the last enthralling twenty pages” Miranda Seymour, T.L.S.

“Aiken has conjured up a deliciously scary ghost story…her mastery of style serves her well in the creation of three separate voices. Those familiar with Henry James’s writing especially The Turn of The Screwwill derive special enjoyment from this novel, but there are shivers enough for any reader willing to acknowledge the possibility of ghosts and the reality of evil” U.S. Library Journal

“In three interlocking ghost stories this veteran British novelist places a fictional haunting within the history of a real house, and displays a masterly way with several contrasting narrative styles, sympathetically evoking some ghostly presences…the wayward spirit of the house and the growing number of literary presences which gradually take possession” Publisher’s Weekly