The Gregg Press science fiction series

The great epic of the world beneath the Bloody Sun known as Darkover did not begin with the coming of the Terrans. It began far earlier, during the dark days of the civilization that came to be known as The Ages of Chaos. For in those years the pwoer of the matrix was first learned - and misused in a power struggle between the rising Domains. that mental-physical force created a technology that threatened to make Darkover into a frightening duplicate of all that was bad in far-off Terra. This is the first novel of the days when the matrix was in the hands of ambitious men, when genetic tampering was producing prodigies and wielders of strange powers, as well as psi monsters, and when the heir of hte Hasturs met his destiny in the persons of the witch-woman he loved and the mutant girl-child he had pledged to protect.

The People, humanoid beings forced to emigrate to Earth when their home world is destroyed, settle in the American Southwest and attempt to preserve their culture and paranormal abilities.

Eternal life. Isn’t that what every religion offers in some way? Existence beyond just this? For Noel Vorst, the quest for eternal life is something much more tangible, driven through science, reaching out to the physical stars in place of a metaphorical Heaven. For his followers, the Vorsters, that quest becomes a religion, technology their god. Others hold on to the belief that it is these bodies, these genes that make us one with the universe. This renegade sect, the Harmonists led by David Lazarus, find a home on Venus, their own agendas in stark conflict with the Vorsters. In the search for life everlasting, it seems that the only thing eternal is human ambition. Religion is, after all, first and foremost a political business. This sprawling, episodic novel by master of thoughtful science fiction Robert Silverberg weaves multiple lives together across the solar system and over nearly a century. Blind faith, practicality, conflict, deception—the more mankind changes, the more it unfortunately stays the same.

From back cover of Avon Books paperback April 1980: STRANGE BENEFACTORS From far beyond Earth came a generation of benevolent robots whose sole purpose was to serve man by ending wars and easing his bodily and spiritual ills. Dr. Clay Forester, brilliant scientist and citizen of the distant future, had been recruited by a band of dissidents to stop the fledgling "brave new world." But why should he try to kill humanity's only hope for everlasting peace? A vagabond band of psychic anarchists are determined to defeat the invincible robots. And Clay Forester must discover the secret of the Humanoids and make an agonizing choice: fight for mankind's freedom to struggle and despair... or yield to the Humanoids' implacable imperative of total peace and pure bliss.

Across a United States all but destroyed by war and characterized by violent storms and giant bats and snakes, men embark on a seemingly doomed mission to deliver an antiserum to plague-ridden Boston.

"Summer life abroad among the arty set -- young hot-bloods, eager to be known as THE SINFUL ONES."

GATHER, DARKNESS! is a science-fiction classic. It tells the story of Armon Jarles, a man on the edge, living amidst the disputes of two rival powers at large in the world. 360 years after a nuclear holocaust ravaged mankind, throwing society back into the dark ages, the world is fraught with chaos and superstition. The new rulers over the masses of humanity are the techno-priests of the Great God, endowed with scientific knowledge lost to the rest of humanity. Jarles, originally of peasant descent, rises to become a priest of the Great God. He knows the gospel propagated by the priests to be a fraud, based on illusion and trickery. Even more offensive to him is the paucity of true believers among the priesthood. One day he rebels against his priestly training and attempts to incite the peasants to rise up and demand freedom, but they are not ready. Jarles is not the only dissenter trying to sabotage and expose the false theocracy of the priesthood—witchcraft is slowly gaining strength and support among the populace. Although Jarles is unaware, his rebellion against the power of the priests is about to throw him headlong into the middle of the greatest holy war the world has ever seen.

THE LAST DAYS OF MAN Under a dying sun, monstrous sentient plants and carnivorous insects are the predators. Man is the prey...

One minute, down and out actor Lorenzo Smythe was — as usual — in a bar, drinking away his troubles as he watched his career go down the tubes. Then a space pilot bought him a drink, and the next thing Smythe knew, he was shanghaied to Mars. Suddenly he found himself agreeing to the most difficult role of his career: impersonating an important politician who had been kidnapped. Peace with the Martians was at stake — failure to pull off the act could result in interplanetary war. And Smythe's own life was on the line — for if he wasn't assassinated, there was always the possibility that he might be trapped in his new role forever!

In a future world where telepathy is a rare but known phenomenon, Dennis Guise is a young boy whose unprecedented mental power is not a blessing, but a curse. Unable to control the myriad external thoughts and personalities that flow into his consciousness, the constant influx of telepathic information leaves him in an autistic state, from which he only very rarely awakens. He was the greatest telepath the world has ever known. he was Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and a Children of the Earth terrorist all rolled into one...He was Dennis Guise, idiot child, whose mind had been suffocated and nearly obliterated by a universe of other people's thoughts...And he was Earth's last hope against an enemy that had created the human race but would destroy it all again if Dennis Archimedes Leonardo Jean Jacques Humanity Guise could not meet this enemy on its own terms and win.

Novelization of the classic movie by one of the screenwriters.

xiii, 269 p. ; 22 cm

After the twentieth century’s devastating series of wars, the world’s governments banded together into one globe-spanning entity, committed to peace at all costs. Ensuring that peace is the Vulcan supercomputer, responsible for all major decisions. But some people don’t like being taken out of the equation. And others resent the idea that the Vulcan is taking the place of God. As the world grows ever closer to all-out war, one functionary frantically tries to prevent it. But the Vulcan computer has its own plans, plans that might not include humanity at all.

Waldo: North Power-Air was in trouble. Their aircraft had begun to crash at an alarming rate, and no one could figure out what was going wrong. Desperate for an answer, they turned to Waldo, the crippled genius who lived in a zero-g home in orbit around Earth. But Waldo had little reason to want to help the rest of humanity -- until he learned that the solution to their problems also held the key to his own... Magic, Inc.: Under the guise of an agency for magicians, Magic, Inc. was systematically squeezing out the small independent magicians. Then one businessman stood firm. With the help of an Oxford-educated African shaman and a little old lady adept at black magic, he went straight to the demons of Hell to resolve the problem -- once and for all!

In an overpopulated world seeking living room in the jungles, the International Ecological Organization was systematically exterminating the voracious insects which made these areas uninhabitable. Using deadly foamal bombs and newly developed vibration weapons, men like Joao Martinho and his co-workers fought to clear the green hell of the Mato Grosso.

The World Jones Made is a 1956 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, examining notions of precognition, humanity, and politics. It was first published by Ace Books as one half of Ace Double D-150, bound dos-à-dos with Agent of the Unknown by Margaret St. Clair. The World Jones Made is set in the year 2002 AD. On a then-future post-apocalyptic Earth, there was a devastating conflict that involved the use of atomic weapons. Many American cities were targeted, and the People's Republic of China (and Soviet Union) also collapsed, leading to the imposition of a Federal World Government (Fedgov). In this particular dystopia, Relativism (a political theory having little to do with Einstein) emerged as the governing political orthodoxy. Relativism is said to be a moral and ethical philosophy that states everyone is free to believe what they wish, as long as they don't make anyone else try to follow that principle. Relativism has become established law after the destructiveness of the war unleashed by clashing ideologies. (However, dissidents from that orthodoxy do end up in forced labor camps). This sacrosanct principle is challenged by a man named Floyd Jones, whose assertions about the future prove correct. Relativism enables legal consumption of drugs like heroin and marijuana, as well as watching live sex shows with hermaphrodite human mutants. Due to the mutagenic effects of radiation from wartime nuclear exchanges, mutants earn their living within the entertainment industry, although one group has been subjected to deliberate genetic engineering, which later enables them to settle (an inhabitable) Venus. The novel addresses questions of Jones's agenda and trustworthiness as well as the decidedly ambiguous benefits of individual precognition.

These three novels set forth the first travails of Prince Corum, of the Vadagh race, in his struggle against human barbarians and elementals of a cosmic sort. Although Moorcock is more famous for his Elric stories, these three novels of Corum are significant '60s-'70s high fantasy, and sword and sorcery of a distinctive kind. Comparable to Tolkien? No, but worthy fantasy nonetheless.

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.

The year is 2203, and the ruler of the universe is chosen according to the random laws of a strange game under the control of Quizmaster Verrick. But when Ted Bentley, a research technician recently dismissed from his job, signs on to work for Verrick, he has no idea that Leon Cartwright is about to become the new Quizmaster. Nor does he know that he's about to play an integral part in the plot to assassinate Cartwright so that Verrick can resume leadership of a universe that is not nearly as random as it appears. Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves. From the Trade Paperback edition.

xxxvi, 312 p. ; 21 cm

This is the story of Lars of the Puma clan, of the people of the Smoking Mountains. Lars's father was of the famed Star Men- explorers of the blasted wilderness beyond the mountain stronghold of the Star Hall. The brotherhood of Star Men sought to carry on the tradition of their research scientist ancestors- to seek out new knowledge for the betterment of the tribe- and of the world. This was to be Lars's destiny also, except that his father failed to return from his last mission and there was no one to speak for him at the last choosing of apprentices. So, rather than accept the insult of a lesser life, Lars took up his sword, bow, and his father's pouch, and along with his great mutant hunting cat, Lura, went out to find the great lost city of the Old Ones that his father's last journal entry spoke of.

The Terran colony on the planet Darkover faces imminent destruction by a plague of the deadly Trailmen's Fever. The only hope is to develop a serum in time, but this requires the cooperation of the elusive native Trailmen, the brilliant parasitologist Dr. Jay Allison, and his split personality. (Introduction by Mark Nelson)

Flandry, here a captain, undergoes a series of adventures: He is abducted by the Scothians, an alien race hoping to invade the Terran Empire; rescues the Emperor's kidnapped granddaughter; meets Aycharaych, his nemesis in league with the Merseians; and investigates a previously unencountered alien race that has invaded the distant colonial world of Vixen. Captain Dominic Flandry, a naval intelligence officer for the declining Terran Empire, becomes involved with an alien kidnapping, the sacking of Fort Lone by barbarians, and assorted alien spies

From back cover Ace paperback November 1982: INTRODUCING... DOMINIC FLANDRY Before he's through he'll have saved worlds and become the confidante of emperors. But for now he's seventeen years old, as fresh and brash a sprig of the nobility as you would care to know. The only thing as damp as the place behind his ears is the ink on his brand new commission. Though through this and his succeeding adventures he will struggle gloriously and win (usually) mighty victories, Dominic Flandry is essentially a tragic figure: a man who knows too much, who knows that battle, scheme and even betray as he will, in the end it will mean nothing. For with the relentlessness of physical law the Long Night approaches. The Terran Empire is dying...

Essentially a linked group of short stories, it recounts the colonisation of the planet Rustum, a fictional terrestrial world orbiting Epsilon Eridani, by a group of refugees from an authoritarian planet Earth bearing some resemblance to the historical Pilgrim Fathers. Although habitable, Rustum's atmospheric pressure is so great that only its mountains and high plateaus are suitable for human settlement. The novel, like much of Anderson's work, has a libertarian subtext as the colonists flee the oppression on their home planet.

The 20th century played a game of nuclear Russian roulette. And lost. Man must escape his own dead world, raid hostile planets, subdue his human nature to survive in a strange cosmos. Poul Anderson explores the future in this blood-chilling narrative that spins from Earth to distant galaxies as he foretells the ultimate destiny of mankind. The six short stories are: The Horn of Time the Hunter Man to My Wounding The High Ones The Man Who Came Early Marius Progress

From back cover Coronet paperback 1976: Captain Sir Dominic Flandry was a top man in the Intelligence Corps of the Imperial Terrestrial Navy. He knew that on the outer edges of the empire, civilization was spread hideously thin. The stars faded towards barbarism, with the great evil Empire of Merseia beyond. But there were times when Flandry abandoned his senior position of command to go out in the field. Then he operated like the cool and brilliant agent he was, a ruthless, highly-trained professional. And in these three fast-moving adventures Captain Dominic Flandry shows that a space-age secret agent has to stay on top of the job -- or succumb to nameless horrors.

Near-Shakespearean tragedy in a galactic setting. Who in this novel can be classified as "good guys" or "bad guys?" . . The corrupt and dissolute aristocracy governing Earth's empire? . . The alien Merseians, lurking in the interstellar dark, poking and prodding at the Empire, awaiting its fall? . . The former High Admiral who can no longer tolerate watching the Empire fall apart, and finds he MUST lead a rebellion, even though he knows it's wrong, even though he knows it's hopeless? . . The young officer Dominic Flandry, scornful of the collapsing Imperium, but true to his duty? . . Or the beautiful woman loved by both men, turned into a pawn by the reptilian aliens? YOU decide! The barbarians in their long ships waiting at the edge of the Galaxy waited for the ancient Terran Empire to fall, while two struggled to save it: ex-Admiral McCormac, forced to rebel against a corrupt Emperor, and Starship Commander Flandry, the brilliant young officer who served the Imperium even as he scorned it.Trapped between them was the woman they both loved, but couldn't share: the beautiful Kathryn - whose single word could decide the fate of a billion suns.