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The Doomed Planet

The gigantic planet of Mirkheim was gone – blasted and vaporised by a supernova. But its core had survived the holocaust, and now, transmuted, it was the only source of certain vital supermetals. David Falkayn, agent and troubleshooter for the powerful Polesotechnic League, governors of the Terran Empire, had plans for Mirkheim. But the Baburites – an unscrupulous alien race – were one step ahead of him and had claimed the priceless minerals as their own. The conflict could mean only one thing – war, on a titanic scale – unless Falkayn could turn the tide and negotiate a peaceful agreement. But with the Baburites, that was a near-impossible task.

Their space-yacht, pursued by angry Adderkops thirsting for their blood, has run into serious engine trouble. Picking up the trail of another alien spaceship, they decide to board it and force its crew to take them home. But once aboard, its not so easy to find the crew: they’re faced with cages full of bizarre, other-wordly animals: Tiger apes, Elephantoids, Gorilloids, Caterpiggles, Helmet beasts, Tentacle centaurs. One set of these extraordinary creatures must be the crew, in hiding. But which? Survival depends on finding the right answer…

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.

IN THE “DOC” SMITH TRADITION

The planet was fine for big game hunters. And it was the tradition there that one must have a trophy before one could call oneself truly a man.

If that were all, it would hardly interest Cap Kennedy because his trophies consisted of planets saved for Terra and missions accomplished. But there was something on Eriadne which was not just a hunt trophy – something which required the presence of Kennedy and his men to check on. One of these things was a fragment of Zheltyana construction which outdated all civilisation.

But the hunt proved to be a double one – Kennedy against an unslayable monster and a lost world of monsters against Kennedy. And if he lost, it would be Terra itself that would be a trophy on some alien’s hunting lodge wall.

SPAWN OF LABAN is one of the best – a real edge-of-the-seat science fiction chiller in the tradition of Edward E. Smith and Edmond Hamilton

HUMAN VS INHUMAN

To the reptilian mind – especially the intelligent type of planets like Sergan and Obrac – the lives of others were as nothing to the need for status.

To the feline mind – especially to the clever advisor of the master of Sergan – the agonies of others were not only of no consequence, they could even be a source of joy.

So when these two types of inhuman intelligences got together to defy the Terran orders against interplanetary kidnapping, space hijacking, and human slavery, it was definitely a case for a top-notch secret agent. Because Earth could not afford a showdown with more than one alien species at a time.

The secret agent was Cap Kennedy, Free Acting Terran Envoy, and his pursuit of the SLAVE SHIP FROM SERGAN turned out to be one of his most dangerous single-handed adventures.

Written under the working title of “The Spore Menace” in 1954, Pandora’s Box was not actually published until 1996. Many of the ideas in this novel are seminal, even prophetic. Tubb was one of the very first sf writers to realize the potential danger to Earth from alien organisms. He appreciated that whilst technology may change, Man’s nature remains the same and Pandora’s Box spins a fascinating tale based on that most basic human emotion – greed!

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.

ALIEN DUST relates the first thirty-five years of the colonization of Mars. It is a poignant story of Man against Nature. No individual hero or heroine marches steadily through its pages. There is no triumphal ending-only faint hope. Instead, against a background of the shifting red sands of a planet unfit for human habitation, emerges the grim picture of pioneer men and women pitting their courage, wits and even lives against the biggest enemy in the Solar System-an alien planet. Rich and warm in human emotion, ALIEN DUST is one of those rare science fiction stories which presents Man in his true perspective-as the intruder.

To escape war and suffering, humanity had allowed itself to take a drug that killed all emotion. But a small number of insurgents – including the returning astronauts from a mission to Mars – had refused to take the drug, and waged an armed rebellion. The last survivors of the Freedom Army were holed up in a besieged bunker when one of their number, the physicist Burges, constructed a gateway to another dimension-an alternate existence. Ex space-pilot Lanson leads the remnants of his Freedom Army in escaping through the gateway-only to find themselves in an alternate world were humanity has been enslaved for the last 30 years by a toad-like alien race, the Zytlen!

Earl Dumarest still seeks the mythical planet Earth . . . still roams alien and violent worlds. With him goes Mayenne, whose songs create joy and passion – or forgetfulness.

Together they are cast up on Tormyle, a planet from another galaxy; a planet unique throughout the Universe. For Tormyle is sentient – the most powerful intelligence in the Cosmos, constantly recreating itself.

Tormyle can be Paradise or Hell. Tormyle can manifest as a dragon or a knight on horseback, faceless behind the helmet. Tormyle understands nothing of humanity, of men and women, of emotion. And Tormyle will let no-one escape who cannot answer the unanswerable.




(First published 1973)

The Collected Stories Volume 5: The Palace At Midnight (1980 – 1982)

Winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, Robert Silverberg is one of the all time greats of science fiction. A professional writer for more than half a century, his short story output has been prolific and exceptional in quality.

This series of nine volumes will collect all of the short stories and novella-length that SF Grand Master Silverberg wants to take their place on the permanent shelf.

Each volume will be roughly 150,000-200,000 words, with classics and lesser known gems alike. The author has also graced us with a lengthy introduction and extensive story notes for each tale.

Contents:
Our Lady of the Sauropods
Waiting for the Earthquake
The Regulars
The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve
A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa
How They Pass the Time in Pelpel
The Palace at Midnight
The Man Who Floated in Time
Gianni
The Pope of the Chimps
Thesme and the Ghayrog
At the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party
The Trouble with Sempoanga
Jennifer’s Lover
Not Our Brother
Gate of Horn, Gate of Ivory
Dancers in the Time-Flux
Needle in a Timestack
Amanda and the Alien
Snake and Ocean, Ocean and Snake
The Changeling
Basileus
Homefaring

The new millennium has barely begun when a vast fleet of alien vessels descends without warning on the Earth. Some starships blaze mighty trails of fire; some pop into view, unfathomably silent. Three different but equally strange kinds of alien emerge. Wide-eyed UFOlogists who rush to welcome them are scooped up like bugs collected for study.

The aliens make no response when the governments attempt to communicate with them, but a single act of resistance to them provokes massive retaliation. This is the first major catastrophe of the alien years and it will be followed by others. In silence the aliens take control of the world, effortlessly enslaving what remains of its population.

On a remote California ranch, the Carmichaels are a family of blue-eyed, straight-backed patriots, flawed by narrow thinking and repressed emotions – but redeemed by their courage. With them rests the slender hope that natives of Earth may one day be free.



(First published 1997)

It will be the greatest voyage of exploration in human history. Fifty men and women are chosen to crew the Wotan. Their mission: to travel deep into the unknown galaxy in search of habitable worlds, to rekindle the dying human spirit. Their only contact with Earth is the telepathic link between one of the crew members and her sister back home. But when the mind-link with Earth is abruptly broken the Wotan is lost in the pearl-gray twilight of nospace. Then just as all seems lost, the Wotan encounters a massive alien presence. Suddenly the crew is forced to realise that their every assumption about life and death, humanity and the universe, may be dead wrong.

‘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 thousand years in the future, the earth has been conquered by an alien race and covered by a single sea. Dovirr Stargan, who is disgusted with the servility of his life on the floating city of Vythain, longs to become one of the Sea-Lords, who roam the sea as powerful protectors of the cities.

Dovirr gets his wish, but the return of the alien race brings unexpected and critically dangerous crises to his new life as he learns the real, sometimes terrible, significance of power.




(First published 1965)

The computer had chosen them – a small cross-section of humanity to serve Mankind’s Destiny. Out of seven billion people on Earth mechanical chance had selected them as involuntary colonists on an unknown planet. In seven days they would be on their way, on a sink-or-swim mission to a lonely world beyond the limits of the Solar System.

It was a summons each had privately dreaded, yet always been prepared for. But no one had prepared them for the vicious attacks of sinister aliens . . .

Secretive, enigmatic beings, they came to Earth to live among humanity in quiet, aristocratic isolation. But now, after years of silence, the “gods” have decided to share their art.

Across the vast galactic void come great ships bearing the fruits of an incomprehensible alien culture – paintings and sculpture of such raw, visceral power that their unveiling plunges the Earth into violent chaos, and sends the visitors fleeing from their adopted planet. But some remain behind – to face death at the hands of rampaging mobs, to witness the outcome of the grand cosmic game, and to assist in the creation of one last, potentially universe-shattering masterpiece that will illuminate the awesome, final destinies of god and man.

Wrestling Reptiloids is no job for milquetoasts.

Mild-mannered Terran archaeologist Keith Salazar was just minding his own business, digging up the alien past on an out-of-the-way site on the planet Kukulcan, when suddenly he was besieged by intruders on his scholarly peace: hostile natives, an indifferent ex-wife, and a demon developer with rapacious eyes glued on both his site and his true love.

In the course of protecting his dig, regaining his loved one and vanquishing his rival, Salazar will fight a giant reptilian predator bare-handed, leap into snake-filled pits, engineer the planet’s first imperial conquest, lead and train a battalion of alien riflemen and hold a séance. Pretty exciting work – but then maybe Keith Salazar wasn’t such a milquetoast after all.

Although largely, and unjustly, neglected by a modern audience, Bayley was a hugely influential figure to some of the greats of British SF, such as Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison. He is perhaps best-known for THE FALL OF CHRONOPOLIS, which is collected in this omnibus, alongside THE SOUL OF THE ROBOT and the extraordinary story collection THE KNIGHTS OF THE LIMITS.

THE FALL OF CHRONOPOLIS: The mighty ships of the Third Time Fleet relentlessly patrolled the Chronotic Empire’s 1,000-year frontier, blotting out an error of history here or there before swooping back to challenge other time-travelling civilisations far into the future. Captain Mond Aton had been proud to serve in such a fleet. But now, falsely convicted of cowardice and dereliction of duty, he has been given the cruellest of sentences: to be sent unprotected into time as a lone messenger between the cruising timeships. After such an inconceivable experience in the endless voids there is only one option left to him. To be allowed to die.

THE SOUL OF THE ROBOT: Jasperodus, a robot, sets out to prove he is the equal of any human being. His furturistic adventures as warrior, tyrant, renegade and statesman eventually lead him back home to the two human beings who created him. Question: Does he have a soul?

THE KNIGHTS OF THE LIMITS: Nine brilliant stories of infinite space and alien consciousness, suffused with a sense of wonder…

It is sometime I the near future. The nations of Earth have drawn closer together – there is even hope of a new era of co-operation and progress will soon begin.

These dreams of lasting peace are shattered by one momentous discovery. One of the members of an international team of scientists stationed on the moon has found an alien spacecraft – with all its incredible technology and weaponry intact. The discovery shatters the illusion of peace on Earth, as each nation joins the mad scramble to learn the terrible secrets entombed by alien visitors eons before.

Only one thing prevents total war – Werner Brecht, the discoverer of the vehicle, is the only one who knows its location, and he has disappeared into thin air.

Britain has fallen to the technological might of the Aztec Empire whose armies have rampaged across the globe. Now, for the first time in a millennium, the British are a subject race.

Inevitably there is resistance – and among those determined to fight the invaders is Princess Catherine, elder daughter of the British monarch. But she is torn between her patriotism and her growing involvement, political and personal, with the Aztecs – and with one Aztec in particular. Then her sister is arrested and exiled for her part in an alleged terrorist attack – and Catherine finds herself walking a perilous tightrope…

Sweeping from occupied Britain to the horrors of the Russian front and the savage splendour of the imperial capital in Mexico, Aztec Century is a magnificent novel of war, politics, intrigue and romance, set in a world that is both familiar – and terrifyingly alien.

Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1993

Science fiction writer Sanford Kvass has a problem. Three problems, actually. He suffering from terrible writer’s block and owes his agent a large sum of money. The last thing he needs is the approaching distraction of the World Science Fiction Convention, with it’s obsessive fans, sex-mad SF groupies and professional writers and editors getting drunk and behaving badly.

But we said ‘three problems’, didn’t we? The best that can be said about Sanford Kvass’ third problem is that it renders his first two irrelevant. Kvass is approached by an alien ( a genuine alien, not a cosplay one) who informs him that the human race is to be tested: an alien will appear at the World Science Fiction Convention, disguised as a human being, and unless Kvass can unmask it, the Earth will be destroyed.

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t present much of a challenge. All he’s have to do, is to observe as many people as he could and identify the one who clearly had no experience of normal social interaction. Voila! One unmasked alien.

There’s just one problem: this is Worldcon . . .

Life was not possible on that watery world except on the Hundred Islands. The Empire of Arelia ruled them all – all except one. Peldain was entirely covered with a forest so impenetrable and so deadly that all attempts to explore it were disastrous. Then a man came out of that jungle – a human – who told the Arelians that at the center of the island a secret kingdom flourished.

There was nothing for it but to organise an expedition. However deadly the alien forest might be, if one man could get out, an army could get in. So Lord Vorduthe landed and began the assault on the great green enemy.

Nobody could have foreseen the horrors with which the forest defended itself. Nobody could have foreseen the price that would be paid by Vorduthe’s men. And only Vorduthe himself would learn the incredible secret of the island…if his mind could stand it.

Are there aliens among us? Are the chariots of the gods returning? If so – are they for us or against us?

John Brunner, award-winning author and science fiction writer extraordinary, takes the questions now on everyone’s mind, and gives one possible answer in this startling novel.

Here is an edge-of-the-seat story of the man who discovers that the vanguard of the aliens are indeed amongst us – and that the human species has but a few hours left before our time runs out.

It’s a science fiction thriller you won’t be able to put down.