DESTINATION: VOID

Penguin SF paperback, 1967. Cover design by Alan Aldridge.

"PROBLEM - to build a complete human consciousness out of computer hardware and desperation! By the author of DRAGON IN THE SEA and DUNE. 

Soon after the start, they went mad. The three powerful, disembodied human brains that should have guided them for the 200-year journey to Tau Ceti. Could they manufacture a replacement before emerging from the Solar System into nothingness? Would the circuits reproduce the characteristics they needed, characteristics like conscience, love and guilt? Or would they end up with a zombie? A monster? A power-crazy fanatic? - or a genius? What they did build was fantastic, unguessable. Yet, looking back, it was always on the cards."

TODAY WE CHOOSE FACES

Orbit paperback, 1976. Cover painting by Peter Jones.

"A pioneer in the new wave, winner of both Hugo and Nebula awards and an author with a tremendous cult following, Roger Zelazny's novels provide a fascinating blend of fantasy, mythology, excitement and adventure. 

In Today We Choose Faces Zelazny has broken new mental and spacial barriers and produced a terrifyingly remote yet immensely impressive vision of the future."

THE MOMENT OF ECLIPSE

Panther SF paperback, 1973. Cover painting by Bob Haberfield
 (thanks, Mark).

"There's No Time Like the Future... 

and here Brian W. Aldiss proves it brilliantly in fourteen stories of devastating power. From an outrageous satire to haunting fantasy, the renowned author of such science fiction classics as Greybeard and Hothouse displays his unmatched talent for creating tales that illuminate times-to-come with the disconcerting intensity of a cobalt bomb's heat-flash..."

Contents:


The Moment Of Eclipse
The Day We Embarked For Cythera
Orgy Of The Living And The Dying
Super-Toys Last All Summer Long
The Village Swindler
Down The Up Escalation
That Uncomfortable Pause Between Life And Art
Confluence
Heresies Of The Huge God
Circulation Of The Blood And Stagnation Of The Heart
The Worm That Flies
Working In The Spaceship Yards
Swastika!

A DIFFERENT LIGHT

Hamlyn paperback, 1983. Cover artist uncredited.

"Jimson Alleca has twenty years to live - or just one. Twenty years if he stays on his home world, where his disease can be treated. One year if he follows his desire to travel the galaxy. 

When he meets Leiko his mind is made up, and he follows her out into space. There they enlist as crew members on a dangerous and illegal voyage - to steal one of the fabulous crystal masks of distant Demea. 

But it will prove a journey of immense problems and perils - and one that becomes a race against time for Jimson..."

THE HOUSE IN NOVEMBER

Berkley Medallion paperback, May 1971. Cover artwork by
Richard M. Powers.

"There had been an invasion, and the town of Beatrice, Nebraska, was occupied. The question was, by whom? 

To Jeff Mallory, awakened one morning to find that he had lost three months out of his life; that his teenage daughter was missing (and his wife denied that she had ever existed); that he was a slave to incomprehensible tasks in the mile-high star tower that had not been there when he went to sleep - the invaders were ALIENS... 

To the bizarre Russo-American army poised on the edge of town and determined to destroy it utterly, the invaders were CHINESE... 

To the strange old man who lived in the old house, and who carried in his mind the key to the whole mystery, the invaders were the MONE..."

Loved this one; very cinematic - that is, I imagine it translating very well to film - it's a great adventure story. The House In November follows familiar Laumer motifs: the pariah, superhuman transformation, transcendence. I found it notable too for the original aliens, in a refreshing change from the usual green-skinned, multi-limbed or bipedal creatures, the Mone are parasitic organisms. (4/5)

PHOENIX IN OBSIDIAN

Mayflower paperback, 1970. Cover painting by Bob Haberfield.

"As Erekosë, the Eternal Champion, he slew the human race that had betrayed his ideals. And loved Ermizhad, the Eldren princess. 

Then the voices called him and he was powerless to resist. As Fate's soldier, the eternal one, his lot was to vanquish tyranny. Sent tumbling through the corridors of eternity. Transformed. Now Urlik Skarsol - Prince of the Southern Ice. But called by whom? 

By Bishop Belpheg, Lord Spiritual of Rowenarc, obscene ruler of a damned race born at the end of Time? By Bladrak of the Scarlet Fjord? By the Lady of the Screaming Chalice? By the Silver Warriors, incandescent men of Moon? 

Urlik Skarsol would need take up the Black Sword, the monstrous weapon that demanded blood, be it friend's or be it foe's, before his tortured soul could rest. Before the powers of Evil could be conquered. Before he could rediscover Ermizhad. Before he could know peace again..."

FUGUE FOR A DARKENING ISLAND

NEL paperback, September 1973. Cover artist uncredited.

FUGUE - a glimpse into the future of Britain. At a time when the country is caught by civil conflict between a right-wing government and the liberal element, a third group arrives - refugee Africans from a continent devastated by nuclear attack. The country is ripe for a three-way civil war. Total breakdown in communications quickly follows, and a nightmare situation grips the community. 

Alan Whitman, the central character of this frightening story, represents the view of the man on the street. How will he cope with this situation when he has opted out all his life, from political, personal and moral decisions? 

Christopher Priest's second novel consolidates his place among the most brilliant and imaginative of the younger writers of today, already established by his earlier work 'Indoctrinaire'."

THE LAST CONTINENT

Hodder paperback, first printing, 1971. Cover painting by Chris Foss.

"The devastated Earth had only a handful of inhabitants - now even their future was in balance 

The Twenty-Second Century had been and gone - and with it, the worst war in the bloody history of mankind: the War of the Black Rising. The Earth was devastated, the moon blasted out of the sky. It was only on Mars, many millions of miles away, that humanity had survived - in the shape of a few isolated Black colonists. 

But out of that few had grown a new civilization - a civilization which now, some two thousand years later, had successfully launched its first ever space exploration - destination, the 'dead' planet Earth.

CYTEEN

NEL paperback, 1989. Cover artist uncredited.

"The planet Cyteen dominated all settled space. 

The Reseune bio-engineering labs dominated Cyteen. 

Ariane Emory, 120 years old, a genius in genetics and psychology, corrupt and ruthless, was absolute ruler of Reseune. 

So when she was murdered, a genetic double had to be brought into being to succeed her. A little child was to be created to inherit all the regions of humanity. 

Ariane Emory was to be reborn..."

WORLD SOUL

Collier / Macmillan paperback, first edition, 1979. Cover painting by
Richard M. Powers.

"Sergei Arefyev is a brilliant scientist at the Institute of Telepathy. Torn by a sense of isolation and alienation, he dreams of a human future where telepathy allows mankind to share its experiences fully. His dream seems to be fulfilled by the World Soul, a biological mutation that links human consciousnesses through telepathy. Lies and deception become impossible, wars can no longer be fought, and people experience an ecstasy of full communion with each other. However, human relations change dramatically as the lack of individual privacy leads to a loss of  personal identity. In the midst of this turmoil the World Soul evolves until it acquires a will of its own, and Sergei and his friends must face the horrible challenge of reestablishing individual autonomy before mankind is completely engulfed."

STORMBRINGER

Mayflower paperback, 1968. Cover art by Bob Haberfield.

SWORD AND SWORDSMAN...BUT WHICH WAS MASTER? 

STORMBRINGER, the mighty runesword, hung far away in the city's armoury. ELRIC, haunted albino warrior-king had sworn never again to touch the enchanted blade. But he needed it now as never before. Evil supernatural beings had abducted his lovely wife Zarozinia. He would sacrifice the world itself to rescue her. But would STORMBRINGER, which seemed to have a life of its own, allow it? 

He was fated to ride out again over spectral landscapes, with the sentient blade he loved and hated...which had slain enemies - and claimed comrades.

NEBULA MAKER

Sphere SF paperback, 1979. Cover artist unknown.

"It was at the moment of creation that the nebulae first found awareness. And they were to burn with life for countless millennia, changing, struggling, shifting on an axis that had only the Mystery at its centre. 

The Launching of the Cosmos, the First Cosmical War, the appearance of Bright Heart the saint and of Fire Bolt the revolutionary - all led to that Mystery - the terrifying, eternally fascinating enigma of the Nebula Maker... 

NEBULA MAKER is a recently discovered novel by Olaf Stapledon, an epic of the universe's evolution that is both separate from and complimentary to his acclaimed masterpiece STAR MAKER."

FAR RAINBOW / THE SECOND INVASION FROM MARS

Collier / Macmillan paperback, first edition, 1980. Cover painting by
Richard M. Powers.

PROFESSOR DOWELL'S HEAD

Collier / Macmillan paperback, first edition, 1981. Cover painting by
Richard M. Powers.

THE ROAD TO SCIENCE FICTION #2 FROM WELLS TO HEINLEIN

Mentor paperback, 1978. Cover Artwork by Paul Stinson.

"H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Murray Leinster, John W. Campbell, Jack Williamson, A. E. Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein. 

These are just some of the top writers from the golden age of science fiction, the wonderful era when the universe was ours for the taking through a simple flight of the imagination. From H. G. Well's story of a scientist who can increase man's speed a thousandfold, to Edgar Rice Burroughs's tale of Mars teeming with alien cultures; from the chilling horror of A. Meritt's The People Of The Pit, to Murray Leinster's encounter with sentient and potentially deadly plant beings; from L. Sprague De Camp's humorous account of how the human race turned into the ultimate shaggy-dog story, to Robert Heinlein's portrait of a man who wanted to reach the stars so badly that he would sacrifice anything to get there... From Argosy to Astounding, from Incredible inventions to alien encounters, here is a delightful and fascinating sampling of some of science fiction's finest moments, a capsule history of the birth and evolution of a modern galaxy-spanning literature."

Contents:

The New Accelerator by H. G. Wells

The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster

The Chessmen Of Mars (chapters II and III) by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The People Of The Pit by A. Merritt

The Red One by Jack London

Dagon by H. P. Lovecraft

The Tissue-Culture King by Julian Huxley

The Revolt Of The Pedestrians by David H. Keller, M. D.

The First And Last Men (chapter XIII) by Olaf Stapledon

Brave New World (chapters 16 and 17) by Aldous Huxley

A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G. Weinbaum

Twilight by John W. Campbell

Proxima Centauri by Murray Leinster

What's It Like Out There? by Edmond Hamilton

With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson

Hyperpilosity by L. Sprague De Camp

The Faithful by Lester Del Rey

Black Destroyer by A. E. Van Vogt

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov

Requiem by Robert A. Heinlein