Author: jmstine

Nebula Nominee author Arthur Byron Cover returns to the Great Mystery Trilogy with this captivating novel, featuring an immortal Sherlock Holmes and a deathless Jack the Ripper in a duel through space and time!

“An East Wind Coming is a decadent smorgasbord...peppered with the thrills of various pulp fictions and comic-book universes. In a far future the iconic characters of nineteenth- and twentieth-century pop culture have been reborn, all of them referring to themselves coyly as "the consulting detective," "the good doctor," "the Big Red Cheese," etc. Imagine Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time reinvented by a chimera of Kim Newman, Philip José Farmer, and Belgian nihilist surrealist Jacques Sternberg, and you'll get an idea of the strange atmosphere of this dense and mindwarping novel. Cosmic concepts, horrific crimes, and pulp heroes . . . what more could you want?” —The Magazine of F&SF

“A dark, rich and unusual fantasy/science-fiction novel. The Golden City of the Godlike Men is haunted by a murderer — possibly a reincarnation of Jack the Ripper. As the utopian streets run with blood, the godlike men face the ultimate crisis of their aimless, drifting existence. The murders seem to expose the underlying corruption and pointlessness of their existence. And the only hope seems to be to rouse the Consulting Detective (Sherlock Holmes) from his torpor, to finally investigate a new case that could change the nature of the godlike men's world. The literary fun-'n'-games should appeal to fans of Alan Moore's LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN or anyone who's explored the Wold-Newton playground of Philip Jose Farmer. But there's a wholly unique and utterly fascinating quality to this lonely, haunted, elegiac novel. Again and again, Cover defiantly mines new meaning and hidden power from the detritus of junk, pop, pulp culture. This lost classic of fantasy richly deserves to be rediscovered.” —Amazon Review

“The book is excellent. I recommend this one very highly, with the proviso that the reader will only enjoy it if they happen to like a great number of different types of writing; from great literature to comic books, pulp magazines, penny dreadfuls, etc.” —Casebook: Jack the Ripper

Arthur Byron Cover’s work is filled with "…agile inventiveness … extraordinary salience and outlandishness … astonishing imagination … grotesque and hilarious … honest and often truly beautiful … shocking and exultant. …nothing like the usual sf fare." —A.A. Attanasio, author, Radix

The Nebula Nominated Breakthrough Novel!

The book that ushered in the 21st century—in 1975! So far ahead of its time that no one knew what to make of it!

"…recommended to readers of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett." —The PorPor Books Blog

"This strange novel-parable launched Cover’s long SF career in 1975. Cover swirls a phantasmagoric slew of allusions, quasi-references, and escapist 'sampling' into something Harlan Ellison’s introduction calls 'entertainingly meaningful.'" —Publisher's Weekly 2015

Autumn Angels is a fast moving, anarchistic romp, filled with pop culture references, in which the clichés and conventions of sci-fi are used as slapstick props, just like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—written four years prior.

"Three Godlike men (the lawyer, the fat man and the demon) … seek to give a godlike humanity depression, in an attempt to make their race seek purpose and become the ultimate species in the universe. What follows is … a novel which plunges you into an original sci-fi world which raises thought provoking questions throughout the plot. …fast paced with engaging and unique characters ... thought provoking and emotive ... Buy it now or I will send you to the antimatter universe." —Adam Gent, Goodreads

"It takes the materials of everyday entertainments—pulp heroes, movies, comics, detective stories—and transforms them …. into a gestalt that is fresh. ...The lawyer is modeled after Doc Savage's sidekick, 'Ham'; the fat man is Sidney Greenstreet; the gunsel is Elisha Cook, Jr. in The Maltese Falcon; the Big Red Cheese is Captain Marvel; the Queen of England who calls herself a virgin is Elizabeth I; the ace reporter is Lois Lane; the zany imp from the Fifth Dimension is Mr. Mxyzptlk, and both the imp and Lois are, of course, from the Superman comics; the godlike man with no name is Clint Eastwood in the Sergio Leone-directed spaghetti westerns; the galactic hero with two right arms is Harry Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero; the fuzzy (but boring) little green balls of Sharkosh are Star Trek scenarist David Gerrold's tribbles; and you can figure out for yourself the true identities or esoteric references for The Ebony Kings, the poet, the shrink, the bems, the other fat man and his witty leg man, and on and on." —Harlan Ellison

No wonder Autumn Angels is over the top, the author lists as influences the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, Richard Lester, the silent comedians, Woody Allen, Harry Harrison, Keith Laumer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Dorothy Parker, Hemingway, Jeeves and Wooster, Phil Dick, Robert Sheckley, and Alfred Bester.

"…agile inventiveness … extraordinary salience and outlandishness … astonishing imagination … grotesque and hilarious … honest and often truly beautiful … shocking and exultant. …nothing like the usual sf fare. I read it through in one sitting." —A.A. Attanasio, author, Radix

"...filled with enough wild images and witty dialogues to equal five books by a lesser writer." —Amazon review

Cover: Ron Cobb.

Nebula nominee author's brilliant, profound, zany, off-the-wall sf extravaganza!

"Unclassifiable, brilliant, takes weird to a whole new level! Highly recommended!" —Goodreads 5-star review

SPECIAL BONUS: Reprinted for the first time ever since its original 1973 appearance in the anthology "Infinity Five", the first story set in the universe of God-Like Men, "In Between Then and Now."

From the My Reader's Block review blog:

The Platypus of Doom: This gigantic, bow-tie-wearing space monster can grant the winner of the "great game"* his or her heart's desire. Sounds great, right. Well, you know the old adage...be careful what you wish for; you just might get it. [*The great game appears to be ping pong, by the way.]

The Armadillo of Destruction: An immortal creature that feeds off the powerful negative energy of hate. He's often on the lookout for a new energy source—which always ends badly for the source. Leopold Janifer thinks he has found a way to beat the Armadillo's system. Is he right?

The Aardvark of Despair: Can Davis, a mean-streets private eye who has been flung through a time vortex into the future, help Dr. Bishop and his family shake off the suicidal depression that the Aardvark instills in its victims?

The Clam of Catastrophe: Will the Clam, the goddess of love, teach the first and most long-lived consulting detective to love and then turn it into disillusionment. Or will the detective find the solution the one of man's oldest problems?

When you meet these monsters, never fear, for there are godlike men in this book to defeat them!

There is, under the near-farcical trappings, an examination of such things as love, hate, motivation, and the meaning of existence itself. Cover manages to pose his questions with a light touch that offers food for though as well as entertaining stories.

"Four absolutely staggering novelettes, saucy and sharp and fun. Cover plays games that are worthy of Philip Jose Farmer (until it was proven otherwise, I thought that Cover *was* Farmer!) The Platypus, et al, are small-g gods, interfering, in an Euripdean fashion, with the fates of mankind. The stories have hidden depths and riddles that reward the effort of solving, but, mostly, they entertain. This is thoughtful stuff, but also highly readable." —Amazon verified review

Cover image: Ron Miller

The classic novel of a planetary paradise in peril!

The Hugo and Nebula finalist and Star Trek: TOS writer who chronicled the voyages of the starship Enterprise in five bestselling books offers up an enthralling novel of the men and women of the final frontier!

From the authorized Star Trek biographer who gave Lt. Uhura her official first name (Nyota, Swahili for “star”) comes this thought-provoking tale of a weary star voyager who finds Paradise, only to discover a nest of vipers planning its destruction. Using the classic TOS trope of a planet with parallels to Earth history, the late William Rotsler makes sharply observed comments on human proclivities and foibles. A novel sure to please all science fiction fans, and especially Star Trek enthusiasts.

“A vivid, fast-paced story, rich with color, insight and passion.” —Robert Silverberg

Raider had wandered for years from world to world through the voids of the final frontier. Now, at last, in its farthest realms, he had found a world he wanted to call home. To a war-weary starman like Rader, the planet Zikkala was paradise. Unfortunately, Zikkala had two drawbacks: The indigenous stone-age-level population had a long tradition of proving their mettle by attacking each other in duels to the death; and with the arrival of Terrans, they had transferred that tradition to attacking outworlders. Meanwhile, a megacorporation from Earth had targeted Zikkala for acquisition. They had their own army—and if they couldn't buy they planet, they planned to conquer it. And, if that weren't bad enough, Alena, the one woman he cared for, ran the best cathouse in town, and the megacorp had targeted it for a takeover. Raider wanted to help, but he was outnumbered, outgunned —and on the wrong side of the law. Failure meant a quick trip to an interplanetary boothill!

“Rotsler takes that idea and runs with it ... A lot of fun. Rotsler was a fine writer.” —Randy Johnson

“Good, fast space opera. What science fiction is supposed to do.” —Larry Niven

LOST meets GAME OF THRONES!

“Gripping. A jetload of Americans is 'snatched' by a ruling race from perhaps another, alternate universe. They want the plane’s metal and sell the people as slaves. Their ancient machines only focus on what we know and love as the Devil’s Triangle near Bermuda. By guile, intelligence and superior fighting ability (enhanced by the lighter gravity of this metal-poor planet), the hero Mace Wilde manages to become the lover to a soon-to-rule Princess and manages to reunite with the woman from Earth he loves, Eve Claton, who has survived an escape and an alliance with a rebellious race of mountain people. [But even if they manage to regain] control of their lives and have a chance to get back to Earth—because of a time differential, such a return would plonk them into our future by several hundred years. Zandra has elemental power.” —Science Fiction Review

“Rotsler introduces all the characters to the readers while they are on an airplane, takes it through the Devil's Triangle and crashed them on Zandra, where all the disappearees have been going for centuries. It's a … great civilization long over the hill, run by feudalistic despots with antigravity airships and slaves, the latter group for which our protagonists are immediately drafted. Our protagonists, of course, take immediate action with their modern wits and cunning, as well as their greater strength in the lower gravity, which they made use of to exhibit truly John Carterish fighting abilities. [They also] struggle to find a way to return to Earth (the first step of which, of course, is to take over the planet from the dangerous but bungling incompetents running it). Well written adventure.” —Thrust

IN A PARADISAICAL FUTURE WORLD, A MADMAN DREAMS OF...A PARADISAICAL FUTURE WORLD

“A fine swashbuckling story, and a rich, robust peek into our crazy future, told in clean, vigorous prose.” —Robert Silverberg

Blake Mason had it all…fame, fortune, and women. As an architect he was without equal; the exotic environments he created pulsated with sublime eroticism. But in this world of abundant free sex, Blake Mason craved true love.

Then he found it—with the one woman he could never have. Rio was the lover of mad multibillionare Jean-Michel Voss. They met when Voss came to Blake with a strange request: design a sensuous tomb in which to live, in which to love—and in which to die. What Voss left out was the supposed tomb’s real purpose.

Blake didn’t care about Voss or his secrets. All he cared about was Rio.

And all Rio cared about was Blake—and the debt she owed Voss: a debt that meant she and Blake could have a few mad nights together, after which they would be separated for eternity.

But Blake was willing to sentence himself to an eternity of unknown hells to be with her...

From the Hugo winning and Nebula nominee, William Rotsler, author of Patron of the Arts, and The Exiles of Zandra.

1931 saw the U.S. and the rest of the world sunk low, despairing in the depths of the Great Depression. But there was rejoicing at Amazing Stories because all in all, story for story, 1931 was Amazing’s best year ever. Among these stories, the now-classic works we have chosen for this anthology are:

“Prima Donna 1980,” a dazzling story of art, ambition, tragedy, business, television, and song, filled with very human characters, that inevitably reminds one of C.L. Moore’s “No Woman Born.” Written by Bernard Brown, a motion picture sound technician, Bleiler rates “Prima Donna 1980,” as “one of the best stories” in the history of Amazing.

Patrick Dutton's masterpiece of style, “The Beautiful Bacillus,” a unique work straddling the line between humor and tragedy. Bleiler pronounced Dutton’s story beautifully written in “a complex, tightly organized prose, handled with considerable grace and elegance”…“subtler than Lovecraft” and “certainly worth rereading, [it is] one of the few stories in early Amazing that deserved to be preserved,” yet has never been reprinted until now.

A. Hyatt Verrill's “The Exterminator,” an O.-Henry-ish short story which anthologist and critic Sam Moskowitz reports “immediately became one of the most popular stories of that length in the history of the magazine.”

One of David H. Keller MD’s top-notch satires that still remains relevant today, “Service First,” proposing an acid-tinged solution to rising rents (a problem even then): an aerial mobile home that only came down for refueling.

"The Incredible Formula” by Paul Ernst, a tale of the chemically resurrected dead replacing workers in plants and fields across the U. S., which also aspired to something more than the mere unfolding of a new scientific discovery, with its carefully crafted economic subtheme and “unusually cynical, unexpected end (Bleiler).”

Raymond Z. Gallun's “The Lunar Chrysalis,” featuring an intelligent mollusk civilization on the moon, a fleet of spaceships aimed at the Earth, a desperate attempt by two explorers to escape and warn the home world, and a surprise ending few readers of the time could have anticipated—“nicely told” writes Bleiler.

Paul Bolton's “The Time Hoaxers,” about which little can be said without giving too much away, except that nothing is what it seems at first or second glance, and the truth is only revealed in a final coda.

Finally, Murray Leinster, who had been writing science fiction for more than a decade (and under his real name, Will F. Jenkins, had been selling memetic fiction to slicks like The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, where he routinely appeared next to Pulitzer Prize winners), contributes “The Power Planet,” a story which reached heights that would rarely (if ever) be reached again until Campbell assumed the helm at Astounding, and combined politics with “a surprisingly good method for gathering solar power in orbit, then transferring it to Earth” (Technovelgy.com), plus a sophisticated sex triangle integral to the plot, “strength of characterization, and accuracy of prediction that stand head and shoulders above other” stories (Wollheim).

As with the earlier volumes in the series, we have included all the original accompanying illustrations for each story we have selected, as well as the original magazine blurbs. 1931: it was a very good year for Amazing Stories, we think, and helped us create a very good anthology.

"A superb tale that every lover of science fiction will want to have around. Completely off-trail science fiction—and highly recommended therefore." —Galaxy Science Fiction

This amazingly prophetic 1931 novel, which some say inspired Flowers for Algernon (on which the film Charlie was based), is easily the best novel Hugo Gernsback ever published in Amazing Stories. It features characters so mature their like would not be seen again until the post-war sf of the 1950s, and a theme that, in its rise and fall, prefigures that of Flowers for Algernon and carries it to a level of operatic tragedy not to be equaled until Bester's The Demolished Man.

Seeds of Life, in short, is the story of Neils Bork, an alcoholic and failure raised to supernal heights of scientific genius and altruism by a scientific accident. And it is the story of what became of his golden dream of free, limitless energy for all, and of the marriage he thought would be crowned with glorious offspring.

"In the unbelievably short period of six years, from 1924 to 1930, John Taine (Professor Eric Temple Bell of California Institute of Technology) drove himself to a unique position in the science fiction world through the outrageously daring flights of the imagination which are the Taine trademark. Seeds of Life is top-notch Taine. The theme is biological—the sources of life, and the forces which mold life. An accident remakes the blundering technician, Neils Bork, into the mutant superman, Miguel De Soto, and at the same time sets in motion other processes which attract the attention of Bork's employer, Andrew Crane, and the very competent Dr. Brown. The author keeps several mysteries at the boiling point—what has happened to Bork, to the black widow spider, to Bertha the hen; what is "De Soto's" plot against the mankind he considers degraded and degrading; what, above all, is the theory of evolution and devolution around which the whole book is built?" —Analog Science Fiction

Amazing Stories Classics is proud to bring this landmark work from the pages of the Amazing Stories Quarterly, Oct 1931—with all of its original Frank R. Paul magazine illustrations—back before the reading public.

Homer Eon Flint was a highly regarded writer of mystery-and-suspense-filled science fiction during the earliest years of the 20th century. Analog hails Flint as one of the field’s “lost masters.” Science fiction historian and critic, Sam Moskowitz, concurs, describing Flint’s work as “filled with cosmic concept and brilliant imagination,”and The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction praises “his deep interest in the emergence of behavioral and historical patterns from various political and social philosophies,” while sf historian Mike Ashley describes his work as "Remarkable [with] a depth of unbridled imagination … teeming with super-scientific concepts."

Flint’s bravura novel, The Nth Man, showcases all these elements—suspenseful mystery, sociological themes, and brilliant imagination—plus a humanistic compassion almost unprecedented for its era. The story piles mystery upon mystery, ensuring that readers are carried along on momentum alone until the end. In just the first few mind-boggling pages, Flint establishes that:
+The Great Wall of China is torn down in a single night;
+The head of the Sphinx is missing and then found on top of one of the Great Pyramids;
+A ship bound for Australia is lifted up bodily, carried thousands of miles away and left;
+An entire building is relocated without harm;
+A little girl who is drowning, unnoticed, in the ocean is lifted to a cliff and saved;
+An incredible being emerges from the depths of the ocean....

And that is only the introduction of a science fiction novel so far ahead of its time that except for the background trappings it appears torn from today’s headlines.

Basis for the 1950s Atomic Age scifi-movie hit, The Amazing Colossal Man.

Amazing Stories Classics is proud to re-present it for the 21st century with all the fabulous Frank R. Paul illustrations!

Despite so many authors being off at the front fighting WWII, 1943 was a pretty good year for Amazing Stories. At the start of 1944, when readers traditionally wrote in to select their best-of-the-year lists, the most frequently cited were: “The Machine,” “The Devil’s Planet,” “Me—the People,” “When the Darkness Came,” “War Worker 17,” “The Powerful Pipsqueak,” “Daughter of Destiny,” “The Degenerate Mr. Smith,” “The Pacifist of Hell’s Island,” “Rats in the Belfry,” “Carbon-Copy Killer,” “The Chameleon Man,” “Enigma of the City,” “The Lost Warship,” and “Pop Gun.” In this special Retro Hugo collection, which contains many of the aforementioned favorites, which we agree are worthy of award consideration.

“A fantastic collection of top-of-the-line scifi adventures from a time when they were written by the very best.” —Ralph Greco, Jr., Amazon 5-Star review.