TIME'S DARK LAUGHTER

Granada paperback, 1983. Cover illustration by Richard Clifton-Dey.

"INTO THE MUTANT WORLD CAME THE BIRD-CHILD 

Five years have passed since Joshua Green the Scribe and Beauty the Centaur set out across the desert to find the creatures who had destroyed their homes and carried off their wives. 

But now Beauty's wife has willingly abandoned him for the pleasures of mind-link with the mysterious Pluggers. Worse, she has taken with her the helmet that protected Josh from the mental summons of the City With No Name. 

And so Beauty travels once more in search of his wife. And Josh's fifteen-year-old brother Ollie, who has conceived a bitter hatred for the vampires who enslaved him in one of their harems, sets off with the Neuroman Jasmine to rescue Josh. Soon they are engulfed in fantastic adventures in this riotously mutated future world with no use - and little room - for humankind..."

If the function of the rear-cover synopsis is to sell the book to the potential reader, this one didn't work and then it gave me a headache. In all fairness though, this is not the sort of material I'd ever read, and a cursory glance at the actual novel shows that it's not as silly as the bumf on the back makes it out to be. Regardless, it's inclusion here is guaranteed because of Richard Clifton-Dey's cover artwork.

THRESHOLD

Granada paperback, 1982. Illustration by Richard Clifton-Dey.

"It was the threshold place. Far away from suburbs, supermarkets, freeways. It was a calm and soothing place. A forest place where time stood still. He liked to drink the fresh clear water there, and feel new strength flow through his body. It was his place. But Hugh was not alone there. First he heard one voice. Then many. Soon he would discover a fabled city, where the people waited for one who would serve a strange quest. They waited for him..."

THE BEAST

Granada paperback, 1984. Cover illustration by Richard Clifton-Dey.

"THE BEAST... 

As a child he hunted the frightened night creatures, left a musky trail and tore flesh from splintered bones... 

HAS BECOME MAN... 

But the Beast has invaded the bodies of several people. Now, as Barry, he has a wife and young family to protect... 

AND IS HEADING TOWARDS HIS FINAL GOAL... 

A chance meeting with a beautiful young Indian leads him to a Navajo reservation where he discovers the astounding possibility of the great leap which will take them both into another dimension. The beast needs to go. Barry the man has to stay..."

TOUR OF THE UNIVERSE

Mayflower paperback edition, 1980. Painting: Jim Burns.

 "Imagine - in the morning mail comes a letter announcing you have won a competition, the first prize an all-expenses-paid trip around the local galaxy. You will spend six months travelling from Earthport across millions of miles of space, visiting strange and wonderful planets along the way. You would think it a hoax if it happened now - but imagine yourself living in the year 2577 and such a letter might not be so crazy. Leio and Caroline win such a prize and visit in full fabulous colour Jupiter, with overnight stops at Ring City, Ganymede, Pluto, VandeZande's World, Pliax and have their first meeting with a living alien civilisation, travelling on through dozens of adventures and dangers. This book is the record of their whole journey. We see the dazzling places in full colour, we see the space craft they travel in, the passports, the immigration forms, the travel brochures, newspaper reports and their diaries of the holiday. Share their adventure of a lifetime!"

Hunderdrag Rock by Richard Sparks.

 "Attention is immediately drawn to the much obscured, yet unmistakeable shape of a man embedded in the largest of the rock columns. His face-plate is clearly delineated, and part of the equipment he wore upon his chest; and from the rock surface, some forty centimetres away, a hand grows out, half clenched as if in final agony. There are no names, no visible clues as to this time-lost person's identity."

Chikstha Varieties by Terry Oakes.

 "The immediate obvious feature of the Chikstha is that they are spider-like creatures, especially in the region of the head, jaws and eyes. This analogous evolution to that of the terrestrial spider is quite remarkable, and is the reason for the widespread belief that the Chikstha seeded earth with their own kind some millions of years in their past (a theory easily disprovable: the Chikstha first cycle occurred less than two million years ago)."

The Sacred World by Bob Fowke.

"On Pliax VI, on the world now totally covered by Chiksthian cities, which even extend out across the oceans, here the human tourist may enjoy a brief and possibly frightening holiday."

The Prismoids by Richard Clifton-Dey.

 "The Prismoids of Annax IV are the most enigmatic of intelligent life - if, indeed, they can properly be said to either intelligent or alive, debate on these questions has raged ever since Annax was discovered in 2264."

Aurora-Magellan Guards With Mural by Jim Burns.

 "This mural, completed in 2493 by Kleo Mchaag, depicts one of the crucial encounters in the Great War of Independence: the Battle of Shiva's Rift, which took place between 13th and 24th May 2451."

Aurora-Magellan Cruiser by Jeff Ridge.

Hall Of A Thousand Races by Les Edwards.

"In this immense gallery, which measures almost 30 kilometres in overall length, we see preserved in columns of ionized fluid representative specimens of 984 different alien species. Of these 633 are identified (including an early specimen of Homo Erectus in column no. 422); the remaining 351 are unknown species (many of which may have been extinct for many years: estimated age of the gallery is 0.5 million years)."