Search Results for: alien-ones,-the

Vivia, a paragon of youth and beauty, daughter of Lord Vaddix, is alienated from his brutal campaign of violence and fear. Her only solace lies in the secret cave in the bowels of the castle, known only to her and the arcane god whose shrine she believes it is.

When plague enters the castle, bringing an orgy of death and destruction, Vivia seeks shelter in this seductive place. Drawn to her innocence and beauty, a presence – Zulgaris – is resurrected who claims her as his own. Wakened to the wonder of the undead, Vivia is granted the secret of eternal life, but she has been betrayed. Her immortality stretches before her like a damnation.

Handsome Zulgaris, dark prince, war-leader and alchemist. Is Vivia to be his lover, or his pet? Or, far worse, is she but one more thing to be used in this relentless quest for sorcerous power.

The Best of Philip E. High

Welcome to the Bizarre Imagination of Philip E. High.

-A world without laws where the basest criminal activity flourishes unchecked in a dog-eat-dog society;
-When the crew of a submarine find themselves flung millions of years into the past the consequences are devastating;
-The minds of the entire population of a city are infected by the thoughts of a madman, and become insane themselves – and the contagion is spreading;
-Mankind is facing extinction by an alien race of mind-readers who can anticipate man’s every counter attack.

Here is the first-ever collection of the greatest short stories of one of Britain’s finest-ever SF writers – Philip E. High! Already well know on both sides of the Atlantic as a writer of many exciting adventure novels, these twelve stories reveal High as a true literary craftsman. A major science fiction event that is not to be missed!

‘The explosion was painfully bright against the dark backdrop of the moonless New Mexico sky. To those who looked up at that precise moment – and there were many who happened to look up – it was as though a new star had momentarily blossomed in blue-white incandescence.’

Only three human beings would ever know that the blinding flash in the sky on that night in 1982 was an exploding flying saucer. Only they would learn the truth about THOSE WHO WATCH – about the alien observers who came into this world in a crash landing from the stars. THOSE WHO WATCH is the strange, seductive story of three accidental colonists from outer space whose chance encounter with Earth brought revelation to three earthly counterparts – and triggered interplanetary conflict. It is a remarkable story by one of science fiction’s most remarkable writers.

A Wall Street trader leaves the bulls and bears – and comes face-to-face with hungrier dinosaurs. A Roaring ’20s gangster gets roughed up – by real cavemen. A pioneer hitches up his covered wagon on the Oregon Trail – and winds up in a modern shopping mall. And Roger Tyson, who thought the space-time continuum had finally settled down to normal, is flung helplessly from the distant past to the far future, and back again.

Superbeings from the end of time are struggling for control of the universe with aliens from another galaxy. And if a few random humans get caught in one of their time gates, they don’t much care. So Roger and his friends find themselves facing everyone from the cast of the original Mutiny on the Bounty to real pirates of the Spanish Main in a wild quest to their own time and bring everything back to insanity as usual…

It’s a rare day when Terrans meet eye-to-eyestalk with the slimy little sticky-fingers – er, that is to say, the noble alien Groaci. This time the races clash on the planet Popu-Ri, once the home of a mighty interstellar power. Popu-Ri has sunk into decline…but its ancient treasures remain. Though not for long, if the Groaci have their way.

Groaci also finds Popu-Ri just the place to build a galactic warfleet. Still, for the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne to respond would threaten the delicate balance of human/Groaci forces on the cocktail circuit. Therefore the ambassador must keep the lid on by doing nothing. But how to do nothing without seeming an inneffectual pantywaist? Send an observer!

Yep, the Ambassador has it all figured out. But he made one little mistake; he sent Retief…

Man is an intelligent mammal. His intelligence lies in his brain. In mammals the tissues of the central nervous system are irreplaceable. The human brain contains something like 100,000,000,000,000 neurons, but 100,000 are destroyed on average each day of a man’s life. Cosmic rays and general internal and external radioactivity account for most of this destruction.

Hunger and Gradey decided on an illegal experiment. They brought up a small group of children in a strange artificial setting where there was practically no radiation. The setting was improved. The environment grew more shielded as generations passed. At last the Thinkers exploded into a world that had not dreamed of their existence. The world was facing other complications at the moment. An alien had appeared from the other side of the cosmos! Humanity was faced with two potentially deadly enemies; could they be turned against each other, or was one a secret friend?

Abercrombie was a strangely secretive man even for a top atom scientist. He had peculiar, advanced theories of his own which he would communicate to no one. The Government research project was well provided with safety factors. In theory the Pile was safe… but theory and practice are poles apart. There is always room for human error. The only man who did not run was Abercrombie. Was he a hero or a megalomaniac? His body was never found, but inexplicable things happened after the accident. It was as if a presence or an essence lingered over the rebuilt Project Headquarters.

The accident at the Pile and the strange rumours surrounding Abercrombie’s name were all but forgotten when the Aliens appeared. Terrible inhuman intelligences aided by powerful androids and monstrous robots threatened the Earth and Man’s concept of civilised life. Then there was another strange phenomenon at the Pile and Abercrombie was no longer forgotten…

Few adventures in the annals of spatial conquest have aroused so much interest and speculation as the discovery, some ten years ago, of Cloris 2. Often described nowadays as a small, exotic world of infinite charm, Cloris 2 is regarded as an ideal holiday resort. It now boasts some of the best hotels and playgrounds in the universe, yet no so long ago it was deserted, peopled only by the ghosts of a long dead race.
Belonging to a neighbouring galaxy, Cloris 2 was well outside the exploration range of the vessels of the time, and could only have been visited through a mischance, without hope of return. Such a chance was forced on a handful of people caught up in the mesh of an operation which began long in the past – they had no choice. The discovery of Cloris 2 is one of human courage and the hand of the unexpected, piracy, narrow escapes from alien defence and the ghosts of past tragedy.

Parallel Worlds! Earth, cerated out of universal chaos, and the Dreamlands, spawned of the dreams of men. But where dreams turn to nightmares, Death is the only crossing-point…
Ex-waking worlders David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer are now sellswords in that ephemeral dimension called Deramland. Once a talented artist of the fantastic, now Hero’s art is the wizardry of his swordplay. Once a lecturing professor, now Eldin professes a knowledge of the dark, mysterious Dream Realms second to none. A formidable pair! But face to face with Yibb-Tstll and the Gaunts of Night, the Eidolon Lathi and her brood, and the mad, alien First One who plots to set free dreaming Cthulu from eon-old imprisonment…what can mere men do?
Take up arms with the Heroes of Dreams and laugh in the face of the world’s worst nightmare!

For millennia, the alien union called the Weave had been at war with the Amplitur. But only in the handful of centuries since Earth had joined the Weave had the tide of the battle been slowly turning in the Weave’s favour. Then an elite unit, raised from childhood in dedication to the Amplitur Purpose and designed to match perfectly the Humans they were to fight, came of age – and it looked as if at last the Amplitur might prevail against the Weave.


But when one of the elite unit, a warrior called Ranji, was captured by the Weave, a horrible truth was revealed: Ranji was in fact Human, a subject of the Amplitur’s vile genetic manipulations.

The Weave promised to reverse the effects and help Ranji rescue other altered Humans from the clutches of the Amplitur. But neither Ranji nor his new allies could have know that the proposed cure would result in an abomination that could tear the Weave alliance apart – and brand Ranji and his kind as the most despicable creatures in the galaxy…

Ian Watson’s latest collection shows the same range and apparently inexhaustible fund of ideas that have characterized all his previous books. No other contemporary figure in SF is so prolific or inventive a writer of short stories. In the title story we immediately encounter a phantasmagoric vision of a society increasingly dependent on recycling its usable material; other brilliant inventions include a planet inhabited by lemur-like aliens who bafflingly produce marvellously finished stone carvings without apparently having the tools to do so (‘The Moon and Michelangelo’); people fighting their way through the various levels of what appears to be a real-life version of a computer adventure game (‘Jewels in an Angel’s Wing’); and a zoo in which are caged the extensions into our universe of four-dimensional hyberbeings (‘Hyperzoo’). And that is only the beginning: there are fifteen stories in all, each one a state-of-the-art example of short science fiction at its finest.

WIKIPEDIA says: ‘H.P. Lovecraft’s reputation has grown tremendously over the decades, and he is now commonly regarded as one of the most important horror writers of the 20th century, exerting an influence that is widespread, though often indirect.’

H.P. Lovecraft’s tales of the tentacled Elder God Cthulhu and his pantheon of alien deities were initially written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and ’30s. These astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when they were first published.

This electronic tome collects together Lovecraft’s tales of terror, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were originally published. It will introduce a whole new generation of readers to Lovecraft’s fiction, as well as being a must-buy for those fans who want all his work in a single, definitive volume.

Scientific progress has taken human beings to remote planes in far galaxies and enabled them to build comfortable homes there. But when that science proved a deadly enemy and had to be abandoned, the pioneers were isolated in alien surroundings. There was no way home. Earth, which had once been home, had ceased to exist. And when the men of the planet Demeter died out in space, the destiny of the human race was left to a group of women.

Clare Monkton worked to establish a feminist world. She used the resources of science to assure the continuance of the race … but the resulting children were to be brought up according to her ideas.

There was bound to be a challenge. When there were once more young men growing up on the planet, it was inevitable that they should oppose the authority of the women. And when one of those young men proved to come from such a dangerous ancestry, Clare knew she had a battle on her hands…

Leinster was a scientist with rather odd political ideas. When he discovers a new super-efficient rocket projectile, he decides to publish his findings to the entire world. The implications are tremendous. Who-ever reaches the moon first and establishes a base can control the earth…
East and West despatch their various expeditions and the space race ends in something like a photo-finish. Almost every Lunar crater in the Sea of Rains becomes a new base for one or other of the great powers, and a new miniature cold-war develops on the moon. Suddenly the leaders of the various expeditions mysteriously disappear. What sinister power is at work? Does life still exist below the dead surface of Lunar?
Has out satellite been the target for non-human space expeditions?
Can the earth men combine against this weird scientific peril?
Or will they remain divided and fall before the terrible alien aggressor?

Dominic Flandry had a great future ahead of him as saviour of the civilised universe. In later years his talent for swift, decisive action would give him an intergalactic reputation. But at the age of nineteen and straight out of naval academy, he was just another raw ensign.

The mighty Merseian Empire had sworn to wipe the Earth from the face of the universe. The attack had already been launched, but no one knew how or where the ravening power of the savage green skinned aliens would strike. Only Ensign Flandry had the answer, in the form of a code which he might – or might not – be able to decipher.

And so the Merseians were coming after Flandry with every weapon in their terrible arsenal. And just to make things worse, Earth’s own armadas were after him too – for desertion, high treason and other assorted crimes. Even for a future saviour, times were looking pretty tough.

A man from Earth’s distant past is humanity’s only hope for a future…Drake Merlin’s wife, the love of his life, is dying of a rare, fatal disease for which there is no cure. Not now, in the 21st century. But surely in the future…For Drake there is only one solution: have Ana’s body frozen until she can be cured. And he will go with her into the cryowomb. It is a desperate gamble born of folly, obsession…and love.Thus begins an epic journey across eons, as Drake is revived again and again, only to find that Ana is beyond help. Millions of years past his first sleep, he learns there is hope for her restoration – at the Omega Point, where the universe collapses, merging past and present. But first he will be awakened to become humanity’s unwilling savior. For an alien menace is laying the solar system to waste, and only an anachronism from the days of human barbarism can save an enlightened race…

In the year 2130 a mysterious spaceship, Rama, arrived in the solar system. It was huge – big enough to contain a city and a sea – and empty, apparently abandoned. By the time Rama departed for its next, unknown, destination many wonders had been uncovered, but few mysteries solved. Only one thing was clear: everything the enigmatic builders of Rama did, they did in threes.

Eighty years later the second alien craft arrived in the solar system. This time, Earth had been waiting. But all the years of preparation were not enough to unlock the Raman enigma.

Now Rama II is on its way out of the solar system. Aboard it are three humans, two men and a woman, left behind when the expedition departed. Ahead of them lies the unknown, a voyage no human has ever experienced. And at the end of it – and who could tell how many years away that might be? – may lie the truth about Rama…

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.

Dreams of love, hate, fear and revenge come true in…


WOLFSTROKER – Willie Whitehorse could have been just another boozed-up guitarist, if it hadn’t been for his songs. Somehow they were different – they reached out and grabbed people’s souls. Now agent Sam Parker wanted a piece of the action. But when he had it, Sam knew he’d made a terrible mistake…a mistake it was much too late to correct…


WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE… – The aliens had returned to Earth after centuries because they needed allies. But after hundreds of years, they had no idea what they would be getting the universe into…and they soon found out!


DREAM GONE GREEN – Pericles was a poet and a genius, who also happened to be a horse!


WHY JOHNNY CAN’T SPEED – A father could teach his son a lot of important things, but combat on the freeways wasn’t one of them…not when the kit was eighteen and too full of himself to survive. But revenge did have it’s compensations!

British Science Fiction award winner Ian Watson graces us here with a brilliant new collection of short stories and essays.

Though he dazzles the reader with his footwork in the kaleidoscope intensity of his vision, each piece is plainly the work of a master craftsman. Whether he is dealing with a future culture where whales control us (“The Culling”) or taking a hilarious poke at the matter of government funding (“The President’s Not for Turning”), his concepts are clear and undeniably logical.

True to the highest ideal of science fiction, Watson carries present tendencies of our society to possible conclusions in “Roof Gardens under Saturn,” and points a warning finger at the consequences of alienation from the environment.

In an innovative style which borders on the experimental, Watson explores in “The Pharaoh and the Mademoiselle” the horrors of fascism.

Ian Watson’s writing stays with us. He entertains and he makes us think. If in some future and better world politicians were to take advice form writers, Watson should be one of them.

Ian Watson is one of the finest writers of SF and fantasy stories, and Butterflies of Memory is his 10th collection, a selection of stories that are by turns serious and playful, and always wildly imaginative…

In the title story, what if mobile phones were to become truly mobile, flying about like butterflies? ‘An Appeal to Adolf’ tells of gay sailors on a Nazi battleship many kilometres long during a Second World War unfamiliar to us; ‘Lover of Statues’ of an enigmatic alien visiting the only statue of Satan in the world, in Madrid – while in the bubbling stew of faiths which is Jerusalem a doorway opens to reveal capricious godlike beings. And just suppose that Jules Verne undertook an actual journey to the centre of the Earth. Closer to home, in a Midlands town, a man who seems to have suddenly popped into existence tries to discover who and what he is. ‘Hijack Holiday’, written a year before 9/11, presciently if bizarrely anticipates events akin to those on that fateful day.

An adventure of the near future – brought on by a catastrophe in the far future. On a summer’s day like any other, holes appeared in the air and people from nowhere walked through them into our world.

They came, and they kept coming, until they numbered in the millions. They said they came from the future – they were our children’s children. They said there was trouble “up there”. They knew they were a terrible burden on our economy, and all, but – well, we couldn’t just let them starve, could we?

Then more facts became apparent.The “holes in the air” were time tunnels, one-way tunnels from the future. The trouble up there was in the form of alien creatures – ravening beasts with teeth, claws, and tentacles, that reproduced like bacteria and were intelligent.They were utterly uncontrollable and so our children’s children fled through the time tunnels, which, they claimed, were securely guarded. The beasts, whatever or whoever they were, couldn’t get through. So they claimed.

But then somebody up there slipped and the beasts were abroad.

Through the means of what he calls “speculative fiction”, Michael Bishop examines the various links between man and the supernatural by exploring the relationships and conflicts between mortals and deities of other worlds, in other times and within other cultures. His scope isn’t limited to alien environments, however. Bishop’s talent for transforming the commonplace into the fantastic often reaches into our own backyards, and the results are astounding:

– A father’s love for his son and the influence of the evangelist’s strange teachings prompt a desperate and violent act.
– In a surreal world of unceasing movies where the inhabitants serve constantly as an audience, one man seeks to confront he ultimate power which controls their lives.
– A young boy’s talent for ventriloquism results in an irresistible summons from an all-powerful source.
– A Midwestern farmer’s compelling visions draw him to the oceanic god of an unusual cult.
– Mysterious airborne hieroglyphics become a young scientist’s obsession.

With these and other stories, Michael Bishop weaves a colourful tapestry of character, theme and circumstance which attests to his position as on of the best in the field.

Both “Drink Me, Francesca” and “Out There Where the Big Ships Go” examine – in differing but related ways – humanity’s first encounter with other intelligent life, and its inevitable profound consequences. In the former, one member of an interstellar expeditionary force is drawn into communion with an intangible, superior being; in the latter an astronaut, believed long dead, returns to Earth bringing with him an alien game whose subtleties the human race must master in order to show itself worthy of membership in the galactic community.

“The Attleborough Poltergeist” is an eerie account of an apparently paranormal phenomenon which proves to have an even stranger scientific explanation, while the long title story is a surprising – and successful – departure: a full-blooded, adventurous fantasy reminiscent of Rider Haggard. A Victorian Army officer, doing surveying work in Asia Minor, stumbles upon a hidden valley in a remote mountain range. There he discovers a cult whose members literally tend and spin the loom of human destiny, and who await his long-predicted arrival to fulfil a strange and unexpected role in their society.