The diabolical Nova Criminals now include the nightmarish characters of Sammy the Butcher, Iron Claws, Izzy the Push and the Brown Artist, and are poised to wreak untold destruction on the world with their new-found control. Only Inspector Lee of the Nova Police has any chance of stopping them, by dismantling the word and image machine before it's too late. The third book of Burroughs's linguistically prophetic 'cut-up' trilogy - following The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded - Nova Express is a hilarious and Swiftian parody of bureaucracy and the frailty of the human animal.
Jon-Joras had come to Earth simply to oversee arrangements for a dragon hunt to amuse the king. These hunts were as much pageantry as sport - the dragons, brought to Earth centuries before as pets of an alien race, were powerful but slow-witted. But suddenly the dragons had become dangerous - quick, deceptive, a menace to the nobles who hunted them. And Jon-Joras found himself caught in the middle of an uprising that could shake the powers that ruled the star-worlds.
"A masterpiece."—Roberto Bolaño What happens after the bombs drop? This is the troubling question Philip K. Dick addresses with Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After the Bomb. It is the story of a world reeling from the effects of nuclear annihilation and fallout, a world where mutated humans and animals are the norm, and the scattered survivors take comfort from a disc jockey endlessly circling the globe in a broken-down satellite. And hidden amongst the survivors is Dr. Bloodmoney himself, the man responsible for it all. This bizarre cast of characters cajole, seduce, and backstab in their attempts to get ahead in what is left of the world, consequences and casualties be damned. A sort of companion to Dr. Strangelove, an unofficial and unhinged sequel, Dick’s novel is just as full of dark comedy and just as chilling.
Palmer Eldritch returns from the edge of the universe with a drug called Chew-D for the colonists of Mars who are under threat of god-like or satanic psychics that threaten to wage war against the human soul.
In a harrowing tale of a futuristic Earth devastated by ecological catastrophe, the world's cities have been destroyed, quick-growing alien plants have overrun the planet, and the desperate human survivors struggle to preserve the last vestiges of human society. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.
THE DEMONS HAD TO STOP JOHN BRAVAIS His secret assignment was simply - to save mankind from the savage dog-like 'things' that used their hands like men. Yet an unknown number of apparently 'human' beings were against him too. First transformed by surgery into a superman, John Bravais probes ever more deeply into the secret nightmare world of the 'things'. At last, when only his mind remains - trapped in a vast robot war machine on the moon - only by an immense act of will-power can he give humanity a future.
Long before Under the Dome, this novel of a town trapped within an invisible force field earned a Nebula Award nomination for the author of Way Station. Nothing much ever happens in Millville, a small, secluded Middle-American community—until the day Brad Carter discovers he is unable to leave. And the nearly bankrupt real estate agent is not the only one being held prisoner; every resident is confined within the town’s boundaries by an invisible force field that cannot be breached. As local tensions rapidly reach breaking point, a set of bizarre circumstances leads Brad to the source of their captivity, making him humanity’s reluctant ambassador to an alien race of sentient flora, and privy to these jailers’ ultimate intentions. But some of Millville’s most powerful citizens do not take kindly to Carter’s “collaboration with the enemy,” even under the sudden threat of global apocalypse. Decades before Stephen King trapped an entire town in Under the Dome, science fiction Grand Master Clifford D. Simak explored the shocking effects of communal captivity on an unsuspecting population. Nominated for the Nebula Award, All Flesh Is Grass is a riveting masterwork that brilliantly reinvents the alien invasion story.
Set in an alternate reality where Richard the Lionheart’s descendants rule the Anglo-French Empire, the laws of magic have developed in place of the laws of physics. In this late 20th century world, people still travel through pea fog by horse and carriage, but magic has made levitation and enchantment spells the norm, especially at a sorcerer’s convention. The International Sorcerer’s Convention is in full swing. Until London’s Chief Forensics Sorcerer, Sir James Zwinge, is found dead inside a locked room, that is. Master Sean O Lochlainn had been at odds with Sir James over competing breakthroughs in incision-free surgery, making him the prime suspect. It’s up to Lord Darcy to solve Sir James’ murder and exonerate his own forensic sorcerer and trusted assistant. But the mystery deepens when the murder of a Naval spy is connected to that of Sir James’ death. Conflict with Poland, a dominating world power, changes the game and suddenly there is a lot more at stake than the freedom of Lord Darcy’s old friend. Too Many Magicians was nominated for the Hugo Award in 1967, and the complete Lord Darcy series later won the Sideways Award for Alternate History.
NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED . . . Captain Pausert thought his luck had finally turned¾but he did not yet realize it was a turn for the worse. On second thought, make that a turn for the disastrous*. Unlucky in love, unsuccessful in business, he thought he had finally made good with his battered starship Venture, cruising around the fringes of the Empire and successfully selling off odd-ball cargoes which no one else had been able to sell. He was all set to return home, where his true love was faithfully waiting for him ... he hoped. But then he made the fatal mistake of freeing three slave children from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to part with them). They were just trying to be helpful, but those three adorable little girls quickly made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancee, his home planet, the Empire, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango¾and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space. And all because those harmless-looking little girls were in fact three of the notorious and universally feared Witches of Karres. A rollicking novel from the master of space adventure. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
A gripping story about primal evil: a sinister intermingling of power, politics, modern theology, the dark forces of necromancy, and what proves, all too terribly, not to be superstition.
Captures the strange world of twenty-first-century Earth, a devastated planet in which sophisticated androids, banned from the planet, fight back against their potential destroyers
A new kind of sci-fi heroine, the tough-as-nails Alyx, is introduced in this Nebula Award finalist that Poul Anderson called an “extraordinary” novel. Set in a semi-utopian world, Joanna Russ’s groundbreaking debut novel is the story of Alyx, a female soldier, survival guide, and agent of the Trans-Temporal Authority. Displaced in time from her ancient Greece, Alyx is tasked with safely leading a group of pampered human vacationers—including some unconventional nuns and a detached teenager known as the Machine—across an uninhabited scenic terrain to a relief station. But the journey proves more challenging than anticipated as they confront one another’s failings; the physical dangers of an icy, hostile wilderness; and Alyx’s own personal demons. Long before the kick-ass heroines of current science fiction and fantasy, Russ unapologetically introduced readers to a short, strong, middle-aged (for her world/time) woman of twenty-six who knows how to survive but struggles with the emotional nuances of her charges and the confusion of her own mixed feelings. With iconic characters like Alyx, Russ “four decades ago helped deliver science fiction into the hands of the most alien creatures the genre had yet seen—women . . . [and] helped inaugurate the now flourishing tradition of feminist science fiction” (The New York Times).
Vornan-19 fell from the sky and landed, naked, on the Spanish Steps in Rome on the afternoon of Christmas Day toward the end of the millennium. And that, for Leo Garfield began an extraordinary and eventful year. For Garfield is an acknowledged expert in the time-reversal of sub-atomic particles and Vornan-19 claims to come from far in the future, a claim that has to be investigated. But the world is in a strange, edgy state as it prepares to move into the next millennium and is ready and willing to see the charming and magnetically charismatic Vornan as some kind of messiah. Even Garfield and his fellow scientists come under Vornan's spell. But can he really be from the future? Or is he just a charlatan and a fraud? First published in 1968
Nebula Award Finalist:Mankind has been reduced to slavery by technology and surveillance, in this near-future novel from the author of Stand on Zanzibar. In The Jagged Orbit, Brunner, writing at the peak of form that allowed him to create Stand on Zanzibar, takes a long, hard, disturbing, and hilarious look at the near and not-so-distant future. Catastrophic changes due to rampant drug abuse, uncontrolled violence, high-level government corruption, inhumane treatment of the too-readily defined “insane,” and the accompanying collapse of the social order are wreaking havoc on the world we recognize and turning it into a reality we must fear and hope to avoid. Brunner tells a spine-chilling tale of where the world could possibly go that is all too believable and real for our comfort. “For each generation, there is a writer meant to bend the rules of what we know. Hugo Award winner (Best Novel, Stand on Zanzibar) and British science fiction master John Brunner remains one of the most influential and respected authors of all time, and now many of his classic works are being reintroduced. For readers familiar with his vision, it is a chance to reexamine his thoughtful worlds and words. For new readers, Brunner’s work proves itself the very definition of timeless.
This Hugo Award finalist, “justifiably regarded as a classic” (SFReviews.net), is the tale of an epic space voyage where time dilation goes horribly wrong. Aboard the spacecraft Leonora Christine, fifty crewmembers, half men and half women, have embarked on a journey of discovery like no other to a planet thirty light-years away. Since their ship is not capable of traveling faster than light, the crew will be subject to the effects of time dilation and relativity. They will age five years on board the ship before reaching their destination, but thirty-three years will pass on Earth. Experienced scientists and researchers, they have come to terms with the time conditions of their space travel. Until . . . the Leonora Christine passes through an uncharted nebula, which damages the engine, making it impossible to decelerate the ship on the second half of their trip. To survive, the crewmembers have no choice but to bypass their destination and continue to accelerate toward the speed of light. But how will they keep hope alive and maintain order as they hurtle deeper into space with time passing more and more rapidly, and their ultimate fate unknown? With its combination of mind-blowing hard science and compelling human drama, Tau Zero is “the ultimate hard science novel” (Mike Resnick).