The Cosmic Crusaders find themselves on a truly strange world–a misfit planet that seems mysteriously cursed. Instead of evolving naturally from birth to death, it's a world out of step with the universe, leaping ahead into the future at unexpected moments. With each 50-year «step,» much of the population dies, and the young replace them as middle-aged individuals. The Crusaders are suspicious that the adviser to the planet ruler is actuall ...
Vret McClintock, a young channel in training at the world-famous Rialite First Year Camp, overhears the sultry female voice of Ilin Sumz, is stricken with love, and decides to pursue her. He discovers that Ilin is running the illicit historical fantasies board on the campus mainframe computer. Vret must then risk his future career to extricate his love from her web of dirty secrets, before they can ruin the lives of other students and teachers–o ...
When the first Martian capsule lands, Alex Smith is drawn to the scene out of curiosity and wonder. But soon he must flee, when the great alien striders begin devastating the countryside and harvesting the living bodies of men and women to drain their blood. Smith wanders south, being drafted into the Army, witnessing major battles between the Martians and the American troops, and following the trail of destruction all the way to San Francisco. ...
When Steve, a hapless school teacher, consults a hypnotherapist to solve his personal problems, he «remembers» being abducted by aliens. When he starts attending sessions of Alien Abductees Anonymous (AlAbAn), he sees a pattern in the stories being told, and thinks his own experiences might provide a key. While his love life continues to deteriorate, Steve must grapple with questions of where the aliens might originate, and what their activities ...
Jaguar is sent back to Planetoid One, her first Planetoid assignment, to investigate a prisoner convicted of killing Supervisor Diane Lasher, once her friend. As she walks the corridors of her own past, Jaguar is haunted by ghosts who might or might not be real, and plagued by attempts to kill her before she gets to the truth. Alex takes extreme measures to make sure he's there to protect her, before she becomes one more victim of the stran ...
The Robert Sheckley Megapack presents 14 short stories and 1 novel by the author Neil Gaiman called «probably the best short-story writer during the '50s to the mid-1960s working in any field.» Here are tales of adventure in strange futures, full of the wry wit and piercing characterizations that made Sheckley one of the great writers working in science fiction! <P> "Robert Sheckley: the best short-story writer the field has pr ...
Mack Reynolds was a frequent and prolific contributor to the science fiction magazines from the 1950s through the 1980s. This volume collects 23 choice tales, ranging from space opera to social science fiction – nearly a thousand pages vintage work from a master storyteller! <P> Included are: <P> HAPPY ENDING<BR> ULTIMA THULE<BR> GUN FOR HIRE<BR> ADAPTATION<BR> STOWAWAY<BR> MEDAL OF HONOR<BR& ...
The eleven stories in Designer Genes showcase the latest volume in this intriguing science fiction that explores intriguing future possibilities in biotechnology, ranging from stories of imminent technology reflecting issues that are already controversial, to stories that feature drastically altered worlds. Most of the stories are domestic dramas in which ordinary people are trying to get on with their everyday lives in circumstances that are al ...
SF Author Stanley G. Weinbaum died from cancer at 33, in December 1935. Short though his career was, his scientific imagination, smooth characterization, and humor completely revolutionized the field, and profoundly influenced his contemporaries. Among his many imitators was English writer John Russell Fearn. Although Fearn's own distinctive work was very popular, he wanted to increase his number of acceptances by writing under pseudonyms–T ...