Search Worlds Without End

The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China.

Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him.

Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.

Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint.

TIME, SPACE, AND THE FUTURE

Here is your passport into the fascinating world of science fiction... eleven dazzling, jet-propelled, rocket-paced tales of tomorrow by one of today's most inventive writers, Alfred Bester, author of The Demolished Man and The Dark Side of the Earth.

Table of Contents:

• 7 • Disappearing Act • (1953) • short story
• 24 • Adam and No Eve • (1941) • short story
• 38 • Star Light, Star Bright • (1953) • short story
• 54 • The Roller Coaster • (1953) • short story
• 61 • Oddy and Id • (1950) • short story
• 76 • The Starcomber • novelette (variant of 5,271,009 1954)
• 110 • Travel Diary • (1958) • short story
• 113 • Fondly Fahrenheit • (1954) • novelette
• 133 • Hobson's Choice • (1952) • short story
• 148 • The Die-Hard • (1958) • short story
• 152 • Of Time and Third Avenue • (1951) • short story

The object arrived without warning, tearing a spiral path of devastation across the rural landscape. After the explotion, searchers sifted through the immense pile of debris... to discover a fantastically instrumented capsule, and a strangely human pilot, stone dead. Bowden Karvel's theory, that the capsule's port of origin lay in the distant future, seemed a plausible explanation.

But while investigating, the capsule was accidentally dispatched again through time... only to reappear with an alien navigator, this time destroying a small French town. One thing seemed imperative: a human operator must man the intricate controls of the capsule, riding it forward to its mysterious point of origin. And Bowden Karvel seemed the perfect choice to make the trip...

Martian Quest: The Early Brackett is a collection of the twenty earliest stories by the undisputed "Queen of Space-Opera."

On a Venus that never was, on a Mars that can never be (but should have been), Leigh Brackett's early stories laid the foundation for her later classic adventures, The Sword of Rhiannon, The Nemesis from Terra, and the "Eric John Stark" series.

Table of Contents:

• xi - Queen of the Martian Mysteries: An Appreciation of Leigh Brackett - essay by Michael Moorcock
• 1 - Martian Quest
• 19 - The Treasure of Ptakuth
• 37 - The Tapestry Gate
• 51 - The Stellar Legion
• 69 - The Demons of Darkside
• 89 - Water Pirate
• 105 - Interplanetary Reporter
• 125 - The Dragon-Queen of Venus
• 145 - Lord of the Earthquake
• 175 - No Man's Land in Space
• 205 - A World Is Born
• 229 - Retreat to the Stars
• 249 - Child of the Green Light
• 269 - The Sorcerer of Rhiannon
• 299 - Child of the Sun
• 327 - Out of the Sea
• 357 - Cube from Space
• 391 - Outpost on Io
• 409 - The Halfling
• 437 - The Citadel of Lost Ships
• 473 - Meet the Author - essay by Leigh Brackett

Includes the novels:

Gateway to Darkness (1949)

Gateway to Glory (1950)

Martians Go Home (1955)

Rogue in Space (1957)

The Lights in the Sky Are Stars (1953)

The Mind Thing (1951)

What Mad Universe (1949)

BUG-EYED MONSTERS ON BROADWAY Pulp SF magazine editor Keith Winton was answering a letter from a teenage fan when the first moon rocket fell back to Earth and blew him away. But where to? Greenville, New York, looked the same, but Bems (Bug-Eyed Monsters) just like the ones on the cover of Startling Stories walked the streets without attracting undue comment. And when he brought out a half-dollar coin in a drugstore, the cops wanted to shoot him on sight as an Arcturian spy. Wait a minute. Seven-foot purple moon-monsters? Earth at war with Arcturus? General Dwight D. Eisenhower in command of Venus Sector? What mad universe was this? One thing was for sure: Keith Winton had to find out fast - or he'd be good and dead, in this universe or any other.

A novel of breathtaking space adventure: Earthblood by SF legend and Bolo and Retief saga creator Keith Laumer writing with award-winning SF luminary Rosel George Brown. Humanity has been defeated by the rapacious Niss millennia ago and lies scattered across the galaxy. Young Roan, raised by aliens, is determined to reclaim his heritage and rediscover the legendary, lost human homeworld. But between Roan and home is a dangerous Niss fleet.

Also included are more tales by Laumer and by Brown, masters of humorous SF adventure with a sharp and often satirical point.

Table of Contents

• Earthblood (1966) novel by Rosel George Brown and Keith Laumer
• The Long Remembered Thunder (1963) novelette by Keith Laumer
• The Other Sky (1968) novella by Keith Laumer
• The Soul Buyer (1963) novelette by Keith Laumer
• Save Your Confederate Money, Boys (1959) short story by Rosel George Brown
• Flower Arrangement (1959) short story by Rosel George Brown
• Fruiting Body (1962) novelette by Rosel George Brown
• Visiting Professor (1961) short story by Rosel George Brown
• Car Pool (1959) novelette by Rosel George Brown
• And a Tooth (1962) short story by Rosel George Brown

Collects:

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

MAN, MONSTER, OR JUNGLE GOD?

Everyone knew him, but to all he was something different. Even he himself did not know who he was -- or what he was. Professor Maxon knew him as the ultimate product of his experiments to create life -- Experiment Number Thirteen. Von Horn knew him as the leader of the Monster Men -- eleven ungodly horrors. Muda Saffir knew him as the stranger who defied every obstacle to pursue him with murderous intent. The Natives knew him as the invincible warrior, the fierce foe of the headhunters of Bulan! Virginia Maxon knew him as the only man who could save her from danger the The Monster Men.

Tarrano, intoxicated by the conquest of two worlds--Venus and Mars--urged on by the power lust, came to Earth to bring it under control, also. But Earth didn't wish outside supervision, thereby precipitating, in the year 2430, the most terrific conflict known to man.

His campaigns were featured by scientific atrocities, but the stubborn resistance of Earth forced Tarrano to abandon his plans and flee to Venus where he received a none too warm welcome in his stronghold, the Gold City. Encouraged by his failureto win the Earth, the Venusians revolted. Even a man of destiny must meet his Waterloo, and Tarrano met his with unflinching courage and daring.

Positively the most unique story of the future ever written!

Good guy Karl Bender is a thirty-something bar owner whose life lacks love and meaning. When he stumbles upon a time-travelling worm hole in his closet, Karl and his best friend Wayne develop a side business selling access to people who want to travel back in time to listen to their favorite bands. It's a pretty ingenious plan, until Karl, intending to send Wayne to 1980, transports him back to 980 instead. Though Wayne sends texts extolling the quality of life in tenth century "Mannahatta," Karl is distraught that he can't bring his friend back.

Enter brilliant, prickly, overweight astrophysicist, Lena Geduldig. Karl and Lena's connection is immediate. While they work on getting Wayne back, Karl and Lena fall in love -- with time travel, and each other. Unable to resist meddling with the past, Karl and Lena bounce around time. When Lena ultimately prevents her own long-ago rape, she alters the course of her life and threatens her future with Karl.

On a future Earth, where invading aliens have forced humanity to revert to a feudal society and conducting scientific research is punishable by death, it's good to be the heir to a duchy. Unless your brother has been burnt as punishment for heresy. And unless you intended to do something about it . . .

The Carver family are out in space, traveling to new worlds to check them out for colonization. But, when Mr. Carver has an accident, and remains out of commission for the trip, his sons, Jon and Jak, step up and take over their trip. The boys use their different talents to make their journey a successful one!

Aircraft designer Dale Currance undertakes a journey to Mars in an effort to capture the prize being offered to the first man to complete an interplanetary journey, but a female stowaway throws his plans into disarray.

Classic novellas and short stories from the Dean of Science Fiction, Robert A. Heinlein. Masterful speculation on what makes us human -- and the problems, opportunities, and adventures humans must face in order to win a superhuman future.

Gulf: in which the greatest superspy of them all is revealed as the leader of a league of supermen the rest of us. The prequel to Heinlein's New York Times best seller Friday.

Lost Legacy: in which it is proved that we are all members of that league of the superhuman -- or would be, if we but had eyes to see.

Plus two great short stories: two of the master's finest: one on the nature of being, the other on what it means to be a man.

Table of Contents:

• Gulf - (1949) - novella
• Elsewhen - (1941) - novelette
• Lost Legacy - (1941) - novella
• Jerry Was a Man - (1947) - novelette

Logic of Empire is a novella by Robert A. Heinlein. It originally appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction, March 1941.

When the United States is destroyed by invading PanAsians, the only hope for the country's survival rests with six men and a newly-developed nuclear weapon.

This novelette was combined with its sequel, "Common Sense", to form "Orphans of the Sky" in 1963.

The gigantic, cylindrical generation ship Vanguard, originally destined for "Far Centaurus", is cruising without guidance through the interstellar medium as a result of a long-ago mutiny that killed most of the officers. Over time, the descendants of the surviving loyal crew have forgotten the purpose and nature of their ship and lapsed into a pre-technological culture marked by superstition. They come to believe the "Ship" is the entire universe, so that "To move the ship" is considered an oxymoron, and references to the Ship's "voyage" are interpreted as religious metaphor. They are ruled by an oligarchy of "officers" and "scientists". Most crew members are simple illiterate farmers, seldom or never venturing to the "upper decks" where the "muties" (an abbreviation of "mutants" or "mutineers") dwell. Among the crew, all identifiable mutants are killed at birth.

It first appeared in the May, 1941 Issue of Astounding Science Fiction, available on Internet Archives.

Planets for sale!

They said that Artur Blord was ruthless, a heartless manipulator whose blind lust for power would ruin the Ridge Stars.

They said he had to be eliminated because he was too much of a threat to their secret.

But just who were they, the accusers of Artur Bloyd?

And what was the secret which Artur Bloyd threatened?

Beyond the answers to these two questions lay a tortured path along which Artur Bloyd compelled himself to travel. Menaced by a terrifying array of lethal forces, Blord risked his life against alien aggressors as well as more human adversaries.

Never knowing at what moment death might overtake him, he fought to fulfill a dream; that he might one day claim the title that riches couldn't buy: Master of the Ridge Stars!

Contents:

• The Aliens ( 1959), novelette
• Fugitive from Space (1954), novella
• Anthropological Note ( 1957), short story
• The Skit-Tree Planet ( 1947), short story (variant of Skit-Tree Planet)
• Thing from the Sky ( 1960), short story

Because Bran Hoddan was a serious electronice engineer, he didn't want any part of his planet's heritage. For he was from Zan -- and Zan's only occupation was spaceship piracy!

This Island Earth's thrills and romance begin when engineer Cal Meacham places a routine order for parts; he never dreams he is making himself a pawn in a struggle for galactic supremacy.

A fixup novel derived from three stories appearing in Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1949 and 1950.

The 1955 film version, directed by Joseph Newman, is one of the best-known science fiction films of the 1950s.

Originally published in 1956, this collection of early gems won acclaim from reviewers all over the country, richly deserving a place as one of six simultaneously published volumes celebrating William Tenn. The Human Angle contains the following: "Project Hush", "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway", "Wednesday's Child, Party of the Two Parts", "The Flat-Eyed Monster", "The Human Angle" and "A Man of Family".

Table of Contents:

• Project Hush - (1954)
• The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway - (1955)
• Wednesday's Child - (1956)
• The Servant Problem - (1955)
• Party of the Two Parts - (1954)
• The Flat-Eyed Monster - (1955)
• The Human Angle - (1948)
• A Man of Family

The Seven Sexes is almost entirely dedicated to the cynicism of nature's prime conman, homo sapiens, in such a variety of stories that it is difficult to believe they all derive from the same source, capped by a hilarious piece of nonsense in which a has-been producer cons the seven variable sexes of Venus into starring in a "typical" Hollywood love epic - with results that defy description.

Contents:

• Child's Play - (1947)
• The Malted Milk Monster - (1959)
• Errand Boy - (1947)
• The House Dutiful - (1948)
• Mistress Sary - (1947)
• Sanctuary - (1957)
• Venus and the Seven Sexes - (1949)
• Bernie the Faust - (1963)

Nerves is a science fiction novella by Lester del Rey, first published in Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1942. It was subsequently expanded into a novel of the same name in 1956. The story deals with a meltdown at a nuclear power plant.

Nominated in 2018 for the 1943 Retro Hugo Award. It has been reprinted many times and can be found in the anthologies Adventures in Time and Space (1943), edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two A (1973), edited by Ben Bova, and The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 4, 1942 (1980), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg, as well as the collection ...And Some Were Human (1948).

The novel is an expansion of a novella of the same name which was first published in 1942.

Nerves is Lester del Rey's frightening novel of a nuclear reactor breakdown in which Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl were scarily and accurately predicted. Del Rey was an important science fiction publisher and an SFFWA Grand Master but none of his work had greater impact than this early novel.

One day (a) reporter for the Paris Soir visited the Berlin Zoo...standing outside the spacious cage housing the newly-acquired Brecht Biped, Fritz, when the world seemed to lurch...Then he was no longer outside the cage looking in, but inside looking out...

Next stop... the moon! Out in the remote California desert Mike Novak was sitting on a powder keg. He was working on the biggest thing since the atom bomb! Hired to build a mock-up fuel tank for a mock-up spaceship, Mike discovered he was looking at a design that could actually work! A design that would soon turn his life upside down. Here is a wildly exciting story torn from newspaper headlines--the story of man's first triumphant step into outer space. It is an unforgettable, nerve-clenching novel of the first moon-rocket and the men who dared to build it--told by one of the great masters of science fiction... C. M. Kornbluth.

In ROCKET SCIENCE, Jay Lake's first novel, Vernon Dunham's friend Floyd Bellamy has returned to Augusta, Kansas after serving in World War II, but he hasn't come back empty-handed: he's stolen a super-secret aircraft right from under the Germans. Vernon doesn't think it's your ordinary run-of-the-mill aircraft. For one thing, it's been buried under the Arctic ice for hundreds of years. When it actually starts talking to him, he realizes it doesn't belong in Kansas-or anywhere on Earth. The problem is, a lot of folks know about the ship and are out to get it, including the Nazis, the U.S. Army-and that's just for starters. Vernon has to figure out how to communicate with the ship and unravel its secrets before everyone catches up with him. If he ends up dead, and the ship falls into the wrong hands, it won't take a rocket scientist to predict the fate of humanity.

She was a restoree, kidnapped. Torn from Earth by a bizarre and nameless black force, Sara had no idea where she was or why she was in a beautiful new body. Controlled by brutal guards and tamed by terror, she could not comprehend her role as a nurse for a man who appeared to be an idiot.

But once she discovered that the planet she had been brought to was Lothar and that the man she was caring for was its regent, Sara knew the restorees had to escape--and fast. And when they did, they became fugitives on a world of multiple evils--bound together on a daring adventure that would either join them for all time... or separate them forever.

Who will save us from the lobsters from outer space?

It is New York City, 1953. Young pulp-fiction writer Kurt Jastrow's world is thrown into disarray when two extraterrestrial lobster-like creatures arrive at the NBC studios. Though rabid fans of Kurt's "scientific" alter-ego, loveable scientist Uncle Wonder, they also judge that the audience of a religious TV program is "a hive of irrationalist vermin." To Jastrow's horror, the crustaceans scheme to vaporize two million viewers when the next show goes on the air.

Now Jastrow and his co-conspirators have a mere forty hours to produce a script so explicitly rational and yet utterly absurd that it will somehow deter the aliens from their diabolical scheme...

An expedition from Earth to Mars discovers a deserted city, the remains of an advanced civilization that died out 50,000 years before. The human scientists recover books and documents left behind, and are puzzled by their contents. Without the Martian equivalent of the Rosetta Stone, how will they ever be able to translate the language of this lost civilization?

Originally published in the February 1957 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, this story was later collected in Federation and anthologized in Prologue to Analog, edited by John W. Campbell, Jr., Great Science Fiction Stories About Mars, edited by T. E. Dikty, Apeman, Spaceman: Anthropological Science Fiction, edited by Leon E. Stover and Harry Harrison, Mars, We Love You: Tales of Mars, Men, and Martians, edited by Jane Hipolito and Willis E. McNelly, Where Do We Go from Here?, edited by Isaac Asimov, and The World Turned Upside Down, edited by Eric Flint, Jim Baen, and David Drake.

Read this story for free at the Gutenberg Library link above.

A collection of Frederik Pohl's short stories, including:

• The Man Who Ate The World
• The Wizards of Pung's Corners
• The Waging Of Peace
• The Snowmen
• The Day The Icicle Works Closed

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1955 and was reprinted on Sci Fiction, September 15, 2004. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Hugo Winners, Volume 1: (1955-61) (1963), edited by Isaac Asimov, Men of War (1984) edited by Jerry Pournelle, and The Great SF Stories 17 (1955) (1988), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collections Far Stars (1961), The Best of Eric Frank Russell (1978) and Major Ingredients: The Selected Short Stories of Eric Frank Russell (2000).

This novelette originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, April 1956. The story can also be found in the anthology 5 Unearthly Visions (1965), edited by Groff Conklin. It is included in the collections Far Stars (1961) and Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (2001).

People hunt and kill one another as public entertainment and to win prizes in "Seventh Victim," the short version of Sheckley's novel The 10th Victim, which was made into a movie.

The twelve other stories in this collection are "The Monsters," "Cost of Living," "The Altar," "Shape," "The Impacted Man," "Untouched by Human Hands," "The King's Wishes," "Warm," "The Demons," "Specialist," "Ritual," and "Beside Still Waters."

From the very beginning of his career, Robert Sheckley was recognized by fans, reviewers, and fellow authors as a master storyteller and the wittiest satirist working in the science fiction field. Open Road is proud to republish his acclaimed body of work, with nearly thirty volumes of full-length fiction and short story collections. Rediscover, or discover for the first time, a master of science fiction who, according to the New York Times, was "a precursor to Douglas Adams."

Table of Contents:

• "The Monsters" (F&SF 1953/3)
• "Cost of Living" (Galaxy 1952/12)
• "The Altar" (Fantastic 1953/7&8)
• "Keep Your Shape" (Galaxy 1953/11; also known as "Shape")
• "The Impacted Man" (Astounding 1952/12)
• "Untouched by Human Hands" (Galaxy 1953/12; also known as "One Man's Poison")
• "The King's Wishes" (F&SF 1953/7)
• "Warm" (Galaxy 1953/6)
• "The Demons" (Fantasy Magazine 1953/3)
• "Specialist" (Galaxy 1953/5)
• "Seventh Victim" (Galaxy 1953/4)
• "Ritual" (Climax 1953; also known as "Strange Ritual")
• "Beside Still Waters" (Amazing 1953/10&11)

In a post-apocalyptic America that has shattered into a hundred perpetually warring fiefdoms, anyone with a loud voice and a doomsday weapon can be king (and probably has been). Duncan Archer--con man, carpetbagger, survivor--has found a way to somehow successfully navigate the end of the world, with its giant killer robots, radioactive mutants, mad scientists, rampant nanotechnology, armed gangs, sea monsters, and 101 unpleasant ways to die.

But when he meets Captain James Barrow, a former OSS agent and the most wanted man in the world, Duncan finds himself a reluctant hero caught up in a whole new level of weird, rollicking adventure...

And the second most wanted man in the world.

Tales from the Radiation Age is a throwback to the pulp-origins of science fiction, painting a vision of the future that's richly detailed, wildly imaginative--and altogether too easy to imagine.

Two reporters looking for a story in the outer reaches of the Solar System come upon a derelict spaceship. Inside, they find the only inhabitant, a beautiful young woman who has been imprisoned for a thousand years in suspended animation, suspended but aware for the whole time. Together they set off on a grand adventure across the vastness of space and time in a search for a race known as the Cosmic Engineers on a mission to save the universe. Originally published as a short novel in Astounding Stories in 1939 and later expanded in this 1950 version, Cosmic Engineers shows the scope and imagination of one of science fictions true masters, Clifford Simak.

Originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in 1939.

They were four of the greatest minds in the Universe: Two men, two women, lost in an experimental spaceship billions of parsecs from home. And as they mentally charted the Cosmos to find their way back to earth, their own loves and hates were as startling as the worlds they encountered.

Here is E. E. Smith's great new novel....

Jimmy Holden was an experiment...

He was normally bright, normal-sized, and enormously curious -- just like most small boys. The only thing different in Jimmy's life was a machine -- a machine which could teach him better, faster, more completely and more thoroughly than any human method yet devised.

It was nothing more than a glorified memorizing contraption, but it filled the mind permanently with whole books of fact and figure -- readin', 'ritin', and 'rithmetic -- plus all the diverse information that an insatiably curious young mind could seek, including how to build the machine that taught him.

So Jimmy quickly became a very valuable experiment indeed. Certain people figured that, properly handled, young James could be a goldmine, and they weren't above murdering in order to get control of him. But even a five-year-old mind will defend itself when attacked.

And nobody had figured on what the machine did not teach -- the fourth "R" -- REASON...

TV megastar Jack Barron hosts the wildly popular Bug Jack Barron, a phone-in show that listens to public gripes and puts politicians and bosses on the spot--live. Naturally Barron pulls his punches for safety's sake... until he tangles with paranoid billionaire Benedict Howards, peddler of cryonic immortality, and walks into a minefield of deadly cover-ups. Violence erupts. Howards believes he can buy anyone, even Barron's estranged wife, even Barron. Barron doesn't mind selling out if the coin is immortality.

It is the sixties -- the 2060s -- and things on Earth are looking grim. Firewood is $7 a stick. Macy's is a giant coal storage bin. Energy laws have outlawed elevators, and skyscrapers stand empty. The U.S. is a second-rate power run by the Mafia and the Teamsters. Space travel is illegal. Worst of all, a new Ice Age is on the way.

What the world needs is a hero. A man rich enough to build his own spaceship. Brave enough to fly it. Crazy enough to want to save the world. Lucky enough to succeed.

And here he comes...

Of all the cities on all the planets of the Solar System, Marsport was the most corrupt. So when one-time prize-fighter, cop, and reporter, Bruce Gordon ends up with a one way ticket to Mars, it was only natural that he would find himself walking a beat collecting graft like the rest of the force. Just trying to survive, he finds himself caught in the middle between two rival gangs as they battle for control of the planet.

Contains:

• Vault of the Beast
• The Great Engine
• The Great Judge
• Secret Unattainable
• The Harmonizer
• Heir Unapparent
• The Second Solution
• Film Library
• Asylum

Contains:

• Earth's Last Fortress
• The Three Eyes of Evil

Centaurus is the destination of the space ship, The Hope of Man. It has been traveling through space for almost twenty years, and still has nine years of flight remaining before Centaurus will be reached. For many on board the craft, Earth has become a vague memory, while for others it is a mere dot in the vast starry reaches of space. Restlessness is evident everywhere; the people want to return to a place they know is inhabited - not continue to an unknown where life is uncertain. Mutiny seems inevitable. Captain Lesbee (the ship's main officer) knows that mutiny breeds mutiny, but what is more significant is his knowledge of Earth's possible obliteration. The one hope is Centaurus. Now more than ever, there can be no turning back. Order has to be maintained even at the price of human life.

After reaching Centaurus and finding it unsuitable to live on, The Hope of Man heads towards the next destination, the Alta system; because the ship at this time is unable to attain light speed it takes decades to travel there. Upon arriving in the system, after mutiny and treachery, The Hope of Man is now captained by Browne, a descendant of the ship's original First Officer. The Hope of Man starts to orbit Alta III in search of a new planet to settle on, but again they find it already inhabited and come under attack from the occupants. During this time we see a struggle for power by various groups. Control changes quickly from one character to another until the arrival of the ship's owner, Avil Hewitt. The novel concludes with Hewitt in charge and the ship finding many planets to inhabit.

Created and adapted from 3 short stories to form a novel. The 3 short stores used were:

• Centaurus II 1947
• Rogue Ship 1950
• The Expendables 1963

Van Vogt's was first to coin the term fixup for this approach.

In the 1940s, the Golden Age of science fiction flowered in the magazine Astounding. Editor John W. Campbell, Jr., discovered and promoted great new writers such as Isaac Asimov in New York, Robert A. Heinlein in California, and A.E. van Vogt in Canada, whose novel Slan was one of the basic works of the era. Throughout the forties and into the fifties Slan was considered the single most important SF novel, the one great book that everyone had to read. Many SF fans rallied to the cry, "Fans are slans."

Today it remains a monument to pulp SF adventure, filled with constant action and a cornucopia of ideas. And maybe fans really are slans. Read it and see for yourself.

Although 30 light years distant, Mittend was Earth's nearest habitable planet. So the bored young heir, Steven Masters, contrived to join the first manned expedition just for a bit of excitment.......When he found himself suddenly back on Earth in another man's body, it was more than he had expected. What then followed was a veritable kaleidoscope of events that was to involve him in multiple personalities, in more expeditions to Mittend, and the affairs of the entity called Mother for whom Mittend itself was just a means to an end----and Steven Masters the handy next step in a galactic program.

The colonies of Fifty Suns, hidden for eons in an ocean of stars, are finally traced by the warship, Star Cluster, of Imperial Earth. Torn By rebellion, Fifty Suns must crush the titanic Earth forces or submit to the domination of the Great Galactic Union. It falls to one man, Peter Maltby, brilliant leader of the feared Mixed Men, to unite the warring factions of his galaxy and guide them to victory.

But first he must resolve his own crossed loyalties. For Captain Maltby of Fifty Suns is also the passionate lover of Lady Laurr, Grand Commander of the Star Cluster, warrior of Imperial Earth...

also published as Mission to the Stars

"Man has conquered space and spread throughout the galaxy. Many civilizations of widely varied life forms on several thousand planets are joined in a vast confederation whose existence is threatened by one paranoid race--the Rull. A form so alien that it may have come from some other galaxy, the Rull are man's equal in intelligence and they have a technology which may be superior. Their space-ship fleets have captured several hundred planets, and the final Armageddon which will decide man's fate and that of his galaxy is imminent.

"Scientist Trevor Jamieson, an advance scout in this war of the worlds, ranges the Milky Way as he tries to formulate a last-ditch plan of defense. Of necessity, he plays a lone hand. The Rulls can change their outward appearance at will, and anyone--even his closest friends and colleagues--may be Rull spies. Jamieson fights preliminary skirmishes on several planets thousands of light-years from home.

"At the end he meets the Rull commander in a man-to-Rull duel in which no holds are barred and the weapons used are the most sophisticated instruments of warfare that man and Rull (and Van Vogt) have yet devised."

This novel is based on stories which originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction Magazine under the following titles:

• "Repetition", 1940
• "Cooperate or Else", 1942
• "The Second Solution", 1942
• "The Rull", 1948
• "The Sound", 1950"

In "One Against the Moon" Donald A. Wollheim spins a tale about a stowaway, on the first rocket to the moon! Trapped in an underground cavern of the moon, Robin Carew faced possible death-alone! Starvation was postponed only briefly. He had the two rabbits and a monkey that had accompanied him in the untested atomic rocket not designed for human passengers. Rescue was unlikely. No one had discovered him hidden within the rocket before the blast-off. He could rely only on himself. From the moment this latter-day Robinson Crusoe discovers edible plants within the lightless cavern, hope of survival grows in him. An underground river leads him to other caverns, where he encounters weird creatures and another being one who speaks in an incomprehensible language. Thus begins a series of remarkable adventures, climaxed by the arrival of a second rocket that brings both danger and good fortune.

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.

Alpha Centauri or Die!

Robot alert - stop that starship!

Legend of Lost Earth

Only traitors talk of Terra.

Collision Course

The crew of the XV-ftl was looking forward to shore leave, vacation, and a chance to see their families after a month in space. But once they brought back the news that they had discovered aliens, they were doomed to another, and longer, journey. Accompanying them on the return were several technical experts, who seemed to be more interested in squabbling with each other than meeting the first alien race in the history of humankind. But face to face with the blue humanoid Norglans, everyone began to realise just how important these first meetings could be - for they could make the difference between peaceful coexistence in space and interstellar war!

The Nemesis from Terra

Rick Urquhart was going to conquer the turmoil-ridden planet of Mars. He was penniless and unknown, but there could be no doubt that he would rule the Red Planet--the ancient Martian mystic had made the prophecy, there was no way fate could cheat him of his prize.

But there were powerful interests on both Earth and Mars who didn't believe in prophecies--and they were going to undo Rick's future before it had a chance to begin.

Table of Contents:

• Story-Teller of Many Worlds - (1977) - essay by Edmond Hamilton
• The Jewel of Bas - (1944) - novella
• The Vanishing Venusians - (1945) - novelette
• The Veil of Astellar - (1944) - novelette
• The Moon that Vanished - (1948) - novelette
• Enchantress of Venus - (1949) - novella
• The Woman from Altair - (1951) - novelette
• The Last Days of Shandakor - (1952) - novelette
• Shannach - The Last - (1952) - novella
• The Tweener - (1955) - shortstory
• The Queer Ones - (1957) - novelette
• Afterword - (1977) - essay by Leigh Brackett
• Addendum - (1977) - essay by Leigh Brackett
• Mars - (1977) - shortstory by Margaret Howes
• Mars (maps) - (1977) - interior artwork by Margaret Howes

Greed pulls the archaeologist Matt Carse into the forgotten tomb of the Martian god Rhiannon and plunges the unlikely hero into the Red Planet's fantastic past, when vast oceans covered the land and the legendary Sea-Kings ruled from terraced palaces of decadence and delight. Talented enough to co-write The Big Sleep film with William Faulkner and imaginative enough to pen the original screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back, Leigh Brackett is a giant in the science-fiction field, and The Sword of Rhiannon is one of her most popular adventure tales.

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!

Beyond the Vanishing Point

THEY OPENED THE PANDORA'S BOX OF ATOMIC TRAVEL

When George Randolph first caught sight of Orena, he was astounded by its gleaming perfection. Here were hills and valleys, lakes and streams, glowing with the light of the most precious of metals. And, more astonishing than that, it was a world of miniature perfection--an infinitely tiny universe within a golden atom!

But for Randolph it was also a world aglow with danger. Somewhere in its tiny vastness were the friends he had to rescue. Captives of a madman, they had been reduced to native Orena size; to return to Earth, they needed the growth capsules Randolph was bringing them. It was up to Randolph to find them--and quickly--for the longer they stayed tiny, the closer they came to passing BEYOND THE VANISHING POINT!

The Secret of Zi

For something like two hundred and fifty years Earth had been dominated by humanoid aliens from the star world of Alishang. But man's spirit refused to be conquered. There was a world-wide underground planning for the day of final liberation. And there were four leaders who knew the secret that would guarantee victory - the secret of Zi.

Rupert Clinton, intelligence man for this underground, was not one of those four; yet somewhere deep in the recesses of his subconscious mind, he knew Zi's secret.

The Planeteers

Collection containing:

• The Brain Stealers of Mars - novelette
• The Double Minds - novelette
• The Immortality Seekers - novelette
• The Tenth World - novelette
• The Brain Pirates - novelette

The Ultimate Weapon

RED SUN RISING:

The star Mira was unpredictably variable. Sometimes it was blazing, brilliant and hot. Other times it was oddly dim, cool, shedding little warmth on its many planets. Gresth Gkae, leader of the Mirans, was seeking a better star, one to which his "people" could migrate. That star had to be steady, reliable, with a good planetary system. And in his astronomical searching, he found Sol.

With hundreds of ships, each larger than whole Terrestrial spaceports, and traveling faster than the speed of light, the Mirans set out to move in to Solar regions and take over.

And on Earth there was nothing which would be capable of beating off this incredible armada -- until Buck Kendall stumbled upon THE ULTIMATE WEAPON.

Lord of the Trees

"Having lived long enough with the charming fairy tale created by my biographer, I feel the time has come for the truth to be known. I propose to tell all; of the origins of The Nine, the elixir that gives us nearly eternal youth and superhuman strength, the struggles between us that set the world atremble."

The follow-up to Jose Farmer's shocking and controversial A Feast Unknown.

The Mad Goblin

They were known simply as the Nine - grim and ancient rulers who thirty thousand years ago had discovered the key to eternal life and ever since had secretly held the world in thrall.

Once, Doc Caliban had been their servant and had shared their secrets. Now, appalled by their tyranny, he has turned against them, daring to challenge their centuries-old supremacy. Together with two henchmen whose superhuman skills match his own, Caliban sets out on the trail of the deadliest of the Nine: the mad goblin Iwaldi, the very incarnation of evil...

The Paradox Men

Set after the Third Great War, North and South America are united into one country: Imperial America. A slave state run by a small noble elite who flaunt their wealth by using, and abusing, the one commodity that only the rich can have: human labour. But working underground, persecuted by the police, is an organization dedicated to the overthrow of government and the existing way of life and the establishment of freedom.

The Society of Thieves was the only organization that flouted authority in America Imperial: they robbed the rich to buy freedom for the slaves. They were well equipped and trained for their job and had friends and informers in high places ready to reveal where the wealth of the nobles was hidden. And Alar was the best Thief of them all - for he had senses not found in ordinary men, senses that accurately warned him when danger was near. But Alar had amnesia and did not know his true identity though sometimes he sensed that there was a purpose in his actions that was not entirely his own volition.

When Keiris, wife of the Imperial Chancellor saw him, she sensed that he was something special and helped him to elude pursuit even though it put her own life in danger. And in trips to the Moon and even the Sun itself, Alar begins to see what part he is destined to play in the struggle for men's freedom.

Dome Around America

What new menace was besieging mankind's last refuge?

The Earth had been stripped bare of the atmosphere and water, its surface left an airless and lifeless desert...except for America. A dome of energy had been erected around the U.S. in the nick of time and only within this vast transparent dome could men and women live in safety. Until the moment Barry Thane spotted a moving thing outside the dome!

Something was there where only Death reigned. Something that was spying on the dome, trying to break in and destroy Earth's last oasis! But what was it...and why?

Barry's single-handed struggle with the unknown, his own break-out into the outside world of airless terror, makes one of the most exciting novels that Jack Williamson, master of science fiction, has ever written.

E. C. "Scar" Gordon was on the French Riviera recovering from a tour of combat in Southeast Asia , but he hadn't given up his habit of scanning the Personals in the newspaper. One ad in particular leapt out at him:

"ARE YOU A COWARD? This is not for you. We badly need a brave man. He must be 23 to 25 years old, in perfect health, at least six feet tall, weigh about 190 pounds, fluent English, with some French, proficient in all weapons, some knowledge of engineering and mathematics essential, willing to travel, no family or emotional ties, indomitably courageous and handsome of face and figure. Permanent employment, very high pay, glorious adventure, great danger. You must apply in person, rue Dante, Nice, 2me etage, apt. D."

How could you not answer an ad like that, especially when it seemed to describe you perfectly? Well, except maybe for the "handsome" part, but that was in the eye of the beholder anyway. So he went to that apartment and was greeted by the most beautiful woman he'd ever met. She seemed to have many names, but agreed he could call her "Star." A pretty appropriate name, as it turned out, for the empress of twenty universes.

Robert A. Heinlein's one true fantasy novel, Glory Road is as much fun today as when he wrote it after Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein proves himself as adept with sword and sorcery as with rockets and slide rules and the result is exciting, satirical, fast-paced, funny and tremendously readable -- a favorite of all who have read it. Glory Road is a masterpiece of escapist entertainment with a typically Heinleinian sting in its tail. Tor is proud to return this all-time classic to hardcover to be discovered by a new generation of readers.

The Mutant Weapon

The only links between the far-flung space colonies were the Medical Services spaceships. When these lonely travelers paid a call, they were always given a royal welcome. So why did the landing grid on Marix III try to destroy Med Serviceman Calhoun's ship?

The Pirates of Zan

Because Bran Hoddan was a serious electronice engineer, he didn't want any part of his planet's heritage. For he was from Zan -- and Zan's only occupation was spaceship piracy!

The Sky is Falling

Dave stared around the office. He went to the window and stared upwards at the crazy patchwork of the sky. For all he knew, in such a sky there might be cracks. In fact, as he looked, he could make out a rift, and beyond that a... hole... a small patch where there was no color, and yet the sky there was not black. There were no stars there, though points of light were clustered around the edges, apparently retreating.

Badge of Infamy

Daniel Feldman was a doctor once. He made the mistake of saving a friend's life in violation of Medical Lobby rules. Now, he's a pariah, shunned by all, forbidden to touch another patient. But things are more loose on Mars. There, Doc Feldman is welcomed by the colonists, even as he's hunted by the authorities. But, when he discovers a Martian plague may soon wipe out humanity on two planets, Feldman finds himself a pivotal figure. War erupts. Earth is poised to wipe out the Mars colony utterly. A cure to the plague is the price of peace, and only Feldman can find it.

The Plot Against Earth

NEVER FOLLOW A FALLING STAR!

The humanoid worlds of the galaxy were alarmed! Somehow, somewhere the mind-destroying hypnojewels were being trafficked in.

An uneasy Earth, newcomer to the ranks of the civilized planets, sent Lloyd Catton to the Interworld Crime Commission on Morilar to investigate. Although the Commission had made little progress until then, after his arrival things started to happen fast.

For it didn't take Catton long to realize that the hypnojewels were but the thin edge of a murderous wedge that was calculated to shove the Earth back again into the helpless isolation of a world returned to savagery

Recruit for Andromeda

Many had gone - none had returned.

Table of Contents:

• Four-Day Planet - (1961) - novel by H. Beam Piper
• Lone Star Planet - novel by H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire (variant of A Planet for Texans 1958)

Read Four-Day Planet for free at Project Gutenberg.
Read Lone Star Planet for free at Project Gutenberg.

Contents:

• Intro by Lester Del Rey
• Shambleau
• Black Thirst
• The Bright Illusion
• Black God's Kiss
• Tryst in Time
• Greater Than Gods
• Fruit of Knowledge
• No Woman Born
• Daemon
• Vintage Season
• Afterword by C.L. Moore.

Classic Science Fiction

Here in one superlative volume 17 Science-Fiction tales by a master storyteller.

"The Midas Plague" - They had committed the greatest crime: failure to consume enough! So their punishment was to consume more and more and more....

"The Day the Icicle Works Closed" - The world was facing total unemployment, and the people had only one thing left to hock, their bodies!

"Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus" - There was peace on Earth. But joy to all men? Well, that was another matter!

"The Martian in the Attic" - What's the value of a real, live Martian? Duniop was determined to find out - and he did!

"Tunnel Under the World" - Things are not always what they seem, in fact. Not even what they seem to seem!

And lots more!

Table of Contents:

• A Variety of Excellence - (1975) - essay by Lester del Rey
• The Tunnel Under the World - (1955)
• Punch - (1961)
• Three Portraits and a Prayer - (1962)
• Day Million - (1966)
• Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus - (1956)
• We Never Mention Aunt Nora - (1958)
• Father of the Stars - (1964)
• The Day the Martians Came - (1967)
• The Midas Plague - (1954)
• The Snowmen - (1959)
• How to Count on Your Fingers - (1956)
• Grandy Devil - (1955)
• Speed Trap - (1967)
• The Richest Man in Levittown - (1959)
• The Day the Icicle Works Closed - (1960)
• The Hated - (1958)
• The Martian in the Attic - (1960)
• The Census Takers - (1956)
• The Children of Night - (1964)
• What the Author Has to Say About All This - (1975) - essay by Frederik Pohl

The World of Null-A

It is the year 2650 and Earth has become a world of non-Aristotelianism, or Null-A. This is the story of Gilbert Gosseyn, who lives in that future world where the Games Machine, made up of twenty-five thousand electronic brains, sets the course of people's lives. Gosseyn isn't even sure of his own identity, but realizes he has some remarkable abilities and sets out to use them to discover who has made him a pawn in an interstellar plot.

The Universe Maker

Did you ever hear of the Inter-Time Society for Psychological Adjustments? Well, neither had Morton Cargill in 1953 when he accidentally killed a girl. A year later that very girl turned up, apparently alive, and announced that the mysterious society had condemned him to death! Cargill's astounding adventures began when he escaped the execution chamber to find himself in the far future. Three conflicting societies were hunting for him, to use him in their own desperate schemes. There were the Floaters, a nation of aerial vagabonds. There were the Tweeners, who dreamed of world conquest. And finally, interwoven through everything, were the sinister figures of the Shadow Men-supermen without visible substance.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1962) - essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• Belief - (1953) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
• Pandora's Planet - [Pandora's Planet - 1] - (1956) - novelette by Christopher Anvil
• Sound Decision - (1956) - novelette by Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett
• Omnilingual - (1957) - novelette by H. Beam Piper
• Triggerman - (1958) - shortstory by J. F. Bone
• A Filbert Is a Nut - (1959) - shortstory by Rick Raphael
• Business as Usual, During Alterations - (1958) - novelette by Ralph Williams
• Pushbutton War - (1960) - shortstory by Joseph P. Martino
• We Didn't Do Anything Wrong, Hardly - (1959) - shortstory by Roger Kuykendall
• Minor Ingredient - (1956) - shortstory by Eric Frank Russell

THREE AGAINST THE STARS!

A sky pirate armed with superior weapons of his own invention...

First contact with an alien race dangerous enough to threaten the safety of two planets...

The arrival of an unseen dark sun whose attendant marauders aimed at the very end of civilization in this Solar System...

These were the three challenges that tested the skill and minds of the brilliant team of scientist-astronauts Arcot, Wade, and Morey. Their initial adventures are a classic of science fiction which first brought the name of their author, John W. Campbell, Jr., into prominence as a master of the inventive imagination -- long before he became the editor of Astounding/Analog and changed the field of science fiction forever!

Collection of three Arcot, Wade and Morley stories originally published in 1930: "Piracy Preferred", "Solarite", and "The Black Star Passes." With an introduction by Campbell.

The alien spaceship was unthinkably huge, enormously powerful, apparently irresistible. It came from the void and settled on Earth, striking awe into the hearts of all who saw it. Its mission, however, was not conquest -- but a call for help!

First contact was a job for the brilliant team of scientists, Arcot, Wade, and Morey. And what they received was an offer of an alliance against an invading foe so powerful that no known force could turn it back!

John W. Campbell's INVADERS FROM THE INFINITE is a veritable odyssey of the universe, exploring world after world and uncovering cosmic secret after cosmic secret. Here is a classic space opera that may never be surpassed!

Contents:

• 5 - The Man in the Moon - (1950) - novelette
• 29 - Please to Remember - (1953) - shortstory
• 41 - Tourists to Terra - (1950) - shortstory
• 50 - The Hatchetman - (1951) - novelette by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds
• 97 - Mercy Flight - (1951) - shortstory
• 109 - One of Our Planets Is Missing! - (1950) - shortstory
• 121 - Final Appraisal - (1952) - shortstory
• 134 - Six-Legged Svengali - (1950) - shortstory by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds
• 145 - Troubador - (1951) - shortstory
• 157 - The Word from the Void - (1950) - shortstory
• 162 - Your Soul Comes C.O.D. - (1952) - shortstory
• 168 - Desperate Remedy - (1954) - novelette
• 202 - After Some Tomorrow - (1956) - shortstory
• 219 - Off Course - (1954) - shortstory
• 229 - United We Stand - (1950) - shortstory
• 237 - Optical Illusion - (1953) - shortstory
• 241 - I. Q. - (1961) - shortstory
• 261 - Stowaway - (1953) - novelette
• 289 - Halftripper - (1951) - shortstory
• 298 - Ask Me No Questions! - (1951) - shortstory
• 310 - D. P. from Tomorrow - (1953) - shortstory

Asimov combines many of his science fiction favorites from the thirties with his personal reflections on his early years, interests, and influences.

Table of Contents:

• Untitled Introduction - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Part Four: 1933 - (1974) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• The Man Who Awoke - (1933) - novelette by Laurence Manning
• Tumithak in Shawm - (1933) - novella by Charles R. Tanner
• Part Five: 1934 - (1974) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Colossus - (1934) - novelette by Donald Wandrei
• Born of the Sun - (1934) - novelette by Jack Williamson
• Sidewise in Time - (1934) - novella by Murray Leinster
• Old Faithful - (1934) - novelette by Raymond Z. Gallun

Asimov combines many of his science fiction favorites from the thirties with his personal reflections on his early years, interests, and influences.

Table of Contents:

• Before the Golden Age, Book 3 - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Part Six: 1935 - (1974) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• The Parasite Planet - (1935) - novelette by Stanley G. Weinbaum
• Proxima Centauri - (1935) - novella by Murray Leinster
• The Accursed Galaxy - (1935) - shortstory by Edmond Hamilton
• Part Seven: 1936 - (1974) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• He Who Shrank - (1936) - novella by Henry Hasse
• The Human Pets of Mars - (1936) - novella by Leslie F. Stone
• The Brain Stealers of Mars - (1936) - shortstory by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• Devolution - (1936) - shortstory by Edmond Hamilton
• Big Game - (1974) - shortstory by Isaac Asimov
• Part Eight: 1937 - (1974) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Other Eyes Watching - (1937) - essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• Minus Planet - (1937) - novelette by John D. Clark, Ph.D.
• Past, Present and Future - (1937) - novelette by Nat Schachner
• Part Nine: 1938 - (1974) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• The Men and the Mirror - (1938) - novelette by Ross Rocklynne

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in If, November 1965. The story can also be found in the anthologies World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and Visions of Wonder (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf. It is included in the collection Berserker (1967).

Bandit, murderer, known to all, seen by none...has he killed a thousand men? Has he saved a dozen world? His legend is as large as the Rim itself, his trail as elusive as a wisp of starlight in the empty realms of space. The reward for him is the largest in history.

Eisner Award-nominated writer Kelly Sue DeConnick (Pretty Deadly, Captain Marvel) and Valentine De Landro (X-Factor) team up to bring you the premiere volume of Bitch Planet, a deliciously vicious riff on women-in-prison sci-fi exploitation.

In a future just a few years down the road in the wrong direction, a woman's failure to comply with her patriarchal overlords will result in exile to the meanest penal planet in the galaxy. When the newest crop of fresh femmes arrive, can they work together to stay alive or will hidden agendas, crooked guards, and the deadliest sport on (or off!) Earth take them to their maker?

THE BLIND SPOT is surely the great classic novel of parallel worlds. It is one of the most enthralling science-fiction books ever written. At once a fantasy adventure, an exceptional mystery, it is a new concept that touches the very framework of reality.

What was "The Blind Spot?" A room in San Francisco where strange things happened--or a doorway into another cosmos, a different world, or perhaps the key to the past or future?

The fantastic events that follow from its deceptively simple opening are the sort of stuff from which Charles Fort wove his world-shaking books and A. Meritt wrought fabulous novels. THE BLIND SPOT is an experience in science-fiction imagination not to be missed by anyone.

72 hours in Hell! Dis was a harsh, inhospitable, dangerous place and the Magter made it worse. They might have been human once -- but they were something else now. The Magter had only one desire -- to kill everything, themselves, their planet, the universe if they could. Brion Brandd was sent in at the eleventh hour. His mission was to save Dis, but it looked as though he was going to preside over its annihilation.

Elsewhere I have set down, for whatever interest they have in this, the 25th Century, my personal recollections of the 20th Century. Now it occurs to me that my memoirs of the 25th Century may have an equal interest 500 years from now - particularly in view of that unique perspective from which I have seen the 25th Century, entering it as I did, in one leap across a gap of 492 years. This statement requires elucidation. There are still many in the world who are not familiar with my unique experience. Five centuries from now there may be many more, especially if civilization is fated to endure any worse convulsions than those which have occurred between 1975 A.D. and the present time. I should state therefore, that I, Anthony Rogers, am, so far as I know, the only man alive whose normal span of eighty-one years of life has been spread over a period of 573 years. To be precise, I lived the first twenty-nine years of my life between 1898 and 1927; the other fifty-two since 2419. The gap between these two, a period of nearly five hundred years, I spent in a state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of katabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on my physical or mental faculties.

This novella version of Armageddon 2419 A.D. was the origin point for the character Buck Rogers in all its various formats - comic strips, comic books, radio shows, a film serial, TV shows, movies, a role-playing game, a board game, video games, and a raft of spin-off books.

Callahan's Place is the neighborhood tavern to all of time and space, where the regulard are anything but. Pull up a chair. grab a glass of your favorite, and listen to the stories spun by time travelers, cybernetic aliens, telepaths... and a bunch of regular folks on a mission to save the world, one customer at a time.

When genius scientist Roger Newton, his wife Elaine, and his fellow scientist Simon Wright leave planet Earth to do research in an isolated laboratory on the moon, and to escape the predations of Victor Corvo (originally: Victor Kaslan), a criminal politician who wished to use Newton's inventions for his own gain. Simon's body is old and diseased and Roger enables him to continue doing research by transplanting his healthy brain into an artificial case (originally immobile--carried around by Grag--later equipped with lifter units). Working together, the two scientists create an intelligent robot called Grag, and an android with shape-shifting abilities called Otho. One day, Corvo arrives on the moon and murders the Newtons; but before he can reap the fruits of his atrocity, Corvo and his killers are in turn slain by Grag and Otho.

The deaths of the Newtons leave their son, Curtis, to be raised by the unlikely trio of Otho, Grag, and Simon Wright. Under their tutelage, Curtis grows up to be a brilliant scientist and as strong and fast as any champion athlete. He also grows up with a strong sense of responsibility and hopes to use his scientific skills to help people. With that goal in his mind, he calls himself Captain Future; Simon, Otho and Grag are referred to as the Futuremen in subsequent stories. Other recurring characters in the series are the old space marshal Ezra Gurney, the beautiful Planet Patrol agent Joan Randall (who provides a love interest for Curtis), and James Carthew, President of the Solar System whose office is in New York City and who calls upon Future in extreme need.

This novel is included in "The Collected Captain Future: Volume One".

Curtis Newton, the Wizard of Science, and His Trio of Futuremen Blaze a Trail Across the Stars to Forestall the Coup of Dr. Zarro-Leader of a Legion of Peril!

This novel is included in "The Collected Captain Future: Volume One".

Striking terror on four worlds, a mysterious raider throttles interplanetary commerce--and Earth summons Curtis Newton, the Wizard of Science, and his trio of Futuremen to combat this sinister menace....

This novel is included in "The Collected Captain Future: Volume One".

One of the most popular and influential science fiction tales of all time, The Land That Time Forgot was first published in book form in 1924. Set on the lost island of Caspak in the South Pacific, this novel is a dazzling blend of imagination, daring adventure, and intriguing scientific speculation.

Hidden behind towering, impassable cliffs, Caspak will not easily give up its secrets. Unique and terrible animals and peoples inhabit the island. Dinosaurs terrorize tropical jungles to the south, while menacing winged humanoids dwell in cities on a large island in the north. Caught between these threats are scattered groups of human beings. Despite their differences, however, Caspak's animals and peoples are all connected in a mysterious and marvelous way.

This commemorative edition features the entire Caspak trilogy in one volume, as intended by the author. This includes: The Land That Time Forgot (1918), The People That Time Forgot (1918), and Out of Time's Abyss (1918).

In his introduction, Mike Resnick celebrates Edgar Rice Burroughs and the timeless appeal of this story. Also included are Scott Tracy Griffin's glossary of terms from the Caspakian language, a rare map of Caspak drawn by Burroughs, and the classic J. Allen St. John illustrations.

Bowen Tyler's fabulous adventure began with a terror-haunted trip as a captive in an enemy submarine-only to end on the rocky shores of a monster-ridden lost world where Time had stopped.

"...I have experienced a cosmic cycle, with all its changes and evolutions for that which I have seen with my own eyes in this brief interval of time-things that no other mortal eye had seen before, glimpses of a world past, a world dead, a world so long dead that even in the lowest Cambrian stratum no trace of it remains. Fused with the melting inner crust, it has passed forever beyond the ken of man other than in that lost pocket of the Earth whither fate has borne me and where my doom is sealed."

Thus begins one of the most thrilling science-fiction series that the creator of Barsoom and Tarzan ever conceived-the epic of the lost continent of Caprona and of the American who first set foot there.

This Novel is contained in the collection The Land Time Forgot.

When Tom Billings set out to rescue Bowen Tyler from the lost continent of Caprona, he equipped himself with all the weaponry the modern world afforded, and a light hydroplane would allow him to scale the perilous wall surrounded the island: Modern Technology and American courage in a battle to the death against dinosaurs, cave-tigers and savage submen -- in Caspak, the land of THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT. I'll never forget my first impressions of Caspak as I circled in, high over the surrounding cliffs. From the plane I looked down through a mist upon the blurred landscape beneath me...

I could see the surface of the water literally black with creatures of some sort... the general impression was of a vast army of amphibious monsters. The land was almost equally alive with crawling, leaping, running, flying things. It was one of the latter which nearly did it for me.... The first intimation I had of it was the sudden blotting out of the sunlight from above, and as I glanced quickly up, I saw a most terrific creature swooping down upon me. It must have been fully eighty feet long... with an equal spread of wings... It was coming straight down toward the muzzle of the machine-gun and I let it have it right in the breast; but still it came for me.....

This Novel is contained in the collection The Land Time Forgot.

This is the tale of how the leader of the group, Bradley, was carried off by the flying men of Caprona, and deposited into the clutches of the diabolical Wieroos who used the skulls of their victims to pave the streets of their city.

Young traveler and adventurer Bowen Tyler has been marooned with his wife on Caspak, a mysterious and uncharted land far in the southern seas. Here Time's laws have been reversed, and the denizens of a thousand lost ages struggle for supremacy. Amidst these terrors, Bowen Tyler seeks to find and rescue his lovely wife.

By an uncanny stroke of luck, Tyler has contacted the outside world. To his aid came Tom Billings in a powerful seaplane, flying over the unscalable cliffs that wall Caspak from the world. But the tropic jungles of this weird valley are alive with a thousand dangers, and Billings, too, has become lost, leaving his associates, Bradley and the others, behind at the hastily-constructed "Fort Out of Time's Abyss Dinosaur" to await his return with Bowen Tyler.

This Novel is contained in the collection The Land Time Forgot.

In the 25th Century the British Space Empire faces the gathering menace of the evil ant-soldiers of the Ghast Empire hive, hell-bent on galactic domination and the extermination of all humanoid life. Isambard Smith is the square-jawed, courageous, and somewhat asinine new commander of the battle damaged light freighter John Pym, destined to take on the alien threat because nobody else is available. Together with his bold crew--a skull-collecting alien lunatic, an android pilot who is actually a fugitive sex toy, and a hamster called Gerald--he must collect new-age herbalist Rhianna Mitchell from the laid back New Francisco orbiter and bring her back to safety in the Empire. Straightforward enough--except the Ghasts want her too. If he is to get back to Blighty alive, Smith must defeat void sharks, a universe-weary android assassin, and John Gilead, psychopathic naval officer from the fanatically religious Republic of New Eden before facing his greatest enemy: a ruthless alien warlord with a very large behind.

Tea... a beverage brewed from the fermented dried leaves of the shrub Camelli sinensis and imbibed by all the great civilizations in the galaxy's history; a source of refreshment, stimulation, and, above all else, of moral fiber--without which the British Space Empire must surely crumble to leave Earth at the mercy of its enemies. Sixty percent of the Empire's tea is grown on one world--Urn, principal planet of the Didcot system. If Earth is to keep fighting, the tea must flow! When a crazed cult leader overthrows the government of Urn, Isambard Smith and his vaguely competent crew find themselves saddled with new allies--a legion of tea-obsessed nomads, an overly-civilized alien horde. and a commando unit so elite that it has only five members. Only together can they defeat the self-proclaimed God Emperor of Didcot and confront the true power behind the coup--the sinister legions of the Ghast Empire and Smith's old enemy, Commander 462.

From the depths of Space a new foe rises to do battle with mankind: the British Space Empire is threatened by the lemming-people of Yull, ruthless enemies who attack without mercy, fear, or any concept of self preservation. At the call of their war god, the Yull have turned on the Empire, hell-bent on conquest and destruction in their rush towards the cliffs of destiny. When the Yullian army is forced to retreat at the battle of the River Tam, the disgraced Colonel Vock swears revenge on the clan of Suruk the Slayer, Isambard Smith's homicidal alien friend. Now Smith and his crew must defend the Empire and civilize the stuffing out of a horde of bloodthirsty lemming-men--which would be easy were it not for a sinister robotics company, a Ghast general with a fondness for genetic engineering, and an ancient brotherhood of Morris Dancers--who may yet hold the key to victory.

In the 25th century the future of the galaxy rests on a knife-edge. The actions of one man could save the British Space Empire or leave Earth at the mercy of deadly legions of ant-people. That one man is Captain Isambard Smith, and Earth is in a lot of trouble. After blowing up a top-secret enemy base, Space Captain Smith and his crew deserve a rest. But their holiday ends when forces unknown destroy the robot convoy they were meant to be guarding. Smith finds himself in hot pursuit of a mysterious vessel that can pass through dimensions, incurring the wrath of the dreaded Grand Witchfinder of New Eden--which would be much easier to deal with if his pilot wasn't cowering under the dashboard and his spaceship wasn't infested with man-eating toads. Meanwhile, the Empire is gathering its allies to form a united front against alien tyranny. Unfortunately, the delicate negotiations have been entrusted to Major Wainscott, a man who knows no fear and very little about diplomacy or trousers. Once again, Captain Smith must summon all his courage to unite humanity behind the Empire. His quest will take him on a journey to face his greatest fears: from the depths of space, through hell itself--and even to France.

The lemming men of Yullia are rushing headlong towards the cliffs of destiny, and they intend to take the British Space Empire with them. When moral fiber clashes with lemming spirit, only one thing is certain--surrender is no longer an option. In the back-streets of Ravnavar, greatest planet of the Space Empire, revolution stirs. Someone will have to go deep undercover, take on the robot underworld, and reveal what lies behind the mysterious Popular Front. Worst of all, Major Wainscott--commando and nudist--has gone renegade in the most dangerous jungle in the galaxy. Someone will have to travel upriver, terminate Wainscott's command, and make him put some trousers on. That someone is Isambard Smith. Once more, Smith and his crew must leap into action, civilize the galaxy, and force legions of angry rodents to stop their nonsense at once. Smith is destined to topple a mighty empire. The only question is--whose empire will it be?

A CITY LAUNCHES ITSELF INTO THE GALAXY!

The noise was horrifying. He had never heard anything even a fraction as loud, but there could be no doubt about what it was: the city's spindizzies were sounding the alert.

Then the whole city seemed to be rocking heavily, like a ship in a storm. At one instant, the street ended in nothing but sky; at the next, he was staring at a wall of sheared earth, its rim looming cliff-like, fifty feet or more above the new margin of the city; then the blank sky was back again...

Here is a letter, attributed to Standard Magazines editor Leo Margulies, sent to science fiction fanzine editors in 1939. This text is from Bob Tucker's classic fanzine Le Zombie (vol. 2, No. 4, Oct 28, 1939)

"Dear Mr. Tucker,

Can there be anything new in scientifiction? We say yes -- and offer CAPTAIN FUTURE. Fellows, CAPTAIN FUTURE is tops in scientifantasy! A brand new book-length magazine novel devoted exclusively to a star-studded quartet of the most glamorous characters in the Universe. And the most colorful planeteer in the Solar System to lead them -- CAPTAIN FUTURE. You'll find Captain Future the man of Tomorrow! His adventures will appear in each & every issue of the magazine that bears his name.

He ought to be good. We spent months planning the character, breathing the fire of life into him. For we feel that the man who controls the destinies of nine planets has to be good. But don't take our word for it -- get your first copy of CAPTAIN FUTURE the day it hits the newstands and marvel at the wizard of science as he does his stuff on every thrilling page.

You'll find Captain Future the most dynamic space-farer the cosmos has ever seen. A super-man who uses the forces of super-science so that you will believe in them. You'll see Captain Future's space craft, the Comet spurting thru the ether with such hurricane fury you'll think Edmond Hamilton, the author, has hurled you on a comet's tail.

And you'll agree that Captain Future's inhuman cavalcade -- the Futuremen -- supplement the world's seven wonders. There's Grag, the metal robot; Otho, the synthetic android; and Simon Wright, the living brain. A galaxy of the ultimate immortal forces!

So come on....give the most scintillating magazine ever to appear on the scientifiction horizon the once over. You'll be telling us, as we tell you now, that CAPTAIN FUTURE represents fantasy at it's unbeatable best.

CAPTAIN FUTURE will appear at all newsstands in a few weeks. Price, 15 cents. First issue features Edmond Hamilton's novel, CAPTAIN FUTURE AND THE SPACE EMPEROR. Cover by Rozen. Illustrations by Wesso. Short stories by Eric Frank Russell and O. Sarri. Brand new departments -- THE WORLDS OF TOMORROW, THE FUTUREMEN, UNDER OBSERVATION, and THE MARCH OF SCIENCE.

That's all.

--Leo Margulies"

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Richard A. Lupoff
• Original Magazine Editorial
• "Captain Future and the Space Emperor" (Captain Future, Winter 1940) - novel
• "Calling Captain Future" (Captain Future, Spring 1940) - novel
• "Captain Future's Challenge" (Captain Future, Summer 1940) - novel
• "The Triumph of Captain Future" (Captain Future, Fall 1940) - novel
• The Future of Captain Future (Captain Future, Fall 1942) essay by Oscar J. Friend
• Artwork Gallery

High above the skyscrapers of New York, Doc Savage engages in deadly combat with the red-fingered survivors of an ancient, lost civilization. Then, with his amazing crew, he journeys to the mysterious "lost valley" to search for a fabulous treasure and to destroy the mysterious Red Death.

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

More information about The Man Of Bronze available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

With a mysterious black Chinaman, Doc Savage and his amazing crew journey to the jungles of Indo-China in a desperate gamble to destroy the infamous Thousand-headed Man.

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

More information about The Thousand-Headed Man available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Doc Savage and his fabulous crew journey to Tibet in pursuit of their most dangerous adversary, the evil genius Mo-Gwei. Battling against overwhelming odds, they try to stop him from conquering the world with a diabolical machine known as the Blue Meteor, a screaming blue visitor from space that turns men into raving animals!

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

More information about Meteor Menace available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Menaced by "the strange clicking danger," Doc Savage and his fabulous five-man army take a desperate journey on a polar submarine in search of a missing ocean liner and a dazzling treasure. Their only clue is a map tattooed on the back of a blind violinist. Awaiting them at their destination is the most terrible killer the Arctic has ever known.

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

More information about The Polar Treasure available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Seeking to avenge his brother's murder, Doc Savage and his daring crew become involved in a desperate hunt for the lost treasure of the pirate, Henry Morgan. Stalking them every inch of the way is the archfiend, El Rabanos, and his strange ally, the werewolf's paw!

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

More information about Brand of the Werewolf available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

While seeking to solve the mystery of "the trained vampire murders," Doc Savage and his amazing crew suddenly find themselves prisoners of Sol Yuttal and Hadi-Mot aboard a hijacked Zeppelin. Their deadly destination is a fabulous lost diamond mine guarded by carnivorous plants and monstrous, bloodsucking bats.

More information about The Lost Oasis available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

A vile greenish vapor was all that remained of the first victim of the monstrous Smoke of Eternity. There would be thousands more if Kar, master fiend, had his evil way. Only Doc Savage and his mighty five could stop him. But the corpse-laden trail led to mortal combat with the fiercest killing machines ever invented by nature.

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

More information about The Land of Terror available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

It was an ageless thing that had existed since the beginning of time -- a monstrous green face that spoke sudden death. With its legions of ghostly, nebulous soul slaves, it had begun to terrorize the world. Even Doc Savage and his fantastic five were helpless against its awesome power, until....

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Arabian thieves led by the diabolically clever Molallet set one fiendish trap after another for Doc Savage and his mighty five. Only "Doc," with his superhuman mental and physical powers, could have withstood this incredible ordeal of endurance which led from the cavern of the crying rock through the pitiless desert of Rub' Al Khali and its Phantom City to a fight to the death against the last of a savage prehistoric race of white-haired beasts.

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

It was all a great mystery. Who was this man called Dan Thunden who claimed he was one hundred and thirty years old? Did he really have the secret of the fountain of youth? What was this island called Fear Cay that spelled horror and death? What was the strange thing that turned men to bone? These were the mysteries that Doc Savage and his fearless crew had to solve at peril of their very lives.

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

It started when a Viking Dragon ship attacked a yacht in the waters outside New York. Next, "Ham" was stabbed with a 1,200 year-old Viking knife. Then Johnny was captured and frozen solid in a block of arctic ice. Finally, even the mighty man of bronze himself -- Doc Savage -- is kidnapped and enslaved by the chilling menace. What is his plan this time? Can he save himself and his friends from almost certain destruction?

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

With the fate of America hanging in the balance, Doc Savage and his fearless crew battle a hideously white-faced man named Ool who kills merely with a touch of his finger. The only clue to his diabolical power is a mysterious pair of dark goggles which brings death to whomever possesses them. The trail leads to a fabulous lost super-civilization hidden deep in the bowels of the earth, where Doc Savage and his fabulous five face their supreme challenge.

Walter Ryerson Johnson authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

It looked just like any other deserted island. But hidden under its tropical sands was a monstrous slave empire, a vast underground network of death pits, giant carnivorous crabs and prehistoric beasts, ruled by the blood-crazed Count Ramadanoff. Blasting their way into this nightmare of horror, Doc Savage and "the fabulous five" embark on their most daring adventure.

Walter Ryerson Johnson authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

It began with a series of quakes which tore huge, gaping holes in the surface of the earth. Soon the sky over the Northwest was filled with the bodies of strange floating men playing a weird melody of death. Was the world doomed? Could Doc Savage and his Fabulous five save it from almost certain destruction? Join them as they race to the center of the earth for a titanic battle with the power-crazed leaders of a fantastic super-civilization.

Laurence Donovan authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

The entire city of New York is swept up in a wave of terror, as an evil international conspiracy devises a crime so sinister that only Doc Savage and his five mighty cohorts can halt its fiendish plan. Led by a phantom master criminal with stupefying supernatural powers, the conspiracy sets trap after trap for Doc. Finally, in a fantastic underground empire, the fearless bronze giant and his courageous crew must fight for their lives against a diabolical enemy that cannot even be seen.

Lester Dent authored this book under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

The Headless Horseman rides again in Sleepy Hollow -- this time streaking down the sky with flashing speed causing destruction and horror wherever he lands. Here is a puzzle worthy of the penetrating powers of the Man of Bronze -- a deception so devious it would have to be solved on two continents.

William G. Bogart authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Graduates of Doc's college for criminals who revert to their former identities. A master trickster who will stop at nothing to further his evil plans. A ferocious monster that turns men's minds to mush. All are part of a cunning scheme which the Man of Bronze and his loyal companions must smash -- or die trying.

Harold A. Davis authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

From the frozen heart of the American continent comes a nameless prehistoric terror of unspeakable savagery, leaving a broken trail of mangled victims that shocks and baffles the world. Only the superhuman Man of Bronze can meet this horrifying menace on its own bloody ground -- and uncover the even greater evil that spawned it.

Lester Dent authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

It came out of nowhere and turned men into mummies. It threatened the construction of the mighty Yellow River Dam. But when it came after Hardrock Hennesey, the tough little mucker summoned the Man of Bronze -- the sensational mind who could smash the diabolical forces behind the mind-boggling mystery.

William G. Bogart authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

World War II is drawing to a close. Hitler rigs an assassination of a look-alike double in a daring plot to save his ruined Reich -- then disappears. America calls on its greatest hero -- Doc Savage -- to track down this most evil of adversaries and stop the phony martyrdom. Joining him in this last-ditch crusade are a wide assortment of Allied agents -- one of whom may be the fleeing Fuhrer himself!

Lester Dent authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

The original Doc Savage magazine (Street & Smith) title was Violent Night.

Doc smuggles himself into Moscow on his most daring mission yet! The Man of Bronze tangles with a deadly military secret, some sinister Soviets, and -- most dangerous of all -- a heroine of the Russian underground who is as treacherous as she is beautiful.

Lester Dent authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

More information available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Satan Black

The Man of Bronze is pegged for murder in a family feud over a pipeline stretching from Arkansas to the Atlantic. The precious oil it carries is needed by the army for the invasion of Europe that will end the war. Only Doc Savage and his fearless sidekicks can find the real culprit and see that the pipeline gets built -- at the risk of death by dynamite!

This is # 97 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Satan Black available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Cargo Unknown

Doc Savage's men are on a top secret mission aboard the Pilotfish when the submarine explodes and sinks to the ocean floor. The Man of Bronze tracks down the treacherous vipers behind the sabotage and searches for the purgatory of terror 200 feet below the ocean surface -- with only 12 hours of air left!

This is # 98 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Cargo Unknown available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Lester Dent authored both novels under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Hell Below

A mad refugee from Hitler's crumbling Reich has set up a powerful fortress in Mexico. The plan? Capture Doc Savage and bring him by submarine to the desert hideout... enlist his aid in carrying out the "New Effort" -- the one that will succeed where Hitler failed!

This is # 99 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Hell Below available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

The Lost Giant

Across the Arctic wastes, Doc Savage races deadly enemy agents on skis and in bombers -- to a remote island off the Greenland coast. The quarry is a secret so great that the future of nations hinges on Doc and his crew... and their ability to stand solidly against menacing forces of evil.

This is # 100 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Lost Giant available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Lester Dent authored both novels under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

One-Eyed Mystic

A criminal master of mind-control conspires to sell the ultimate weapon of terror and destruction to the Nazis. Only Doc and his daring crew can stop him. They trail their malevolent quarry to the frozen Arctic sea -- and fall into an icy evil trap of machine guns, U-boats and sheer insanity!

This is # 111 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about One-Eyed Mystic available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

The Man Who Fell Up

Out of the darkness, yellow and bodiless eyes peer into the faces of Doc Savage and his crew. And when Monk vanishes inside a locked room, Doc leaps to the rescue -- plunging straight into a vicious international maelstrom that could change the course of history!

This is # 112 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Man Who Fell Up available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Lester Dent authored both novels under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Pirate Isle

A murderous madman is holding a South Sea atoll in terror. His aim? Nothing less than pirating the secret of turning sea water into gold. His obsession? Set a deadly trap -- then obliterate the Man of Bronze and his bold crew!

This is # 115 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Pirate Isle available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

The Speaking Stone

To unlock the secret of a mysterious talking stone, Doc travels to an ancient utopia high in the mountains. A vicious army of vipers are hot on his heels, racing him to the city in the clouds. To get the secret, Doc's awesome talents are soon tested when he must protect the lives of his crew -- and the lives of everyone in the city!

This is # 116 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Speaking Stone available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Lester Dent authored both novels under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

The Golden Man

A murderous madman is holding a South Sea atoll in terror. His aim? Nothing less than pirating the secret of turning sea water into gold. His obsession? Set a deadly trap -- then obliterate the Man of Bronze and his bold crew!

This is # 117 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Golden Man available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Peril in the North

250 people are abandoned in the Arctic wilderness at the mercy of a murderous madman. Only Doc Savage can prevent wholesale slaughter on ice. Following a gun- and bomb-blasting battle on the New York docks, the Man of Bronze and his crew face northward to smash a sinister plot -- and to expose the cruel secret of a bloodthirsty foreign dictator!

This is # 118 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Peril in the North available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Lester Dent authored both novels under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

The Laugh of Death

Doc's trusty crew suddenly disappears. The only clue is an unearthly laughter that arises from nowhere and destroys the will. Doc, alone, must save his sidekicks before they die -- but when the laughter attacks him, the Man of Bronze becomes the helpless puppet of evil!

This is # 119 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Laugh of Death available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

The King of Terror

A ruthless madman is plotting to rule the world. His ingenious plan involves an enigmatic woman, a psychotic surgeon, and a strange and powerful fog that muddles men's minds. First, they have to kill Doc Savage. And Doc's vengeance begins only after he is dead!

This is # 120 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The King of Terror available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Lester Dent authored both novels under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

The Three Wild Men

The FBI is after the Man of Bronze. The U.S. government believes he's conducting bizarre experiments to transform the world's wealthiest and most powerful men into brutal, mindless creatures. From posh New York apartments to murky Virginia swamps, Doc Savage races one step ahead of the G-men as he seeks the true evil genius behind the maniacal plot of worldwide terror!

This is #121 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Three Wild Men available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

The Fiery Menace

A ruthless madman is plotting to rule the world. His ingenious plan involves an enigmatic woman, a psychotic surgeon, and a strange and powerful fog that muddles men's minds. First, they have to kill Doc Savage. And Doc's vengeance begins only after he is dead!

This is # 122 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Fiery Menace available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Lester Dent authored both novels under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Devils of the Deep

A mysterious "sea monster" is sighted by fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico. Then a pirated submarine, using a powerful secret weapon, begins to terrorize shipping along the entire Atlantic seaboard. Hundreds die as warships of all nations join together to find and destroy the deadly menace. The chief suspects: Doc Savage and his loyal crew!

This is # 123 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Devils of the Deep available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Harold A. Davis authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

The Headless Men

A mad scientist has invented a way to decapitate people and let them live as his headless slaves. The Man of Bronze and his crew pursue this deadly genius to Central America, where they are all trapped and captured. Only Doc Savage can prevent the headless horde from taking over the world -- but he is strapped to a sacrificial altar and is scheduled to lose his head at midnight!

More information about The Headless Men available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Alan Hathway authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

The Spook of Grandpa Eben

Can an ancient ring put a curse on its hapless victims? Doc and his crew must uncover the incredible truth -- or be condemned for murder!

This is # 135 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Spook of Grandpa Eben available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Measures for a Coffin

Doc becomes a helpless pawn in a diabolical plot to steal millions. If his trusty crew can't save him, the Man of Bronze will surely die!

This is # 136 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Measures for a Coffin available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

The Three Devils

A strange supernatural beast stalks the northern wilds. Can Doc put an end to its reign of terror -- before a ruthless band of fanatics puts an end to Doc?

This is # 137 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Three Devils available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Strange Fish

A gorgeous heiress, a mysterious fat man, an unlovely fish, and murder -- they all bring Doc and his crew to a Midwest ranch, a bloody playground for the most cunning madmen on earth!

This is # 138 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Strange Fish available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Lester Dent authored all four novels under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

No Light to Die By

An eerie illumination in the moonless night sky lights a path to destruction for Doc Savage -- as the Man of Bronze must defuse the most explosive threat to mankind since the atom bomb!

This is # 143 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about No Light to Die By available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

The Monkey Suit

Why are people being murdered for a rented, moth-eaten ape costume? Doc and his crew battle to unmask the deadly mystery -- and to keep a billion-dollar scientific breakthrough out of the hands of gangland gorillas.

This is # 144 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Monkey Suit available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Let's Kill Ames

When a beautiful but unscrupulous con-artist gets herself entangled in a poisonous extortion plot, only Doc Savage and his bold crew can discover the hidden antidote for murder.

This is # 145 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Let's Kill Ames By available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Once Over Lightly

Sudden death turns a carefree vacation into a captive hell, as Doc races to prevent a terrifying transaction that could reduce America's cities to radioactive rubble!

This is # 146 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Once Over Lightly By available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

I Died Yesterday

Sudden death turns a carefree vacation into a captive hell, as Doc races to The corpse of a young man in a beauty parlor, an ice pick, a camera, plants, chemistry, and Doc's meddlesome cousin Pat Savage all add up to a frightening plot -- and an all-out mission to rescue the Man of Bronze!

This is # 147 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about I Died Yesterday available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

The Devil's Black Rock

A mysterious black rock with the power to unleash deadly explosions is about to be sold to the Nazis -- the destructive mineral will change the outcome of the war unless Doc can muscle in on the buy!

This is # 164 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Devil's Black Rock available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Waves of Death

A freak tidal wave occurs in the normally placid waters of Lake Michigan -- suddenly Doc and his crew find themselves on the trail of a mad inventor with the power to hold the world hostage!

This is # 165 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Waves of Death available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Terror and the Lonely Widow

Doc and crew are en route to the South Sea Islands where an evil mastermind plans to start WWIII by selling an atomic bomb to the highest bidder -- but Doc's search is cut short when the madman hijacks their plane!

This is # 166 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Terror and the Lonely Widow available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

The Too-Wise Owl

Doc is lured to the criminal hideout of an evil genius and an experiment with the incredible Vitamin M -- a nutrient that can make a man incredibly smart -- or terminally stupid!

This is # 167 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Too-Wise Owl available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Lester Dent authored all four novels under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Se-Pah-Poo

Doc and his crew arrive at a remote archaeological dig in Arizona where scientists are being cooked alive and uncover the mummified hand of an angry god -- and an amazing weapon of death!

This is # 168 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Se-Pah-Poo available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Colors For Murder

A kidnapping, a killing, and a young woman on the run set Doc on an explosive trail of conspiracy and intrigue that leads straight to a group of mysterious, multicolored whales!

This is # 169 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Colors For Murder available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Three Times a Corpse

All Doc wanted was a quiet vacation, but what he gets instead is a femme fatale with a curious lucky streak, a bottle of poisoned bourbon, and a man who dies three times!

This is # 170 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Three Times a Corpse available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Death is a Round Black Spot

Doc is summoned to a small Missouri town where violent death is a way of life -- and a black spot marks the next victim!

This is # 171 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Death is a Round Black Spot available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

The Devil is Jones

A man, a woman, or the devil himself: who -- or what -- is the elusive, mysterious Jones? Doc better find out quick, before he's framed for murder!

This is # 172 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Devil is Jones available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Lester Dent authored all four novels under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Bequest of Evil

One of Doc's friends inherits a Canadian estate, but they all get more than they bargained for, including kidnappers, torture, an Arctic colony of slaves -- and a diabolical madman with a plot to rule the world!

This is # 173 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Bequest of Evil available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

William G. Bogart authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Death in Little Houses

A group of bearded mountain men steals pieces of a miniature model home and a lady trucker is marked for death -- only Doc can put the pieces of this bizarre puzzle together before murder rules the road.

This is # 174 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Death in Little Houses available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

William G. Bogart authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Target for Death

When a seemingly innocent letter leaves a trail of dead bodies, Doc tracks the mysterious sender halfway round the world to stamp out a killer whose punishment is long overdue.

This is # 175 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about Target for Death available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

William G. Bogart authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

The Death Lady

Doc and the gang head for the Brazilian jungle to rescue a missing heiress, but instead of a damsel in distress they find a lovely lady with a heart of darkness.

This is # 176 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Death Lady available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

William G. Bogart authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

The Exploding Lake

A lake vanishes in a fireball, a gregarious blonde with an ocelot cub, and a far-off land of mystery spell trouble for Doc and his crew -- and finis for the world as we know it.

This is # 177 in the Doc Savage Novels series.

More information about The Exploding Lake available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

Harold A. Davis authored this novel under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Contents:

• The Derelict of Skull Shoal
  In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean a dog howls -- launching Doc and his crew on a high-seas adventure involving bloodthirsty pirates, man-eating sharks, and an island of zombie-killers!
  • This is # 178 in the Doc Savage Novels series. More information about The Derelict of Skull Shoal available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.
  
  
• Terror Wears No Shoes
  When one of his trusty crew mysteriously vanishes in the Orient, Doc's investigation leads to a beautiful glamour-puss, a deadly virus, and a diabolical plot to poison America!
  • This is # 179 in the Doc Savage Novels series. More information about Terror Wears No Shoes available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.
  
  
• The Green Master
  In a secret fortress high in the Andes, Doc and his crew are enslaved by a race of extrasensory super-blondes who worship a strange green stone with a life of its own!
  • This is # 180 in the Doc Savage Novels series. More information about The Green Master available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.
  
  
• Return from Cormoral
  When an eccentric young millionaire suddenly starts predicting the future with unerring accuracy, Doc has to find out how and why fast -- because the next prediction is of his own death!
  • This is # 181 in the Doc Savage Novels series. More information about Return from Cormoral available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.
  
  
• Up From Earth's Center
  A shipwrecked lunatic, a mysterious cavern, and a plump little man with a fear of fire lead Doc on his strangest and most legendary adventure ever -- straight to the gates of hell itself!
  • This is # 182 in the Doc Savage Novels series. More information about Up From Earth's Center available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.
  
  
• Afterword, essay by Will Murray
  
  
• Afterword, essay by Philip José Farmer
  
  

Lester Dent authored all five novels under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Note: This Omnibus is the last of the Doc Savage Novels of the the pulp era. The remaining Doc Savage Novels were authored by Philip José Farmer or Will Murray, from notes or concept by Lester Dent.

Originally appeared in Ace Double H-27 (1967) and later in Ace Doube #89301 (1973). Published in 1968 as Gath, thereafter as The Winds of Gath.

This is the tale of Earl Dumarest. Space-wanderer, gladiator-for-hire, seeker of Man's forgotten home. Dumarest's search begins on the ghost-world of Gath, where he becomes unwilling champion of the Matriarch of Kund, and must undergo a fight-to-the-death at stormtime. Victory could give Dumarest his first clue to the whereabouts of the planet he fled from as a child - an obscure world scarred by ancient wars, which lies countless light years from the thickly populated centre of the galaxy; a world no-one else in the inhabited universe believed exists. Earth, the birthplace of Man.

The Empire of Earth, spanning more than a thousand solar systems, is threatened by a conspiracy from within. Now, with more than three-quarters of the Galaxy ready to fall into enemy hands, the Empire is forced to call on its top-secret weapon: the renowned Circus of the Galaxy featuring the d'Alembert family, a clan of circus performers with uncanny abilities. But even these super agents may not be in time to save the Empire.

Gone from the galaxy...

A startling discovery has shaken Earth's galactic Empire: more than two hundred and fifty thousand people have vanished from the resort moon, Vesa, without a trace! Called to duty, SOTE's most daring secret agents, Jules and Yvette D'Alembert - the former aerialists from the triple-gravity planet Des Plaines, possessed of lightning-reflexes and super-strength - are faced with a lethal and baffling conspiracy.

Together the D'Alemberts have conquered many of the Empire's most dangerous foes, but now the mighty pair must divide forces - each to challenge a deadly evil terror alone!

Stranglers' Moon is the second book in the "Family D'Alembert" series.

TREASON THREATENS THE GALAXY

A robber captured in far-off Kolokov knows a secret that threatens the stability of the succession of the Throne of the Empire of Earth. But he withstands the powers of the fatal truth-telling drug nitrobarb and dies before revealing the traitors' names.

Daring secret agents Jules and Yvette d'Alembert, possessed of lightning reflexes and super-strength, are faced with a far-reaching and baffling plot. They join forces with the rest of the d'Alemberts to uncover the "time bomb" that menaces the Princess' life and the control of the Galaxy's most populated sector, Earth!

When Helena, daughter and second-in-command to the Head of the Empire of Earth's security forces disappears - the future safety of the whole intergalactic network is threatened. Especially the lives of SOTE's two most highly trained operators - Jules and Yvette d'Alembert.

For Helena was one of the very few people who knew their real identities and who understood the vital significance of the d'Alembert Circus as SOTE's ultimate weapon for dealing with treason. So Jules and Yvette are sent on a top priority assignment - to find Helena and save SOTE from destruction.

Fourth volume in the Family d'Alembert series.

The Empire's boldest agents - Jules and Yvette d'Alembert - blast off against the most dangerous conspiracy in the Galaxy. But even the lightning-powers inherited from their triple-gravity planet are no match for their adversary, the beautiful and ruthless star-warrior called... Lady A.

The four-armed reptilian natives of the planet Uller revolt against the chartered company from the Terran Federation which rules them.

Fenris isn't a hell planet, but it's nobody's bargain. With 2,000-hour days and an 8,000-hour year, it alternates blazing heat with killing cold. A planet like that tends to breed a special kind of person: tough enough to stay alive and smart enough to make the best of it. When that kind of person discovers he's being cheated of wealth he's risked his life for, that kind of planet is ripe for revolution.

Conn Maxwell returns from Terra to his poverty-stricken home planet of Poictesme, "The Junkyard Planet", with news of the possible location of Merlin, a military super-computer rumored to have been abandoned there after the last war. The inhabitants hope to find Merlin, which they think will be their ticket to wealth and prosperity. But is Merlin real, or just an old rumor? And if they find it will it save them, or tear them apart?

After a galaxy-wide war had left the planetary federation in ruins, every surviving civilized world was on its own. And that was a perfect setup for the marauders from the far-out rim. Trask was one of those dreaded Space Vikings, a warrior spaceman with a crew and a ship that struck terror to a thousand worlds. But Trask had a special personal interest in sourging the stars - he wanted to draw upon himself the fire of a certain enemy - a renegade planet-wrecker with a yen for empire-building

The ultimate source of Piper's future history, this collection contains:

• Omnilingual
• Naudsonce
• Oomphel in the Sky
• Graveyard of Dreams
• When in the Course

Collected here for the first time anywhere are four of the best stories by one of the Grand Old Masters of science fiction.

• Empire: The Edge of the Knife
• A Slave is a Slave
• The Ministry of Disturbance
• The Return (with John J. McGuire)
• The Keeper

By the year 2137 Europe has become a largely forgotten, savage wilderness. Fierce bands of hunters rove the crumbling ruins of once mighty, war-ravaged cities. On the other side of the Atlantic a prosperous Pan-American Federation has emerged, claiming all lands and seas between the 30th and 175th longitudes and forbidding contact with the rest of the world. All who cross beyond thirty are sentenced to death.

Beyond Thirty is the story of Captain Jefferson Turck and the crew of his aero-submarine, who through accident and sabotage are forced beyond the thirtieth longitude and embark on an epic quest to rediscover the legendary lands of the Old World. Their adventures stand as one of Edgar Rice Burroughs's most imaginative and subtly crafted tales. Burroughs wrote the story in 1915 in reaction to the growing horrors of the First World War, and his devastating vision of its consequences provides a haunting and enduring warning for the twenty-first century.

Has also been published as The Lost Continent.

In the late twentieth century, Admiral Julian 3rd can get no rest, for he knows his future. He will be reborn as his grandson in the next century to journey through space and make an ominous discovery inside the moon; he will live again in the dark years of the twenty-second century as Julian 9th, who refuses to bow down to the victorious Moon Men; and as Julian 20th, the fierce Red Hawk, he will lead humanity's final battle against the alien invaders in the twenty-fifth century. The Moon Maid is Edgar Rice Burroughs's stunning epic of a world conquered by alien invaders from the moon and of the hero Julian, who champions the earth's struggle for freedom, peace, and dignity.

The most complete version of The Moon Maid saga ever made available, this edition contains the story as published serially, along with numerous passages, sentences, and words excised from the magazine version or added later by the author. This edition also features an introduction by Terry Bisson, new illustrations by Thomas Floyd, the classic frontispiece by J. Allen St. John, essays by scholar Richard J. Golsan and writer Phillip R. Burger, a glossary by Scott Tracy Griffin, and a compendium of alterations to the text.

"Oh, I wish I were anywhere but here, anywhere out of this redtape-ridden world of ours! I wish I were in the planet Mars!"

Whisked away to the legendary red planet, the intrepid Lieutenant Gullivar Jones is caught up in the adventure of a lifetime. To win the love of a beautiful princess, he fights his way across a dying and savage planet of desolate cities, lost races, utopian societies, and the haunting and unforgettable River of Death.

This classic, influential tale of Mars, written in the utopian tradition of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, is also considered a possible inspiration for the immortal Barsoom of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Both reflective and imaginative, Gullivar of Mars celebrates the acuity and storytelling power of science fiction writers of the early twentieth century and continues to influence writers and to entertain readers today.

This commemorative edition includes the full text of the classic 1905 edition, a new introduction by Richard A. Lupoff, an illustration by Thomas Floyd, and an afterword by Gary Hoppenstand.

Originally and also published as Lieut. Gulliver Jones: His Vacation

"'What would you do if you were the strongest man in the world, the strongest thing in the world, mightier than the machine?' He made himself guess answers for that rhetorical inquiry. 'I would run the universe single-handed. I would scorn the universe and turn it to my own ends. I would be a criminal. I would rip open banks and gut them. I would kill and destroy. I would be a secret, invisible blight. I would set out to stamp crime off the earth.'"

Hugo Danner is the strongest man on earth, the result of a monstrous experiment by his scientist father. Nearly invulnerable, he can run faster than a train, leap higher than trees, lift a wrecked vehicle to rescue its pinned driver, and hurl boulders like baseballs. His remarkable abilities, however, cannot gain him what he desires most--acceptance--for Hugo Danner is desperately lonely, shunned and feared for his enormous strength.

An enduring classic in speculative fiction and the reported inspiration for the original comic hero, Superman, Gladiator is a melancholic tale of a boy set apart because of his unique gift and his lifelong struggle to come to terms with it.

A classic work of science fiction, this novel was one of the first to explore the world of the atom.

The Girl in the Golden Atom is the story of a young chemist who finds a hidden atomic world within his mother's wedding ring. Under a microscope, he sees within the ring a beautiful young woman sitting before a cave. Enchanted by her, he shrinks himself so that he can join her world.

Having worked for Thomas Alva Edison, Ray Cummings (1887–1957) was inspired by science's possibilities and began to write science fiction. The Girl in the Golden Atom was enormously successful at its publication in 1923, and Cummings went on to write an equally successful sequel, The People of the Golden Atom.

Perhaps best known for editing the popular post-World War II magazines Galaxy Science Fiction and Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Horace L. Gold also wrote comic-book scripts for DC Comics and penned numerous pulp adventures and science-fiction stories. Perfect Murders, a collection of seven of these stories, captures the timeless emotions evoked by pulp and science fiction for the twenty-first century. Though the main character is always called Gilroy, his identity shifts from story to story: the horserace handicapper fighting for his dame, the private eye sussing out the murderer, or the hard-boiled journalist exposing the mad scientist. And though Gold uses the traditional genres--time travel, Armageddon, science gone awry, murder, extraterrestrials--Perfect Murders is nothing less than a horrific, page-turning, fictional thrill ride engineered by one of the leading science-fiction writers and editors of the mid-twentieth century. The Bison Books edition is introduced by Gold's son, E. J. Gold, offering a new perspective on these classic stories.

Contents:

• vii - Introduction (Perfect Murders) - (2010) - essay by E. J. Gold
• 1 - At the Post - (1953) - novelette by H. L. Gold [as by Horace L. Gold ]
• 59 - I Know Suicide - (1947) - shortstory by H. L. Gold [as by Horace L. Gold ]
• 83 - Love in the Dark - (1951) - shortstory by H. L. Gold (variant of Love Ethereal) [as by Horace L. Gold ]
• 107 - A Matter of Form - (1938) - novella by H. L. Gold [as by Horace L. Gold ]
• 205 - The Old Die Rich - (1953) - novella by H. L. Gold [as by Horace L. Gold ]
• 287 - Perfect Murder - (1940) - shortstory by H. L. Gold [as by Horace L. Gold ]
• 297 - Problem in Murder - (1939) - novelette by H. L. Gold [as by Horace L. Gold ]

Found as a child with no memory of his past, adopted by a scholarly couple who raised him as their own, Jaro never quiet fit into the rigidly defined Society of Thanet.

When his foster parents are killed in a mysterious bombing, Jaro Fath sets out to discover the truth of his origins--a quest that will take him across light-years and into the depths of the past.

Terrifying disturbances have been reported in the Uranium mines of Fortuna. The minors have come to believe that they are haunted, and the delays in production have attracted the attention of the Royal Atomic Energy Commission. Their agent arrives to discover one of the mine's owners, a young woman of unknown origin, living in terror of the other, an old man with mad dreams of immortality. They follow a mysterious and ruthless would-be goddess into another world, where masked beings of pure energy have enslaved the population for thousands of years, drawing their titanic power from the unfathomable Well of the Worlds.

Unexpectedly the starship Stellaris hurtled off the earth and into the farthest reaches of space. If only that was the only problem! No star maps, killer aliens and a ship that was only partially built.

A Variant Title for The Fairy Chessmen:

A mathematician whose research involves a type of chess played with variable rules ("fairy chess") is the only one able to solve an "equation from the future" in which the constants are treated as variables that the "bad guys" are going to use to win World War III.

Two people awaken from Suspended Animation to find themselves in conflict with a dictatorship.

While vacationing in Italy, 19-year-old Leo Thrasher rashly experiments with a radical new science. The result: he "reflects" himself 500 years back in time and must deal with life in the middle ages as he strives to return to the present. And in the 20th century, the memoirs of Leonardo da Vinci are unearthed.

An advanced alien race is considering our sun as a reference point on their star route, but must first determine if there are any intelligent life-forms in its solar system, since altering the sun would be fatal for all the system's life. The aliens seek to contact the most highly-regarded being on planet Earth, coming up with Dusty Britton of the Space Patrol. What they DON'T realize is that he's an actor, star of a hit sci-fi TV show! Egotistical Dusty quickly realizes that he must now play his TV role in real life in order to save the solar system from disaster.

A woman is found dead on the streets of New York, ancient Egyptian symbols carved into her flesh. A ghostly figure is seen floating over the rooftops of the city. And an expedition returns from Cairo to exhibit their finds at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Gabriel's old friend and lover, Ginny Gray, was part of the expedition, but when Gabriel goes to meet the ship, Ginny is not on board.

Ancient forces are stirring and the Ghost, Ginny and Gabriel's friend Donovan are caught right in the middle...

Brigands of the Moon

A startling glimpse into the future--the year 2070. An intimate revelation of the world of our great-great-great grand-children. Told by the foremost pseudo-scientific writer of the day--Ray Cummings.

Greg Haljan--reliable, faithful, competent--is navigator of the space-flyer, Planetara. Because of these qualities and his experience he is not abandoned on a planetoid with the rest of the crew and passengers, by the Martian brigands who seize the ship in mid-space and head it toward the Moon, there to rob Johnny Grantline fo his precious radium ore.

Haljan, attempting to frustrate their plans, wrecks the Planetara in landing, killing most of the Martians but escaping uninjured himself. He immediately dashes to the Grant-line and his followers prepare to defend the radium--and their lives--with their pitifully inadequate weapons but their hopes are dashed to the ground when reinforcements from Mars, bearing death-dealing devices of the most ultra-modern type, arrive on the scene.

Here we have a glorious, imaginative story that sweeps us to new, strange and adventurous thoughts about our future world and its relations with the other planets, as well as a wholly new conception of what may lie beneath the surface of the Moon. Good to the last page!

A collection of 15 masterpieces by one of the brightest stars in the science fiction firmament, tales of wit, wonder and adventure - with a touch of something strange...

Contents:

• Introduction - (1976) - essay by Gardner Dozois
• Introduction - (1973) - essay by Harry Harrison
• And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side - (1972) - shortstory
• The Snows Are Melted, the Snows Are Gone - (1969) - shortstory
• The Peacefulness of Vivyan - (1971) - shortstory
• Mama Come Home - (1975) - novelette (variant of The Mother Ship 1968)
• Help - (1973) - novelette (variant of Pupa Knows Best 1968)
• Painwise - (1972) - novelette
• Faithful to Thee, Terra, in Our Fashion - (1973) - novelette (variant of Parimutuel Planet 1969)
• The Man Doors Said Hello To - (1970) - shortstory
• The Man Who Walked Home - (1972) - shortstory
• Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket - (1972) - shortstory
• I'll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool is Empty - (1971) - shortstory
• I'm Too Big but I Love to Play - (1970) - novelette
• Birth of a Salesman - (1968) - shortstory
• Mother in the Sky With Diamonds - (1971) - novelette
• Beam Us Home - (1969) - shortstory

And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side - Exogamy, the desire to mate with the new and different has been a primary force in human evolution - but when the object of that desire is not merely different, but alien...

The Man Who Walked Home - The first Chrononaut moved step by step from the far future toward a present whose past was in the future, and whose future was his past.

I'm Too Big But I Love To Play - Genuine communication between human and alien implies that one must transform himself into an analog of the other. And when that transformation is complete...

Pharaoh's Broker: Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner (Written by Himself).

This novel, publishsed in 1899, is an interplanetary romance set on Mars. Parallel Evolution has resulted in a society almost identical to that of Egypt in the time of Joseph. In the end the hero, having been a grain-broker in Chicago, is able to take on Joseph's role.

Inch by inch, day by day, Scott Carey is getting smaller. Once an unremarkable husband and father, Scott finds himself shrinking with no end in sight. His wife and family turn into unreachable giants, the family cat becomes a predatory menace, and Scott must struggle to survive in a world that seems to be growing ever larger and more perilous--until he faces the ultimate limits of fear and existence.

Subsequently re-published as The Incredible Shrinking Man.

They called themselves the Galileo Club -- not a bad name for a group of space-minded young men who had high hopes of putting one of their homemade rocket ships in orbit.

But it wasn't until they teamed up with Doc Cargraves that their impossible dream became an incredible reality. Suddenly the three Earthbound youths and their mentor were hurtling through space, heading for the barren wasteland of the Moon. Or so they thought.

They were totally unaware that the dark crater shadows concealed a threat beyond their wildest imaginings . . . a threat from which only a mircale could save them!

The basic story is set in the nineteenth century, where a man asks his friends if they want to see something he has been working on and they all end up taking a trip to Venus, where there are different societies depending on if you live on the sun side or the no-sun side of the planet, where all you need as a human to survive is a fur coat and a pistol, and the people have tapped into the higher powers of the brain for communication.

England's trilogy, Darkness and Dawn (published in 1912, 1913 and 1914 as The Vacant World, Beyond the Great Oblivion and Afterglow) tells the story of 2 modern people who awake a thousand years after the earth was devastated by a meteor. They work to rebuild civilization.

The Vacant World - Beatrice Kendrick, and her boss, engineer Allan Stern, wakes up on an upper floor of a ruined Manhattan skyscraper, thousands of years in the future when civilization has been destroyed. The pair has been in a state of suspended animation for fifteen hundred years. Changes in the earth's features as well as monstrously mutated ""humans"" make it clear they have little hope of survival.

Beyond the Great Oblivion - Allan and Beatrice begin to discover the nature of the catastrophe that has split the Earth open. Rebuilding an airplane, they find a ""bottomless"" chasm near Pittsburgh where a huge portion of the Earth has been torn away to become a second moon. Alan and Beatrice earn the loyalty of the People of this Abyss and lead them from the chasm to New York.

The Afterglow - Allan and Beatrice, with the People of the Abyss, prepare to recolonize the Earth's surface. But first, they must defeat the devolved, cannibalistic survivors who populate Earth's cities.

"Who Goes There?": The novella that formed the basis of "The Thing" is the John W. Campbell classic about an antarctic research camp that discovers and thaws the ancient body of a crash-landed alien. The creature revives with terrifying consequences, shape-shifting to assume the exact form of animal and man, alike.

Paranoia ensues as a band of frightened men work to discern friend from foe, and destroy the menace before it challenges all of humanity!

The story, hailed as "one of the finest science fiction novellas ever written" by the SF Writers of America, is best known to fans as THE THING - it was the basis of Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World in 1951, and John Carpenter's The Thing in 1982.

Barney is all set to spend two weeks doing nothing at his parents' summer house. But then he meets the neighbors, and things start to get interesting. Zena, Manny, and Joe are not your average folks on vacation. In fact, Barney suspects they're not from Earth at all. Not only are they physically perfect in every way, but they don't seem to have jobs or permanent addresses, and they are addicted to a strange role-playing game called Interstellar Pig. As Barney finds himself sucked into their bizarre obsession, he begins to wonder if Interstellar Pig is just a game.

Someone is sabotaging the Universal Transmitting Company's new technology--instantaneous transport of objects and people around the world. When Detective Jan Darzek investigates, the mystery seems inexplicable--out of this world.

He had no friends, only respect, but the terrible test of the Sun proved him a friend to have!

Originally appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1941 available on Internet Archives.

This short story appears in the following collections:

• Men, Martians and Machines, by Eric Frank Russell (1953)
• The Best of Eric Frank Russell, Eric Frank Russell (1978)
• Major Ingredients: The Selected Short Stories of Eric Frank Russell, by Eric Frank Russell (2000)

The explorers were equipped for strange and menacing animals. But not for the highly moral--if bloodthirsty--things of that world!

This short story appears in the collection, Men, Martians and Machines, by Eric Frank Russell (1953)

Originally appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction, January 1942 available free on Internet Archives.

The explorers had run into the machine civilization gone mad on Mechanistria, but this planet seemed safe. Not a machine anywhere, just jungles. And with their weapons, they didn't have to fear anything --

This short story appears in the collections:

• Men, Martians and Machines, by Eric Frank Russell (1953)
• The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 5 1943, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg (1981)
• Adventures in Time and Space, edited by Raymond J. Healy, J. Francis McComas (1978)

This novelette originally appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1943 available free on Internet Archives.

A Princess of Mars (1912) introduces officer John Carter, transported magically from Earth to Mars and plunged immediately into intrigues embroiling the Martian races. In The Gods of Mars (1918) and The Warlord of Mars (1919), Burroughs elaborates his colorful vision of Mars as a home to fantastic fauna, airborne pirates, and battling tribes of nomadic, four-armed green Martian giants and city-dwelling red Martians.

Already a seasoned swordsman, Carter becomes an even fiercer warrior, unfettered by the planet’s lesser gravity. Thrust into one deadly battle after another as he seeks to woo the beautiful Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, John Carter of Mars magnificently meets his destiny as science fiction’s first larger-than-life hero.

There will undoubtedly be a time when tomorrow's bureaucrats will wish to question such dangerous survivals...

This story originally appeared in the November 1958 issue of Fantastic Universe,

It is also contained in the Frank Herbert collections "The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert" and "Eye".

The Earth is long dead, blasted apart, and the human survivors who settled on Venus live in huge citadels beneath the Venusian seas in an atrophying, class-ridden society ruled by the Immortals - genetic mutations who live a thousand years or more. Sam Reed was born an immortal, born to rule those with a normal life-span, but his deranged father had him mutilated as a baby so that he wouldn't know of his heritage. And Sam grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and the law, thinking of the Immortals as his enemies. Then he reached the age of eighty, understood what had happened to him and went looking for revenge - and changed his decaying world forever.

Contains two short stories in the Legion Universe: The Legion of Time and Aftwer World's End.

The hope of a future utopia hangs literally on a thread of probability. Instead, armageddon lies almost certainly in the future of humanity. Only the Legion of Time can alter the future course of history. Only Denny Lanning can decisively help them. But to do so, he must first die--for the Legion is composed of dead men--and second, he must kill one of the two women that he loves. . .

After World's End, a short novel, is another saga of time-adventure, also included in this volume. An American astronaut helplessly orbits the solar system as millennia pass. And on Earth, humanity's bright future is destoryed by war with an enemy they themselves created.

Cosmic Conflict

In Triplanetary, battle is joined for the control of the universe. The Arisians, benevolent humanoids who have declared themselves Guardians of Civilization, war with the Eddoreans, shapeless, malevolent beings, hungry for power at any price. They fight on both physical and mental levels, wielding weaponry of inconceivable destructiveness.

And their battleground is a tiny planet in a remote galaxy: Earth. The swamping of Atlantis, the fall of Rome, the wars that rack the world and blaze through space - all may seem historical accidents to the men involved, but each in reality is a move in a savage universe-wide power struggle...

Triplanetary is the first volume in the famous Lensman series of novels, an epic saga of galactic adventures on the same magnificent scale as Isaac Asimov's classic FOUNDATION trilogy.

In the not too distance future, while fleets of commercial space ships travel between the planets of numerous solar systems, a traveler named Virgil Samms visits the planet Arisia. There he becomes the first wearer of the Lens, the almost-living symbol of the forces of law and order. As the first Lensman, Samms helps to form the Galactic Patrol, a battalion of Lensmen who are larger than life heroes. These solders are the best of the best, with incredible skills, stealth, and drive. They are dedicated and incorruptible fighters who are willing to die to protect the universe from the most horrific threat it has ever known.

The Galactic Patrol's Lensmen are the most feared peacekeepers in the Galaxy. The "Lens," a telepathic jewel matched to the ego of its wearer, is the ultimate weapon in the war against the merciless pirate Boskone and his forces of lawlessness. The only problem is the Galactic Patrol isn't sure how to capitalize on the Lens' incredible powers, but new graduate Kimball Kinnison is determined to learn. Taking command of the experimental fighting ship, the Brittania, Kinnison and his crew set off on a journey of harrowing adventures, coming face to face with deadly space creatures, and the evil pirate Helmuth...who may be the dreaded Boskone himself.

Lensman Kimball Kinnison has attained the goal which every Lensman seeks, and so few attain, that of Unattached Lensman, a Lensman who is accountable to no one anywhere, completely independent, completely free.

Further, he is learning how to fully use his lens. This knowledge is crucial, because as he works his way up through the ranks of the enemy the problems are growing more and more complex and dangerous. Coming face-to-face, and mind-to-mind, with the multi-tentacled scaley creature in his corpse-littered domain, Kimball Kinnison must use everything he has learned to defeat the beast or die trying.

Again Kimball Kinnison and the Galactic Patrol take up battle with Boskonia. The warfare leads to some odd corners of the universe and some stranger worlds. There is the planet Lyrane where a matriarchal society exists; the frigid world of Onio, with its incredibly alien inhabitants, on which the utterly weird and unhuman Lensman, Nadreck of Palain Seven works so efficiently.

It was beginning to look as though no one could prevent the annihilation of the civilised universe. For a weird intelligence was directing all the destruction of all civilisation from the icy depths of outer space.

Kim Kinnison of the Galactic Patrol was one of the few men who knew how near the end was. And in the last desperate strategem to save the universe from total destruction, he knew he had to use his children as bait for the evil powers of the hell-planet Ploor...

Runaway fireball!

A churning nuclear vortex, appearing out of nowhere, wreaking utter destruction - and countless numbers of them were menacing planets throughout the galaxy! 'Storm' Cloud, nucleonic genius, set out in his spaceship Vortex Blaster to track and destroy the mysterious vortices - and embarked on a saga of discovery and conflict among the far stars and the worlds of the Lensmen...

Tedric the Ironmaster wields the mightiest sword his world has ever seen - and swears to break the power of the black magician Sarpedion, or die in the attempt. In another universe... only Tedric's strength and daring stand between the dwindling power of the Terran Empire and total alien conquest.

Brought from his own distant world by the mysterious Scientists, working toward an end he cannot know, Tedric brings the war-wisdom of his own past into a universe of starships and alien powers.

Starr uncovers a Martian plot to ruin the economy of the earth's galactic colonies.

A year has passed since the events in David Starr, Space Ranger. In that time the spaceship TSS Waltham Zachary has been taken and gutted by pirates based in the asteroid belt, and David "Lucky" Starr has come up with a plan to deal with them.

In the sprawling spheres far below the boundless seas of the planet, the earthmen had established an incredible civilization. But now, a series of seemingly trivial accidents threatened to obliterate all that the men had created.

It was Lucky's job, as a representative of the powerful Council of Science, to find the evil and root it out.

Yet by the time he discovered the insidious force which preyed on the minds of men, the only enemy he could hope to destroy . . . was firmly lodged within his own head!

Lucky Starr is sent to Mercury by the Council of Science to determine who is sabotaging Project Light.

Lucky Starr & his sidekick Bigman Jones hunt for a spy and saboteur who is trying to wreck the test flight of the first anti-gravity space ship.

Six weeks after returning from the Jovian system, David "Lucky" Starr receives an urgent visit from Hector Conway, Chief Councilman of the Council of Science. The Council has been sweeping up the Sirian spy ring uncovered by Starr in the Jovian system, but the head of the ring, Jack Dorrance, has eluded capture and escaped from Earth in his one-man spaceship, The Net of Space. A fleet led by Councilman Ben Wessilewsky is in hot pursuit, but there is only one ship that can catch up with Dorrance, and that is Starr's own Shooting Starr.

Contents:

• The Coming of the Terrans (frontispiece) - interior artwork by uncredited
• Foreword - essay by Leigh Brackett
• The Beast-Jewel of Mars - (1948) - novella by Leigh Brackett
• Mars Minus Bisha - (1954) - short story by Leigh Brackett
• The Last Days of Shandakor - (1952) - novelette by Leigh Brackett
• Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon - (1964) - short story by Leigh Brackett
• The Road to Sinharat - [Eric John Stark] - (1963) - novelette by Leigh Brackett

The story of an experiment gone wrong--a planet seeded with primitive bacterial, plant, and insect life forms, then forgotten until a spaceship crash-lands, stranding its crew. The crew must fight to survive in a savage nightmare world. From the Hugo Award-winning author, Murray Leinster.

The god Ptath is flung into the far future by a deadly rival and given the mind of a 20th century man. Stranded in this alien world, he must fight to regain his powers before the rival goddess sends the world spinning into chaos and darkness.

One of the finest writers in the golden age of science fiction--and inventor of the intricatley plotted form of SF known as the "space opera"--offers the story of a flawed hero possessing almost superhuman strength. When his wife is kidnapped, war veteran Jim Pendrake embarks upon a search that takes him to a lost colony on the moon--and a secret, sinister society.

Also published as Moonbeast.

David Marin risks his career to defend Wade Trask, a scientist being tried for sedition, but when Trask switches their brains, Marin finds himself branded an enemy of the state.

Miriam Black knows when you will die.

Still in her early twenties, she's foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days Louis will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name.

Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. But Louis will die because he met her, and she will be the next victim. No matter what she does she can't save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she'll have to try.

75th Anniversary Edition!

Among the best-written and most emotionally complex stories of the Pulp Era, the tales of intergalactic smuggler Northwest Smith still resonate strongly 75 years after their first publication. From the crumbling temples of forgotten gods on Venus to the seedy pleasure halls of old Mars, Northwest Smith blazes a trail through the underbelly of the solar system in 13 action-packed stories you won’t soon forget.

Contents:

• Teaching the World to Dream - essay by C. J. Cherryh
• Shambleau (1933) - novelette
• Black Thirst (1934) - novelette
• Scarlet Dream (1934) - novelette
• Dust of Gods (1934) - novelette
• Julhi (1935) - novelette
• Nymph of Darkness (1935) - short story with Forrest J. Ackerman
• The Cold Gray God (1935) - novelette
• Yvala (1936) - novelette
• Lost Paradise (1936) - novelette
• The Tree of Life (1936) - novelette
• Quest of the Starstone (1937) - novelette with Henry Kuttner
• Werewoman (1938) - novelette
• Song in a Minor Key (1940) - short story

Note: The Singularity & Co. e-book of Moore's Northwest Smith stories has the same contents as the 1982 Ace Books collection (Northwest Smith), and does not include "Nymph of Darkness", "Quest of the Starstone", and "Werewoman".

Has also been published under the title: The Pawns of Null-A.

In this sequel to World of Null-A, Gilbert Gosseyn must learn to use both his brains and function in various bodies in order to save the universe from Enrothe Red.

Five hundred miles beneath the earth's surface lies a fantastic, timeless world of eternal daylight, prehistoric beasts, and primeval peoples--Pellucidar. Pellucidar is a world within our world, a place where the horizon curves upward and merges with the sky. Here time stands still, for Pellucidar is illuminated by a miniature sun that never sets but hovers motionless in the sky. Scattered throughout the savage, prehistoric wilderness are communities of distrustful humans and the cities of the reptilian, highly evolved Mahars.

David Innes and Abner Perry break through into this mysterious inner world. Their discovery of Pellucidar and the ensuing struggle to unite the human communities and overthrow the Mahars is a top-notch, thrilling tale of conquest, deceit, and wonder.

This commemorative edition features an introduction by Gregory A. Benford and an afterword on the science of At the Earth's Core by Phillip R. Burger. Also included are a map of Pellucidar, a glossary of terms and names by Scott Tracy Griffin, a contemporary review, and the classic J. Allen St. John illustrations.

The original novel that inspired the films!

First published more than fifty years ago, Pierre Boulle's chilling novel launched one of the greatest science fiction sagas in motion picture history.

In the not-too-distant future, three astronauts land on what appears to be a planet just like Earth, with lush forests, a temperate climate, and breathable air. But while it appears to be a paradise, nothing is what it seems.

They soon discover the terrifying truth: On this world humans are savage beasts, and apes rule as their civilized masters. In an ironic novel of nonstop action and breathless intrigue, one man struggles to unlock the secret of a terrifying civilization, all the while wondering: Will he become the savior of the human race, or the final witness to its damnation? In a shocking climax that rivals that of the original movie, Boulle delivers the answer in a masterpiece of adventure, satire, and suspense.

The fantastic story of a spy who could read minds!

Brain Twister - follows the adventures of FBI agent Kenneth J. Malone as he attempts to unravel the machinations of a telepathic spy. How do you find a telepath to catch the first telepath? A fun piece of sci fi that features claims of immortality, mind-reading, spies and insanity.

The first complete English translation of Jules Verne's epic fantasy novel. The Full Text of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe is also included.

Decades after Edgar Allan Poe's longest and weirdest tale, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, was published--the protagonist disappearing into the misty, mystifying Antarctic seas; his fate unknown--Jules Verne took up the challenge to answer what had happened to him.

In The Sphinx of the Ice Realm, he penned the most amazing journey of his fabled career: a voyage across the bottom of the world! An astonishing mix of manhunt, sea story, scientific speculation, and polar nightmare, Verne's epic fantasy novel appears here for the first time as a new and complete translation by noted Verne expert Frederick Paul Walter. The book is a treat for any fan of science fiction and fantasy, and includes many fascinating notes for students and scholars alike. In addition, the book features a complete, reader-friendly rendition of the original Poe tale that sparked Verne's uniquely imaginative response.

The story has also been published under various titles: The Sphinx of the Ice Fields, An Antarctic Mystery, The Sphnix of the Ice.

Journey to Mars: The Wonderful World; its Beauty and Splendor; its Mighty Races and Kingdoms; its Final Doom (1894)

Pope's novel is the story of a Lt. Frederick Hamilton, USN. On a voyage to Antarctica, his ship is wrecked; he and a Maori sailor are cast onto a barren island. Though near the end of his endurance, Hamilton rescues a strange-looking man before he loses consciousness. He awakens three weeks later, aboard a spaceship traveling to Mars.

On Pope's Mars there are three human-like races: red, yellow, and blue Martians. They have attained a sophisticated technology while preserving a feudal society (which allows for duels and swordplay). The Martians travel in "ethervolt cars" and anti-gravity aircraft; they enjoy communications devices that are equivalent to television and video telephone. Pope also provides a Martian magician who is telepathic, invokes spirits, and reads the hero's future.

Hamilton has various adventures, including a romance with the yellow-complexioned Princess Suhlamia. The Martians need to relocate from their world because of impending planetary catastrophe: meteors bombard the planet (the so-called Martian canals are actually linear cities, which makes them thinner targets), and the moons Phobos and Deimos threaten to crash to the surface. Hamilton returns to Earth to try to find space for them. A Martian revolution disrupts his plans, however; he writes no account of his adventures prior to an attempt to return to the red planet.

Journey to Venus, the Primeval World; Its Wonderful Creations and Gigantic Monsters.

The book was a sequel to Pope's novel of the previous year, Journey to Mars. The Venus volume features the same hero and heroine, Lt. Frederick Hamilton, USN, and his love interest the Martian princess Suhlamia. They travel to Venus on a Martian "ethervolt" spacecraft.

The publisher promoted the book as "full of exciting adventures, hairbreadth escapes, and perilous vicissitudes, among primeval monsters and semi-human creatures, the episodes following each other in such breathless succession that the interest of the reader never flags."

"The Moon Conquerors" is a Space Opera implausibly involving the Moon, though the tale is notable for the suggestion of an electromagnetic drive to launch a Spaceship to the Moon.

Its companion piece, "The War of the Planets" is presented as the text of a work discovered on the Moon. It is the first novel describing the history of the solar system and how a black race established 'human' life on Earth about 30,000 years ago in Africa.

Romans' book is also a uniquely science fictional plea for racial tolerance.

This a classic novel of adventure reflecting the tangled milieu of the Middle East just after World War I. It is a flying adventure story reflecting the enthusiasm for air travel and constantly improving technology of the period. The super aircraft of the Flying Legion, The Eagle of the Sky, could come, in effect, from the magazine covers of Science and Mechanics of the period.

If you like first rate derring do, cliff hanging situations, heroic characters fighting down to the last ditch against impossible odds, this is it!

Ted Dustin, an American inventor, seeks to win a prize of one million dollars by being the first person to touch the moon with an object launched from Earth. He devises a huge gun, which fires upon the surface of the moon. Shortly thereafter, the moon fires back, and war breaks out between the planet and its satellite. Using a videophone he invented, Ted hails communication with the moon. A beautiful woman and her guards first reply, but their transmission is cut off by warlike yellow aliens. Ted eventually heads to the moon in a spacecraft of his own design, and meets the titular character, who turns out to be the beautiful woman from the transmission, as well as a princess of one of the two groups that inhabit the moon.

This book is a combination of the two original Buck Rogers stories (Armadeddon 2419 A.D. and The Airlords of Han) together as one.

This is the story of how World War One veteran Anthony Rogers, after investigating an incident at a remote mine, wakes up five hundred years in the future. He awakes to a occupied America, ruled by the Air Lords of the Han with there gleaming cities and giant air ships suspended on beams of force. The Han supress the remants of the American population who live by stealh in the forests with hidden factories and plans to liberate thier homeland from the Han invaders. Buck Rogers, with his knowledge of long forgotten combat and tactics, comes to their aid. With his help, the Han's days are numbered.

A million light-years from Earth, one solitary experimental spaceship floated amidst a vast fleet of strange starships, hurtled into the unmapped void by a revolutionary new concept in space mechanics!

They were four of the greatest minds in the Universe: Two men and two women, all Psionic Primes, lost in an experimental spaceship billions of parsecs from home. And as they mentally charted the cosmos to find their way back to Earth, their own loves and hates were as startling as the worlds they encountered...

Here is E. E. Smith's classic science fiction novel -- one of the greatest space operas of all time!

Myles Cabot, a radio expert and inventor of radio transmission of matter, who has married Princess Lilla, the queen of Cupia on the planet Venus, returns to the earth for a visit.

When Princess Lilla sends an SOS, Cabot starts back to Cupia by wireless but a thunderstorm throws him off course and he lands on a different continent where he is confronted by his old enemies, Prince Yuri and the Formians, the giant ant-men of Venus!

Appeared in Ace Double G-585 (1966).

RED SUN RISING:

The star Mira was unpredictably variable. Sometimes it was blazing, brilliant and hot. Other times it was oddly dim, cool, shedding little warmth on its many planets. Gresth Gkae, leader of the Mirans, was seeking a better star, one to which his "people" could migrate. That star had to be steady, reliable, with a good planetary system. And in his astronomical searching, he found Sol.

With hundreds of ships, each larger than whole Terrestrial spaceports, and traveling faster than the speed of light, the Mirans set out to move in to Solar regions and take over.

And on Earth there was nothing which would be capable of beating off this incredible armada -- until Buck Kendall stumbled upon THE ULTIMATE WEAPON.

Myles Standish Cabot, radio genius, who solved the secret of the wireless transmission of matter, returns to Earth from the planet Venus, who inhabitants, the Cupians, are much like men, except that they have antennae instead of ears, and communicate by radio. Cabot relates how the conquered Formians, giant, intelligent ant-men, conspired with Prince Yuri, a renegade Cupian, and his followers to again take control of the planet.

Eric John Stark: a loner, able to survive unsupported even on Skaith, that mysterious closed planet; peopled but not civilised, where half-human tribes wander, burrow, fight and dream of the Dark Man who one day will lead them into the stars.

Eric John Stark rides again! Leigh Brackett's unforgettable science-fantasy hero of The Secret of Sinharat and The Ginger Star cuts a red swath across the brutal planet Skaith Having killed the king-dog Flay in his quest to save an old friend and mentor, Stark now wanders the Worldheart in the company of nine ferocious canines that respond to his every command. Ruling the hounds of Skaith means tapping into the savagery of Stark's own mysterious past, and even a moment's hesitation could turn the pack against him!

Before Eric John Stark can escape from the dying planet of the ginger star, he is betrayed by the starship captain Penkawr-Che. Abandoned by friends and besieged by enemies, Stark is a fugitive once more. Running from all those who hunt him, he embarks on a nightmare journey through deadly jungles and across predator-infested seas to risk his life for those who hunger for his death.

The Skylark of Space is one of the earliest novels of interstellar travel. Originally serialized in 1928 in the magazine Amazing Stories, it was first published in book form in 1946 by The Buffalo Book Co. The Skylark of Space is often categorized as the first literary space opera (in the complimentary sense), complete with protagonists perfect in mind, body, and spirit, who fight against villains of absolute evil.

The Skylark of Space is available to read free on-line from Project Gutenberg.

In this exhilarating sequel to The Skylark of Space, momentous danger again stalks genius inventor and interplanetary adventurer Dr. Richard Seaton. Seaton's allies on the planet Kondal are suffering devastating attacks by the forces of the Third Planet. Even worse, the menacing and contemptuous Fenachrones are threatening to conquer the galaxy and wipe out all who oppose them. And don't forget the dastardly machinations of Seaton's arch-nemesis, DuQuesne, who embarks on a nefarious mission of his own. Against such vile foes and impossible odds, how is victory possible?

Featuring even more technological wizardry, alien worlds, and all-out action than its predecessor, Skylark Three is hailed by many as the imaginative high point of the Skylark series.

A pioneer of the space opera, E. E. "Doc" Smith (1890–1965) profoundly influenced the development of American science fiction. Smith's books include the classic Lensman series. Jack Williamson is the author of numerous classic novels, including The Humanoids and Terraforming Earth. He has been inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

The incredible staship Skylark Three has fought the Fenachone Supermen to a standstill, and Richard Seaton has gone back to his first love - exploration. Roaming the galaxy, he discovers a world of disembodied intelligences; a world of four dimensions where time was insanely distorted and matter obeyed no terrestrial laws, where 3-dimensional intellects were barely sufficient to thwart invisible mentalities! Meanwhile, the villainous DuQuesne is allying himself with the remnants of the Fenachrone, and planning his next attack...

Dick Seaton & Marc DuQuensne are the deadliest enemies in the Universe--their feud has blazed among the stars & changed the history of a thousand planets. But now a threat from outside the Galaxy drives them into a dangerous alliance as hordes of strange races drive to a collision with mankind. Seaton & DuQuensne flight & slave side by side to fend off the invasion--as Seaton keeps constant, perilous watch for DuQuesne's inevitable double-cross.

Circling the solar sphere in search of new worlds and high adventure

Captain James Kirk - Assigned to the top position in Space Service - Starship Command - Kirk alone must make decisions in his contact with other worlds that can affect the future course of civilization throught the Universe.

Science Officer Spock - Inheriting a precise logical thinking pattern from his father, a native of the planet Vulcanis, Mr. Spock maintains a dangerours Earth trait... an intense curiousity about things of alien origin.

Yeoman Rand - Easily the most popular member of the crew, the truly "out-of-this-world" blonde has drawn the important assignment of secretary to the Captain on her fist mission in deep space.

With a crew of 400 skilled specialists, the mammoth spacs ship Enterprise blasts off for intergalactic intrigue in the unexplored realms of outer space.

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when Real Men with ray guns and beautiful women in beguiling outfits battled hideous monsters from outer space! Return with us to the days when Captain Proton ruled the skyways!

When the queen of an evil space empire kidnaps Captain Proton's faithful secretary Constance Goodheart, it's only the first step in her diabolical plan to conquer the Incorporated Planets. It soon becomes clear that there is more to her plot than meets the eye when, on the very edge of death, Captain Proton is saved by a power Not Of This Universe. Caught in an eons-old fight between two alien races, who can Captain Proton trust? No one -- not even his sidekick, ace reporter Buster Kincaid. Can Captain Proton save the Galaxy from the forces of evil and save Constance Goodheart from the Giant Demon Squid of Greyhawk II?

Extra! Dr. Chaotica plots the Death of the Patrol, Constance Goodheart must find Captain Proton before she shrinks to a size too small to be seen, and Buster Kincaid faces the Swamp of Doom!

The stars whispered: Die, Starwolf! Die!

Morgan Chane was an Earthman by parentage, but he had been born on the pirate-world Varna, whose heavy gravity had developed strength and incredibly quick reflexes in him. When he was old enough, he joined the raider-ships that looted the starworlds, and fought side by side with the dreaded Starwolves of Varna.

But then there was a fight among them. Chane killed their leader, and the other Starwolves turned on him. He barely got away alive – wounded near death, his Starwolf pursuers following him across the galaxy.

And there was nowhere he could seek refuge, for no world lift a hand to save one of the hated Starwolves.

This novel is contained in the Omnibus Starwolf

When Morgan Chane and his comrades of John Dilullo's interstellar mercenaries invaded the Close World of Arkuu in search of a lost Terran expedition, they found a planet of strange menace. Incredibly powerful monsters prowled though Arkuu's dense jungles, and the ghosts of the planet's past haunted its ancient deserted cities. The Arkuuns themselves fought grimly to drive the Terrans away. But at last Chane discovered the Free-Faring, the terrible alien secret of Arkuu... and suddenly he knew why no Terran had ever left the Closed Worlds alive.

This novel is contained in the Omnibus Starwolf

SHE WAS RUNNING FROM A RUTHLESS CRIMINAL
ACCOMPANIED BY SOMEONE MORE THAN HUMAN...

When the shipwrecked stranger washed up, nearly drowned, on the beach near research scientist Samantha Bryton's home, she was unaware that he was something more than human: an experiment conducted by Charon, a notorious criminal and practitioner of illegal robotics and android research. The man said his name was Turner Pascal--but Pascal was dead, killed in a car wreck. Then she found that Charon was experimenting with copying the minds of humans into android brains, implanted in human bodies to escape detection, planning to make his own army of slaves that will follow his orders without question.

Samantha and Turner quickly found themselves on the run across the country, pursued by the most ruthless criminal of the twenty-first century. In desperation, Samantha decided to seek help from Sunrise Alley, an underground organization of AIs that had gone rogue. But these cybernetic outlaws were rumored to have their own hidden agenda, not necessarily congruent with humanity's welfare, and Samantha feared that her only hope would prove forlorn....

Charon is dead.

Long live Charon!

The creator of a proscribed network of rogue AIs and androids has been destroyed, his multiple copies deleted. Except for one. Alpha: a female android who seems to possess a conscience--so much so that her execution is delayed. Big mistake. Now on the run, and with her former captor as hostage, Alpha moves to activate a long dormant master-plan -- a plan that may well include the end of humanity and the violent transformation of the world as we know it!

Only once in several lifetimes does the world get such a man as Richard Henry Benson, known as The Avenger.

A man who had amassed a fortune in his early years, he was ready to enjoy life to the fullest with his wife and daughter when disaster struck, which vacuumed his soul right out of his body.

His family was taken from him by crime, and to make matters worse, no one believed him. He was forced into an insane asylum. He escaped.

His facial muscles were paralyzed by the tragedy, so he could press his face into any position to adopt any guise. From that day on, The Avenger's only drive in life was to bring destruction to crooks who operated beyond the law, and usually he made sure it was by their own hand.

Paul Ernst authored this novel under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

The hidden gold of the Aztecs. A gang of criminals kill to find it and unleash the wrath of The Avenger

In the roaring heart of the crucible, steel is made. In the raging flame of personal tragedy, men are sometimes forged into something more than human.

It was so with Dick Benson. He had been a man. After the dread loss inflicted on him by an inhuman crime ring, he became a machine of vengeance dedicated to the extermination of all other crime rings.

He turned into the the person we know now: A figure of ice and steel, more pitiless than both; A mechanism of whipcord and flame; A symbol to crooks and killers; A terrible, almost impersonal force, masking chill genius and super normal power behind a face as white and dead as a mask from the grave. Only his pale eyes, like ice in a polar dawn, hint at the deadliness of the scourge the underworld heedlessly invoked against itself when crime's greed turned millionaire adventurer Richard Benson into The Avenger.

Paul Ernst authored this novel under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

A harsh, droning sound from an invisible plane. A man mysteriously walking in the sky, and huge skyscrapers collapse like matchsticks. Can the Avenger halt a master criminal's reign of death and destruction?

Paul Ernst authored this novel under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

A message traced in blood reads "The devil's horns"; a political boss lies paralyzed. The city he controls now in the hands of killers; and The Avenger must decipher the bloody message - or die!

Paul Ernst authored this novel under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

A fine, white powder like snow settles on one human body and a plague of death is alive in the world's greatest city. One man's greed has created the deadly powder- and only The Avenger can stop its murderous spread.

Paul Ernst authored this novel under the pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

Two years before Edgar Rice Burroughs became a worldwide celebrity with the publication of Tarzan of the Apes and its twenty-two sequels, which together have sold more than 30 million copies, he published A Princess of Mars. A futuristic sci-fi fantasy romance, A Princess of Mars tells the story of John Carter, a Civil War veteran who inexplicably finds himself held prisoner on the planet Mars by the Green Men of Thark. Together with Dejah Thoris, the princess of another clan on Mars, the unlikely pair must fight for their freedom and save the entire planet from destruction as the life-sustaining Atmosphere Factory slowly grinds to a halt.

Soldier and adventurer John Carter tells the story of how he returns to the planet Mars to be reunited with his love, the Martian princess Dejah Thoris. With his great friend Tars Tarkas, mighty Jeddak of Thark, Carter sets out in search of his princess. But Dejah Thoris has vanished. And Carter becomes trapped in the legendary Eden of Mars from which none has ever escaped alive.

Edgar Rice Burroughs created one of the most iconic figures in American pop culture, Tarzan of the Apes, and it is impossible to overstate his influence on entire genres of popular literature in the decades after his enormously winning pulp novels stormed the public's imagination.

The Warlord of Mars, first published in 1919, is the third book in Burroughs' Mars series--this opening trilogy of a series that grew to 11 books is considered among the greatest science fiction ever written. Here, Earthman John Carter, swept by magical means to the Red Planet, embarks on a rescue mission to the frozen polar wastes to save his beloved Martian princess, Dejah Thoris.

Edgar Rice Burroughs created one of the most iconic figures in American pop culture, Tarzan of the Apes, and it is impossible to overstate his influence on entire genres of popular literature in the decades after his enormously winning pulp novels stormed the public's imagination.

Thuvia, Maid of Mars, first published in 1920, is the fourth book in Burroughs' Mars series. Here, hero Carthoris goes in search of the kidnapped Thuvia, princess of Ptarth, encountering strange Martian creatures and romantic rivals along the way.

Tara, Princess of Helium, beautiful, fiery-tempered, impetuous, found that following a whim could be dangerous. Lost in her flier in the midst of a Martian tempest, she was at the mercy of the mad wind, and could only pray to be set down unharmed. Her hope of survival in the ancient, mysterious region of Barsoom would have been small indeed had she known of the strange inhuman customs of its inhabitants.

A chessboard manned by humans who must contest each square to the death. Heads without bodies, and bodies without heads. And meet Gahan of Gathol, a hero worthy of the immortal warlord's daughter.

Former Earthman Ulysses Paxton served Barsoom's greatest scientist, until his master's ghoulish trade in living bodies drove him to rebellion. Then, to save the body of the woman he loved, he had to attack mighty Phundahl, and its evil, beautiful ruler.

Tan Handron from the realm of Gatho encounters a wide range of enemies in this science fiction thriller of the 1930's. He fends off green men, mad scientists, cannibal, spiders and white apes. The main character Tan Handron finds himself an unlikely hero in this pulp fiction classic. "A Fighting Man of Mars," is the seventh book in the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian series.

Carter relates an adventure commencing with a private war he and his picked followers have been waging against the resurgent Guild of Assassins, led by Ur Jan. Hoping to cut off the threat at the root, he travels undercover to the Assassins' base, the restive city of Zodanga, still smarting from its defeat and sack by the Empire of Helium and the horde of Tharks in A Princess of Mars.

John Carter desperately needed the aid of Barsoom's greatest scientist. But Ras Thavas was the prisoner of a nightmare army of his own creation -- half-humans who lived only for conquest. And in their hidden laboratory seethed a horror that could engulf all of Mars.

There is no such thing as peace on the planet of war. John Carter, while searching for his granddaughter, must fight his way from Horz to the north pole, and to far Gathol.

Pew Mogel and a monstrous giant threaten the peace and security of Barsoom.

John Carter is treacherously captured then transported to Jupiter by the war-like Morgors. Only his wits and sword arm may see him through.

MEET TELZEY AMBERDON - SHE'S NOBODY'S TOY

Telzey Amberdon was only in her teens when she discovered that she was a telepath. Not only a telepath, but a xenotelepath, able to communicate mentally not just with humans, but with alien intelligences. And she turned out to be one of the most powerful telepaths in the history of the galactic civilization called the Hub.

First she had to deal with an alien race that humans hadn't realized were intelligent, and who were about to eliminate those troublesome humans who thought they were colonizing an uninhabited world. Then, she had to fend off the secret psi agents of the Psychological Corps who took a dim view of any telepath, let alone one with Telzey's powers, operating outside of their control. Next, she stumbled across a telepathic serial killer, who used an unstoppable predator, under his mental control, to hunt and kill his victims-and Telzey was to be the catch of the day.

It was fortunate for the human race that she survived, since she next found herself in the middle of a secret war between two hidden races of genetically engineered humans. They called it the "Lion Game," and they made the mistake of thinking that in this clash of predators, Telzey was just a harmless kitten. But when the dust settled, Telzey would be the only one purring....

Table of Contents:

• Novice - (1962) - novelette
• Undercurrents - (1964) - novella
• Poltergeist - (1971) - short story
• Goblin Night - (1965) - novelette
• Sleep No More - (1965) - short story
• The Lion Game - (1971) - novella
• Blood of Nalakia - (1953) - novelette
• The Star Hyacinths - (1961) - novelette
• Afterword - essay by Eric Flint
• The Federation of the Hub: An Overview - essay by Guy Gordon

THEY'RE DYNAMITE

Telzey Amberdon is one of the most powerful xenotelepaths in the known galaxy. Trigger Argee is a crack shot, with reflexes that make lightning look lethargic, and also a top agent of the galaxy's Federation of the Hub. Separately, they have been making life miserable for human criminals, unfriendly aliens, and nefarious members of all species. But when a danger to the entire Hub civilization brought these two together, the galaxy would never be the same!

Table of Contents:

• Company Planet - (1971) - novelette
• Resident Witch - (1970) - novelette
• The Pork Chop Tree - (1965) - short story
• Compulsion - (1970) - novelette
• Glory Day - (1971) - novelette
• Child of the Gods - (1972) - novelette
• Ti's Toys - (1971) - novella
• The Symbiotes - (1972) - novelette
• Afterword - essay by Eric Flint
• That Certain Something - essay by Guy Gordon

IF BUREAUCRACIES HAD STARSHIPS

Con games Corrupt governors. Deadly rivalries between departments of the same government. And, of course, the long arm of the Mob. Even in our future among the stars, some things never change-except that the governors run (and ruin) planets, the rivalries are fought with spacecraft and energy bolts, and the mobsters smuggle real illegal aliens and make their getaways with subspace portals. It's all just another day in that bastion of galactic peace and democracy, the Federation of the Hub

-and somebody has to clean up this mess!

Join secret agent Trigger Argee, scout adventurer Heslet Quillan and Holati Tate, master of intrigue, as they battle the criminal element on its own interstellar turf... and make the future a little safer for the rest of us.

Table of Contents:

• Harvest Time - (1958) - novelette
• Lion Loose - (1961) - novella
• Aura of Immortality - (1974) - short story
• Forget It - (1965) - novelette
• Legacy - (1962) - novel
• Sour Note on Palayata - (1956) - novelette
• Afterword - essay by Eric Flint
• The Psychology Service: Immune System of the Hub - essay by Guy Gordon

THE HUB IS A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE - BUT SO ARE ITS CITIZENS.

The Federation of the Hub: thousands of rough, ornery and tough-minded human worlds with only the subtlest of interstellar governments holding them all together. Stable at last after centuries of war, the Hub is now prime real estate ... making it a merciless arena for the conflicting schemes of criminals, unscrupulous corporations, and invaders from beyond the edges of Federation space.

But the Hub is well-defended, and not only by professional heroes such as Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee. In Hub Space a citizen is expected to stand up for herself, blaster in hand, as needs must; so when Trouble comes Hubward in large doses, there are an awful lot of armed citizens waiting for it....

Table of Contents:

• The Searcher - (1966) - novella
• Grandpa - (1955) - novelette
• Balanced Ecology - (1965) - short story
• A Nice Day for Screaming - (1965) - short story
• The Winds of Time - (1962) - novelette
• The Machmen - (1964) - short story
• The Other Likeness - (1962) - short story
• Attitudes - (1969) - novelette
• Trouble Tide - (1965) - novelette
• The Demon Breed - (1968) - novel
• Afterword - essay by Eric Flint
• Recurring Characters in the Hub Series - essay by Guy Gordon

On the planet Darkover, a Keeper--the center of a working psychic circle, the manipulator of colossal psychic forces--has traditionally been a virgin female. Callista, powerful Keeper of Arilinn Tower, has resigned her office to marry the Terran, Andrew Carr, who rescued her from her abductors in the previous book, THE SPELL SWORD.

As she struggles to throw off the years of conditioning that kept her mind and body under frighteningly rigid control, her new husband has his own battle with crippling culture shock. Meanwhile, Callista's brother-in-law Damon is conducting his own researches in an attempt to help her; his work, which suggests that a Keeper need not be virgin--nor female--could shake the very foundations of Darkovan society.

Contains a subset of the stories originally published in The Early Asimov.

Contains:

• Author, Author
• Death Sentence
• Blind Alley
• No Connection
• The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline
• The Rd Queen's Race
• Mother Earth

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1981) - essay by Martin H. Greenberg
• The Cave - (1943) - novelette by P. Schuyler Miller
• The Halfling - (1943) - novelette by Leigh Brackett
• Mimsy Were the Borogoves - (1943) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• Q. U. R. - (1943) - short story by Anthony Boucher
• Clash by Night - (1943) - novella by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lawrence O'Donnell]
• Exile - (1943) - short story by Edmond Hamilton
• Daymare - (1943) - novelette by Fredric Brown
• Doorway Into Time - (1943) - short story by C. L. Moore
• The Storm - (1943) - novelette by A. E. van Vogt
• The Proud Robot - (1943) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• Symbiotica - (1943) - novelette by Eric Frank Russell
• The Iron Standard - (1943) - short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]

This volume contains all the Hugo award winning short fiction for the award years 1955 to 1961, each with an introduction by Isaac Asimov.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Allamagoosa - (1955) - shortstory by Eric Frank Russell
• Exploration Team - (1956) - novelette by Murray Leinster
• Flowers for Algernon - (1959) - novelette by Daniel Keyes
• Or All the Seas with Oysters - (1958) - shortstory by Avram Davidson
• That Hell-Bound Train - (1958) - shortstory by Robert Bloch
• The Big Front Yard - (1958) - novella by Clifford D. Simak
• The Darfsteller - (1955) - novella by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• The Longest Voyage - (1960) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• The Star - (1955) - shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• Appendix: The Hugo Awards - essay by uncredited

In the parallel world first introduced in S. M. Stirling's The Sky People, aliens terraformed Mars (and Venus) two hundred million years ago, seeding them with life-forms from Earth. Humans didn't suspect this until the twentieth century, but when the first probes landed on our sister worlds, and found life--intelligent life, at that--things changed with a vengeance. By the year 2000, America, Russia, and the other great powers of Earth are all contending for influence and power amid the newly-discovered inhabitants of our sister planets.

Venus is a primitive world. But on Mars, early hominids evolved civilization earlier than their earthly cousins, driven by the needs of a harsh world growing still harsher as the initial terraforming runs down. Without coal, oil, or uranium, their technology was forced into different paths, and the genetic wizardry of the Crimson Dynasty united a world for more than twenty thousand years.

Now, in a new stand-alone adventure set in this world's 2000 AD, Jeremy Wainman is an archaeologist who has achieved a lifelong dream; to travel to Mars and explore the dead cities of the Deep Beyond, searching for the secrets of the Kings Beneath the Mountain and the fallen empire they ruled.

Teyud Zha-Zhalt is the Martian mercenary the Terrans hire as guide and captain of the landship Intrepid Traveller. A secret links her to the deadly intrigues of Dvor il-Adazar, the City That Is A Mountain, where the last aging descendant of the Tollamune Emperors clings to the remnants of his power... and secrets that may trace their origin to the enigmatic Ancients, the Lords of Creation who reshaped the Solar System in the time of the dinosaurs.

When these three meet, the foundations of reality will be shaken--from the lost city of Rema-Dza to the courts of the Crimson Kings.

The course of World War One is interrupted by messages from a mysterious Scientist known only as PAX, who is threatening superscientific punishments if the war is not stopped. After some demonstrations, featuring Rays, a flying ship, atomic energy and the slowing of Earth's orbit, which causes vast earthquakes, the nations obey; unfortunately, PAX turns Mad Scientist, but dies before he can turn Europe into an Arctic wilderness.

This novel is notable for describing what an atomic detonation would look like in 1915, thirty years before the United States detonated the first atomic bomb.

The character who discovered the dead PAX in The Man Who Rocked the Earth must now defend Earth against an approaching Asteroid. He travels with a proto-Feminist mathematician who found the errant asteroid; they change the course of the asteroid so it becomes a second Moon, and then marry.

A beautifully logical tale of a robot who simply couldn't tell the truth!

This short story is in the Susan Calvin series a Sub-series of: The Positronic Robot Stories

The story is included in the collections:

• The Complete Robot (1982)
• I, Robot (1950)
• The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 3, (1941)

It first appeared in the May, 1941 Issue of Astounding Science Fiction, available on Internet Archives.

FOR 300 YEARS THE PLANET OF WOMEN AWAITED THE COMING OF MAN. THEN ONE ARRIVES...

He is Davis Bertram, a space-explorer. But how can he convince the he really is a man? Their legends have built Men into gods.

Trying to worthy of the Coming, the women imitate masculine virtues. they are warlike, ambitions, ruthless. Unless Davis can convince them he is a man, they will kill him for blasphemy. But if he does convince them, the Coctor-Priests will kill him to protect their own iron control of the planet....

Slippery Jim DiGriz. The galaxy's greatest thief and con artist: the Stainless Steel Rat. For novel upon novel, Jim DiGriz has outfoxed the forces of conventionality, cutting a stylish swathe through dozens of star systems.

Now, Slippery Jim and his beautiful wife Angelina find themselves becalmed on a painfully boring backwater planet, with nothing to do but practice their skills at computer crime.

Then they meet a billionaire who claims to be 40,000 years old--who offers them millions of credits to investigate a string of unsolved interstellar bank robberies. Robberies which, it turns out, always happen when the circus is nearby. . . .

In a sense, The Stainless Steel Rat has always been a high-wire performer. Now, as he infiltrates the world of the galactic big top, he's taking the role to extremes . . . and drawing the attention of more dangerous ringmasters and strongmen than he ever expected.

Will this be his final show? Has Slippery Jim finally leapt for his last trapeze? Naaah.

After a ten-year absence, the return of one of the most enduring series characters in modern SF

James Bolivar "Slippery Jim" DiGriz, Special Corps agent, master con man, interstellar criminal (retired), is living high on the hog on the planet of Moolaplenty when a long-lost cousin and a shipful of swine arrive to drain his bank account and send him and his lovely wife, Angelina, wandering the stars on the wildest journey since Gulliver's Travels.

In this darkly satiric work, Harry Harrison bring his most famous character out of retirement for a grand tour of the galaxy. The Stainless Steel Rat rides again: a cocktail in his hand, a smile on his lips, and larceny in his heart, in search of adventure, gravitons, and a way to get rid of the pigs.

With the publication, in the July 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, of the story Seesaw, van Vogt began unfolding the complex tale of the oppressive Empire of Isher and the mysterious Weapon Shops. This volume, The Weapon Shops of Isher, includes the first three parts of the saga and introduces perhaps the most famous political slogan of science fiction: The Right to Buy Weapons is the Right to Be Free. Born at the height of Nazi conquest, the Isher stories suggested that an oppressive government could never completely subjugate its own citizens if they were well armed. The audience appeal was immediate and has endured long beyond other stories of alien invasion, global conflict and post war nuclear angst.

Imagine: a future empire of super-science, so strong that it had lasted thousands of years, so vast that it encompassed the entire Solar System, and whose ruler was a glamorous and thoroughly willful young woman. Yet, this tremendous set-up was completely unable to cope with the machinations of one solitary outlaw.

That man was the amazing Robert Hedrock, and though Hedrock had been declared a kill-on-sight outcast even by those who had once been his own faction, neither they nor their empress foe suspected that he alone could provide the solution to their deadliest cosmic crisis.

IT'S CALLED "THE EVENT," AN UNIMAGINABLE CATACLYSM THAT SHATTERS 600 MILLION YEARS OF THE EARTH'S TIMELINE.

Our world is gone, instantly replaced by a new one made of scattered remnants of the past, present, and future, dropped alongside one another in a patchwork of "shards". Monsters from Jurassic prehistory, ancient armies, and high-tech robots all coexist in this deadly post-apocalyptic landscape.

A desperate group of survivors sets out to locate the source of the disaster. They include 21st century Californian Amber Richardson, Cam, a young Celtic warrior from Roman Britannia, Alex Brice, a policewoman from 1985, and Blake, a British soldier from World War II. With other refugees from across time, they must learn the truth behind the Event, if they are to survive.

Biron Farrell was young and naïve, but he was growing up fast. A radiation bomb planted in his dorm room changed him from an innocent student at the University of Earth to a marked man, fleeing desperately from an unknown assassin.

He soon discovers that, many light-years away, his father, the highly respected Rancher of Widemos, has been murdered. Stunned, grief-stricken, and outraged, Biron is determined to uncover the reasons behind his father's death, and becomes entangled in an intricate saga of rebellion, political intrigue, and espionage.

The mystery takes him deep into space where he finds himself in a relentless struggle with the power-mad despots of Tyrann. Now it is not just a case of life or death for Biron, but a question of freedom for the galaxy.

The shimmering, cloud-covered planet of Venus conceals a wondrous secret: the strikingly beautiful yet deadly world of Amtor. In Amtor, cities of immortal beings flourish in giant trees reaching thousands of feet into the sky; ferocious beasts stalk the wilderness below; rare flashes of sunlight precipitate devastating storms; and the inhabitants believe their world is saucer-shaped with a fiery center and an icy rim. Stranded on Amtor after his spaceship crashes, astronaut Carson Napier is swept into a world where revolution is ripe, the love of a princess carries a dear price, and death can come as easily from the blade of a sword as from the ray of a futuristic gun.

Pirates of Venus is the exciting inaugural volume in the last series imagined and penned by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was originally serialized in Argosy magazine in 1932.

Second in the Venus series. Carson Napier begins this episode in the Room of the Seven Doors. He can leave any time he wants, but six of the seven doors lead to hideous deaths; only one is the door of life.

After navigating his way out of this logic puzzle, Carson continues his quest to rescue the planet's fairest princess. He pursues this with singlemindedness, even though more terrible dagners lie ahead; even though the princess wishes neither his help or his affection; even though her people will execute him if he enters their country! Such is the honor of an Earthman's pledge.

In Carson of Venus our intrepid hero and his beloved Duare flee from Havatoo but are soon attacked by a brutal female tribe; Carson is left for dead and Duare is enslaved. Carson's only mission now is to find and rescue Duare and make his escape with her to their new kingdom of Korva.

Originally serialized in 1938 in Argosy.

A classic of nineteenth-century French literature, this science fiction tale delves into the depths of the Earth, and by so doing, reveals the staggeringly long history of our planet.

Back in print after a decade, expanded with new original material, this is the first volume of George R. R. Martin's Wild cards shared-world series

There is a secret history of the world-a history in which an alien virus struck the Earth in the aftermath of World War II, endowing a handful of survivors with extraordinary powers. Some were called Aces-those with superhuman mental and physical abilities. Others were termed Jokers-cursed with bizarre mental or physical disabilities. Some turned their talents to the service of humanity. Others used their powers for evil. Wild Cards is their story.

Originally published in 1987, Wild Cards I includes powerful tales by Roger Zelazny, Walter Jon Williams, Howard Waldrop, Lewis Shiner, and George R. R. Martin himself. And this new, expanded edition contains further original tales set at the beginning of the Wild Cards universe, by eminent new writers like Hugo-winner David Levine, noted screenwriter and novelist Michael Cassutt, and New York Times bestseller Carrie Vaughn.

He is the greatest hero of our time--Doc Savage!

Philip José Farmer, three-time Hugo award winner and Science Fiction Grand Master, has turned his superb research and narrative skills to one of the greatest heroes of our time: Doc Savage, the bronze champion of justice.

Now, at last, the incredible life story of the real man behind the Doc Savage pulp novels, including:

His true name and family background, covering his relationship to Lord Greystoke, Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, James Bond, and Fu Manchu.

Detailed information on some of his most devilish opponents--John Sunlight, the Mystic Mullah, and Mr. Wail.

A summation of some of Doc's most amazing inventions.

Biographies of the Fabulous Five--Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom, and Johnny--as well as the group's Lady Auxiliary and Bronze Knockout, Pat Savage!

Together with other data and brilliant deductions, Philip José Farmer offers an amazing account of this remarkable man's astonishing career!

Imagine a whole series of separate universes, made to suit the whims of a race of super-beings. Imagine these universes with their own laws, cultures, creatures and ecologies-all existing only to please the fancies of their individual master. Then imagine one such universe constructed as a diabolical trap to destroy a single person-the man called Robert Wolff, one of the race of universe-makers, and once of Earth. When the satanic Master-Lord, Urizen, kidnaps Wolff's wife, he forces Wolff to enter the deadly universe of ambushes, filled with every kind of tortuous snare that the evil mind of the Master-Lord can devise. Wolf has only his courage and his wits which to combat this cosmic maze-unless he can perform a miracle, he and Chrysalis are doomed.

It was a world of tiers and layers - the Amerind level, the Garden of Eden level, theTalanac, the Atlantean - a universe of green skies and fabled beasts. It was the playground-cosmos of the Lord Jadawin, with transgravitational gates to the other levels and other worlds. But now those gates were being sabotaged to permit the entry of an invading force of 'Sellers' - human bodies housing the transferred minds of rebel Lords - and their minions, who were seeking two things: total domination of every Lord's private cosmos, now that they had achieved immortality, and the life of Kickaha the Trickster, who knew too much…

BEHIND THE WALLS OF TERRA .... LAY THE SECRET NO MAN COULD BE ALLOWED TO LEARN!

Kickaha was the name by which Paul Janus Finnegan, adventurer had been known on the artificial universes created by that super-race known as the Lords. And though Earthman and mortal, he had survived the worst they could throw at him.

But it was to be upon his return to Earth that Kickaha was to face his greatest trial. For once back on the streets of an American city, armed with the knowledge of the forces that moved the heavens, he was a target for the cosmic venom of the powers that contended for this very universe.

BEHIND THE WALLS OF TERRA lay a secret no human could learn - and live. But Kickaha had learned it - and he was not going to take it lying down!

The Lavalite World is a world of slow but constant change. The very landscape moves. Here mountains rise from plains or sink into rifts. New oceans form as vast hollows collapse and seas rush in. And there is only one escape from this bizarre planet: the one gateway to other universes is in the palace of the Lord Urthona. Paul Janus Finnegan - also known as Kjckaha - must reach it if he is to survive. And he must do so despite the Lords Urthona and Red Ore, the hired thug McKay, flesh-eating vegetation on the run, assorted strange beasts of prey, and planetary pseudopods . . .