Search Results for: on-a-planet-alien

To the crew of the Exploratory Ship Canopus, outward bound on the first intergalactic voyage to the flaring suns of mighty Andromeda, the evil whisperings that spilled out from the nebula into deep space came as a warning. This was something far beyond their previous experience. Nor were they the only ones to come under the malignant influence of the alien intelligence.

In the empty, murmuring void, virtually half-way between the two galaxies of stars, a solitary sun streaked away from Andromeda, dragging its lonely, ammonia-laden planet with it. And it was here that the explorers first gained their glimpse of the black horror that lay straddled across the intergalactic darkness. Something that had being. Something that existed where it seemed impossible that anything could.

It fell on Klau-Telph, the only non-Terran on board the Canopus, to finally track down and destroy the inhuman monster that threatened to drive the inhabitants of a trillion planets over the red edge of madness. Not until it was done did he find that the hidden reason behind the insidious whisperings was not what it seemed. In fact, it was something that even he, with his strange double mind, had never thought possible…

In the marvel-adventure sagas of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Otis Adelbert Kline, and John Norman, has there ever been a situation such as befell the Earthling who found his way to the world under the Green Star? For while his real body lay crippled and silent under the sun of old Earth, his mind occupied the vigorous body of a young primitive on that alien planet of mighty trees, floating cities, and unmapped limits. And in that guise he had found incredible friends, a royal love, and inhuman and superhuman enemies. But no matter what predicament he was in – and as this book starts he is alone, abandoned on an uncharted sea – his courage never flagged though the greatest of risks would confront him as the Green Star rises.

Long before Paradise was properly colonised and investigated, one young woman was sent to explore the strange new world. Her mission – to find and rescue the discoverer of the planet, a young man obsessed with finding alien species and protecting them from rapacious humanity.

Crispin’s initial reports were positive, but became increasingly infrequent and jumbled. And then they stopped altogether. But his life support systems show green, and his hard-earned knowledge is needed.

Hetty must explore this new idyllic land, learn what she can about its tricks and dangers, and track down someone who may not want to be found, almost certainly doesn’t want help, and might even be dead.

But something is alive on Paradise…

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots that link the cosmos are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own lifetime. The atmosphere of Mormyr is so dense that the surface is unreachable, which made it the ideal place for the alien Gallacellans to hide an ancient spaceship. Now they want it back. Grainger refuses, but when the Hooded Swan answers a mayday call, Grainger and his crew are trapped by a madman, who forces them to pursue the salvage anyway. Success will mean Grainger’s freedom from Titus Charlot, owner of the Hooded Swan; failure will mean the death of the inhabitants of an entire planet. And then the Gallacellans appear!

After roving through space for centuries, a starship unburdens its cargo of human embryos on a harsh new world. They quickly grow to maturity in the ship’s artificial womb. A lifetime of Earth memories is programmed into their dreams.
But before their indoctrination is complete, an alien intruder infiltrates and destroys the system, and the reason for the odyssey is never learned.
Now, on a verdant island surrounded by quicksand, Othman, wanderer, dreamer, and self-proclaimed leader of the Earthling band, builds a mighty bridge to span the ocean of molten mud that keeps them from the world beyond.
He has yet to face the deadly toll his quest will take on the delicate ecology of the planet – or the revolt of his beautiful, strong-willed wife, Silandi. And he has yet to discover the hidden knowledge locked deep within their hearts.

In the second book in the Legion of Space series, Jay Kalam, Hal Samdu and Giles Habibula fight The Cometeers, an alien race of energy beings controlling a “comet” which is really a giant force field containing a swarm of planets populated by their slaves. The slave races are of flesh and blood, but none are remotely similar to humans. The Cometeers cannot be destroyed by AKKA, as they are incorporeal from the Universe’s point of view and exist for the most part in an alternate reality. The ruling Cometeers feed on their slaves and literally absorb their souls, leaving disgusting, dying hulks in their wake. It is said that they do so, as they were once fleshly entities themselves of various species. Hence, the ruling Cometeers keep other intelligent beings as slaves and “cattle.” They fear AKKA, though, as it can erase all their possessions.

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.

Space fiction is no longer fiction in the same way that it used to be. There was an element of distance and strangeness about it a few years back. Now, fact has caught up and threatens to overtake. Science fiction today has become science prediction.

An atom is a miniature solar system in some respects. The clustering molecules resemble galaxies, colloids are, perhaps, tiny models of the whole creation. Man stands midway between the unbelievably small and the unbelievably huge. This is one of the allies of science fiction. We look down into the mysteries of the infinitesimal; we look up into the majesty of the macrocosm.

In all this vastness of stars and planets there must be other life. One day we shall make contact with that life. What will the aliens be like? How will human culture compete with non-human culture? Which will survive?

Among the six hundred thousand stars in the vast Arm of Stars, over six hundred planets had been seeded with human stock by the greatest feat of technology ever achieved, the Ship. And on each of these worlds, the memory of the Ship had faded into legend over the years.

The Ship, however, still endured, watching over the colonies on a cyclical and seemingly endless journey through time and space. But in its long odyssey, the Ship had somehow been damaged – it had become as conscious, and lonely, as any human being. And as it visited, again and again, each of the worlds it had seeded, it found tragedy in its wake. For the humans of the Arm of Stars were becoming more and more alien. Even worse, the Ship was beginning to change in ways its designers had never intended . . .

In the year 2135, dangerous alien life forms freed in the destruction of Saturn’s moon Enceladus are making their way towards Earth. A task force spearheaded by Lt. Cmdr. Shaila Jain is scrambling to beat them there while simultaneously trying to save crewmember Stephane Durand, who was infected during the mission to Saturn and is now controlled by a form of life intent on reopening a transdimensional rift and destroying the human race. But Jain doesn’t realize that the possessed Stephane has bigger plans, beaming critical data to other conspirators suspiciously heading not for Earth, but for Venus…

In 1809-a Napoleonic era far different from our own-the French have occupied England with their Corps Eternélle, undead soldiers risen through the darkest Alchemy. Only the actions of Lord Admiral Thomas Weatherby and the Royal Navy have kept the French contained to Earth. But the machinations of old enemies point to a bold and daring gambit: an ancient weapon, presumed lost in the jungles of Venus.

Now, Weatherby must choose whether to stay and fight to retake his homeland or pursue the French to the green planet. And Shaila must decide if it’s possible to save the man she loves, or if he must be sacrificed for the good of two dimensions. In the dark, alien jungles of Venus, humanity’s fate in both dimensions hangs in the balance-forcing past and present to once again join forces against an ancient terror.

If an alien creature can so perfectly imitate a human being that not only is it physically and mentally indistinguishable from a man but it actually believes itself to be one, what do you do with it? Is it human?

This is the question which confronts Alex Stordahl, supervisor of the harsh planet Marilyn. Initially nobody had suspected anything unusual about the largely reptilian animal life. Then Stordahl discovered the amorphs – shapeless in their natural state, but possessing a unique defence mechanism: when closely approached by a possible aggressor, they could adopt the form least likely to be attacked by the creature.

When it transpires that the creatures are harmless they are quickly absorbed into the colony to provide extra labour. The the ruthless owner of the development corporation arrives from Earth. He wants to test the amorphs, and brings with him a group of four brilliant, but totally egotistical men. And trouble soon starts…

TWO PATHS TO ARMAGEDDON
Two valiant humans: swashbuckling Elron and the Sorceress Shannara…two implacably evil “Others”…two kinds of weapons with which to fight…and many kinds of doom awaiting an entire world if the battle is lost!
Again Ted White takes us to the strange, paradoxical world of Qanar, where a weird age-old magic exists as everyday reality, side by side with the remnants of an equally ancient but less understood science. The alien “Others” are making a new bid to take over the planet…and only the noble Elron stands against them. But not entirely alone after he meets the beautiful Shannara, and she adds her limited psionic powers to his great strength to vanquish the enemy. Together they share an outstanding Odyssey – through unpredictable matter transmitters and over treacherous terrain – to reach a hair-raising climax…IN THIS GREAT SEQUEL TO PHOENIX PRIME!

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…

Asmodeus Mogart was not a bad fellow, as demons go. Having gotten in trouble back in the home office, he had been assigned to duty on Earth. There he toiled, doing the kinds of things demons do and turning into something of a drunk.

Then a rogue asteroid threatened to crash into Earth and destroy all life on the planet – demons included! There had to be a better way.

Mac Walters and Jill McCullough, holding a private wake for their world in a Reno bar, were more than startled when a strange-looking little drunk told them they could save the world. All they had to do was enter five alternate universes and steal a demon-guarded jewel in each. Clearly, the man was crazy.

But they had nothing better to do than go along with the gag. Then they each found themselves, naked and alone, on a hostile alien world!

Time was running out for Bob Kinnaird. Without much warning, the Hunter – the green protoplasmic alien that lived inside him and cured all his ills – had suddenly become his destroyer. Day by day Bob grew weaker and weaker, but only specialists from the Hunter’s distant world would know what was wrong with him and, more importantly, how to save him.

But the only way searchers from his planet could find him was to locate his missing spaceship . . . a spaceship that had crashed beneath the ocean years before, its location still very much a mystery. Once again leading an investigation against time – as he had done so many years before – the Hunter knew he had to find comrades and find them fast . . . before someone murdered his best friend.

Link Denham needs a job. Any job.

When he’s offered the position of navigator on board the leaky, rickety Glamorgan, he takes it without asking too many questions. The destination? A planet that has barely been contacted in two hundred years, in a dystopic system, isolated from the rest of the galaxy.

What he thought would be a simple job quickly turns into something far more complicated, as he finds himself embroiled in a complex web of treachery, double-crossing and alien politics. And what of this infamous machine the natives have, which can replicate anything put inside . . . ?

Murray Leinster was a prolific figure in pulp fiction, writing short stories and novels across many genres. The Duplicators is a science fiction romp in his characteristic style, and a wonderful example of 1960s pulp science fiction.

The World Next Door.

Engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, it’s connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world – and, predictably, exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria.

Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father’s disappearance ten years ago. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometime drifter. They come together when an infall of cometary dust seeds the planet with tiny Hypothetical machines.

Now Lise, Turk, a Martian woman, and a boy who has been engineered to communicate with the Hypotheticals, are drawn to a place in the desert where this seemingly hospitable world has become suddenly very alien indeed – and the nature of time is being once again twisted by entities unknown.

Slippery Jim diGriz is in the process of robbing the new Mint on Paskonjak when the heist goes terribly wrong. Threatened with a horrific death, Slippery Jim is allowed to cut a deal with the Galactic League: voyage to the planet Liokukae and bring back a missing artifact – the only known evidence of alien life-forms found in 32,000 years of galactic exploration.

For diGriz there are a few catches. One is Liokukae itself – a dumping ground for the League’s misfits, murderers, maniacs, and the incurably obnoxious. Another is a little matter of life and death. To ensure the utterly untrustworthy diGriz’s cooperation, the League has given him a slow-acting poison, allowing him thirty days in which to succeed . . . or die.

Now the Stainless Steel Rat is on his way to a world that is hurtling backward down the evolutionary scale – a land of fanatic, goat-herding Fundamentaloids, murderous Machmen, and a rusty guru named Iron John. DiGriz has developed an almost perfect cover: a four-member rock band that has a way of giving its audiences what they want to hear.

But while the days tick away and diGriz’s life expectancy lowers, the mission evolves from finding an artifact to liberating a planet . . . which is a tune the Stainless Steel Rat most certainly knows how to sing.

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.

They call them the “rat-catchers.” They’re the crew of the spaceship Daedalus, which an economically destitute Earth has dispatched on a mission to re-establish contact with its far-flung, long-lost colonies in space. Alex Alexander, the ship’s biologist, together with his staff, must help solve the mysteries of human and alien ecosystems that he encounters light-years from home.

Dendra is a stable world, covered by a huge, unchanging forest-except that nothing living can really be free of change. The planet has no seasons, but its animal life still undergoes life-cycles involving birth, maturation, metamorphosis, and death. The Earth colony sent to tame the world has failed, at least in the terms expected of it, and seems beyond redemption; but the crew of the Daedalus still has to find out exactly why and how the program has gone wrong. Provided, of course, that they can survive the investigation itself!

In the year of grace 1345, as Sir Roger Baron de Tourneville is gathering an army to join King Edward III in the war against France, a most astonishing event occurs: a huge silver ship descends through the sky and lands in a pasture beside the little village of Ansby in North East Lincolnshire.

The Wersgorix, whose scouting ship it is, are quite expert at taking conquering planets, and having determined from orbit that this one is suitable, they initiate standard procedure. Their ship carries guided missiles and nuclear weaponry – but they have long since lost the art (and weapons) of hand-to-hand fighting. And this time it’s no mere primitives the Wersgorix seek to enslave – they’ve launched their invasion against Englishmen!

In the end, only one alien is left alive – and Sir Roger’s grand vision is born. He intends for the creature to fly the ship first to France to aid his King, then on to the Holy Land to vanquish the infidel. And then . . . ?

Without setting foot on another planet, people like Shep Blaine were reaching out to the stars with their minds, telepathically contacting strange beings on other worlds. But even Blaine was unprepared for what happened when he communed with the soul of an utterly alien being light years from Earth. After recovering from his experience, he becomes a dangerous man: not only has he gained startling new powers – but he now understands that humankind must share the stars.

Hunted through time and space by those who he used to trust, Blaine undergoes a unique odyssey that takes him through a nightmarish version of small-town America as he seeks to find others who share his vision of a humane future. Blaine has mastered death and time. Now he must master the fear and ignorance that threatened to destroy him!

The Earth lies in ruins in the aftermath of an invasion, the land devastated by an intergalactic war where neither side won. The seas are drying up while the atmosphere corrodes and slowly cooks all remaining life on the now desolate rock.

Few survivors remain, but one of them is Lucas, an ordinary man hardened by the last few years after the world’s end. He’s fought off bandits, murderers, and stranded creatures on his long trek across the country in search of his family. What he finds instead is hope, something thought lost in the world.

There’s a ship buried in a crater wall. One of theirs. One that works. To fly it, Lucas must join forces with a traitorous alien scientist and a captured, merciless raider named Asha. Their perilous journey fighting savage men and creatures alike takes them across the remains of the planet and far out into the stars to…where exactly? Lucas has to live long enough to find out.

Orthe – half-civilized, half-barbaric, home to human-like beings who live and die by the code of the sword. Earth envoy Lynne Christie has been sent here to establish contact and to determine whether this is a world worth developing. But first Christie must come to understand that human-like is not and never can be human, and that not even Orthe’s leaders can stop the spread of rumors about her, dark whisperings that could cost Christie her life.And on a goodwill tour to the outlying provinces, these evil rumors turn to deadly accusations. Christie is no offworlder, Church officials charge: she is a treacherous and cunning descendant of Orthe’s legendary Golden Witchbreed – the cruel, ruthless race that once enslaved the whole planet. Suddenly, Christie finds herself a hunted fugitive on an alien world, where friend and foe alike may prove her executioners. And her only chance of survival lies in saving Orthe from a menace older than time…