A Berkley Medallion Book

"By the spring of 1945, the Second World War was drawing to a close in Europe. Allied troops were sweeping through Nazi Germany and discovering the atrocities of SS concentration camps. The first to be reached intact was Buchenwald, in central Germany. American soldiers struggled to make sense of the shocking scenes they witnessed inside. They asked a small group of former inmates to draft a report on the camp. It was led by Eugen Kogon, a German political prisoner who had been an inmate since 1939.The Theory and Practice of Hell is his classic account of life inside"--Cover, p. 4.

The Betty Book chronicles the development of the author's wife as one of the best mediums of the 20th century. It describes how she first discovered her talent, how she developed it, and what her research came to mean. It also introduces the reader to the "Invisibles" -- a group of people living on the inner planes who guided Betty and helped her understand the nature of life without a physical body.

Twelve-year-old Kurt and his father encounter poisonous plants, an earthquake, and a gigantic flesh-eating dinosaur when they begin exploring the interior of the Outer Island near Dinotopia.

It was the highest honor to defend the Empire against the dreaded Chingers, an enemy race of seven-foot-tall lizards. But Bill, a Technical Fertilizer Operator from a planet of farmers, wasn't interested in honor - he was only interested in two things: his chosen career, and the shapely curves of Inga-Maria Calyphigia. Then a recruiting robot shanghaied him with knockout drops, and he came to in deep space, aboard the Empire warship Christine Keeler. And from there, things got even worse... From the sweltering fuse room aboard the Keeler, where he loses an arm while blasting a Chinger spaceship, to the Department of Sanitation far below the world-city of Helior, where he finds peace, job security, and unlimited trash...here is Bill, a pure-hearted fool fighting a deluxe cast of robots, androids, and aliens in a never-ending losing battle to preserve his humanity while upholding the glory of the Empire.

This collection of stories from Ballard's early years displays him in full command of his considerable literary gifts. Ballard excels in the short form and this book contains some of his very best; most notably, The Drowned Giant and The Garden of Time. His vivid, visual and original imagination are coupled with a jade cool narrative style, resulting in a uniquely strange body of work. Chronopolis and Other Stories contains none of the excesses for which Ballard has been damned and praised, just sixteen fine short stories; two or three of which are among the best you'll ever read.

One night in July, 2135, there were some eight billion people on Earth! The next morning there were perhaps 400. There was no clue to what had happened to the world's population—but, over the centuries that followed, still stranger things occurred. The human lifespan now stretched to millennia instead of decades, and much of the remaining population developed the ability to move at will among the stars—and abandoned their homeworld for a life in deep space. Then, after 3000 years, a star-rover discovered what had happened to Earth's original inhabitants—and that they were coming to reclaim their heritage. Those who had stayed behind knew, with a growing fear, that the mystery of what had been done to Earth and why was about to be solved... in a way that would change humanity forever.

After five Harvard students share a car in 1938, they continue to stay in touch through the war, their marriages, and their times as parents.

From inside cover: In the future, "jumpdoors" presented to mankind by the mysterious entities known as Calebans have made instantaneous travel -- to any point in the Galaxy -- a commonplace. But the Calebans are vanishing, and now only one is left -- and two agents of the Bureau of Sabotage make a horrifying discovery: When the last Caleban dies, so will everyone, everywhere, who has ever used a jumpdoor! And nobody is known not to have "jumped" at least once.... The Caleban must be kept alive -- but it is under contract to a psychotic millionairess who is subjecting it to systematic, damaging torture.... From this weird situation, Frank Herbert spins a colorful, fast-moving tale, set in an exotic future civilization -- deft, dramatic, shimmering with the "sense of wonder" that marks the best SF.

Having just returned to Earth from an intergalactic research mission, Professor Peter Maxwell, specialist in Supernatural Phenomena, finds himself in most desperate straits. Earth, as the professor is well aware, has advanced beyond belief in many areas; time travel, for instance, has been perfected to such an extent that creatures from different ages (goblins, dinosaurs, and Shakespeare!) live together at the same time. But Maxwell has accidentally discovered a mysterious crystal planet which contains a storehouse of secret information, and he is sure that not even one-tenth of this knowledge is yet known on Earth. Realizing the value of the planet for the Earth's future development, he attempts to convince those in power that they must, at any cost, get control of the crystal planet. But his efforts are thwarted by a startling fact: Maxwell was ingeniously duplicated on his return trip. The "other" him came back before he did, and was soon after "accidentally" killed. Now no one will believe the new Maxwell really exists.