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Talents Incorporated
by Murray LeinsterCharlatans or Prophets? At best, the tiny Kandarian Air Fleet would fight until its last ship was blown into infinity. At worst, it would be annihilated without a chance. To young Captain Bors, either course was unthinkable.The ruthless Dictator of Mekin had already subjugated twenty-two helpless planets. Now he wanted Kandar's unconditional surrender, or his vastly superior forces would blast it out of existence.It took a lot of guts, and the hope that is frequently born of despair, for a military man like Bors to throw in his lot with Talents, Incorporated, an untried, unscientific organization. Through peculiar gifts of extra-sensory perception, its personnel could, their leader insisted, out-think and out-guess even the most deadly dictator in the history of mankind. Could it? It just might.And it just might not. . . . But there was absolutely nothing to lose, and a free world (and a beautiful girl) to win. Captain Bors made his decision, and the loaded die was cast!
That Sweet Little Old Lady
by Randall Garrett Laurence M. JaniferMalone lives in a world where psionic powers such as telepathy and teleportation exist. He must cope with them as well as an FBI Director who leaves Malone continually confused about what situation he is being asked to handle and what he is expected to do about it. That Sweet Little Old Lady finds Malone charged with investigating leaks in a secret government program. For assistance, he recruits a powerful psi from a mental institution who believes she is Queen Elizabeth I of England. The problem is, she may be right. Perfectly marrying SF adventure with slapstick comedy for hilarious results, it was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1960.
They Walked Like Men (Gateway Essentials)
by Clifford D. SimakMoney was worthless!It had no value!It couldn't buy a home, clothes, food. Someone with enormous quantities of cash was buying houses and tearing them down - buying stores and closing them.A few people could have stopped the transaction before it was too late. They could have said that Earth was being taken over by alien beings in the shapes of bowling balls, talking dogs, dolls that walked like men.In fact, they did say it. The trouble was, no one believed them.
The Tides of Time
by John BrunnerFirst there was the end. After weeks of running from pursuers, Gene and Stacy finally found refuge on an isolated island. But around them the island changed - and so did they. Each time they awoke from sleep, they lived a different life in a different time. And the farther back they went, the more they lost their anchor to their own world. When at last they were found, the people they had become no longer recognised their pursuers. And that was the beginning.
Time Out For Tomorrow
by Richard WilsonRichard Wilson's stories could almost be described as gentle - if it were not for the pungent humor which runs through most of them, the startling satiric commentary, all the more impressive for its quiet setting - and the one other quality that is essential in any form of good writing: a genuine concern with the human condition. This quality Wilson possesses in abundance and, perhaps in the end, it is this that makes his work such a joy to read.TIME OUT FOR TOMORROW contains twelve SF tales of vivid imagination!Kin (1956)The Big Fix (1956)Wasp (1954)An Abundance of Good Things (1954)The Tunnel Under the World (1959)The Best Possible World (1960)The Voice of the Diaphragm (1958)QRM (1957)The Ubiquitous You (1957)Just Call Me Irish (1958)The Locus Focus (1957)
Tongues of the Moon
by Philip Jose FarmerOUT FROM THE GREEN WORLD: Humans had colonized the planets & lost its birthright. Civilization was a lonely chain of space stations linked by terror. The Empire kept the pioneers enslaved with a weapon that shattered any protest into screaming insanity.All they had left was the dream of someday returning home. Until their dream exploded in the holocaust that destroyed the Earth. But the embers of their dead planet sparked a brain-blasting revolution that swept the galaxy: a revolution of exiles in an alien universe-with nothing left to lose.
The Trial of Terra
by Jack WilliamsonThe men of Earth were on the verge of breaking into space. The first of their manned moon rockets was on its way to Luna. Now, after ten thousand years, the celestial Watchers were forced to a decision.Were the Earth people ready to join in the civilizations of sapce - or should they be turned down and wiped out with solar fire?THE TRIAL OF TERRA had begun!The men of Earth were on the verge of breaking into space. The first of their manned moon rockets was on its way to Luna. Now, after ten thousand years, the celestial Watchers were forced to a decision.Were the Earth people ready to join in the civilizations of space - or should they be turned down and wiped out with solar fire?THE TRIAL OF TERRA had begun!
Uranium 235
by Patricia Fanthorpe Lionel Fanthorpe John E. MullerAtomic Alloys Amalgamated could always use a research technician. A man like Rosco Cawdor was sure of a job there. The security department hadn't been terribly keen. Cawdor had no living relatives. No one knew him. A few strands of circumstantial evidence were his only proof of identity. He was a brilliant scientist. His great reason d'etre was the new power sphere. It was his brain child, his creation. It looked like opening a whole new field of undreamt of nuclear research. The sphere could hold the secret of unlimited power. It could also hold unlimited danger.The stranger arrived. He looked disconcertingly like Rosco. He said Rosco was not Rosco! He said a lot more . . . somebody disappeared!They tested the power sphere. The all important cut-out fused together. The experiment went mad. The sphere was out of control. Why could Rosco withstand fatal doses of radiation? Who was the stranger? Why did they look alike? What were they after? Could the power sphere be controlled before it destroyed the planet?
Vengeance of Siva
by Patricia Fanthorpe Lionel Fanthorpe John E. MullerUma, a beautiful but frightened dancing girl, sells a strange bronze statuette of Nataraja, the dancing Siva, to Dr Chris Anderson, while he was visiting a bazaar in Pollachi, Southern India. He travels back to Kerala and puts the statuette on the bedside cabinet in his hotel room. His sleep is tortured by fantastic nightmares in which he seems hosts of ancient Indian gods and demons, in all their splendour and horror.He wakes in terror to hear a faint voice whispering in the darkness. The bronze statuette is glowing with unearthly light and there is a smell if incense. Can a human soul be imprisoned in bronze by the power of weird, unearthly dark magic?Can Dr Chris Anderson release the psychic prisoner? Who is Uma, the mysterious dancing girl?
Walk Through Tomorrow
by Patricia Fanthorpe Lionel Fanthorpe Karl ZeigfreidRudolf Mallory was one of the many pathetic pieces of human flotsam on the tide of the 20th-century neurosis. He was a man who had reached the end of his rope, death seemed pleasant by comparison... He tried to take the easy way out, but something went wrong. Unknown to Mallory other men had problems too. Separated by vast distances of time and space, Rumal, citizen of an advanced humanoid society, with a strangely different technology had also decided to end it all...Time and Space are almost perfect but rare warps and blemishes do exist in the continuum. They can produce peculiar events.The Englishman from 1963 suddenly found himself on the other side of the galaxy. Rumal found himself in England. They had been unable to solve their own problems - could they solve each other's?
The Wanting Seed
by Anthony BurgessFrom the acclaimed author of the dystopian classic A Clockwork Orange, The Wanting Seed is an inventive, thought-provoking and darkly absurd novel set in a work rampant with overpopulation. The Wanting Seed is part of our Penguin Essentials series which spotlights the very best of our modern classics.As governments struggle to maintain order in the face of overpopulation and food shortages and homosexuality is glorified in an attempt to further limit family sizes, Tristram Foxe and his wife Beatrice-Joanna find themselves facing dire choices. Their world transforms into a chaos of cannibalistic dining-clubs, fantastic fertility rituals, and wars without anger.
The Wind of Liberty
by Kenneth BulmerA planet's destiny trembled in the balance.Waiting, quiet and as dangerous as a timber-wolf, Vickery heard another faint slither of foot on stone. A dark shape flitted past the lighted shop front on the opposite side of the street and vanished into the doorway. Vickery's heard gave one gigantic lunge, and a wolfish smile creased his face. He fired at the shadows and the brilliance of the exploding charge threw everything out in the street into garish highlights...
Worlds of the Imperium
by Keith LaumerAmerican diplomat Brion Bayard is on assignment in Stockholm when he notices he's being shadowed. Before he can escape, Bayard is kidnapped and transported to a parallel universe: the Imperium, where history has taken a different turn and the British Empire and its allies rule the world. Yet another parallel world exists, and the Imperium has a task there for their reluctant visitor: the impersonation and assassination of a global dictator who happens to be Bayard's otherworldly double.This adventurous, action-packed novel is the work of award-winning author Keith Laumer, creator of the Bolo and Reteif stories. Science-fiction enthusiasts, especially those who enjoy alternate histories, will savor the twists and turns of this imaginative thriller.
The X-Machine
by Patricia Fanthorpe Lionel Fanthorpe John E. MullerSally McQuire worked for an unusual organisation. She was an undercover agent for the I.P.F., but her friends knew her only as a scatter-brained night club dancer. Then came the Thing. At first there were just off paragraphs in provincial papers. A cow disappeared. Fish stopped biting. Finally Jon Vardo, a shepherd, vanished without a trace. The I.P.F. put Sally on the track. She discovered a strange common denominator linking the events. There was a mathematical and geographical sequence. Sally arranged to be at the next danger zone, and then she too vanished. This is a story of humanity at its best, locked in a life and death struggle with a cruel, cold culture of Beings from the Beyond. This is a story of humanity fighting against incredible odds and fantastic weapons. Can the mind of man hold its own against deadly, sinister Intelligence from beyond the stars?
The X-Machine (Fanthorpe Sci-Fi Collection)
by John E. Muller Lionel Fanthorpe Patricia FanthorpeSally McQuire worked for an unusual organisation. She was an undercover agent for the I.P.F., but her friends knew her only as a scatter-brained night club dancer. Then came the Thing. At first there were just off paragraphs in provincial papers. A cow disappeared. Fish stopped biting. Finally Jon Vardo, a shepherd, vanished without a trace. The I.P.F. put Sally on the track. She discovered a strange common denominator linking the events. There was a mathematical and geographical sequence. Sally arranged to be at the next danger zone, and then she too vanished. This is a story of humanity at its best, locked in a life and death struggle with a cruel, cold culture of Beings from the Beyond. This is a story of humanity fighting against incredible odds and fantastic weapons. Can the mind of man hold its own against deadly, sinister Intelligence from beyond the stars?
Zero Minus X
by Karl Zeigfreid Lionel Fanthorpe Patricia FanthorpeMan is an intelligent mammal. His intelligence lies in his brain. In mammals the tissues of the central nervous system are irreplaceable. The human brain contains something like 100,000,000,000,000 neurons, but 100,000 are destroyed on average each day of a man's life. Cosmic rays and general internal and external radioactivity account for most of this destruction.Hunger and Gradey decided on an illegal experiment. They brought up a small group of children in a strange artificial setting where there was practically no radiation. The setting was improved. The environment grew more shielded as generations passed. At last the Thinkers exploded into a world that had not dreamed of their existence. The world was facing other complications at the moment. An alien had appeared from the other side of the cosmos! Humanity was faced with two potentially deadly enemies; could they be turned against each other, or was one a secret friend?
The Alien Ones
by Patricia Fanthorpe Lionel Fanthorpe Leo BrettLife on the pioneer planet Orkol was harsh and lonely. Earth settlers found a civilisation of decay, a frustrating shortage of women, outdated machinery and plagues of vicious rodents. The dawn of the green suns gave only a thin eerie light. And the mineral Orkolite produced vibrations that could destroy a planet or shatter a human brain.
Beyond the Galactic Rim
by A. Bertram ChandlerA journey to the Rim Worlds takes you straight to the edge of the unknown or right to the gaping void of the abyss. Out there you're beyond the borders, hovering between the warped contours of troubled space and time...Captain Clavering bought his ship on a lottery win. Now he's holed up on the dismal planet of Lorn filling in the time on a chemical-blasted airstrip waiting for a contract. Somewhere there must be a newly colonized planet needing charters or some threatened world that needs evacuating. He'd risk anything for money in the bank - even a dodgy landing on the gas-blasted plains of Eblis, if the Rim Runners fancy paying hard cash for an expedition to hell...
Cat's Cradle (S.F. MASTERWORKS #70)
by Kurt VonnegutOne of America's greatest writers gives us his unique perspective on our fears of nuclear annihilationExperiment.Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it.Solution.Dr Felix Hoenikker, one of the founding fathers of the atomic bomb, has left a deadly legacy to the world. For he is the inventor of ice-nine, a lethal chemical capable of freezing the entire planet. The search for its whereabouts leads to Hoenikker's three eccentric children, to a crazed dictator in the Caribbean, to madness. Felix Hoenikker's death-wish comes true when his last, fatal, gift to mankind brings about an end that, for all of us, is nigh.
Doctor Who - King Of Terror (DOCTOR WHO #216)
by Keith ToppingA Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough novel Two alien races the Jex and the Canavitchi are engaged in a battle to invade and either conquer or destroy the planet Earth. The Doctor is summoned to a meeting with Brigadier who shows him a photograph of a powerful media mogul named Sanger who has bought enough plutonium to destroy the world ten times over. UNIT are on the case and it seems that Sanger is one of a frightening number of alien Jex who came to Earth twenty years ago to sow the seeds of their ruthless world-domination When the Canavitchi launch their counter-attack and their alien fleets embark upon full-scale destruction, the Doctor finds himself engaged in a race against time to save planet Earth
Dolphin Island
by Sir Arthur C. ClarkeA Story of the People of the SeaThe adventure begins when Johnny, who has run away from home and hidden aboard an intercontinental hovership, is shipwrecked in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. Stranded on a raft, and in an apparently hopeless situation, he is propelled by a pack of dolphins towards an island in the Great Barrier Reef, a famous centre for Dolphin Research.Professor Kazan, the director of research, shares Johnny's bewilderment as to the reason for the dolphin rescue operation and arranges for Johnny to stay on the island to assist in unravelling the mystery. In the chapters that follow, Johnny learns how to communicate with dolphins, explores the coral reef, goes skin-diving at night, survives a fearful hurricane, unearths a horrifying underwater conspiracy, and, in an intensely exciting final episode, makes a dangerous 100 mile tip on surfboard towed, turn and turn about, by his two closest dolphin friends.
The Dreaming Earth
by John BrunnerA daring novel of mankind's strange and startling destiny. . .Here is a novel to equal Arthur C. Clarke's great work, Childhood's End. It tells with frightening clarity of a desperately stricken Earth - wracked by overpopulation and plagued by famine and despair. It tells, too, of a new breed of men and women - twenty-first century lotus eaters caught up in a mysterious euphoria which will ultimately threaten all life on this planet: the drug-induced world of 'happy dreams'. Do these 'happy dreamers' herald the end of the human race - or the next extraordinary step in the evolution of Man?First published in 1963.
Escape to Infinity
by Karl Zeigfreid Lionel Fanthorpe Patricia FanthorpeMike Sterne was a man with problems. His environment included an unknown quantity in the form of an eccentric alien scientist and a determined corps of totalitarian militia with orders to liquidate him. A rigidly imposed authoritarian social structure can only be undermined by a superior ideology. Sterne encountered that ideology on the other side of an electronic gateway through the X dimensions, a gateway to the infinite universe of the microcosm and the macrocosm. His enemies also discovered a route through the continuum... but they didn't reach the same world that Sterne had found.
The Forbidden
by Leo Brett Lionel Fanthorpe Patricia FanthorpeCobwebs hung in weird, grotesque festoons from the vaulted roof. There was a strange odour in the ancient cellar. A bent figure crouches over forbidden books and mixes indescribably strange ingredients in a cauldron. The cauldron bubbles and foul fumes arise. The alchemist transfers the secret formula to a flask. It travels carefully and ceremoniously from flash to retort and back again. Unnatural things happen in the flask... terrifying things. Suddenly a human figure appears, yet it is not human in all respects. Has the alchemist made this strange, frightening thing, or has it come from realms beyond? The alchemist finds himself involved in a series of breathtaking psychic adventures such as he had never imagined possible even in his wildest dreams.
Galaxy 666 (Gateway Essentials)
by Pel Torro Lionel Fanthorpe Patricia FanthorpeThey had reached the very limits of space. Nothing lay ahead except the evil planet, waiting to destroy. NOTES FROM CAPTAIN BRONET'S LOG: It looked like a lizard, or a snake with legs. It had a large flattish head, three eyes set in triangular formation, and a round food-intake in the centre of the "face." There was no chin. The head perched high on a mottled, leathery neck. The skin on its back was ribbed and corrugated. This creature was the first living thing we encountered on the sinister planet...