Sci-Fi/UFO

//Sci-Fi/UFO
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  • Man's concept of time forms a fundamental part of modern life. From the everyday time experience of day and night, the seasons,  the oddities of time zones and the International Date Line, to the deeper mysteries of  relativity theory, quantum mechanics, the concept of parallel universes and physical timewarps, the paradoxes and the possibilities of our relationship with time are constantly expanding in the face of fresh discoveries. While our watches and calendars are witness to the fact that time flows inexorably forward, at the other extreme black holes negate time altogether, making it stand still. In a wider context, the latest scientific theories are strikingly reminiscent of older philosophical ideas embracing such phenomena as precognition, reincarnation and dream telepathy. In this examination  of time, there are startling new insights into the nature of reality and the possibility that timewarps do exist. Illustrated with black and white photographs.

  • Book IV of The World As Myth. Maureen Johnson, the somewhat irregular mother of Lazarus Long, wakes up in bed with a man and a cat. The cat is Pixel, well-known to readers of The Cat Who Walks through Walls. The man is a stranger to her, and besides that, he is dead... Cover art by Boris Vallejo.
  • Book I of Fractalverse.  Kira Navárez dreamed of life on new worlds. Now she's awakened a nightmare. During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she's delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move. As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn't at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human. While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity's greatest and final hope...
  • What if there were an Afterworld?  Not Heaven or Hell, per se, but a place where everyone who has ever lived reawakens when they die, to live again and die again and live again, for ever. Warrior-King Gilgamesh has been in such an Afterworld longer that almost anyone else save the Hairy Men from Before the Flood, and in recent centuries he's seen it change beyond recognition as the newly dead import their machinery, weaponry and Industrial Age attitudes.  Gilgamesh's dissatisfaction with this behaviour sends him on a quest through the Afterworld realms of such luminaries as Prester John, Simon Magus, Walter Raleigh and Pablo Picasso in search of a gateway that is rumored to exist - a gateway that leads back to the land of the living. Cover art by Steve Crisp.

  • The 22nd century, 150 years after the Dust Wars destroyed America's Mid-West, and much else besides. California is a last outpost for survival and reclamation during a long epidemic of all-purpose despair.  The extraordinary cult of 'Tumbondé', a former taxi driver its prophet and leader, predicts the imminent arrival on earth of 'Gods' from the stars. The movement grows daily. Tom O'Bedlam, an apparent madman, prey since childhood to visions which seem to confirm 'Tumbondé', goes even further. He can, he will, help others to make the Crossing. If the world doesn't go too mad too soon. If well-meaning 'rationalists' don't lock him away...Cover art by Mark Salwowski
  • Eleven short, sharp crisp stories.  Call Me Dumbo: Dumbo is married to Carl, and has three sons - but who is she really? Repeat Performance: A cinema owner who shows old movies witnesses odd occurrences at his establishment ... And Isles Where Good Men Lie: An endless caravan of alien space craft are entering the solar system and disgorging a horde of fifteen-foot long insects that exude deadly bacteria. Scientists understand that these aliens are refugees, but how to stop them spreading a plague that will kill humanity? What Time Do You Call This? A scientist engaged in time-stream hopping appears in the apartment of a criminal. When the crook learns how the time-hop device operates, he steals it - but to what end? Communication: A bogus medium uses a computer to find out confidential information about his clients to convince them that the dead really can communicate - and then discovers the dead really CAN communicate. The Cosmic Cocktail Party: A super-computer housing the personalities of the dead to provide interaction with the living goes haywire when the dead start interacting with each other!The Happiest Day of Your Life: A future in which the cognitive and economic elite can, through hypnosis, drugs and surgery, get all their education in one day, resulting in eight-year-old attorneys and executives unable to converse with their parents because of their high IQs.  The Weapons of Isher II:  The most popular entertainment of the Space Empire is televised duelling - but a journalist discovers that the duels are nowhere near as 'deadly' as they  look; Pilot Plant: A cybernetics expert hears a mysterious disembodied voice just before a test flight of a new aircraft crashes; Telemart Three:  Holographic televisions of the future with a teleport means housewives can have their shopping instantly - and causes husbands to contemplate murder. Invasion of Privacy: Middle-class suburbanite George Ferguson's mother-in-law has been dead for two weeks, but his son Sammy claims to have seen her alive and well - in the old abandoned house down the street.  
  • Book I of Tomorrow.   When Ellie and her friends go camping in a remote location the locals call Hell, they have no idea they're leaving their old lives behind forever. Despite a less-than-tragic food shortage and a secret crush or two, everything goes as planned. But when they return home, they find they are really in Hell -  their homes are abandoned and their pets starving or dead. Something has gone wrong - horribly wrong. Before long, they realize the country has been invaded and the entire town has been captured - including their families and all their friends. Ellie and the other survivors face an impossible decision: They can flee for the mountains or surrender. Or they can fight... Cover art by Helen Halliday.
  • Book I of Tomorrow.  When Ellie and her friends go camping in a remote location the locals call Hell, they have no idea they're leaving their old lives behind forever. Despite a less-than-tragic food shortage and a secret crush or two, everything goes as planned. But when they return home, they find they are really in Hell -  their homes are abandoned and their pets starving or dead. Something has gone wrong - horribly wrong. Before long, they realize the country has been invaded and the entire town has been captured - including their families and all their friends. Ellie and the other survivors face an impossible decision: They can flee for the mountains or surrender. Or they can fight... Cover photo by International Photographic Library.
  • A rare collection of shorts by the masters of classic sci-fi: The Man Who Lost The Sea, Theodore Sturgeon; March Hare Mission, Ford McCormack; The Earth Men, Ray Bradbury; Who Goes There? Don A. Stuart; In Hiding, Wilmar H. Shiras; Not Final! Isaac Asimov; And Be Merry...Katherine Maclean; The Witches Of Karres, James H. Schmitz; Resurrection, A.E. van  Vogt. Cover art by Jim Burns.
  • Simeon Krug's obsession is to see a tower built - one kilometre high, a tower that will reach out to answer the voice from space. The Androids are his tools; superb man-like creations of Man. The Androids take Krug for their God and seek to become one with flesh-and-blood mankind through his wisdom. But Krug is not God - and it takes a God to control the terrible emotions that Krug has stirred...Cover art by Colin Hay.
  • Book III of The Dumarest Saga. Wanted by Dumarest: information on the whereabouts of the planet Earth. On the world Toy was the giant computer that might have the information. But the world of Toy gave nothing for free. The information would be costly. Dumarest would have to take part in the Toy games. Fight like a tin soldier in a giant nursery. Yet there was nothing childish about being a plaything on Toy. The pain was real - as were the wounds, the blood and death. Cover art by Chris Yates.

  • Warhammer 40,000. Book VIII of Gaunt's Ghosts.  Book 1 of The Lost sequence. A high-ranking Imperial officer has been captured by the foul forces of Chaos. Gaunt must assemble a squad of his most trusted men and venture deep into enemy territory. Their mission: rescue the officer if they can. However - if he has been compromised their rescue mission may become an assassination. Cover art by Adrian Smith.
  • Medium is a heart-warming machine, designed to provide a connection with the dead.  Now all the world could reach their loved ones - at a price. Anything so emotionally loaded and carrying that kind of price tag could be a powerful political weapon. But no-one, not even the inventor, could guess at how terrible that price might become. Cover art by Peter Jones.
  • From a damp February afternoon in Kensington Gardens, Richard Avery is precipitated into a world of apparent unreason. A world in which his intelligence is tested by computer and in which he is finally left on a strange tropical island with three companions and a strong human desire to survive. But then the mystery deepens; for there are two moons in the sky, and the rabbits have six legs...
  • Book III of Doona. The huge black spaceship in orbit around Doonarrala is apparently unarmed and poses no immediate threat, but a classified military tape reveals that it bears a striking resemblance to one found derelict and looming over a planet devastated by war.  For Todd Reeve, leader of the Human colony on Doonarrala, and for his Hrruban friend Hrriss, the ship represents a chance for both their species to extend the hand of friendship to another. For others, both from Earth and Hrruba, the ship and its inhabitants are a threat of such magnitude they will stop at nothing to to sabotage Todd's efforts at communication. Cover art by Mark Harrison.
  • Book VIII of Witch World. The fate of Witch World hangs in the balance. Can Yonan the Warrior, aided by the spirit of Tolar, an ancient Witch World hero, combat Targi and defeat the Forces of Darkness? Only in the past can Targi's defences be penetrated.  While Yonan/Tolar journey backwards in time, Crytha, an untrained witch, must thwart the Forces of Darkness until his return. Cover art by Rodney Matthews.
  • Mech-Warrior Dark Age; Battletech Universe No. 83. The Raging Bears have begun their occupation of the planet Vega with the hope of restoring order after violence and civil war. But their move to stabilise Prefecture 1 for the Republic of the Sphere may be the chance their enemies have waited for. While the military takeover was no great challenge, setting up a new planetary government and restoring the infrastructure of civilisation have proven to be far more difficult for the peace-keeping forces of the Rasalhague Dominion. There remains an underground rebellion that refuses to cease fire and the Bears suspect that the Draconis Combine is secretly supporting the rebellion. As the Combine threatens them from without, the Bears also find themselves plagued by betrayal and deception from within. Uless they can find the rival elements in their clan, they may end up as fodder for destruction.

  • Book X of The Chronicles of Counter-Earth. The Others were on the move. The Priest Kings had received a message: Surrender Gor. The date had been set for conquest or destruction. Tarl Cabot could not linger in Port Kar - now he must act on behalf of the Priest King, on behalf of Gor and on behalf of Gor's unsuspecting, teeming twin: Earth. Evidence pointed to the great wasteland of the Tahari, known only to the clannish militant tribes of desert wanderers. There, Tarl Cabot must go. Among the feuds, along the salvers' tails, beyond the forbidding salt mines to a rendezvous with treachery, a woman warlord, a bandit chief and with the monster intelligences from the world of steel. Cover art by  Fred Gambino.