Collier nucleus fantasy & science fiction

From back cover of Ace paperback May 1987: Image Helliconia -- a world at the end of a reign that has lasted nearly two thousand years. The glorious civilization that blossomed during spring and summer has faded, and the dismal wasteland of winter is rapidly destroying the human race. For it is the chill end of the Great Year, the 2500 year cycle in which each season gives way to a new oppressor. And now, as winter approaches and the numbers of mankind dwindle, the barbaric phagors prepare to seize their chance to rule again. And they will succeed. Unless mankind can be united to stop them.

From the back cover: Imagine a world a thousand light years from Earth, where each season lasts for generations, and each generation knows only one season. Where twin suns warm the icy winds of the Sibornal, the forests blaze and kingdoms turn into ashes... once every 2500 years. Where it is summer again on Helliconia.

Space travel has been abandoned in the twenty-second century. It is deemed too dangerous, expensive, and inconvenient—and now the all-powerful Fishhook company holds the monopoly on interstellar exploration for commercial gain. Their secret is the use of "parries," human beings with the remarkable telepathic ability to expand their minds throughout the universe. On what should have been a routine assignment, however, loyal Fishhook employee Shepherd Blaine is accidentally implanted with a copy of an alien consciousness, becoming something more than human. Now he's a company pariah, forced to flee the safe confines of the Fishhook complex. But the world he escapes into is not a sanctuary. Its people have been taught to hate and fear his parapsychological gift—and there is nowhere on Earth, or elsewhere, for Blaine to hide.

Atom war had destroyed the world...History and records had been lost; the few war-shocked people who were left could not even recall what had started the atomic destruction. But even these desperate circumstances could not change the basic nature of man. Out of the still-smoking ruins came one who was stronger and more ruthless than most. And from his plans to rule the universe grew the seeds of the last great war of all-the one that would -- finally and forever -- wipe man off the face of Earth.

Unavoidably, David Cheney becomes part of the future, in which a nuclear war has weakened both East and West, and in which America is torn by a race war. Yet among this desolate world, he discovers reasons for living.