Search Results for: world-of-the-gods

Merlin is almost young, and immortal, one of those born to walk the paths of the world, a man with charm carved into his bones, and enchantment running through his body thicker than blood . . .

And this is a time of heroes, centuries before King Arthur is born, men and women who, though not gods themselves, are something more than mere mortals. For decades, Jason has been immured in his ship Argo in a lake in the far north, alive, but not, still traumatised by the murder of his sons by his enchantress wife Medea . . . until Merlin sees through the veil of enchantment and realises the boys were never killed; it was all a trick.

Through the mists-shrouded isle of Alba to Greek Land, Merlin leads Jason and his Argonauts, some old, some new, on a quest to find the boys, journey filled with heroism and heartbreak, truth and treachery.

Sheri Tepper, one of the foremost science fiction writers in the world, gives us an exciting, evocative and thought-provoking tale where science and magic meet head-on. A group of colonists, waking every few hundred years to see what’s been happening on the planet they fled to from a dying Earth, watch as the systems and rules they set in place so long ago become debased and decayed.

The corrupt leaders govern by oppression, but technological resources run low and the knowledge of how to replace them is lost in the mists of time. Instead, the power-hungry leaders turn to sorcery of the blackest kind, kindled by pain and despair.

And when they launch a religious crusade to wipe out all those who won’t conform to the government’s ever-more-stringent dictates, not even the original colonists – the new gods – are safe from the ravaging sorcery-fuelled armies of the righteous . . .

In this thrilling second book of the Earthborn trilogy, Lucas and Asha have survived the decimation of Earth at the hands of the invading Xalans and seek safe haven with their enemy’s true foes, the Sorans. They find a lush planet inhabited by a civilization far more advanced than their own, waging a seemingly endless war against a constantly evolving enemy.

The Sorans call the pair of them the “Earthborn” and they’re welcomed as heroes, almost as gods. To an audience of billions, they swear an oath to avenge their fallen planet by aiding the Sorans in their war against Xala. But soon Lucas and Asha find Sora just as dangerous as apocalyptic Earth when they’re targeted by the Fourth Order, a rebel collective who decries them as false prophets and harbingers of further bloodshed.

Their friend and turncoat Xalan scientist Alpha believes he’s located someone who can help them turn the tide of the war for good, stranded on a conquered colony planet. But landing on the new world, Lucas and Asha find themselves hunted by a violent, mysterious beast, known only as the Desecrator, let loose by the Xalans.

Escaping Earth was only the beginning. As Lucas and Asha quickly learn, the universe has worlds and creatures far more dangerous than anything their home planet could have offered, and their continued survival hinges on gaining new allies they never could have imagined.

It was a changed world. No longer did the black monks of the Christian Church own half of England and extend their deadly domain over their flock. No longer did the murderous Ragnarssons and their Viking hordes ravage the shires unopposed. Now, in the year 867 AD, those who wished to be Christian were free to worship without the heavy yoke of the ever-hungry Church. Those who did not could follow the Asgarth Way, the Norse religion that paid homage to the gods of Asgard: Othin, Thor, Frey…and Rig. Rig, the patron – perhaps the father? – of Shef Sigvarthsson. Whose new weapons and battle strategy had defeated both the battle-hardened Vikings and the Frankish knights of Pope Nicholas’ failed Crusade.

While enemies plotted, Shef left England by ship, to avoid the wedding of his ally, Alfred of Wessex, to his childhood love, Godive. Shipwrecked on the Frisian Coast he begins a journey that will keep him away from England for months and years, and add more legends to his already myth-shrouded life.

In One King’s Way Harry Harrison Continues the story of Shef Sigvarthsson, god-chosen warrior and mystic. From the Vikings of the North Sea to the scheming priests of Germany, from the frozen northern lands to the snow-covered Finnish tundra, he fights his way towards overwhelming kingship. While his supernatural allies and enemies engage in a shadowy battle for his future. This is historical fantasy of the highest order, from a giant of the genre.

When Odin breathed life into the mortal realms, he also created the Cardinal Wizards: the Northern Wizard as the representative of Good, the Southern as master of Evil, and the Western and Eastern as the keepers of the balance between Good and Evil, each neutral, both sharing the burden of holding their fellow magic wielders in check.
But now the days decreed in ancient prophecy have come upon the mortal realms. The Great War has been fought and a Renshai has proven its Champion.
Yet even as the war’s heroes struggle to place the rightful king of Bearn upon his throne, and the also true Renshai seeks to train a new generation of his warrior race, the word is carried forth on falcon’s wings that the Western Wizard is no more.
And unless Shadimar, the Wizard of the East, can find the one mortal with any hope of surviving the challenge of the Seven Tasks of Wizardry, the worlds of gods and mortals alike will fall….

Four hundred years ago the kingdom of Avornis lost the Scepter of Mercy, long the property of its kings – and the key to its destiny. All attempts to retrieve it have failed horribly. But without it, how long can Avornis keep resisting powers greater than its own?

While young King Lanius dreams of being more than a mere figurehead, his fellow sovereign, the usurper King Grus, is defending Avornis against the shadowy plots of the Banished One – the dark god cast from heaven who seeks now to dominate the mortal world.

With the barbarous, nomadic Menteshe holding the Scepter of Mercy – and civil war raging among the Chernagor city-states in the north – Avornis finds itself threatened on two fronts and prevented from regaining the Scepter. But the longer the kings go without acting on their dream of retaking the Scepter of Mercy, the greater the chance the Banished One will triumph…

‘Welcome to Heaven’, said the voice. ‘The acquisition programme is entirely for females; but the occasional enterprising male does not displease us.’

Berry, Chief of his clan, knew his people could survive the dangers of the forest; and when winter came he made them build barricades against raiders from other clans. But no barricades were strong enough to hold against the Night Comers – huge silver beings of horrifying strength who carried away the womenfolk and were drastically lowering the human population.

Were the Night Comers men, monsters or gods? Berry believed they were men; and when the inevitable night came when the women of his clan were seized, he managed to follow. He followed them to a huge tapering column of metal, which took him away from the world he had known to an island in the sky called ‘heaven’.

And there Berry realised that he had to defeat the Lords of Heaven if the people on Earth were to survive.

A COMIC SCIENCE FICTION MASTERPIECE!
In the spirit of Monty Python, Arthur Schopenhauer and Douglas Adams, Striped Holes is science fiction with a sense of humor.
Sopwith Hammil might be the nation’s top chat-show host but his peace of mind is shattered when a time traveling bureaucrat lands on his couch. To save his life and the human race (They’re turning the Sun off!), Sopwith must find a wife inside three hours. Turns out it’s not that easy, Soppy.
Meanwhile, popular astrologer and certified lifesaver O’Flaherty Gribble, a favorite guest on Sopwith’s show, has discovered the Callisto Effect and how to build striped holes. And in a future that makes Nineteen Eighty-Four look like Brave New World or vice versa, beautiful Hsia Shan-Yun is about to have her brain scrubbed for knitting one of those striped holes, with frightful consequences. But luckily, O’Flaherty finds himself seated on a plane next to God. Tighten your belt, it’s that kind of novel.

The beautiful Dedo Nyneve’s innocent tales of a land called Camelot have spawned a real-life cast determined to choose their own fates, yet each move draws them closer to catastrophe. And as the many happentracks of the universe narrow to a dangerous few, the actions of every sorcerer, man, and living creature will determine whether the great god Starquin lives or dies.
For the first time in remembered history, humans and gnomes find themselves sharing the same Earth happentrack. But King Arthur has larger concerns as he watches the society he rules spiralling toward ultimate destruction. Little does he know that the evil Mogan Le Fay has been working her treacherous magic to split the happentracks wide open – a deadly betrayal that could spell the end of Camelot.
With the ma possible futures swiftly shrinking to one last destiny too awful to contemplate, courageous Fang the gnome joins forces with Arthur and Nyneve to manipulate history in a final confrontation of wills and worlds. The last move is Fang’s, as he unravels the strands of time to keep his clan from the brutal vision of Starquin’s end.

THE BALANCE BETWEEN LAW AND CHAOS has long been maintained by the rulers of Béarn, but the death of the current king has enabled the elves to magically substitute one of their own on the throne. And, under the leadership of Dh’arlo’mé, the dark elves are preparing to claim their long-sought vengeance on mankind.
But when the small party which set out to find and bring back the last possible heir to the throne returns to Béarn, Dh’arlo’mé realizes that even magic and murder combined will not be enough to overturn the balance. Now his solution must hinge on Béarn’s burden and treasure: the Staffs of Law and Chaos. Within these plain-pieces of wood dwell the essences of Law and Chaos, each eternally seeking its Champion to destroy the other.
Lured into one Staff’s power, Dh’arlo’mé seeks to seduce the mortals into championing the other. And with all the worlds teetering on the brink of doom, it falls to Colbey Calistinsson – son of the god Thor and the greatest of Renshai warriors – to select that Champion. If he chooses wrongly, all life will come to an end. Yet even success will come at a high price. For the only way to insure that this danger can never arise again, is for both Champions and Staffs to be totally annihilated.

Best known for his Hugo Award-winning classic A Case of Conscience, Blish was one of the first serious SF writers to involve themselves with tie-in novels, writing eleven Star Trek adaptations as well as the first original adult Star Trek novel, Spock Must Die. This omnibus contains three of his long out-of-print works: Black Easter, The Day After Judgement and The Seedling Stars.
BLACK EASTER: A gripping story about primal evil: a sinister intermingling of power, politics, modern theology, the dark forces of necromancy, and what proves, all too terribly, not to be superstition.

THE DAY AFTER JUDGEMENT: Develops and extends the characters from BLACK EASTER. It suggests that God may not be dead, or that demons may not be inherently self-destructive, as something appears to be restraining the actions of the demons upon Earth.

THE SEEDLING STARS: You didn’t make an Adapted Man with just a wave of the wand. It involved an elaborate constellation of techniques, known collectively as pantropy, that changed the human pattern in a man’s shape and chemistry before he was born. And the pantropists didn’t stop there. Education, thoughts, ancestors and the world itself were changed, because the Adapted Men were produced to live and thrive in the alien environments found only in space. They were crucial to a daring plan to colonize the universe.

Young Walter Scot is hot on the heels of cattle raiders in the service of the dark Lord of Soulis when he encounters his kinsman Michael Scot – and his life is changed for ever. Even in the turbulent Borderlands of the thirteenth-century Scotland Michael had a fearsome reputation as a magician and master of forbidden arts, trafficking with the demons of middle air. Now he has returned from years of exile with the Pope’s pardon and the favour of the Emperor, a peaceful man of God – and yet strange events still follow him.

The mysterious fire that blasts the raiders. The fourth voice that laughs where only three men were seen. The luxury that suddenly appears to furnish his long-abandoned castle – the mystery about him only deepens.

But still darker forces are at work behind the bloody rivalries of Border politics, black sorceries stirring within the sinister castle of Hermitage. When Walter’s father is ambushed and killed, his betrothed flung into a dungeon and his lands and his very life threatened by the necromancer-baron Soulis, Michael appears to offer the aid he desperately needs. Aid that, as Walter soon discovers, is almost as frightening as his enemies’ threats – as he is transported to another world, ensnaring, enchanting, seductive. There he finds a new life, new heroism and a new, all-consuming love. But there is a terrible price he must pay…

Hidden away from the world by his mother, the powerful sorceress Heloise Oliver, Pierce has grown up working in her restaurant in Desolation Point. One day, unexpectedly, strangers pass through town on the way to the legendary capital city. Look for us, they tell Pierce, if you come to Severluna. You might find a place for yourself in King Arden s court.

Lured by a future far away from the bleak northern coast, Pierce makes his choice. Heloise, bereft and furious, tells her son the truth: about his father, a knight in King Arden s court; about an older brother he never knew existed; about his father s destructive love for King Arden s queen, and Heloise s decision to raise her younger son alone.

As Pierce journeys to Severluna, his path twists and turns through other lives and mysteries: an inn where ancient rites are celebrated, though no one will speak of them; a legendary local chef whose delicacies leave diners slowly withering from hunger; his mysterious wife, who steals Pierce s heart; a young woman whose need to escape is even greater than Pierce s; and finally, in Severluna, King Arden’s youngest son, who is urged by strange and lovely forces to sacrifice his father s kingdom.
Things are changing in that kingdom. Oldmagic is on the rise. The immensely powerful artifact of an ancient god has come to light, and the king is gathering his knights to quest for this profound mystery, which may restore the kingdom to its former glory or destroy it…”

Originally written as a play and performed at the Mermaid Theatre, Easter 1962.

It is the early 20th century. Man is seeking signs of life elsewhere in the universe, but all exploratory ships have been lost without a trace – except for DSP15. Thirty years after leaving earth, and given up for lost, DSP15 suddenly appears on radar screens at the space station at Mildenhall, England. Her crew had been frozen to prevent ageing, and as the ship settles to a landing, Dr Richard Warboys eagerly awaits with other scientists for word of what DSP15 has found. But there is no crew, only a message scratched into a metal surface, signed by the captain: “If this ship returns to Earth, then mankind is in deadly peril – God help you – ” And so Earth becomes accidentally involved in a cosmic battle against a virtually omnipotent alien power, in a story suspenseful and exciting from cover to cover.