Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Tales from the Forbidden Planet (1987), edited by Roz Kaveney, and was later published as a chapbook.

Among six hundred thousand stars visited by man, sixty thousand have planets hospitable to life, six thousand have developed life and six hundred have been settled, or seeded, with humanity. A vast vessel, known simply as Ship, travels an endless route, checking in with all the settled planets, observing, offering help where it can as some flourish, some falter but all change and evolve. Unexpectedly, Ship has developed feelings and intelligence and it struggles with human-like emotions as it sees the many ways that man can evolve or devolve when left to his own devices with the one eternal constant--change.

Everything about the planet revolving about Sigma Draconis seemed to indicate that here was a world that could be made into a second Earth. It was fertile and lacked native inhabitants and dangerous beasts. Then what was troubling the pioneer colony that had landed and set up shop there? Was it really possible just to create a new Earth on any vacant world waiting a landing?

Or was there a lot more to planetary ecologies than humanity realized?

When mankind colonized the stars, they travelled out from Earth in two directions - to Centaurus and its Southern Hemisphere neighbours and to Ursa Major and the constellations around Polaris. And strange to say the humans who settled on those various worlds began to develop into two differing antagonistic types. For Ray Mallin, born under the surface of Mars in the sparse colony of Earth's inhospitable old neighbour, neither the anarchic 'bears' nor the autocratic 'Centaurs' commanded his loyalty. So when secret agents of both galactic groupings suddenly focus their unwelcome attention on his most recent star-piloting mission, he knew only that something of vast significance was up - and that he unknowingly was the key to it.

Originally published as The 100th Millennium in Ace Double D-362 in 1959.

A hundred thousand years from now, it was discovered that a star was approaching the world on a collision course. Its discoverer, Creohan, figured there might be time to save the world if he could arouse everyone to the danger.

But the Earth had become a strange and kaleidoscopic place in that distant era. Too many empires had risen and fallen, too many cultures had spread their shattered fragments across a planet whose very maps had long since been forgotten. People were too busy with their own private dreams to pay attention to one more new alarm.

The story Creohan's effort to Catch a Falling Star is one of John Brunner's most colourful science-fiction concepts.

Britain in the near future: the country is heading toward ecological disaster, chemical waste is seeping into people's brains, deadly parasites contaminate food - and the despotic fascist government is trying to keep it all quiet. But there is one thing they can't suppress - the emergence of a new master race. Children who have the power to persuade adults to do anything they want...

American sociologist Claudia and reporter Peter Levin begin an investigation that brings them to a trail of genetic theories. All the children, they discover, have the same father. But who is he? And is he a force of good... or of evil?

In Double, Double, a random collection of strangers converges on a seaside town, not knowing one another and having nothing in common. A mystery from the sea, a shape-shifter, begins to take over the people and produce oddly behaving duplicates of them. A combination of scientific knowledge and a little luck may be all that stands between mankind and an alien invasion.

Table of Contents:

• Host Age - (1956) - novelette
• Lungfish - (1957) - novelette
• No Other Gods But Me - (1966) - novella (variant of A Time to Rend 1956)

Collected when Brunner was at the peak of his writing form, this even dozen of his short stories, with a bonus poem thrown into the mix, offers provocative ideas and thrilling action mixed with conceptions of the inevitable future, the inventable future, the alternate future, the future to be avoided, and the future that is sometimes right now. A heady brew.

Table of Contents:

• A "From This Day Foreword", as It Were - essay by John Brunner
• The Biggest Game - (1956) - shortstory
• The Trouble I See - (1959) - shortstory
• An Elixir for the Emperor - (1964) - novelette
• Wasted on the Young - (1965) - shortstory
• Even Chance - (1965) - shortstory
• Planetfall - (1965) - shortstory
• Judas - (1967) - shortstory
• The Vitanuls - (1967) - shortstory
• Factsheet Six - (1968) - novelette
• Fifth Commandment - (1970) - shortstory
• Fairy Tale - (1970) - shortstory
• The Inception of the Epoch of Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid - (1971) - shortstory
• The Oldest Glass - poem

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.

Collects:

• The Altar on Asconel (novel)
• The Man From the Big Dark (novella)
• The Wanton of Argus (novella)

Originally published as Slavers of Space in Ace Double D-421 in 1960.

It was carnival time on Earth. Prosperity was at its peak; science had triumphed over environment; all human needs were taken care of by computers, robots and androids. There was nothing left for humans to do but enjoy, themselves... to seek pleasure where they found it, without inhibitions and without thinking of the price.

Then an android died - in a senseless, brutal murder. And young Derry Horn was shocked out of his boredom and alienation. His life of flabby ease had not prepared him for a fantastically dangerous mission to outlying, primitive stars - but now, at last, he had a reason for living. And even when he found himself a prisoner of ruthless slavers, even when he learned the shocking truth about what the androids really were and where they came from... even when he saw all the laws of the orderly, civilised universe he knew turned upside-down and inside-out... he fought on.

For that universe had to be shattered and reborn - even if Derry Horn and the Earth he had irrevocably left behind died in the process!

A much shorter version of this story appeared under the title Endless Shadow in Ace Double F-299 (1964).

The interstellar Bridge System was the greatest invention in the long history of cosmic humanity. Spread through dozens of planets, men and their societies had drifted apart in isolation until the Bridge came to link together humanity's multifold worlds... and had affirmed once more that all men were brothers and sisters under the skin.

But the far away world of Azreal was the exception, the one dissident world that refused the Bridge. It became the task of two agents, a man and a woman, to bring Azreal back into manshape unity, to ferret out the hidden reasons for the stubborn refusal.

The problem, with its perils and high risks, was to involve more than just secrets, for Manshape is John Brunner novel that deals with the very fabric of civilization...

Originally published in Ace Double D-507 in 1961.

Allyn Vage was once a beautiful woman, but due to an accident - which may have been a murder attempt - she was now a hopeless cripple, burned and disfigured and without the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. When they brought her to Jome Knard, that noted physician had no choice but to employ a certain apparently miraculous device, incomprehensible even to him, to keep her immobile body alive and to restore and regulate her sensory perception.

This strange machine had been imported from a seemingly primitive people on the world of Akkilmar. They had allowed it to be exported, but there was something about it they couldn't - or wouldn't - explain.

Little did either the doctor or his patient realize that between them they had now become the lever that could topple a world!

A revised version of THE ASTRONAUTS MUST NOT LAND (1963, published in Ace Double F-227). It isn't every day that the impossible happens. But when it does, and you're a witness, you have to start looking for answers. The authorities won't talk. So you decide to find out for yourself. That's what Drummond did. And when he found out. it changed the universe!

ANNOUNCING THE TOURIST EXPERIENCE THAT IS THE TALK OF THE GALAXY! MEET:

The Cryogenic resurrectee Rinpoche Gibbs. He's not surprised to awaken in the twenty-fourth century, cured of cancer. He is, however, very surprised by everything else...

The incredibly beautiful Nixy Anangaranga-Jones, who may or may not be haunted by ghosts, but to whom the unexpected always happens...

The Yelignese Chief Bureaucrat - the Esteemed Thingitude in charge of restoring Earth who can't quite grasp what human history is all about...

Spotch from the planet Trigon, whose trip to Earth really did cost an arm and a leg...

The amazing Cardinal Numbernine and Her Wiliness Pope Joan II - religion may be gone, but the church will endure forever...

The adolescent Sherlock Holmes and his Biker Street Irregulars...

Table of Contents:

• No Future in It - (1955) - shortstory
• Puzzle for Spacemen - (1955) - novelette
• Fair - (1956) - shortstory
• The Windows of Heaven - (1956) - shortstory
• Out of Order - (1957) - shortstory
• Elected Silence - (1962) - novelette
• Badman - (1960) - shortstory
• Report on the Nature of the Lunar Surface - (1960) - shortstory
• The Iron Jackass - (1962) - shortstory
• Protect Me from My Friends - (1962) - shortstory
• Stimulus - (1962) - novelette

Table of Contents:

• No Other Gods But Me - novella (1956)
• The Man from the Big Dark - (1958) - novella
• The Odds Against You - (1965) - shortstory

Contains:

• Prerogative
• Fair Warning
• The Warp and the Woof-Woof
• Single Minded
• A Better Mousetrap
• Coincidence Day
• Seizure
• Treason is a Two Edged Sword
• Eye of the Beholder
• Round Trip

Table of Contents:

• Preface - (1965) - essay by John Brunner
• Some Lapse of Time - (1963) - novelette
• Imprint of Chaos - (1960) - novelette
• Thou Good and Faithful - (1953) - novelette

Contains:

• The Fourth Power
• The Man Who Played the Blues
• Orpheus' Brother
• Such Stuff
• When Gabriel....
• The Nail in the Middle of the Hand
• The Last Lonely Man
• Whirligig
• See What I Mean!
• The Totally Rich

War hero, jet-setter, gourmet - Godwin Harpinshield was all of those and more; his life was a game played among the Beautiful People whose fame, wealth and power set them above the law, and beyond the laws of nature. Because of a simple bargain that all the Beautiful People made, Godwin's every desire was his for the asking. Seduced by luxury, Godwin never doubted his fortune, never wondered about his mysterious patrons.

Then the game turned ugly.

Suddenly, the ante was raised and the game was real. The stakes were his future, his sanity and, possibly, his very soul. All Godwin Harpinshield had to discover was: What were the rules of the game? And who - or what - were the other players?

She appeared in our world naked, defenceless, unable to say a word anyone could understand.

Her origin was at first simply a puzzle, then a scientific enigma, and finally a series of terrifying surmises that her most fascinated investigator was afraid to probe. But probe he must, for somehow he knew that this strange girl was a key to the kind of information science had sought for centuries. But the more he uncovered from the depths of her mind, the deeper became the quicksand into which his own was sinking.

There are seven billion-plus humans crowding the surface of 21st century Earth. It is an age of intelligent computers, mass-market psychedelic drugs, politics conducted by assassination, scientists who burn incense to appease volcanoes... all the hysteria of a dangerously overcrowded world, portrayed in a dazzlingly inventive style.

Donald Hogan was a mild-mannered student, a dilettante intellectual--at least that's what everyone was supposed to think he was. But Donald knew otherwise. He knew he was a spy.

But what Donald didn't know was that in a world overpopulated by the billions--in a society squeezed into hive-living madness by megabrain computers, mass-marketed psychedelics, and eugenics--where everyone was struggling for life--he himself was programmed for death!

Originally published in Ace Double D-465 in 1960.

In The Atlantic Abomination, an exploratory expedition to the bottom of the ocean discovers the remnants of a long-lost civilization, and then, the enormous body of an alien being preserved for unknown millennia. An attempt to raise the body unleashes a horror beyond imagining as the creature revives from a long sleep and begins to exert control over men's minds throughout the world.

Table of Contents:

• Premumble - (1976) - essay by John Brunner
• Crossword - (1976) - essay by John Brunner
• Limerick No. 1 - (1976) - poem by John Brunner
• A Different Kick, or How to Get High Without Actually Going Into Orbit - (1965) - essay by John Brunner
• "Lullaby for the Mad Scientist's Daughter" - poem by John Brunner
• Bloodstream - (1974) - novelette by John Brunner
• Domestic Crisis 2017 - (1974) - poem by John Brunner
• Hide and Seek - (1973) - shortstory by Gérard Klein (trans. of Cache-cache 1960)
• Limerick No. 2 - (1976) - poem by John Brunner
• The Technological Folk Hero: Has He a Future? - (1972) - essay by John Brunner
• "The Ballad of Teddy Hart" - (1976) - essay by John Brunner
• Who Steals My Purse - (1973) - novelette by John Brunner
• Feghoot I - (1962) - shortstory by John Brunner
• Excerpt from a Social History of the 20th Century - (1970) - shortstory by John Brunner
• Die Spange - (1976) - poem by Stefan George
• Limerick No. 3 - (1976) - poem by John Brunner
• Them As Can, Does - (1966) - essay by John Brunner
• "Faithless Jack the Spaceman" - (1976) - essay by John Brunner
• When Gabriel ... - (1956) - shortstory by John Brunner
• What We Have Here - (1970) - poem by John Brunner
• Feghoot II - (1976) - shortstory by John Brunner
• Limerick No. 4 - (1976) - poem by John Brunner
• The Spartans' Epitaph at Thermopylae - (1976) - essay by John Brunner
• The Educational Relevance of Science Fiction - (1971) - essay by John Brunner
• "The Spacewreck of the Old 97" - (1976) - essay by John Brunner
• Manalive (excerpt) - (1964) - shortfiction by John Brunner
• Matthew xviii, 6 - (1971) - poem by John Brunner
• Feghoot III - (1976) - shortstory by John Brunner
• Corrida - (1973) - poem by Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. of Corrida 1907)
• Limerick No. 5 - (1976) - poem by John Brunner
• The Evolution of a Science Fiction Writer - (1972) - essay by John Brunner
• "The H-Bombs' Thunder" - (1958) - essay by John Brunner
• The New Thing - (1969) - shortstory by John Brunner
• The Atom Bomb Is Twenty-Five This Year - (1970) - poem by John Brunner
• Epigrammata LXV - (1976) - poem by Decimus Magnus Ausonius
• Solution to Crossword - (1976) - essay by John Brunner

Ed Carter, a New York reporter on his way to his home town in Omaha for a short vacation, saw the missile in the last moments in its journey back to earth. A sweller on the brink, like all of us, he had no doubt about what it was; Oh God, he thought, this is it. The blast of the impact flung him some distance, and when he regained consciousness, his first reaction was one of surprised to find himself still alive, and not, it seemed, even badly hurt. Presumably the missile had been directed at the big Air Force base nearby, and should have destroyed everything and everyone within a radius of miles. Could it have failed to explode?

Carter sees the remains of part of the missile in an adjacent field and hobbles over to it. A minute or two later several Air Force officers arrive. They examine the remains, and find the burned-up body of a pilot. In other worlds, the missile was not Russia's first shot in the Third World War, but a failure to launch a man into space. But Carter knows that the Distant Early Warning line will have reported the missile; that the senior Air Force officers, in accordance with plan, will have taken to the air - in the country's interest, their lives must, of course, be preserved if possible; that by now the retaliatory American bombers will have passed the point of no recall; and that the Third World War has begun. Not so, Colonel Ben Goldwater tells him: "I called the bombers back."

Goldwater, the man who had been left in command, has saved the world - for at least a little longer. So he becomes a world hero? Not a bit of it. On the contrary: a nightmare looms ahead both for him and for Ed Carter, and the reader watches it all with growing fury...

In The Crucible of Time, John Brunner creates a true epic of SF invention. Imagine a planet existing in a debris-strewn corner of the galaxy. Cosmic dust and rubble cause an endless succession of ice ages followed by tropical warmth followed by more ice ages, and on and on. Meteors of all sizes plummet to the surface of the planet frequently and burgeoning civilizations have a sad tendency to be wiped out all of a sudden. Society survives, sort of, but the brightest scientists know that to survive long term, the race has to transcend the surface of the planet and become a space-faring species. In a story that spans millennia, a determined group of people take control of their own evolution and build the technological society that will be their way into space. Long before Brian Aldiss's magisterial Helliconia series, even before some of Arthur C. Clarke's grand future visions, John Brunner led the way in imagination and scope of vision.

For each generation, there is a writer meant to bend the rules of what we know. Hugo Award winner (Best Novel, Stand on Zanzibar) and British science fiction master John Brunner remains one of the most influential and respected authors of all time, and now many of his classic works are being reintroduced. For readers familiar with his vision, this is a chance to reexamine his thoughtful worlds and words, while for new readers, Brunner's work proves itself the very definition of timeless.

When suddenly all the fissionable material on Earth was exploded, Earthmen had their first notice of the aliens' arrival.

And by the time the panic, death and chaos had been sorted out, reports were coming in about mysterious cities scattered across the face of the planet - huge areas of flickering light and awesome free energy, disorienting to human senses and impregnable to attack.

The question was: were they alien bases... or something else?

The far-flung fingers of Earth's civilisation touched many corners of the galaxy, and among them was the beautiful planet Yan. Here the colonists lived a peaceful, almost idyllic life, amid ancient and secret relics, co-existing with their strange and compatible neighbours.

The arrival of Gregory Chart, the greatest dramatist ever, whose productions were played out in the skies, and whose actors were also the audience, could only disrupt and destroy once the Yanfolk were aroused from their dreaming indifference...

A daring novel of mankind's strange and startling destiny. . .

Here is a novel to equal Arthur C. Clarke's great work, Childhood's End. It tells with frightening clarity of a desperately stricken Earth - wracked by overpopulation and plagued by famine and despair.

It tells, too, of a new breed of men and women - twenty-first century lotus eaters caught up in a mysterious euphoria which will ultimately threaten all life on this planet: the drug-induced world of 'happy dreams'. Do these 'happy dreamers' herald the end of the human race - or the next extraordinary step in the evolution of Man?

This short story originally appeared in Amazing Stories, July 1990. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection (1991), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Tileman could make our fantasies come true - create reality from your dreams - for a very high fee. Catering to the desires of London's most powerful - and decadent - figures, Tileman had top-level connections to guarantee him protection and influence.

But he had killed Laird Walker's best friend - and Walker, the dead man's sister, and a bizarre nightclub entertainer began a private war on Tileman... a war whose final battle was unimaginable horror.

The first practical matter transmitter was a success, or so everyone thought. In spite of paranoid security restrictions, Justin Williams and Cinnamon Wright, co- inventors of the device, counted on it to revolutionise civilisation and gain them an honoured place in history. But the first long-distance field test with a human being a diplomatic courier carrying a vital message somehow misfired when the courier killed himself on arrival at his destination. To prove his faith in his invention and to escape charges of sabotage Justin has himself posted thousands of miles. He comes through unchanged. It was the world that was different.

Matthew Flamen, the last of the networks' spoolpigeons, is desperate for a big story. He needs it to keep his audience - and his job. And there is no shortage of possibilities: the Gottschalk cartel is fomenting trouble among the knees in order to sell their latest armaments to the blanks; which ties in nicely with the fact that something big is brewing with the X Patriots; and it looks as if the inconceivable is about to happen and that one of Britain's most dangerous revolutionaries is going to be given a visa to enter America. And then there's the story that just falls into his lap. The one that suggests that the respected Director of the New York State Mental Hospital is a charlatan...

This short story originally appeared in New Worlds SF, #142 May-June 1964. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• World's Best Science Fiction: 1965, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr
• 10th Annual Edition: The Year's Best S-F (1965), edited by Judith Merril
• Best SF Stories from New Worlds 8 (1974), edited by Michael Moorcock
• Robert Silverberg Presents the Great SF Stories: 1964 (2002), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Silverberg

The story is included in the collections Out of My Mind (1967) and The Best of John Brunner (1988).

When racial hatred turns to murderous menace... First a rocket ship loses its engines on take-off and is destroyed. On board - an important extra-terrestrial visitor. Next someone slams into the sealed vehicle used for transporting aliens around in the lethal atmosphere of Earth. Then the vital controlled environment for the Tau Cetian delegation is sabotaged. Oxygen leaks in, and the aliens are half burnt alive. Even if it means brutal murder, The Stars Are For Man League is determined to shatter the harmony between Earth and civilizations on other planets - and to keep mankind supreme among the alien life forms. Only one man can stop them - a man who unknowingly nurses a viper in his bosom... First published in 1965.

Until he became an alcoholic, Murray Douglas was one of Britain's leading actors. Now, after treatment, he's ready to resume his career, but his first come-back part isn't exactly what he thought it would be.

The idea was to create an avant-garde play where the actors made up the script as they rehearsed. Unusual but hardly frightening. What was frightening was the rest of the cast. Like Murray, they all had some kind of craving. And each of them was given access to whatever had addicted them.

It was doubtful if the play would ever entertain the public. But it seemed to entertain the director . . .

An enduring classic, this book offers a dramatic and prophetic look at the potential consequences of the escalating destruction of Earth.

In this nightmare society, air pollution is so bad that gas masks are commonplace. Infant mortality is up, and everyone seems to suffer from some form of ailment. The water is polluted, and only the poor drink from the tap. The government is ineffectual, and corporate interests scramble to make a profit from water purifiers, gas masks, and organic foods.

Environmentalist Austin Train is on the run. The Trainites, environmental activists and sometime terrorists, want him to lead their movement. The government wants him in jail, or preferably, executed. The media wants a circus. Everyone has a plan for Train, but Train has a plan of his own.

When the sleepy town of Weyharrow is enveloped by a mysterious fog, the inhabitants find themselves behaving in strange and dangerous ways. Dr Steven Glaze, a young probationary GP, prescribes a most unorthodox treatment for arthritis; the vicar proclaims in morning service that the villagers are in the hands of the devil; and Phyllis Knabbe tragically commits suicide. Throughout the village people have seemingly taken leave of their senses.

Soon word leaks out and Weharrow becomes inundated both by the national press and a bus load of hippies seeking a magical experience, who believe that a nearby ancient pagan temple is somehow responsible for this strange phenomenon. But Steven Glaze and Jenny, a reporter for the local newspaper, feel sure that there is more to this than meets the eye and they set out to discover the cause - supernatural or otherwise - of everyone's drastically altered behaviour.

He Was The Most Dangerous Fugitive Alive, But He Didn't Exist!

Nickie Haflinger had lived a score of lifetimes...but technically he didn't exist. He was a fugitive from Tarnover, the high-powered government think tank that had educated him. First he had broken his identity code -- then he escaped.

Now he had to find a way to restore sanity and personal freedom to the computerized masses and to save a world tottering on the brink of disaster.

He didn't care how he did it...but the government did. That's when his Tarnover teachers got him back in their labs...and Nickie Haflinger was set up for a whole new education!

A tour-de-force, a disciplined exercise peopled originally by wooden or ivory or jade figurines, now fleshed and clothed and given dramatic life in a battle as old as the classic conflict of chess. But these are real people. When heads roll, blood gouts out and drenches the remaining players while they watch in horrified fascination - until their turn comes. For it is a real game. And the players cannot tell the outcome. Even when their lives depend on it....

A much shorter version of this story appeared in Listen! The Stars! Ace Double F-215 in 1963.

A stardropper got its name from the belief that the user was eavesdropping on the stars. But that was only a guess... nobody really knew what the instrument did.

The instrument itself made no sense scientifically. A conventional earpiece, an amplifier, a power source - all attached to a small vacuum box, an alnico magnet, and a calibrated 'tuner'. What you got from all this was some very extraordinary noises and the conviction that you were listening to beings from space and could almost understand what you were hearing.

What brought Special Agent Dan Cross into the stardropper problem was the carefully censored news that users of the instrument had begun to disappear. They popped out of existence suddenly - and the world's leaders began to suspect that somehow the fad had lit the fuse on a bomb that would either destroy the world or change it forever.

There was a cure for depression and unemployment.

There was a cure for war, madness and national hatreds.

There was a cure for prejudice, crime and mass hysteria.

But there were those who wanted the cure suppressed until the world collapsed!

A novel of the fever-pitched fight against the end of the world, reminiscent of 1984 or A Clockwork Orange - but with an amazing difference.

The Acre was the only part of an entire world where Earthmen were allowed to live as they pleased and as they were accustomed. For elsewhere on Quallavarra, humanity was forced into servitude by the Vorra, THE SUPER BARBARIANS, who has somehow managed to conquer space.

But within the Acre, the underling Terrestrials had cooked up a neat method of keeping teir conquerors from stamping them out altogether. They had uncovered a diabolical Earth secret the Vorra couldn't abide - and yet couldn't do without.

After weeks of running from pursuers, Gene and Stacy finally found refuge on an isolated island.

But around them the island changed - and so did they.

Each time they awoke from sleep, they lived a different life in a different time. And the farther back they went, the more they lost their anchor to their own world. When at last they were found, the people they had become no longer recognised their pursuers.

And that was the beginning.

Gerald Howson was born in the gutter, with the body of a cripple... he was raised in harsh poverty and ridicule... and he would grow up with a mind of transcendant power.... What kind of man would he be?

A daring and fascinating exploration into the possibilities that include the marvel of internal creation---or the threat of lingering death!

Published in the UK as: The Telepathist

Originally appeared in Ace Double D-391 in 1959.

The inhabited galaxy was caught in the crushing vice of a struggle for power. The political titans of the planets of mankind were making their bids for supremacy.

The contestants: Cornice, man of strange powers, authority in the spheres of the intellect; and Bassett, man of money-power, financial and business wizard.

As the association of human worlds drew near the teetering edge of internal revolutions; one of these men would be in a position to triumph. The only thing that neither side could foresee was that there were Others hovering among the stars, loo ling for new worlds to conquer!

In a near future where a paranoid America has sealed itself off from the rest of the world by a vast and complicated defense system, a young Russian scientist infiltrates all defenses to tell an almost unbelievable and truly terrifying story. At the outer reaches of the solar system, near Pluto, has been detected a superior form of intelligent life, far smarter than man and in possession of technology that makes it immune to attack from human weaponry and strong enough to easily destroy planet Earth. Can humans set aside their differences and mutual fears to work together and defeat a common enemy?

This short story originally appeared in the anthology The Williamson Effect (1996), edited by Roger Zelazny. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 2 (1997), edited by David G. Hartwell.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by John Brunner
• Galactic Consumer Report No. 1: Inexpensive Time Machines - (1965) - shortstory
• Speech is Silver - (1965) - shortstory
• The Warp and the Woof-Woof - (1966) - shortstory
• The Product of the Masses - (1968) - novelette
• Galactic Consumer Report No. 2: Automatic Twin-Tube Wishing Machines - (1966) - shortstory
• Death Do Us Part - (1955) - shortstory
• Coincidence Day - (1965) - shortstory
• Whirligig - (1967) - shortstory
• Galactic Consumer Report No. 3: A Survey of the Membership - (1967) - shortstory
• Nobody Axed You - (1965) - novelette

Also sometimes listed as a novel (mash-up). Conatins:

• Spoil of Yesterday
• The Word not Written
• The Fullness of Time

A Pandora's box of evil

Freitas had commanded the engineers of his vast, world-wide empire to build him a device that could ransack the past.

Now all the riches of the ages were his for the taking. But mere wealth was not what Freitas was after. Supreme power was what he sought, and from the past he picked the men and women who could help him gain absolute mastery over his rivals.

But one thing he had not reckoned on - the power these creatures fro the past would have over him, the reign of terror about to begin...

In To Conquer Chaos, John Brunner gives us a heaping helping of classic planetary science fiction adventure. The barrenland is a mystery and an enigma, a dangerous and terrifying place that none who enter ever return from. More than three hundred miles around, it has existed far longer than collective memory can guess, and all too often, strange beasts emerge from it and kill at random.

Conrad lives on the edge of the barrenland and is haunted by visions of its past as a haven, populated by magical people who could travel between worlds. He meets Jervis Yenderman, a soldier who has knowledge of the visions and who believes that within the barrenland is an island of human survivors--and that one man has escaped it within recent memory.

A collection of humorous quatrains by John Brunner, each with a cartoon by Arthur Thomson (ATom).

Table of Contents:

• John Brunner - essay by Don D'Ammassa
• Android
• Bug-Eyed Monster
• Chemist
• Doctor
• Earthmen
• Flying Saucers
• Genius
• Hypnotist
• Inorganic Matter
• Jovian
• Knob
• Larva
• Mutant
• Neanderthalers
• Oölitic Strata, Oligocene
• Planets
• Question
• Robot
• Spaceship
• Time Paradoxes
• Utopia
• Virgin
• Weather
• Xperiments
• Yeti
• Zoo

Nineteen light years from Earth, on Sigma Draconis, an international space team stumbles upon the first evidence of another highly advanced civilization in the universe.

Tragically, however, the Draconians are extinct and have been for a hundred thousand years. What mysterious disaster destroyed man's nearest neighbour in the colossal emptiness of space? And will the same fate befall Earth?

The answers, as Earth degenerates into squabbles, paranoia and self-destruction, are vital. But how to begin the almost insuperable task of cracking the enigma of a long-buried and utterly alien culture?

He was 'The Visitor'... in a society revolutionised and troubled by a transportation device that let you walk through a door and be anywhere in the world - instantly. He was 'The Visitor'... at a time when unauthorised travel had caused the violent deaths of countless millions and the survivors were quaking in fear. He was 'The Visitor'... in a world where the invasion of privacy was the ultimate crime and where his obsession with visiting places where he had no right to be led him on a perilous adventure towards his own destruction.

Beyond the Silver Sky

Keston Ochiltree's visit home had been short and disastrous. His newborn nephew had proved to be one of the Hopeless Ones and had only served to remind him of the present plight of mankind. Keston knew that the decision he was being called on to make might mean a new start for humanity or the end of their underwater civilization.

Each day found more Hopeless Ones being born: pitiful creatures with webbed hands and feet. More important, the inhuman Zammu were pressing their attack in a fierce struggle between species. Most important, the silver sky was lowering. The shimmering sky-level would soon shrink until they had all burned in the gaseous beyond.

So Keston's decision might mean everything. Should he stay in the Emperor's shark-cavalry to fight the Zammu? Or should he join Professor Lansing in an illegal attempt to find what lay beyond the silver sky?

Meeting at Infinity

Allyn Vage was once a beautiful woman, but due to an accident - which may have been a murder attempt - she was now a hopeless cripple, burned and disfigured and without the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. When they brought her to Jome Knard, that noted physician had no choice but to employ a certain apparently miraculous device, incomprehensible even to him, to keep her immobile body alive and to restore and regulate her sensory perception.

This strange machine had been imported from a seemingly primitive people on the world of Akkilmar. They had allowed it to be exported, but there was something about it they couldn't - or wouldn't - explain.

Little did either the doctor or his patient realize that between them they had now become the lever that could topple a world!

Castaways' World

Colonising a new planet requires much more than just settling on a newly discovered island of Old Earth. New planets were different in thousands of ways, different from Earth and from each other. Any of those differences could mean death and disaster to a human settlement.

When a ship filled with refugees from a cosmic catastrophe crash-landed on such an unmapped world, their outlook was precarious. Their ship was lost, salvage had been minor, and everything came to depend on one bright young man accidentally among them.

He was a trainee planet-builder. It would have been his job to foresee all the problems necessary to set up a safe home for humanity. But the problem was that he was a mere student - and he had been studying the wrong planet.

The Rites of Ohe

'How short a time a century really is...' The speaker was Immortal Karmesin, and he had lived a thousand years. He stood, a gigantic figure against the rush of time, a permanently open channel for the infants of the galaxy to explore the deep past. He was anathema to the Phoenixes, for their creed was that of birth in death, of regeneration in destruction. And he knew that he - one man - had to unravel the Phoenix mystery, or live to watch it bring fiery death to all the planets of man...

Dr. Futurity

Jim Parsons is a talented doctor, skilled at the most advanced medical techniques and dedicated to saving lives. But after a bizarre road accident leaves him hundreds of years in the future, Parsons is horrified to discover an incredibly advanced civilization that zealously embraces death. Now, he is caught between his own instincts and training as a healer and a society where it is illegal to save lives.

But Parsons is not the only one left who believes in prolonging life, and those who share his beliefs have desperate plans for Dr.Parsons' skills, and for the future of their society.

Dr. Futurity is not only a thrilling rendition of a terrifying future but it is also a fantastic examination of the paradoxes of time-travel that could only have come from the mind of Philip K. Dick.

Slavers of Space

It was carnival time on Earth. Prosperity was at its peak; science had triumphed over environment; all human needs were taken care of by computers, robots and androids. There was nothing left for humans to do but enjoy, themselves... to seek pleasure where they found it, without inhibitions and without thinking of the price.

Then an android died - in a senseless, brutal murder. And young Derry Horn was shocked out of his boredom and alienation. His life of flabby ease had not prepared him for a fantastically dangerous mission to outlying, primitive stars - but now, at last, he had a reason for living. And even when he found himself a prisoner of ruthless slavers, even when he learned the shocking truth about what the androids really were and where they came from... even when he saw all the laws of the orderly, civilised universe he knew turned upside-down and inside-out... he fought on.

For that universe had to be shattered and reborn - even if Derry Horn and the Earth he had irrevocably left behind died in the process!

Rocket to Limbo: Lars Heldrigsson was fresh out of the Colonial Service Academy and his first assignment was a milk-run to Vega aboard the *Ganymede. Not a very exciting trip, except that the ship's commander, Walter Fox, had explored and opened more new colony-worlds than any other man.

But the *Ganymede* had hardly blasted off before Lars discovered that not all the crew shared his admiration of their chief. Rumors circulated, rumblings of mutiny were heard, and the news finally broke that they weren't going to Vega at all, but to Wolf IV, the one planet from which no man had returned alive!

Echo in the Skull: Sally Ercott is a disintegrating personality. She finds herself living in filth, abject squalor, with vague memories of a clean, happy, prosperous life which has somehow slipped away.

But, superimposed on those memories are OTHER lives recalled; lives on planets alien beyond comprehension. Lives ended in horror as each world was destroyed by a malignant alien, slimy and ugly, demanding sacrifice. What is happening to this girl's mind?

Edge of Time

They created a miniature universe, but could they control it?

The 100th Millennium

They searched the past to escape the future.

Enigma from Tantalus

'We won't be landing anywhere just yet', Waters said to the other passengers on the spaceship Fulmar. 'I was pretty mystified by this story of mechanical breakdown, so I've been checking up.' He hefted his little box. 'I've spent the past half hour successfully tapping your subspace circuits, Captain, so I know the truth and I propose to share it with everyone. We're not to land. We're to orbit in space, indefinitely.'

Beloved Sister Dorcas's screams pierced the quiet.

'You see,' Waters continued, holding up his hand for silence, 'this is being done on the direct orders of Master Brand . . . you don't know the name?' He glanced inquiringly around. 'No? Well, he happens to be one of the powers of Earth, and there is nobody in the galaxy to overrule him.'

The Repairmen of Cyclops

The Corps Galactica, the Galaxy's police force, had pledged itself to a policy of non-interference with the backward Zarathustra Refugee Planets.

Langenschmidt, the Corps chief on the planet Cyclops, was content with this ruling. After all, if the refugee planets could form their own civilizations from scratch, logically they would come up with cultures suited to their own needs.

However, when the case of Justin Kolb came to his attention, Langenschmidt was forced to rethink the problem. Kolb's accident with the wolfshark revealed to the Corps' medicos the leg-graft that had been performed on him. It was a perfect match - only its gene-pattern wasn't Cyclopean, and limb-grafting wasn't practised on Cyclops.

Where had the leg come from, who had been the unknown repairmen, and wasn't this something that might be violating galactic law?

Listen! The Stars!

Tune in on eternity - and disappear...

The Rebellers

The population explosion conspiracy!

Sanctuary in the Sky

A cold war among the stars was growing hotter by the minute. As Pag and Cathrodyne struggled for domination, a hot war threatened which would rend and annihilate whole planetary systems. The two master races would have consumed one another long ago, but for one single factor:

Waystation. It was a stupendous synthetic world, famed throughout this galaxy. For Waystation was controlled by a neutral people, and until the greater powers could seize this strategic wonder planet and ferret out its secrets, they were doomed to fretful inactivity.

But as a Cathrodyne vessel drew near to Waystation, the all-important balance of power stood in sudden peril. The ship in itself was routine. But on board was a stranger, a man of undiscovered race, who spoke too little, and, it appeared, knew too much...

The Secret Martians

Jery Delvin had a most unusual talent. He could detect the flaws in any scheme almost on sight--even where they had eluded the best brains in the ad agency where he worked. So when the Chief of World Security told him that he had been selected as the answer to the Solar System's greatest mystery, Jery assumed that it was because of his mental agility.

But when he got to Mars to find out why fifteen boys had vanished from a spaceship in mid-space, he found out that even his quick mind needed time to pierce the maze of out-of-this-world double-dealing. For Jery had become a walking bomb, and when he set himself off, it would be the end of the whole puzzle of THE SECRET MARTIANS--with Jery as the first to go!

Siege of the Unseen

THE THREE EYES OF EVIL

"The crash was over, the car on its side. Slade sprawled dizzily on his back, while something warm trickled from his forehead into his left eye. He wiped it away, and saw with a start that it was blood. The skin was torn raggedly..."

"A third eye was plainly visible. The eyelid of it was closed by a surplus of sticky matter, but abruptly he grew aware that it was pulsing with a vague perception of light..."

At first it was a grotesque discovery, when the accident revealed that young businessman Michael Slade was a bizarre freak -- a man with three eyes. But the impact of what it meant to see with three eyes was even more macabre. For Slade, that shocking third eye was his entry into a strange new dimension of terror and adventure -- a fearful new world that would wrap itself about him forever!

The World Swappers

The inhabited galaxy was caught in the crushing vice of a struggle for power. The political titans of the planets of mankind were making their bids for supremacy.

The contestants: Cornice, man of strange powers, authority in the spheres of the intellect; and Bassett, man of money-power, financial and business wizard.

As the association of human worlds drew near the teetering edge of internal revolutions; one of these men would be in a position to triumph. The only thing that neither side could foresee was that there were Others hovering among the stars, loo ling for new worlds to conquer!

The Altar on Asconel

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...

Android Avenger

All of a sudden I was moving faster than usual. The other passengers standing on the subway platform seemed rooted to their places. It took me only seconds to reach the top of the six flights of stairs, and then I was out of the station and moving down Fulton Street at better than forty miles an hour!

What was happening to me? It was as though I were the helpless passenger in a runaway car. Something else had assumed control and was guiding me.

My body turned into an office building and raced down the corridor to a room where a man was sitting at a console. He'd begun to swing around in his chair when my mouth opened, and a thin, blood-red ray shot out, cleaving the man from head to abdomen.

Then it was over. My mouth closed, and I stood there, stunned. Up to today I was Bob Tanner, an average, sane Citizen. Now what was I, man or murder machine?

The Arsenal of Miracles

When Earth's stellar empire was attacked by the Lyanir, a powerful race from the uncharted stars, it was Bran Magannon, High Admiral of Space, who met their battle-challenge. He saved the Empire, but he also fell in love with the beautiful young Lyarnin queen Peganna. To the people of Empire his name became that of traitor. Now he was a lone, brooding outcast among Earth's outpost worlds, called Bran the Wanderer. Then Peganna of the Silver hair returned and told him of a fabled cache of deadly weapons left aeons ago by the long-dead race of the Crenn Lir. She wanted those weapons for her people, to use against the Empire if need be.

Endless Shadow

Two worlds in conflict: Azrael--Where pain was the only reality, & murder was not a crime but a ritual.

Ipewell--Where motherhood was honored & manhood meant a life of servitude & fear. These two worlds were at the heart of a taut dangerous situation which threatened to explode. Jorgen Thorkild, director of the Bridge System that connected forty worlds among the stars, had to try to tame them. But Thorkild faced still another problem: the loss of his own sanity!

The Astronauts Must Not Land

They'd left as men, but what were they now?

The Space-Time Juggler

He tampered with the furure of words.

The Atlantic Abomination

Man, meet your master.

The Martian Missile

Pawn of the space invaders.

The Beasts of Kohl

Were they cavemen, supermen, or both?

A Planet Of Your Own

One man to a world - or was one man too many?

For over thirty years, Hugo Award-winning author John Brunner has written science fiction that stands as a shining example of imagination and innovation of thought and form. Here are more than 15 stories that cover the full range of Brunner's writing, from the profound and sublime to the whimsical, in the best tradition of speculative fiction.

The Last Lonely Man: In a world without fear of death, no one had to be alone... except the man who took friendship a step too far.

An Elixir for the Emperor: It was an ingenious ploy in Roman politics...until Caesar actually got what he asked for!

The Totally Rich: Their wealth could buy anything imaginable, except what their hearts most desired...

What Friends Are For: He was the best designed child money could buy - and every parent's nightmare. But then he found a friend...

...and lots more!

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Brunner Mosaic - essay by Joe Haldeman
• The Totally Rich - (1963) - novelette
• The Last Lonely Man - (1964) - shortstory
• Galactic Consumer Report No. 1: Inexpensive Time Machines - (1965) - shortstory
• Fair - (1956) - shortstory
• Such Stuff - (1962) - shortstory
• Galactic Consumer Report No. 2: Automatic Twin-Tube Wishing Machines - (1966) - shortstory
• Tracking with Close-ups (21) and (23) (excerpt) - shortfiction
• X-Hero - (1980) - shortstory
• No Future in It - (1955) - shortstory
• Galactic Consumer Report No. 3: A Survey of the Membership - (1967) - shortstory
• What Friends Are For - (1974) - shortstory
• The Taste of the Dish and the Savor of the Day - (1977) - novelette
• Galactic Consumer Report No. 4: Thing-of-the-Month Clubs - (1969) - shortstory
• The Man Who Saw the Thousand-Year Reich - (1981) - novelette
• An Elixir for the Emperor - (1964) - novelette
• The Suicide of Man - (1978) - novelette
• The Vitanuls - (1967) - shortstory

The Rim of Space

Derek Calver touches down on Lorn and is determined to join the Rim Runners to explore desolate planets.

He joins the crew of Lorn Lady and sets forth for Mellise, inhabited by intelligent amphibians; for Groller, where the natives have just qualified as humanoids; for Stree with its tea loving lizards; and Tharn, home of a pre-industrial civilization., January 1965

Secret Agent of Terra

Once the city of Carrig stood supreme on this planet that had been settled by space refugees in the distant, forgotten past. From every corner of this primitive lost world caravans came to trade - and to view the great King-Hunt, the gruesome test by which the people of Carrig chose their rulers.

Then from space came new arrivals. And with them came their invincible death guns and their ruthless, all-powerful tyranny.

Now there would be no King-Hunt in Carrig, or hope for the planet-unless a fool-hardy high-born named Saikmar and a beautiful Earthling space-spy named Maddalena, could do the impossible...

Threshold of Eternity

Because of a twist in the structure of Time, three strangers were brought unexpectedly together: Red Hawkins of California, Chantal Vareze of London and a man from the 41st Century. Their meeting seemed an impossible prank of a universe gone mad - but it turned out to be quite otherwise.

For it seemed there was a war going on throughout space and time. A war fought by men of different epochs, on planets of different cultures, but for a cause that all could acknowledge - the very continued existence of creation itself.

And the coming together of these three very unlikely people - a modern man, a lovely girl and a futurian soldier - was to prove the master stroke of a super-science strategy that had already brought humanity to the THRESHOLD OF ETERNITY.

The War of Two Worlds

The twenty-year Earth-Mars war was finally over. What was left of Earth - its crumbled cities, its ruined farmlands - were firmly and completely under the rule of the Martian Archon. And this powerful planetary ruler was taking no chances: he intended to reduce the Terrans to a society of primitive agricultural tribes in less than a generation!

But for David Arnfeld, ex-spaceman and Earth Base Commander, there was something in the whole set-up which did not ring true. Why had both sides muffed countless chances to end that awful war in the first year or two? And why had the two planets gone to war in the first place?

In the back of Arnfeld's mind an idea was growing...perhaps there was yet a chance to save the doomed population of Earth. But if his idea was true, and proof was available, he had to work fast. Too many people were involved in this War of the Two Worlds to let one man upset their plans.

Destiny's Orbit

Though Ajax Calkins was wealthy enough to buy anything on earth his heart desired, the one thing he wanted most was strictly forbidden. That was a world of his own - a planet, however small, which would be his private kingdom in the sky. The Earth-Mars Space Administration stood in his path. They would tolerate no such 18th Century derring-do in the commercial and workaday planetary channels of the 21st Century. Empire-building was out.

But when an offer from a bearded stranger opened the way to just such an adventure, Ajax leapt at the chance. In his luxury spacecraft Destiny he shot out through the inner planets to the tiny world that waited a king - and, unwittingly to a monster outer-planet empire that waited a detonator for cosmic war.

Times Without Number

Traveling backwards in time, Don Miguel had to undo the errors and interruptions o f other time-interlopers; he had to preserve the present. Even the most insignificant nudging of the past could entirely alter his world! And he suspected that this had already happened: that a maniacal genius crazed with a desire for nationalist vindication had plotted to alter the victorious outcome of the Spanish Armada of 1588 - thus changing recorded history and perhaps even imperiling the mighty Spanish Empire of 1988!

If Don Miguel did not successfully intercede, when he came back to the present he might find a different world... a different time... a time in which he probably didn't even exist!

Vulcan's Hammer

After the twentieth century's devastating series of wars, the world's governments banded together into one globe-spanning entity, committed to peace at all costs. Ensuring that peace is the Vulcan supercomputer, responsible for all major decisions. But some people don't like being taken out of the equation. And others resent the idea that the Vulcan is taking the place of God. As the world grows ever closer to all-out war, one functionary frantically tries to prevent it. But the Vulcan computer has its own plans, plans that might not include humanity at all.

The Skynappers

When Ivan Wright stepped out of his mountain cabin, rifle in hand, to investigate the sound of a strange helicopter, he stepped right into the middle of a galactic crisis.

For the crew of that odd aircraft were not men such as he'd ever seen before - and when he tried to oppose them, he found himself hurled uncontrollably into oblivion.

He awoke to find himself considered as a kidnapped barbarian from a backward planet in a galaxy of advanced civilizations - yet one who somehow held in his own hands the key to all their futures!

BLANK SPACE

Time stands still in this innocent-looking are of country-side. Things happen there that can't happen. The legendary and mythological have reality there--but the very existence of the real is severely threatened. No one has ever returned from there.

Into this Blank Space walked 7 very real people -- determined to learn why.

YOU ONLY DIE TWICE

A pretty dancer collapsed and died in the street. But an autopsy revealed she had actually dies 72 hours before.

A sailor returned from shore leave to a nuclear submarine--but he was not the same man who left. In fact, he was not a man at all...

Was there no one who realized the danger to earth these signed revealed?

Mind Control

Someone--something had infected the minds of a group of unrelated people with an identical terror. A girl unnaturally kept from the world by a psychotic mother. A man imprisoned for many years... A socialite who enjoyed life's pleasures.

Something had invaded their minds. Something evil...

If There Is No Money...

...What is there to steal?

If the inhabitants have no endocrine gland systems how can there be crimes of passion?

And if there was no crime whatsoever on Albazar I, why was Hautley Quicksilver, licensed criminal extraordinary, called there?

He had no answer until he arrived at the planet... or where it should have been. For Albazar I disappeared before his eyes.

Drifting through a party celebrating 400 years since the Spanish Armada's successful invasion of Britain, Don Miguel Navarro -- Licentiate of the Society of Time -- is shaken by the host's possession of a flawless mask from an ancient Aztec festival. 'Imported' from the past, the discovery signals a breach in the Society's policing of time-travel and imminent danger to reality itself. Today, a relic out of time; tomorrow, the rewriting of the course of history? In three ground-breaking novellas, John Brunner weaves an ingenious tale of diverging timelines and a battle for dominance over the fourth dimension.

The Society of Time stories were abridged when first collected. Here, the trilogy is reprinted in full along with two mesmerising standalone novellas: The Analysts and Father of Lies.

Contents:

• 7 - Introduction (The Society of Time) - essay by Mike Ashley
• 15 - Spoil of Yesterday - [The Society of Time - 1] - (1962) - novelette
• 65 - The Word Not Written - [The Society of Time - 2] - (1962) - novelette
• 115 - The Fullness of Time - [The Society of Time - 3] - (1962) - novelette
• 167 - Father of Lies - (1962) - novella
• 239 - The Analysts - (1961) - novelette

These three novellas are set in an alternate world first created by Silverberg in his novel, The Gate of Worlds (TOR, 1984). The idea remains intriguing: the Black Plague decimates the European population to a degree that proves irrecoverable and the ensuing cultural, inventive, and technological vacuum is filled by the civilizations of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Silverberg and John Brunner contribute taut and tantalizing glimpses into the might-have-beens of Timbuctoo politics and would-be Eastern European assassins. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's contribution, set in the courts of the Incas, unfortunately bogs down in its strain to demonstrate just how exotic this setting is. Despite this reservation, the book is likely to be popular with fans of alternate-world dramas and of these well-known authors. In addition, it might prove a stimulating enrichment for world-history classes. -Cathy Chauvette, Fairfax County Pub. Lib., VA

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the collection The Traveler in Black (1971) and was reprinted in Fantastic, April 1971. The story is included in the collection The Compleat Traveller in Black (1986).

This is a collection of stories of the Traveller in Black. It is set in a world where chaos rules. One man - the man with many names, but one nature - is charged with creating order out of the warring forces of nature.

Table of Contents:

• Imprint of Chaos - (1960) - novelette
• Break the Door of Hell - (1966) - novelette
• The Wager Lost by Winning - (1970) - novelette
• The Things That Are Gods - (1979) - novelette
• Dread Empire - (1971) - novelette

This collection was originally issued as The Traveller in Black in 1971 with 4 stories as part of the Ace Science Fiction Specials line; "The Things That Are Gods" was also included in later editions of the collection as The Compleat Traveller in Black.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's SF Adventure Magazine, Fall 1979. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 6 (1980), edited by Lin Carter, and Fantasy Annual III (1981), edited by Terry Carr. The story is included in the collection The Compleat Traveller in Black (1986).

A collection of stories about the Traveler in Black. In a world where chaos rules, one man is charged with creating order out of the warring forces of nature.

Contents:

• Imprint of Chaos
• Break the Door of Hell
• The Wager Lost by Winning
• Dread Empire

When the star Zarathustra went nova, the desperate survisors spread out in all directions. Those that found habitable worlds were few, and after hundreds of years the Zarathustra Refugee Planets were either forgotten or in quarantine. Colonising a new planet requires much more than just settling on a newly discovered island of Old Earth. New planets were different in thousands of ways - any of those differences could mean death and disaster to a human settlement. And sometimes, refugees from another planet had to be brutal. For the inhabitants of Carrig, new arrivals brought invincible death guns - and their ruthless, all-powerful tyranny...

Now published in one volume, these brilliant novels once again show John Brunner to be a true master of science fiction writing.

Table of Contents:

• Polymath (1974) aka Castaways' World (1963)
• The Avengers of Carrig (1969) aka Secret Agent of Terra (1962)
• The Repairmen of Cyclops (1965)

A much shorter version of this story appeared under the title Secret Agent of Terra in Ace Double F-133 (1962).

Once the city of Carrig stood supreme on this planet that had been settled by space refugees in the distant, forgotten past. From every corner of this primitive lost world caravans came to trade - and to view the great King-Hunt, the gruesome test by which the people of Carrig chose their rulers.

Then from space came new arrivals. And with them came their invincible death guns and their ruthless, all-powerful tyranny.

Now there would be no King-Hunt in Carrig, or hope for the planet-unless a fool-hardy high-born named Saikmar and a beautiful Earthling space-spy named Maddalena, could do the impossible...

A much shorter version of this novel appeared under the title Castaways' World in Ace Double F-242 (1963).

Colonising a new planet requires much more than just settling on a newly discovered island of Old Earth. New planets were different in thousands of ways, different from Earth and from each other. Any of those differences could mean death and disaster to a human settlement.

When a ship filled with refugees from a cosmic catastrophe crash-landed on such an unmapped world, their outlook was precarious. Their ship was lost, salvage had been minor, and everything came to depend on one bright young man accidentally among them.

He was a trainee planet-builder. It would have been his job to foresee all the problems necessary to set up a safe home for humanity. But the problem was that he was a mere student - and he had been studying the wrong planet.

A shorter version appeared in Fantastic Stories of Imagination in January and Februari 1965. It was expanded for publication in Ace Double M-115 and revised again for the 1981 novel edition.

When the star Zarathustra went nova, the desperate survivors spread out in all directions. Those that found habitable worlds were few and after hundreds of years the Zarathustra Refugee Planets were either forgotten or in quarantine. On Cyclops, an advanced world, an ominous political crisis had developed which threatened to oust the Corps Galactica. Something horribly improper was going on... something involving its corps of medical wizards... something that might have to do with an undiscovered Zarathustra planet. Gus Langenschmidt's job was to save the Corps base on Cyclops. But it proved to be a life-and-death task on a multi-planet scale.