There were nine major planets in the Solar System, and it was within their boundaries that man first set up interplanetary commerce and began trading with the ancient Martian civilization. And then they discovered a tenth planet -- a maverick! This tenth world, if it had an orbit, had a strange one, for it was... read more »
The invasion began innocently enough when the meteor crashed to earth. Then a glow began to emanate from the meteor and everything that entered the light was destroyed. The fate of the Earth is now in the hands of Bob Trevor, a newspaperman, Professor Newland, and others. Would the Earth be saved from the invaders... read more »
This story was originally published in Omni Magazine, April, 1986; and in Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology,1986. Dark meat in the can--brown, oily, and flecked with mucus--gave off a repellent, fishy smell, and the taste of it rose in his throat, putrid and bitter, like something from a dead man’s stomach. ... read more »
Charlon, Ruler of the Bat People of Neptune, Puts Tremendous Obstacles in the Way of Three Spaceteers of Earth—and Jeopardizes the Destinies of Two Planets! read more »
Something strange is happening on the high-orbital space station called Halo, and the men who run the corporation who own Halo don't know what it is. SenTrax has hired freelance data auditor Mikhail Gonzales to find out. Why are the resources of Aleph, the artificial intelligence that operates Halo's systems, being... read more »
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... read more »
Out of the dark--out of the unknown--came Karkora...rotting the souls of the kings of Cyrena. For Karkora, the Pallid One, was a creature more loathsome than anything on earth. It was beyond good or evil, a Presence from the Outside--a shadow of which the "altar fires had whispered." read more »
Two planets clash for lunar treasure! Gregg Haljan was aware that there was a certain danger in having the giant spaceship Planetara stop off at the moon to pick up Grantline's special cargo of moon ore. For that rare metal--invaluable in keeping Earth's technology running--was the target of many greedy eyes. But... read more »
It all begins next year in California. A maladjusted computer industry billionaire and a somewhat crazy US President initiate a radical transformation of the world through sentient nanotechnology; sort of the equivalent of biological artificial intelligence. At first they succeed, but their plans are reversed by... read more »
What if Alan Turing, founder of the modern computer age, escaped assassination by the secret service to become the lover of Beat author William Burroughs? What if they mutated into giant shapeshifting slugs, fled the FBI, raised Burroughs's wife from the dead, and tweaked the H-bombs of Los Alamos? A wild beatnik... read more »
An enormous tidal wave on the west coast of North America has just killed thousands. Lenie Clarke, in a black wetsuit, walks out of the ocean onto a Pacific Northwest beach filled with the oppressed and drugged homeless of the Asian world who have gotten only this far in their attempt to reach America. Is she a... read more »
Mars, Venus, Pellucidar, and finally Poloda - the last planet to be explored by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Of them all, Poloda was the most distant - literally Beyond The Farthest Star our telescope could view! Yet on Poloda, appeared an American from our own time, to take part in one thrilling adventure after another in... read more »
A huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew--people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater--down to live and work in this weird, fertile... read more »
Perry and Lester invent things: seashell robots that make toast, Boogie Woogie Elmo dolls that drive cars. They also invent entirely new economic systems. When Kodak and Duracell are broken up for parts by sharp venture capitalists, Perry and Lester help to invent the “New Work,” a New Deal for the technological... read more »
Colonization is the theme of this exciting, complex page-turner that provides a provocative and entertaining look at Thoreau's classic eco-text Walden. Eccentric billionaire Jack Winter has bought the planet Beekman's Pea, renamed it Walden, and created a utopia in which members renounce the technologies of human... read more »
In 1836, Mason Algiers Reynolds leaves his family's Virginia farm with his father's slave, a dog, and a mule. Branded a murderer, he finds sanctuary with his hero, Edgar Allan Poe, and together they embark on an extraordinary expedition to the South Pole, and the entrance to the Hollow Earth. It is there, at the... read more »
His most ambitious novel to date, Accelerando is a multi-generational saga following a brilliant clan of 21st-century posthumans. The year is some time between 2010 and 2015. The recession has ended, but populations are ageing and the rate of tech change is accelerating dizzyingly. Manfred makes his living from... read more »
Miracles to order was a fine way for the paratimers to get mining concessions--but Nature can sometimes pull counter-miracles. And so can men, for that matter... read more »
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to get bitten by a zombie? To live through a bioweapon attack? To have every aspect of your life governed by invisible ants? In Cory Doctorow’s collection of novellas, he wields his formidable experience in technology and computing to give us mindbending sci-fi tales that... read more »
What will happen when we first encounter sentient beings from outer space? In this action-packed account of first contact between the human denizens of Earth and an alien species, Murray Leinster details the tense early interactions between clashing spaceships. Is long-term coexistence possible? Read The Aliens to... read more »
After a worldwide plague breaks civilization, Joaquin Smith and his sister build an empire up the Mississippi Valley. Who would be brave or foolish enough to stand in their way? Who but a young backwoodsman named Hull Tarvish? read more »
She spoke in a tongue dead a thousand years, and she had no memory for the man she faced. Yet he had held her tightly but a few short years before, had sworn eternal vengeance—when she died in his arms from an assassin's wounds. read more »
Derring-do on a world of primitive monsters! When Robert Grandon swapped bodies with a prince of the planet Venus, he was concerned only with the thrill and interest of living on a different world. But the situation he found himself in was hardly that of a leisurely sightseer. Instead, he found himself smack in the... read more »
Civilization had died screaming in a blaze of nuclear and biological warfare. Gradually, during the Dark Centuries that followed, secrets were re-discovered, and new knowledge gained. Finally, the key to immortality is found, and the preternaturally beautiful Margaret Smith becomes Margot of Urbs and, with her... read more »
Dan Burke steps out of a stuffy New York City party hoping to get some air and peace in Central Park, but instead he meets a gnomelike man who asks him, "But what is reality?". Sci-fi luminary Stanley G. Weinbaum first broke through with the hugely influential story A Martian Odyssey, one of the first to depict an... read more »
Part of this prolific author's popular Terra-Human Future History series, this tale takes place just prior to the devastating world war that occurs in 1973, wiping out much of humanity and leading to the ascendance of a new world order. The story focuses on a protagonist who is plagued by brief glimpses of the... read more »
The, self-aclaimed "great", Haskel van Manderpootz has been "cheated" out of the coveted Morrell Award and unable to accept of life of modesty and in the discussion of varying points of view, van Manderpootz sets in motion his next great experiment. One of science fiction's classic duos – wacky inventor Professor... read more »
A terrifying darkness engulfed the sky while on the horizon a fire flood consumed the mountain! The ship swayed again. Flying creatures darted back and forth above the tree tops. Miles away, insensate violence reigned. Clouds of dust and smoke shot miles into the air, half a mountainside glowed white hot, and there... read more »
'A pair of lunatics, you two,' observed Harrison. He squinted through the port at the gray gloom of the Mare Cimmerium. 'There comes the sun.' He paused. 'Listen, Dick--you and Leroy take the other auxiliary rocket and go out and salvage those films.' read more »
An eldritch, fearsome tale of the worship of the fish-god in the ancient world, and the prowess of a doughty swordsman in old Atlantis. Lycon and Elak embark on an adventure to kill the great wizard of Atlantis, but not all is what it seems! read more »