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The World Shuffler (Lafayette O'Leary)
by Keith Laumer'TWAS BORING IN ARTESIA...or so thought Sir Lafayette O'Leary, ex-craftsman from Earth, and now seemingly ex-interdimensional swashbuckler extraordinaire as well. His battles were all won, his dragons all slain and life was just the same boring round of riches, royal hunts and regatas. Boring, boring, boring; until he walked past the azalia...Suddenly Artesia was gone, and O'Leary was trapped in Melange, a world of giants and pirates, karate-chopping hags and electronic flying carpets, a world where goons and harlots are the spitting images (literally!) of his own aristocratic Artesian associates. And because they think he's his double, lots of his new friends want O'Leary dead.Unless he can get through the interdimensional gate and find the continuum path back home, O'Leary's life will never be boring again. Just short.
World without Children and The Earth Quarter
by Damon KnightAlien Ghetto.The men of Earth were spread thin across the galaxy - and little welcome where they did appear. They lived on sufferance, disliked by their hosts and intent on spreading hatred to the stars! Unable to live in peace in their own worlds, they would sow their seeds of discontent among the peoples of the galaxy, as all the hatreds of mankind simmered under alien rule. But revolution against Earth's alien hosts would mean - for all mean - the end of the stars!
Worldly Spirits, Extra-Human Dimensions, and the Global Anglophone Novel
by Dr Hilary ThompsonEngaging a diverse range of contemporary anglophone literature from authors of the Asian, Middle Eastern and Caribbean diasporas, this book explores how such works turn to spirit forces, spirit realms and spirit beings - were-animals, mystical birds, and snake goddesses - as positive forces that assert perceptual dimensions beyond those of the human, and present a vision of Earth as agentive and animate. With previous scholarship downplaying these aspects of modern works as uncanny hauntings or symptoms of capitalism's or anthropocentrism's destructiveness, or within a blanket rubric of 'magical realism', Hilary Thompson rejects this partitioning of them as products of an exotic East or global South. By contrast, this book builds a new critical framework for analysis of worldly spirits, drawing on anthropological discussions of animism, the newly recovered 1930s boundary-crossing art movement Dimensionism, and multispecies theories of animals' diverse perceptual worlds. Taking stock of novels published from 2018-2020 by such writers as Amitav Ghosh, André Alexis, Yangsze Choo, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Zeyn Joukhadar, and Tanya Tagaq, Thompson illuminates how these works extend an ecological call to decentre the human and align with multidimensional theories of art and literature to provide ways to read for rather than reduce the extra-human dimensions emerging in contemporary fiction. A refreshing rejection of ecological apocalypticism, this book unsettles typical conceptualizations of both anglophone and Anthropocene literatures by invoking European art theory, philosophy, and non-Western ideas on animism and spirits to put forward perceptions of the extra-human as a form of dealing with the many uncertainties of today's different crises.
The Yawnicorn
by Emily HamiltonMagic is waiting in this rhythmic, calming tale that is the perfect bedtime story for when little ones struggle to fall asleep!You're tucked into bed, ready for sleep. But . . . your head is all busy. and your legs are all twitchy. And this blanket is so itchy!It's time to call on the Yawnicorn! Tuck in for an enchanting nighttime adventure flying over oceans, marching through jungles, and soaring across glittering galaxies until you find your perfect dreamland. With the Yawnicorn's help, young readers are destined for a night of magical wonder and sweet dreams.Join the Yawnicorn on a bedtime adventure you'll never forget!
Abyss: Two Novellas
by Kate WilhelmAbyss Anyone? Enter Kate Wilhelm's realm of extrasensory perception, alternate universes, alien monsters, and something else, something much more strange...the abyss that lurks near each of us, ready to destroy us...or set us free.
Alternate Orbits (John Grimes)
by A. Bertram Chandler"When Kinsolving's Planet crosses your path, beware!"Commodore John Grimes would have done well to heed this warning. But the evil magic of Kinsolving draws him on, pulling him on a journey through the universes. Is Grimes a swiftly facing literary ghost, doomed to disappearance for the inadvertent theft of a meerschaum pipe? Or, is he a flesh and blood Commodore, sailing the spaceways from world to world, enjoying dangerous voyages to momentary safe ports?It does not matter what role is the "true" John Grimes for none can protect him from the grasp of Kinsolving's Planet, an abandoned colony which reaches out for man, for the target, John Grimes, who is inexorably sucked toward his final destiny ...
And All The Stars A Stage
by James BlishThere are too many men in a world governed by women. They're bored and disillusioned and often resort to 'suicide missions' - jobs in experimental space research. Jorn applies for such a job, is selected and trained as a navigator for the huge ship Javelin, the first to implement the recently discovered faster-than-light Evrak Effect.Before the Effect is tested, however, it is discovered that life will be extinct within nine years; the sun is burning up, preparing to explode. The Evrak Effect will save a small percentage of mankind, take civilisation to a yet unknown planet. Production on new ships is given priority, the ruthless selection of passengers begins. Twenty-five billion people will be left behind.Led by Javelin, thirty ships wander in space through many light years of promises, lost hope and death for the original crew and passengers. But life does survive, children grow and learn, to inherit the beginning of another world, another promise.James Blish has written a compelling novel of gigantic moral problems and of people who learn to cope with their own limitations in order to deal with them.
Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine
by R. A. Lafferty'This, I believe, is the first autobiography of a machine,' writes Epikt, a Ktistec machine. In the resulting mindbending, at times hilarious, work of the imagination, the careful and attentive reader realizes that Epikt is not only presiding at its own birth at the Institute for Impure Science, but it is also addressing itself to the interpretation of mankind's most profoundly puzzling problems.
Butterfly Planet
by Philip E. HighLook down into the streets, the buildings, the parks.There is your battleground. Down there is the enemy - an enemy who wears no uniform.He walks behind you in the street, sits with you when you eat, and perhaps swims beside you in a public pool. He may ask you for a light, bow you into a hotel, sell you a flyer, or in another form, leave the smell of perfume on your pillow.The enemy is young and old, male and female, and he is everywhere. Could such a situation arise - or has it arisen? In this exciting story of the future, the author depicts a world at war. An undercover war, so skilfully manipulated that sixty per cent of the population is unaware of its existence. Yet, daily, the casualty figures climb higher and higher.Can you say that such a war is impossible? Can you say when you have this all-action novel, that it has not already begun?
The Byworlder
by Poul AndersonEarly in the 21st century the world is enjoying an uneasy peace, with a distinct division between the "straight" society and the various fringe groups that go to form the Byworld.Tension grows, however, over the presence of an alien spaceship that is orbiting the world, bearing a single occupant - the Sigman. It appears that no-one knows how to communicate with the Sigman; no-one knows the purpose of his visit. Until two people - one "straight" and the other a Byworlder - solve the problems involved; and in so doing trigger off a series of violent plots and counterplots that mount to a frenetic climax.
The Clocks of Iraz
by L. Sprague deCampThe Best Mislaid PlansWizardly schemes, Jorian knew went oft a-gley. But this time the wizard's plan seemed simple. Since ancient prophecy foretold that the clocks would save Iraz, Jorian must repair the great tower clocks that his father had built.If everything went well, Karadur could then plan the rescue of Jorian's beloved wife, Queen Estrildis from Xylar.And Jorian would be appointed Clockmaster of Iraz, a position that would require him to break a pirate siege, placate an amorous priestess, and stay at least one step ahead of the Royal Guard of Xylar - where he was still wanted as the star sttraction of a royal beheading!
The Dancer from Atlantis
by Poul AndersonAN ACCIDENT IN TIME...Duncan Reid was snatched out of the twentieth century from a cruise liner in the mid-Pacific. Oleg Vladimirovitch came from Novgorod in medieval Russia. Udin was a Hun barbarian who lived by cunning and the axe. Erissa had been a sacred priestess in a lost continent. And a mistake in a time-experiment by a race from the far future had thrown these four unlikely comrades together, pulling them through a warp in the fabric of space and time to a world which was ancient history.The strange alliance that Duncan and his comrades formed in that unfamiliar world was to take on a significance that none of them could have foreseen. For not only their own future, but they very future of the world they had found was at stake...
The Dark Dimensions (John Grimes)
by A. Bertram ChandlerCommodore John Grimes was finally getting his space wings back. On his old ship, Faraway Quest, Grimes was to venture forth to the very Rim of the known worlds, seeing ... The Outsider."The Outsider's Ship ... is a storehouse of science and technology ... we, and the Federation, and the Shaara Empire, and probably quite a few more, have sent expeditions. Every one has ended disastrously."So, it is out to the Rim and find The Outsider. But the mystery ship is not always easy to find. And other worlds, too, yearn for the treasures of the alien technology. What Commodore Grimes finds at the Rim, and what finds him there, sends him racing through time tracks, surrounded by enemies and temporary friends, trying endlessly to discover the secret dangers of ... The Outsider.
Darkness Weaves (Kane)
by Karl Edward WagnerKane - indestructible swordsman, invincible sorcerer, immortal wanderer through strange worlds. Efrel, Empress of Pellin, seeks vengeance on the King of Thovnos and chooses Kane as her champion.
The Day After Judgement: After Such Knowledge Book 4 (Gateway Essentials)
by James BlishThe events told in Black Easter have run their course. Now God is dead, and Satan has dominion over the earth . . .
Decision At Doona (Doona Ser. #Bk. 1)
by Anne McCaffreyDoona was a jewel of a planet -- a pastoral paradise with rivers, lakes, mountains and seas. The Hrrubans needed it to revitalise their decadent race, to give it back something of the old pioneering spirit. The Terrans needed it as an overspill from the hysterical crowding of Earth, a place to breathe and move without restrictions.So they both sent a colonising party -- and they both began to think of Doona as Home. And then one day the smooth-skinned, two-legged mammal known as Man came face to face with the furry, four-pawed mammal known as Hrruban...
Destiny Doll
by Clifford D. SimakThe planet beckoned them from space - and closed round them like a Venus Fly Trap! Assailed by strange perils and even stranger temptations, the little group stumbled towards its destiny - Mike Ross, the pilot, Sara Foster, the big game hunter, blind George Smith, and the odious Friar Tuck. Before them was a legend made flesh, around them were creatures of myth and mystery, close behind them stalked Nemesis. The doll, the little wooden painted doll, was to be their salvation. Or their damnation, for each might choose, and find, his own Nirvana.
The Devil Is Dead: The Devil Is Dead Trilogy Book 1
by R. A. LaffertyIn The Devil is Dead, Lafferty tells of an astonishing band of adventurers seeking the Devil himself. It is a tale of demons and changelings, monsters and mermaids - and of how it is not always serious to die, the first time it happens...
Dinosaur Beach
by Keith LaumerAppearing from the remote future, Nexx Central agent Ravel is emplaced in America, circa 1936. His mission: to undo successive tamperings of the time stream which threaten the survival of Mankind. He falls in love with a lovely, simple girl, Lisa, but in the midst of his happiness is called away to Dinosaur Beach.Dinosaur Beach is a Nexx Central station located millions of years in the past, in the Jurassic Age. But shortly after Ravel's arrival, the station is attacked and destroyed, and Ravel begins a terrifying odyssey through time.For the attackers were another time-tampering team from still a different future era. And Ravel himself is not only in growing danger but the human world as we know it...
Domino
by Richard CowperFrom the moment when young Christopher Blackburn is prevailed upon to attend a seance at The Seekers' Temple a series of seemingly inexplicable and increasingly terrifying experiences gradually convinces him that he has been singled out by some unknown power which is bent on his destruction. But why? And what can he have which has attracted the attention of the sinister Guardians? In a desperate hunt for the answers to these questions Christoper learns for himself the old truth that no man is an island; the new one that it is possible to be in two times at the same place; and the sombre one that some of us are more responsible to posterity than we care to admit!
Don't Pick the Flowers
by D. F. JonesWhen experimental drilling on the pacific sea-bed breaks through the earth's thin mantle, vast quantities of nitrogen, trapped for untold millions of years, are released into the atmosphere. As a result, the oxygen in the air becomes dangerously diluted. Whole areas of America are thrown into chaos as the inhabitants literally fight for breath. Two men and two girls put to sea in a yacht in a desperate effort to escape the terror, but terror, in a different and no less deadly form, pursues them relentlessly.
Dragonquest: Dragonflight - Dragonquest - The White Dragon (The Dragon Books #2)
by Anne McCaffreyAnother Turn, and the deadly silver Threads began falling again. So the bold dragonriders took to the skies and their magnificent dragons swirled and swooped in space, belching flames that destroyed the shimmering strands before they reached the ground. But F'lar knew he had to find a better way to protect the peoples and lands of Pern, and he had to find it before the rebellious Oldtimers could breed any more dissent...before his brother F'nor would be foolhardy enough to launch another suicide mission...and before the mercurial fire lizards could cause even more trouble.
Dragons, Elves and Heroes
by Lin CarterThere is magic in the grand old tales that have survived through centuries of time. Even the names of the books have a ring that sets the blood pounding - THE VOLSUNG SAGA, THE SHAH-NAMAH, THE MABINOGIAN. From all over the world, from all periods of ancient time, the great myths and heroic tales thunder down through the ages. Each country, each region has its legends. Somewhere, sometime, somehow, some often unknown scribe has set the tales down in permanent form.In this volume, Lin Carter has gathered together samplings from this richest of all sources of adult fantasy and although their original names may sometimes be anonymous, there surely has never been such a pride of taletellers together at one time as we have in DRAGONS, ELVES AND HEROES.