Book picks similar to
Son of the Tree / The Houses of Iszm (Ace Double, 77525) by Jack Vance
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fantasy
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The Space Willies / Six Worlds Yonder
Eric Frank Russell - 1958
But it was also understood that when a really dangerous job had to be done, a scout-pilot was the man to do it.So for John Leeming, a couple of months of dodging death in a one-man ship, zipping in and out of the enemy Combine's rearguard, was just another one of those jobs. And there was no man in the Universe more surprised than Leeming when his heretofore indestructible ship just gave up the ghost smack in the middle of a Combine-held prison planet!It was then that the spirit of the Scout Corps had its chance to shine. With self-confidence as his only weapon, Leeming had only two choices: give in to the enemy and be captured...or quick-talk them into a real case of THE SPACE WILLIE!
Eye Of The Monster
Andre Norton - 1962
His worst fears were realized when the Terran authorities decided to grant the Ishkurians self-government and withdrew their protective forces from the planet.It turned out that he was right - as soon as the last troops left the "crocs" went on a killing rampage.Cut off from the remaining fortified outposts by miles of jungle and armies of crocs, Rees knew that his only chance for survival was to outwit the cunning reptiles. He had to learn to think like a croc, feel like a croc...and see through the eye of the monster!
Whipping Star
Frank Herbert - 1969
It all depended on the survival of the last of the entities known as Calebians.But the Caleban was dying - subjected to systematic torture by the richest, most wicked woman in the Galaxy. Unless she could be stopped, the end was only a few days away, or hours - or even minutes!
Salvation
Peter F. Hamilton - 2018
A new technology of linked jump gates has rendered most forms of transporation--including starships--virtually obsolete. Every place on earth, every distant planet mankind has settled, is now merely a step away from any other. And all seems wonderful...until a crashed alien spaceship is found on a newly-located world 89 light years from Earth, harboring seventeen human victims. And of the high-powered team dispatched to investigate the mystery, one is an alien spy...Bursting with tension and big ideas, this standalone series highlights the inventiveness of an author at the top of his game, as the interweaving story lines tell us not only how humanity arrived at this moment, but also the far-future consequences that spin off from it.
The Swordsman of Mars
Otis Adelbert Kline - 1933
He exchanges bodies with his look-alike, Martian Sheb Takkor, and is transported millions of years into the past to a Mars peopled with mighty warriors, beautiful women, and fearsome beasts. Sheb Takkor, a great swordsman in his own right, must fight his way across the deserts and jungles of ancient Mars to save the lovely Princess Thane and to defeat his arch-enemy Sel Han -- or die trying! Edgar Rice Burroughs was the first great writer of planetary adventures. His one true rival and equal at writing planet stories was Otis Adelbert Kline. Kline was on the original editorial staff of Weird Tales, and was literary agent to Robert E. Howard of Conan fame.
Restoree
Anne McCaffrey - 1967
Torn from Earth by a bizarre and nameless black force, Sara had no idea where she was or why she was in a beautiful new body. Controlled by brutal guards and tamed by terror, she could not comprehend her role as a nurse for a man who appeared to be an idiot. But once she discovered that the planet she had been brought to was Lothar and that the man she was caring for was its regent, Sara knew the restorees had to escape—and fast. And when they did, they became fugitives on a world of multiple evils—bound together on a daring adventure that would either join them for all time . . . or separate them forever.Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780552083447
A World Out of Time
Larry Niven - 1976
Once he was outbound, where the Society that ruled Earth could not reach him, he headed his starship toward the galactic core, where the unimaginable energies of the Universe wrenched the fabric of time and space and promised final escape from his captors.Then he returned to an Earth eons older than the one he'd left...a planet that had had 3,000,000 years to develop perils he had never dreamed of -- perils that became nightmares that he had to escape...somehow!
Lord of the Trees & The Mad Goblin
Philip José Farmer - 1970
Ace Double 51375 includes:The Lord of the Trees by Philip José FarmerThe Mad Goblin by Philip José Farmer
The Faded Sun Trilogy
C.J. Cherryh - 1978
For aeons this golden-skinned, golden-eyed race had provided the universe mercenary soldiers of almost unimaginable ability. But now the mri have faced an enemy unlike any other - an enemy whose only way of war is widespread destruction. These "humans" are mass fighters, creatures of the herd, and the mri have been slaughtered like animals.Now, in the aftermath of war, the mri face extinction. It will be up to three individuals to save whatever remains of this devastated race: a warrior - one of the last survivors of his kind; a priestess of this honorable people; and a lone human - a man sworn to aid the enemy of his own kind. Can they retrace the galaxy-wide path of this nomadic race back through millennia to reclaim the ancient world which first gave them life?
Armor
John Steakley - 1984
The military sci-fi classic in a striking new packageFelix is an Earth soldier, encased in special body armor designed to withstand Earth's most implacable enemy-a bioengineered, insectoid alien horde. But Felix is also equipped with internal mechanisms that enable him, and his fellow soldiers, to survive battle situations that would destroy a man's mind.This is a remarkable novel of the horror, the courage, and the aftermath of combat--and how the strength of the human spirit can be the greatest armor of all.
Midnight at the Well of Souls
Jack L. Chalker - 1977
A hidden stargate hurls him and his passengers to the Well World, the master control planet for the cosmos created by the now-gone godlike race who designed the universe. Now someone wants to find the Well of Souls to seize control of all the cosmos--and it's up to Nathan to stop them.
Little Fuzzy
H. Beam Piper - 1962
Their charter was for a Class III uninhabited planet, which Zarathustra was, and it meant they owned the planet lock stock and barrel. They exploited it, developed it and reaped the huge profits from it without interference from the Colonial Government. Then Jack Holloway, a sunstone prospector, appeared on the scene with his family of Fuzzies and the passionate conviction that they were not cute animals but little people.
The World of Null-A
A.E. van Vogt - 1945
E. van Vogt was one of the giants of the 1940s, the Golden Age of classic SF. Of his masterpieces, The World of Null-A is his most famous and most influential. Published in 1949 it was the first major trade SF hardcover, and has been in print in various editions ever since. The entire careers of Philip K. Dick, Keith Laumer, Alfred Bester, Charles Harness, and Philip Jose Farmer were created or influenced by The World of Null-A, and so it is required reading for anyone who wishes to know the canon of SF classics.It is the year 2650 and Earth has become a world of non-Aristotelianism, or Null-A. This is the story of Gilbert Gosseyn, who lives in that future world where the Games Machine, made up of twenty-five thousand electronic brains, sets the course of people's lives. Gosseyn isn't even sure of his own identity, but realizes he has some remarkable abilities and sets out to use them to discover who has made him a pawn in an interstellar plot.
We Claim These Stars
Poul Anderson - 1959
Still, how do you plan the ambush and capture of a tremendously capable telepath?The intended victim, the weird genius from an uncharted world and the right arm of the enemy's general staff, not only knew everything thought nearby, he could read minds a a distance. So the problem posed to Dominic Flandry, Captain of Terran Intelligence, was a real killer.To make matters worse, the telepath in question was equally interested in putting Flandry out of commission. The fate of many planets might depend on which of the two triumphed.
Pirates of Venus
Edgar Rice Burroughs - 1935
In Amtor, cities of immortal beings flourish in giant trees reaching thousands of feet into the sky; ferocious beasts stalk the wilderness below; rare flashes of sunlight precipitate devastating storms; and the inhabitants believe their world is saucer-shaped with a fiery center and an icy rim. Stranded on Amtor after his spaceship crashes, astronaut Carson Napier is swept into a world where revolution is ripe, the love of a princess carries a dear price, and death can come as easily from the blade of a sword as from the ray of a futuristic gun.Illustrations by Thomas Floyd, the original frontispiece by J. Allen St. John, an afterword by Phillip Burger, a glossary of Amtor terms by Scott Tracy Griffin, a map of Amtor drawn by Edgar Rice Burroughs that appeared in the first edition, and an introduction by acclaimed science fiction and horror novelist F. Paul Wilson.