Author: jmstine

Never-Reprinted Classic from Astounding SF!

Kleon of ancient Greece, who slept through the ages in a remote cavern, and Sam Ward, a contemporary American who unintentionally joined him in that sleep, wake in the future to meet Beltan, Oglarch of Hispan.

Escaping Beltan's nightmarish dystopia, the three determine to seek a culture of freedom and peace, only to fall into the hands of a regimented future state—the City of the Rocket Horde. Sentenced to die before their quest is begun, the trio must pool their knowledge if they are to survive to continue their quest.

First time in book form for the first two stories in the immortal "Past," "Present" and "Future" saga from the pages of the legendary 1930s Astounding Science Fiction.

Classic SF Romp by the Author of Riverworld!

When Alan Green's starship crashes on a medieval planet overrun with feudal human societies, he is instantly captured and sold into slavery. Green soon finds himself installed as a gigolo to Duchess Zuni of Tropat, the local duke's voluptuous but bath-needing wife.

Lazy and cautious to the point of timidity, he soon finds himself under the thumb of Amra, an Amazon of a wife, a slave like him, who combines beauty and intelligence with five kids, one of them Green's. With himself as gigolo and Amra as official lernan of the Duchess Zuni, Green is doing quite well in a precarious position when he hears that another ship from the sky has landed a few thousand miles away, and the two men on board mistaken for "demons" and scheduled for execution.

Determined to save his fellow Earthmen from death, and himself from Amra, Green determines to cross the grass sea of Xurdimur and get himself to Estorya in time to stop the execution—and incidentally hitch a ride home to Earth. Thus begins Philip Jose Farmer's The Green Odyssey, which has rightly been called "rollicking science-fiction adventure"; "uproarious"; "swashbuckling"; "sheer fun" and by science fiction critic and by scholar, Sam Moskowitz: "filled with engaging humor."

The next adventure begins when Alan Green arranges passage on a "wind roller", a sailing vessel of the plains, by dazzling the captain with a financial scheme offering rich profits to overcome his reluctance to help a fugitive. Setting "sale" with the captain, Green thinks he's escaped from his dominating wife—but he's wrong.

Throw in pirates and floating islands and a black cat-goddess with a taste for beer, picked up after shipwreck on one of the wandering Islands of the Xurdimur, and you have the recipe for science-fantasy adventure as irresistible as Riverworld itself. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction hails Green Odyssey as "A picaresque tale of an earthman escaping from captivity on an alien planet; the intricately colorful medieval culture of this planet, the high libido of its women, the mysteries buried within the sands of the desert over which the hero must flee, and the admixture of rapture and disgust with which the hero treats this venue—all go to make this novel a model for the flowering of planetary romance from the 1960s on."

Long-lost Collaborative Novelette of Supernatural Horror!

A strange fragment of quartz carved with eldritch symbols sends its finder on a cosmic quest across space and time to face horrors unknown in this unique collaborative classic by five masters of dark fantasy: Frank Belknap Long, C. L. Moore, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt.

As historian/critic Sam Moskowitz says, The Challenge from Beyond is "An All-Star game of supernatural horror. Though a series of special circumstances a group of all-time great writers of fantasy came together to collaborate on a single story … a literary landmark."

A Dwarf Star Classic Novelette.

Three More Full-Length Tarzan Books in One!

Read three Tarzan novels in one ebook—for one low price. The Beasts of Tarzan and The Son of Tarzan tell the thrill-packed story of the kidnapping of the jungle lord's infant son by a treacherous enemy.  Tarzan's best efforts to track the culprit prove fruitless, and in what the enemy feels is the perfect revenge, the boy is abandoned in the jungle, to die among the animals.  But one of Tarzan's ape friends senses the foundling is the jungle lord's son—and soon he, too, is being raised among the anthropoids.

Grown to his teenage years, he rescues a young French girl, lost amid the wilds, and the two lead an idyllic life—until human enemies prove more savage than the most fearsome jungle beasts and the two are separated. To rescue her, he will have to prove himself, indeed, the son of Tarzan.

In Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, the ape man and his family are vacationing on their African ranch when financial reverses send Tarzan back to the treasure vaults of Opar. But an injury during an earthquake costs Tarzan his memory of recent events and sends him back to his ape brethren, Jane forgotten—just when she needs him most! Kidnapped by false friends, Jane faces her own jungle ordeal, hoping at any moment for Tarzan to rescue her.  While Tarzan, gathering fruit from the vines, has no memory of her existence at all.

All three books complete and unabridged—over 1200 pages in hardcover.

Cover: J. Allen St. John.

You've Never Heard of Her—But You Should Have!

Her name is Frances Deegan, and she wrote twenty-one stories and thirty-five articles under her own name for the science fiction pulps between 1944 and 1952, when few other women were selling to them at all.

...And yet you won't find her listed in any book about science fiction. Not The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction, Pamela Sergeant's Women of Wonder, Roger C. Schlobin's comprehensive listing of women science fiction authors, Urania's Daughters, Alexei and Cory Panshin's The World Beyond the Hill, or David Hartwell's Dark Descent. In fact, in the years since her death Frances Deegan has become the Forgotten Woman of the golden age of pulp science fiction, and none of her stories have ever been reprinted. The only place you will find Frances Deegan's name is buried among the plethora of male authors in the table-of-contents listings for old sf magazines.

But at a time when only a handful of women were writing—or reading—science fiction, Frances Deegan was one of the field's most popular authors, if the letter columns of the period are to be believed. And that popularity was deserved, as this first-ever collection of her stories shows. And what stories they are! Set against backgrounds that are often rustic ("The Radiant Rock"), peopled with characters who are decidedly not urban ("The Wizard of Blue Gap"), Deegan's stories are frequently humorous, with comic touches in even the most straightforward scientific puzzle story ("The Third Bolt"). They blazed new trails for science fiction when first written, and still stand out as vigorous, idiosyncratic work even today, a half century after they were written.

It is hoped that this collection will introduce the work of this Forgotten Woman to new generations and help, in some measure, to rescue the name and reputation of Frances Deegan from obscurity.

Molten-hot action with this forgotten but legendary comic book superhero!

Will Eisner and Lou Fine created The Flame and he was instantly one of the hottest characters of the Golden Age of Comics. In fact, you could easily trace a lot of The Flame forward to many now-legendary comic characters.

Gary Preston was the only survivor of a flood that killed his father, Charteris Preston—a missionary in China.  Little Preston was saved by a benevolent order of Tibetan monks who taught him the mysterious power of heat and fire. Gary learned that power must be used for good—and thus The Flame was born. Like a lot of characters created around that time, The Flame's ability—and adventures—were so imaginative they were almost hallucinatory: The Flame can raise his body temperature high enough to melt bullets, control any nearby fire, and even travel through fire itself—including appearing out of a casually lit match. Naturally, The Flame's weakness is water—often used by the villains to try and snuff him out. Lonely at first in his burning pursuit of justice, in later issues Flame Girl, sporting almost identical powers, joins The Flame in his crusade against evil in all of its forms.

In this complete reprinting of all The Flame stories from the very first issue—over sixty pages of non-stop thrills—Eisner is at the helm, writing every story while his partner of the time, Lou Fine, produced the art. While concentrating on adventure and action, they work together to introduce many little embellishments that keep their work far out of the routine. Each panel and page leaps out at the reader—even decades later—with grace, composition, power, and even beauty.

Eisner went on to become a true legend of the comic world as an innovative writer and artist. He created the playfully noir strip The Spirit, and then to completely change the game of what a comic—excuse me, graphic novel—could be as he created A Contract with God, and Other Tenement Stories, following its critical acclaim with highly regarded graphic novels such as To the Heart of the Storm, Dropsie Avenue, and The Building.

With an introduction by comics fan and novelist M. Christian.

Four Complete SF Novels From the Legendary Pulp Magazine!

Imagination was the last science fiction magazine featuring action-adventure novels and stories in the grand tradition of the pulps. And it was the "complete" science fiction adventure novel Imagination ran in each issue that readers ranked number one in their "likes." Many of these novels take place in highly-colored outer space and/or distant planet settings, but others are Earth-bound tales of tension and suspense in regimented near futures, or which involved alien intrigue, dangerous inventions, or extra-sensory powers taking place today (or at least the "today" of the 1950s). But whatever the subject or background of the novel, in Imagination the emphasis was always on action, drama, peril, and color.

The four novels we have selected for this inaugural issue of the new, revived Imagination are representative of the brand of unabashed adventure that could be found in any issue of the magazine. The Terror out of Space by Dwight V. Swain is the story of rebellion in the relatively-near future, during the conquest of the solar system, against the tyrannical Cartel that holds the planets under an iron grip.

Edmond Hamilton's The Ship from Infinity, on the other hand, takes us to the distant future and the very edge of the galaxy to a strange, vast ship, the product of alien technology and the object of men's cupidity for wealth and power.

Armageddon, 1970 by Geoff St. Reynard is an alien invasion story and flying saucer shocker, of Earth nearly crushed by the might of otherworldly weapons, while Boyd Ellanby's The Star Lord is the story of how the captain of a commercial passenger ship plying its trade among the stars copes when, due to sabotage, the entire ship is endangered.

All four are by frequent contributors, whose names became associated with Imagination over the years. Two are by men who helped make the golden age of the pulp science fiction magazines golden: Edmond Hamilton and Dwight V. Swain. Two are by writers whose contributions may have been less frequent, but were more than made up for by their quality.

We hope you will join us for Issue Two of Imagination, coming soon!

"No Exit" is the rarest of all Larry Niven stories. Reprinted only once in an obscure British anthology, it has otherwise only been obtainable by those who could afford the high prices charged for older science fiction magazines. Written with Jean Marie Stine, it appeared in the June 1971 issue of Fantastic Stories. The original magazine blurb for the story read in part: "Stine's review here of television's The Prisoner led to the opportunity to write the third book in that series. Niven is a Hugo winner and the author of the recent novel Ringworld. Put them together and you have…" This special Dwarf Stars digital republication contains a very personal Introduction by Jean Marie Stine discussing the writing of the story and sharing some unique glimpses of Niven as the young author-in-the-making.

Hugo Nominee Story, First Time Ever in a Book!

Robert Silverberg calls Phillips "A master!" and Analog/Astounding hails Phillips' SF as "Fast-moving—entertainment!" Find out why in this giant helping of classic Golden Age science fiction, Rat in the Skull & Other SF Classics. Here is the much-lauded science fiction author Rog Phillips' first-ever collection featuring his Hugo-nominee short novel and five other outré novelettes.

Included is Phillips' science fiction masterpiece, "Rat in the Skull" (unavailable for nearly fifty years). What the magazine editors said then about this controversial novelette remains true today: "Some people will be shocked by this story. Others will be deeply moved. Everyone who reads it will be talking about it. Read the first four pages: then put it down if you can."

Other Phillips novelettes gathered in Rat in the Skull include: "The Yellow Pill," "Executioner No. 43," "Unto the Nth Generation," "Pariah," "Love Me, Love My..." and "The Holes in My Head." This collection is a must-read for those who love science fiction.

"Science fiction readers who have never been exposed to Roger Phillips Graham's* inimitable brand of prose are in for a real treat." —Forrest Ackerman.

*Rog Phillips' birthname; see Author Page.

Their Only Hope was the Villain!

Here is the stunning conclusion to Nebula Award nominee Emil Petaja's science fictional retelling of the Finnish epic, The Kalevala.

Millennia ago, the Vanhat fled their dying world, Otava, and settled on Earth, in an icy, unwanted peninsula in the far north, where they became known as the Finns. Once the Vanhat had been a mighty people, possessors of an ancient knowledge, whose cosmic heroes and heroines gave battle to dark forces from beyond our universe. In the distant future, humankind has scattered to the stars, and only a remnant still dwell on an abandoned, ransacked Earth, among them, the Vanhat. For a prophecy has long predicted that in this age Otava would bloom again, and the time of the Great Return would be at hand when the exiled Vanhat could reclaim the world that gave them birth.

But their most ancient and bitter enemy, the sinister being known as Louhi, the star-witch, has waited eons for this moment and laid careful plans to destroy to the Vanhat on the very eve of the Great Return. Her carefully chosen and honed tool: the most despised being in the universe, Kullervo, the tramontane, the cosmic outcast. Touched in his mother's womb by an evil entity from another dimension, all other living beings, animal, human and Vanhat alike, are instinctively repulsed by him. Kullervo has been on a rampage of destruction since birth. He is a creature who thirsts for revenge on the grand scale, and Louhi has instilled within him the power to destroy an entire race, the Vanhat, forever! Kullervo gloats at the thought. He is the last one anybody would pick for the hero of the piece.

Unexpected and deeply moving, Tramontane is a fitting conclusion to Emile Petaja's quartet of cosmic fantasies. Don't miss the previous books in the series, found in the "Related Products" tab.