Here is a novel to equal Arthur Clarke's 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--21st 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 species--or the next extraordinary step in the evolution of humanity?

    Forst. (1958).........................47- So Bright the Vision (1956).......88- Galactic Chest (1956).................133

    Dramocles, an ordinary king on an ordinary planet, finds himself thrust into an adventure that combines soap opera, Greek tragedy and Shakespearean drama as he unwillingly, and disastrously, seeks to fulfill a momentous destiny that is only revealed to him a piece at a time as he managed to foment an interplanetary war, precipitate the disintegration of his family, lose all his friends and uncover betrayal among his closest advisers as barbarian invaders besiege his realm.

     After a devastating atomic holocaust, mankind had now turned to the machine to solve his problems. Which led to the androids - descended from the robot, they were hardly distinguishable from real humans. By the year 2113 they ran society - leaving man to a life of leisure. It was into this world that John Markham emerged after spending 146 years of suspended animation in an underground deep-freeze unit. But his new lease of life was likely to be a short one. A man with his outdated ideas could be very dangerous - a fact the androids realized only too well.

    Other nations (primarily cold war America and Soviet Union) try to acquire this technology, providing much of the tension and the climax of the novel.

    Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different—and rigidly enforced—level of technology. Horsetown is pre-industrial; in Neon Heights they have television and electric trains . . .Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon's world is wrenched apart one more time, for the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint's Celestial Levels—and with the dying body comes bad news.If Quillon is to save his life, he must leave his home and journey into the cold and hostile lands beyond Spearpoint's base, starting an exile that will take him further than he could ever imagine. But there is far more at stake than just Quillon's own survival, for the limiting technologies of the zones are determined not by governments or police, but by the very nature of reality—and reality itself is showing worrying signs of instability . . .Terminal World is a snarling, drooling, crazy-eyed mongrel of a book: equal parts steampunk, western, planetary romance, and far-future SF.

    The only problem is that the Confederacion needs him as one of its twelve Prime Operators for its secret service, the TBII. The TBII wants him as a spy, thief & assassin. It's not, of course, a problem for the Confederacion, which simply uses immersion therapy & hypnotic personality overlay for Otto's training, then sends him out in deep cover, encased in plastiflesh, on a variety of dangerous missions on a number of bizarre worlds. But for him, it's a different matter: what he has to witness & what he's forced to do take a terrible toll. Always he returns to his original self--his conscience stabbed by the memory of all those he'd killed in the service of interstellar harmony.

    An odyssey of discovery, from a shattered society through the solar system with a handful of men and women who ride a cold, hurtling ball of ice to the shaky promise of a distant, unknowable future.

    

    Heated from below by the planet's seething core, it is the widest, deepest, most fearsome ocean in the solar system.Idealistic young American scientist Grant Archer joins a clandestine expedition to this awesome new world. But Grant does not share the ideals of the scientists he accompanies: he has been planted on their expedition by the New Morality, a religious group that wants to ferret out what the 'godless humanists' have discovered. His mission: to reassure the new religious leaders of Earth that Jupiter holds no intelligent life.But unknown to the New Morality, Grant, though the son of a minister, is both a believer and a man who sees no reason why science and faith can not co-exist. He has come to the vast, planet-girdling ocean of Jupiter with an open mind, and he is about to tell his masters something that may shatter their conviction.

    On an island with a glass shore - relic of some even more ancient conflict - she discovers she is to be hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes she is the last obstacle before their faith's apotheosis. She has to run, knowing her only hope of finally escaping the Huhsz is to find the last of the ancient, apocalyptically powerful but seemingly cursed Lazy Guns. But that is just the first as well as the final step on a search that takes her on an odyssey through the exotic Golterian system and results in both a trail of destruction and a journey into her own past, as well as that of her family and the system itself; a journey that changes everything.

    Menaced by a terrifying array of lethal forces, Blord risked his life against alien aggressors as well as more human adversaries.Never knowing at what moment death might overtake him, he fought to fulfill a dream; that he might one day claim the title that riches couldn't buy: Master of the Ridge Stars!Originally published in 1954. It is based on these short stories, all by E. Mayne Hull: Competition (1943) The Contract (1944) The Debt (1943) Bankruptcy Proceedings (1946) Enter the Professor (1945)

    So how is it that, in competition with the worst villains the universe has to offer, he's become the proud owner of the last seedship of Earth's legendary Ecological Engineering Corps? Never mind, just be thankful that the most powerful weapon in human space is in good hands-hands which now control cellular material for thousands of outlandish creatures. With his unique equipment, Tuf is set to tackle the problems human settlers have created in colonizing far-flung worlds: hosts of hostile monsters, a population hooked on procreation, a dictator who unleashes plagues to get his own way...and in every case the only thing that stands between the colonists and disaster is Tuf's ingenuity - and his reputation as an honest dealer in a universe of rogues...Tuf Voyaging features interior illustrations by Janet Aulisio. Included in it will be her original eight illustrations, along with 28 newly commissioned ones.

    Contents:p 11 • The Horn of Time the Hunter • [Kith] • (1963) • short story (aka Homo Aquaticus)p 27 • A Man to My Wounding • (1959) • short story (aka State of Assassination)p 44 • The High Ones • (1958) • novelettep 68 • The Man Who Came Early • (1956) • novelettep 91 • Marius • [Psychotechnic League] • (1957) • short storyp 104 • Progress • [Maurai] • (1962) • novelette

    Sartorials compete fiercely in creating new apparel, and Peder has heard that the greatest of them all are in the Caeanic worlds, where clothing is a way of life and a philosophy of living. In Peder's sector, though, Caeanic clothing is prohibited, and he has fallen in with a band of pirates attempting to salvage a Caeanic freighter. In splitting the loot--clothes--Peder cleverly spots a legendary suit, one of five in the entire galaxy, and walks off with it. And no sooner does he put it on than his personality changes; he becomes self-assured, clever, successful--it almost seems as though the suit of clothes is wearing him! A whimsical tale of a suit of clothes that really makes the man.