Author: jmstine

Hugo Winning Novelist's First and Only Collection!

Frank Riley won the Hugo Award for the Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year in 1955 for They'd Rather Be Right, co-authored with Mark Clifton. In this first-ever collection of Frank Riley's work, an eBook exclusive, you will find all seven of his highly-regarded novelettes and novellas. Published between 1955 and 1958, they represent all the science fiction Riley ever wrote, beyond They'd Rather Be Right.

Though his solo sf output was small (seven stories) and written over a very short period of time, the modest handful of work he produced helped set the pace for his fellow writers for years to come. Riley's impact on the field was evident from the very beginning, when "The Cyber and Justice Holmes" (1955) his first sf story, was immediately selected for the annual "best science fiction of the year" anthology. The editors of If: Worlds of Science Fiction noted Riley's exceptional gifts when they wrote that, while he had been "writing science fiction for only two and a half years, his stuff has the maturity and easy-reading quality of the experienced craftsman."

Included in this long-awaited collection of Riley's work are "The Cyber and Justice Holmes," which asks whether a human or a computer can deal out justice most fairly; "Project Hi-Psi," Riley's unique new take on psychic abilities; "Abbr." the tale of what happens when an innocent colonist returns to a much changed Earth for a visit; "Eddie," an unusual and affecting sf espionage story; "Bright Islands," the author's most offbeat work; "A Question of Identity," an insightful look at what, exactly, makes a man; and "The Executioner," a deeply-moving parable of courage and defiance.

This collection represents your first opportunity to read the work of this seminal and dazzling sf author for the first time in half a century. Must-read science fiction.

From the Creator of Dark Fantasy!

Move over Dean Koontz and Anne Rice, the Grandmistress of Horror is back in print at last, with her supreme novel of psychological terror! Francis Stevens has "the best claim at creating the new genre of dark fantasy," writes Professor Gary C. Hoppenstand, while the supreme historian of sf/f/h Sam Moskowitz says, "Francis Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett) was the greatest woman writer of horror between Mary Shelly and Anne Rice!"

This unnerving classic from the pages of the pulp magazines All-Story and Famous Fantastic Mysteries tells the chilling tale of a normal young man tempted to theft, murder and betrayal when he becomes the unwilling tool of an evil spirit from beyond the grave.

Author-critic Lloyd Arthur Eshbach hailed this shudder classic as "original in concept, entertainingly written, revealing an unusual mastery of atmosphere, a flair for maintaining suspense, a fertile imagination, a rare narrative gift, and a strong leaning toward the mysterious." If you love the work of Koontz, King, Rice, Straub, and Clark, you must read Francis Stevens' Possessed!

Publisher Note: As a bonus, this special eBook edition contains the only three short tales of dark fantasy Francis Stevens ever published: "Behind the Curtain," "Elf-Trap" and "Unseen-Unfeared".

"The author has done a good job in making his twisted people real and their problems logical. A good idea, well worked out." —Astounding/Analog

Medical science has created a world of perfect people, no matter what birth defects or devastating accidents they suffer, science can fix them. No one is deformed or even unattractive anymore. That is, except for a handful, who have suffered calamities beyond even the power of future surgery to make perfect. They are "the Accidentals."

Exiled on a tiny asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, to the rest of humanity the Accidentals are pathetic and deformed, half- or quarter-men and women, fractional organisms masquerading as people. To many they are just "circus freaks"—but to themselves they are still members of the human race.

Their leader is Dochi, who had been a electrochemical engineer with a degree in cold lighting. Then he became the victim of a particularly nasty accident, badly mangled and thrown into a vat of basic cold lighting fluid. His arms gone, his ribs crushed into his spinal column, his regeneration hadn’t been easy. The semi-organic cold lighting fluid had both preserved him, and in part replaced his blood, permeating every tissue until Dochi’s body had adapted. The adaptation couldn’t be reversed. Now Dochi, his arms and back muscles gone, must wear prosthetic arms for appearance's sake but can’t move them, while the metabolism of his ruined body pulses with light like that of the firefly.

There is also Nona: deaf, non-speaking, seemingly unintelligent—and a genius in her rapport with machines. And, "Anti," the ballerina who was infected by a Venusian fungi until she became a shapeless thing living in the pool of acid, her body a ceaselessly growing mass of flesh being eaten away by the acids, least she someday outweigh the world. Among them are Jordan, gone from the waist down, and Jeriann, her digestive tract destroyed. None of the perfect people on the Earth or in the solar system even want to be reminded of the existence of the "Accidentals." Hence, their asteroid exile.

So, when the Accidentals learn the first interstellar flight is in preparation, they decide to hijack the ship and seek a world they can make their own. The stars are very, very far away and the exploratory trips will be very, very long. But the medical skills which have kept them alive have also given the Accidentals incredible endurance and made them nearly immortal. They know that while there may be no place for them in the worlds of ordinary humanity, their unique metabolisms make them ideal candidates for interstellar exploration.

There is only one problem: The "perfect" people don't want a bunch of freaks as humanity's first emissaries to the stars. And they are willing to blow the Accidentals' ship out of space to stop them. What Earth can't possibly anticipate is the difference the Accidentals' strange talents can make. Like Nona's strange empathy for machines…

"Personalities whose courage you will respect and admire. Definitely worth reading." —Fantastic Universe

Two Complete Book-Length Novels of Strange Adventures on Other Worlds...

...reprinted from the pages of the legendary pulp magazine of colorful, poetic space opera, Planet Stories! In Emmett McDowell's gripping Red Witch of Mercury, death was Jaro Moynahan's stock in trade, and every planet had known his touch. But now, on Mercury, he was selling his guns in the weirdest of all his exploits, gambling his life against the soft touch of a woman's lips—the fearful Red Witch of Mercury.

And then, Leigh Brackett's incomparable classic, The Beast-Jewel of Mars. Could Fand, beautiful and base, bewitch the tall swordsman from Terra? Burk Winters was a panting, shambling ape, fleeing through dark and echoing pits of horror. Behind him hissed the lashes of the jeering mob, savagely exultant at having debauched another proud Terran into something that slavered and crawled. Had the scheming Fand overlooked one crucial factor? Could the Earthbeast's love for Jill somehow free him from the superscientific thrall of her devolution ray?

Cover art by Allen Anderson, for the Winter 1948 Planet Stories, illustrating The Beast-Jewel of Mars.

Two classic, colorful novels of the spaceways from the pages of the supreme magazine of space opera, Planet Stories. In "Flame Jewel of the Ancients", proud Terra and the 1,000 suns would be drifting embers if Bro-Donal won the Flame-Jewel of the Ancients. The tiny golden sphere, blazing with terrible energy, spelled Galactic Empire at last to his outlaw horde, once they had tapped its limitless power.

They were grimly amused, therefore, when Captain Glayne of the Stellar Guardians dropped innocently out of subspace to view their mighty prize. Glayne's only hope was the laughing, green-eyed Niala, who betrayed men with a heart colder than the blue vapors of Jupiter.

And in "The Seven Jewels of Chamar": The seven gems were scattered, yet they still flamed like distant suns, maddening the beholder. United, held in a grasping palm, they bestowed a godlike power that could rule the Solar System. But, the Jewels' flame-lances still white-hot from killing, young Ormondy and the fabulous Firebird learned the terrible price of that power...

Unabridged magazine version with an additional three chapters not found in most other ebook editions!

When The Skylark of Space was first published in paperback in the early 1960s, the publishers made Smith abridge the book. Three key chapters that appeared in the original 1928 Amazing Stories printing were omitted. These deleted chapters tell of the hero's development from childhood to young manhood, and his growing romance with Dorothy Vaneman—both of which parallel in many ways the life story of the author himself.

These chapters also delve into the intrigue around his discovery of the secret of liberating the energy of the atom. Soon his characters will be careening around not just the solar system, to whose confines science fiction had limited itself until The Skylark of Space was published, but the galaxy. What a honeymoon! ...Especially with kidnappings, evil alien armadas, wedding dresses to be designed, man-eating dinosaurs to be battled and, oh yes, home to be found somehow, far away on the far side of the galaxy.

Yes, it's the galumphing granddaddy of space opera, Edward E. "Doc" Smith, Ph.D., creator of the Lensmen, in his first-ever interstellar outing—and of course the galaxy is just the first stop. Alexei Panshin hails it as "the most fully realized ... most innovative ... most influential" science fiction novel of its era. "When The Skylark of Space first appeared [in the August 1928 Amazing Stories] Edward E. Smith Ph.D. was instantly recognized as the premier writer of American science fiction and would remain that for fully a dozen years more. Why? The Skylark of Space was the first book whose "true business [was] not the exploration of the local solar system—but the exploration of the stars!"

Complete text of this must-read romp. With a new introduction, recommended reading lists, notes on the text, and a reproduction of rare promotional material written in 1946 for the first book publication.

Two Classic SF Novels and the Only eBook Collection of Smith's Short Stories.

The first ship to the stars is crewed by two men and two women with incredible mental powers and incredible sexual drives—the Galaxy Primes. They will need both to survive what they find.

Then, read all the great E. E. Smith stories available for eBook publication from the rarely reprinted "Robot Nemesis" to his two heroic fantasy novelettes about Lord Tedric, the mighty warrior, to "The Vortex Blaster" and "Subspace Survivors".

Finally, join the crew of the Arcturus as they battle space pirates, enemy aliens, and their own inner passions—and still get the job done!—in Spacehouds of I.P.C.

Here is a not-to-be-missed omnibus edition of three full length sf books!

Three Full-length Tarzan Books in One!

The first three Tarzan novels in one eBook—for one low price—complete and unabridged. Here is the trio of romantic adventures that made the ape man one of the most believable and fascinating characters in literary history: Tarzan of the Apes; The Return of Tarzan; and Jungle Tales of Tarzan.

In Tarzan of the Apes, young Lord Greystoke is reared by anthropoids when his parents perish after being marooned in the African jungle. Tarzan grows to manhood learning the secrets of jungle craft, speaking only the language of the apes, believing himself an ape. Then he meets Jane Porter and her party, who have also been marooned on the jungle shore. When she flees into the jungle to escape danger, Tarzan rescues Jane, and although they do not speak the same language, they somehow learn to speak the language of love. To Jane, her idyll with the instinctively chivalrous ape man, though filled with peril and adventure, is a jungle Garden of Eden—but when Tarzan nobly returns her to her friends, convinced she would be happier married to one of her own kind, he disappears on a suicide mission to save one of her party captured by cannibals, and Jane is carried away against her wishes by her friends.

In The Return of Tarzan, the ape man tries to drown his sorrows in drugs and alcohol, in dangerous living that takes him from the ballrooms of the rich to the rooftops of the poor, from the dueling fields of Paris to the killing fields of Arabian intrigue. Then, ironically, an assassination attempt by a treacherous foe leads Tarzan back to the very shores where he grew up. There, Jane too is in peril, and to save and win her he will have to brave the dangers of the treasure vaults of Opar, elude the snares of La and its beautiful, scheming high priestess, do battle with the fifty frightful men, and face betrayal by his closest relative.

In Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Burroughs recounts the jungle lord's adventures as a child and adolescent growing up among the jungle's challenges and wonders. A memorable work! All three books complete and unabridged—over 1200 pages in hardcover.

Cover: J. Allen St. John, circa 1920.

"Magnificent! It's got everything, humor excitement, science fiction, and plenty of suspense." —W. Paul Ganley, Weirdbook.

Here is a thrilling tale of a lost world of futuristic marvels, a lost legion of American soldiers, a lost soul in search of redemption, a lost alien determined to conquer the world or destroy it—and a love that defied death! The Eye of the World is a mind-bending "thought-variant" novel from the 1940s intended to change the way its readers viewed reality forever!

From the text: "What Allan was seeing was a gigantic room, nearly two miles high. And there were clouds of orange fire rolling out of the top of a volcano-like cone. It was the cone itself that struck Allan with awe. It must have been two miles in diameter—yet the room was not filled by it. The great loop of the glide-walk moving around it gave it the effect of slowly turning. It was strangely illuminated, and over its perfectly symmetrical surface Allan could see hundreds—yes, thousands of patches of color ... a glass-like surface composed of small, sharply defined squares. Each square, only about three by three inches, contained a picture. Sixteen squares to the square foot—and how many thousands of square feet? There must be billions of tiny pictures set side by side over this surface—each picture was a person—a face. These pictures were in motion. Was it an actual image of persons in other lands—images that revealed their actions and expressions of this very moment? And then he was sure that all this spectacle before his eyes was happening now. He took a few steps upward. He was walking on faces—illuminated, tinted photographs. The expressions of the faces were quite unaffected by the contact of his heel plates. He caught his breath with sharpened interest. A billion? two billion? Was it possible that there was room here for everyone? Some squares were in darkness ... purple and black—and the deed was murder! Scores of different murders were being pulled off right before his eyes. Some were American, others were murders in India, on some desert island, on the snow field that might have been Siberia. Although the pictures revealed an amazing variety of bloody deeds, they showed up as a group, dominated by a single color-tone. What was the meaning of such a colossal mirror, hidden below these lost mountains of Africa?"

Rog Phillips' Eye of the World is a never-reprinted, lost masterpiece of pulp science fiction that award-winning author, editor and critic Terry Carr hailed as one of the "standout" stories of the year after it first appeared in the January 1949 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

They Dared a Lost World, the Frozen Arctic Wastes, a Giant White Tiger and a Vengeful Queen for a Fortune in Furs and a Lost Lord!

From the January 1943 issue of the legendary Fantastic Adventures, and the "wild man" author of The Land of Blue Apples and Princess of the Sea, comes a technicolor science fantasy extravaganza! Jim McClurg was an artist. He had no interest in fortunes. But when he learned his fellow passenger out of Baffin Bay, the beautiful Lady Lorruth, was determined to brave the hellish cold and endless ice to find her husband, he agreed to accompany her party.

Soon Jim will encounter wonders never imagined by those who live in the world's temperate zones: cold so bitter sound waves freeze into an impenetrable barrier around those who shout, entombing them forever; a civilization that has survived under the polar snows for thousands of years; the Sleeping King, who has ruled his kingdom with an iron fist for thousands of years—and never spoken a word; the strange Firemen who guard the mystic knowledge that allows their world to survive; and others. And the glorious young Queen, 60 centuries old, whose mount is a Snow Tiger, and who steals Jim's heart, though she is married to the Sleeping King. Plus the dark secret of the missing Lord Lorruth.