Author: jmstine

The Story that Helped Make SF Famous!

This 1915 classic tells the story of a pool of force inside Polynesia's Nan Matol ruins created by the vibrational pattern of seven different lights, which release the "Shining One," a powerful, luminous being of radiant matter who can race down moonbeams, bearing away to his own realm men and women who wear a mingled expression of ecstasy and loathing on their faces.

The SF Encyclopedia hails him as "the supreme fantasy genius of his day." The mainstream Hartford Times called him a writer who "weaves a web of fantasy…with poignancy and poetry…stories of tremendous action and excitement." And the Saturday Review of Literature named him "a genius" whose work displayed "a fertility of imaginative resource…unique, eerie, compelling."

This is the original 15,000 word novelette, which was seriously abridged when joined with the sequel to make the novel The Moon Pool. Not only was Merritt a monumental success in his lifetime (1884-1943), but also he remained the field's bestselling author for the next four decades, selling over 7 million copies of his work in the U.S. alone.

Five full-length books by this legendary master of fantasy and terror!

Lord Dunsany is the man H. P. Lovecraft modeled his work on. Here's your chance to read his best-loved works, The Book of Wonder, A Dreamer's Tales, Fifty-One Tales, The Gods of Pegana, and the Sword of Welleran and Other Stories.

The Reader's Guide to Fantasy praises Lord Dunsany (1897-1957) for his "ornate, art-nouveau fantasy...of mythical worlds." His were the first set in wholly created mythical worlds and paved the way for Tolkien's Middle Earth. The Reader's Guide describes his work as "of concise elegance. Typical are 'The Hoard of the Gibbelins,' in which it is told how the Gibbelins, 'who eat nothing less good than man,' protect their hoard of wealth from an epitomal hero, and 'The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jewller,' the hero of whom has an encounter with Hlo Hlo, the spider idol."

Both are included in this comprehensive eBook edition. Over 2,000 pages in hardcover!

Four Complete Fantasy Masterpieces!

Lord Dunsany is the man H. P. Lovecraft modeled his work on. Here's your chance to read his best-loved works, The Book of Wonder, A Dreamer's Tales, Fifty-One Tales, The Gods of Pegana, and the Sword of Welleran and Other Stories.

The Reader's Guide to Fantasy praises Lord Dunsany (1897-1957) for his "concise elegance" and "ornate, art-nouveau fantasy...of mythical worlds. His were the first set in wholly created mythical worlds and paved the way for Tolkien's Middle Earth."

Included are: Tales of Three Hemispheres; Time and the Gods; Tales of War and Don Rodriguez.

"A Story That Stayed with Me!" —Isaac Asimov

Meet the Zoromes, who inspired Asimov's own characterization of his positronic robots.

After spending forty million years in suspended animation while his one-man ship circles twenty thousand miles from earth, Professor Jameson awakes to discover humanity has perished and he is the only one left alive. Jameson faces a very lonely existence indeed—until he meets the Zoromes, highly advanced intellects who have transferred their minds into near-immortal metal bodies, roaming the universe in search of strange worlds and high adventure.

Soon the Professor has been persuaded to accompany them in a metal body of his own. With his trivial human passions off-screen, the author is free to focus on creating and painting wonder after wonder: planets with double suns, societies of intelligent fish, hollow planets, metal moons, cat people, twin worlds, mausoleums of vanished races...

In fact, the Jameson series is one of the seminal sf works that gave birth to the term "sense of wonder." Professor Jameson Interstellar Adventures #2 presents the two short novels in this classic series from the early 1930s.

A Never-Reprinted Science Fantasy Classic!

When the first volume of this classic trilogy appeared as a complete novel in the March 1952 Amazing Stories, it caused a sensation and hundreds of readers wrote in demanding a sequel. It took two more sequels to begin to satisfy the readers' hunger for "more Flannigan, please!" Ray Palmer, editor of rival Other Worlds, hailed the Flannigan stories as "terrific" and called the author, a "worthy successor to Edgar Rice Burroughs."

For the first time in more than half a century, you can read this thrilling, colorful science fantasy adventure that captures all the excitement and energy of the classic pulp magazines. Don't miss this visionary trilogy that becomes increasingly off-trail as it develops from book to book, and is certain to remind some readers of the work of Jack Vance.

A song was the clue that propelled Michael Flannigan from one world to another. A song and a dream. The song told of a strange woman and a strange land, and so did the dream. Most vivid of all was the image of a strange other dimensional gateway shaped like a lens that lay somewhere on the Moon. That's why Flannigan became an astronaut, and that's why Flannigan made certain he was chosen pilot on the next flight to Luna.

Behind him, Flannigan left the woman he loved. But he left even more behind when he found the the interdimensional gateway and passed through it. There he found he found a primitive world of swords and arrows, with ancient legends of golden gods and lost magic, a world enslaved, groaning beneath oppressors, fighting constantly for its life.

There Flannigan discovered the truth about himself—if he could only believe that truth! There he also found his lost love, Altinra, "she of laughter, whose eyes were like the dawn."

But, when Altinra was captured, Flannigan determined to free her—and all the people who dwelt in the land beyond the lens. Flannigan's only hope was his knowledge of Earth weapons like explosives and guns! To rescue Altinra, Flannigan determined to fight the terrors of this hidden world of monsters and primitive city states with modern weapons. It was a daring dream that would carry him to victory or death. And did Flannigan really want to live? For if he won he would have to choose, not merely between two worlds, but between two loves!

"I'd stand in line for a story by Stu Byrne!" said Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

Lost Horror Classic of an Ancient God's Vengeance!

When a young woman's grasping billionaire uncle unearths a centuries-old box from Atlantis containing the magical secrets of the ancient God of the Sea, she finds herself a pawn in the struggle between her uncle and the legendary but-all-too-real Poseidon. For the Sea God is determined to either regain the box—or claim her as his bride!

A young doctor resolves to stand by her against this dark peril—but how can he protect her, when the sea can invade the third story of a house, when the oceans rise from the shore to swallow whole cities, when Poseidon himself comes riding his white-maned horses across the sea's waves, and when the long dead rise up to man ghost ships and pluck the woman he loves from his arms?

Claimed! is another gripping classic from the grandmistress of dark horror, Francis Stevens (AKA Gertrude Barrows Bennett), the woman whose work, H. P. Lovecraft wrote, "if written by Sir Walter Scott or Ibanez...would have been praised to the skies... Underlying its amazing and thrilling scenes...[is a] wonderful and tragic allegory. [Stevens is] among the highest grade of writer." Fantasy editor Mary Gnaedinger hailed it as "a masterpiece...all readers will like."

Written in 1919, Claimed! is a rare treat for fantasy and horror fans, out of print in any form for more than fifty years!

The classic tale that inspired the hit Disney movie, The Story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, presented complete and unabridged. Translated from the original One Thousand and One Nights (or One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, as it's usually known in English), Aladdin is not a children's story, but a book-length fantasy novel of romance and wonder!

If you love fantasy novels replete with sorcery and bravery, then you owe it to yourself to read The Story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp in a delightful turn-of-the-century translation. Straight from the pages of the One Thousand and One Nights, Aladdin has been called "the first fantasy novel ever written down"—40,000 words of breathless adventure and romance.

Meet Aladdin, the boy in China who sends a genie to kidnap the princess on her wedding night. And meet the princess Bedr-el-Budar. Discover why Aladdin traded rubies for bread, why one room of Aladdin's palace was left unfinished, what happened the night of the princess' first marriage to the Wezir's son, why Aladdin's troubles were only beginning when he finally slew the evil sorcerer who schemed for the lamp, how the kidnapped princess kept the wizard at bay in her boudoir, what happens when you call upon a genie of the Lamp to obtain the egg of a rukh, and many other wonders of the story of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp that have been kept from you until now.

"Vitally Important in the History of Fantasy Fiction!"

William Morris' novels are "vitally important in the history of fantasy fiction", according to the Reader's Guide to Fantasy, in which "Morris is regarded with good cause as the inventor of the fantasy novel."

And here in one inexpensive ebook is a trio of his best: The House of the Wolflings, The Well at World's End, and The Wood Beyond the World. As the Reader's Guide says, these three classics are "wonderful stories of journeys and quests through unknown lands, of strange and fey creatures, of sorceresses and knights and princes, of mystical wells sand woods and isles, all taking place in worlds that were for the first time wholly created." It's a triple treat of fantasy no reader can afford to resist.

Hugo Award finalist author Rog Phillips launched his career with this then-highly-controversial science fiction novel. It was a simple little discovery, worked out mathematically—but it made the atom bomb seem inconsequential.

The year is 2196, as seen from 1947. Most of humanity has been wiped out—not by atomic war, but by an atomic chain reaction. The rest huddle underground, safe from mutant creatures of all kinds, while struggling to find a way to reverse the process that led to Earth's demise.

You are about to read a real treasure: The never-reprinted, and at the time highly controversial, debut novel (previously published only in the December 1947 issue of Amazing Stories) of a major science fiction writer of the 1940s. This first-ever book edition is even more of a landmark because it also features the original magazine editor's introduction of the author and the story, as well as an article the author wrote a few issues later defending his controversial premise and detailing the science behind it, including mathematical formulas.

"Phillips is the master of a new type of sf writing. Adventure, but plenty of thick, fascinating scientific information." —Robert Silverberg, Hugo & Nebula winner

"A very interesting story, well written and well plotted. I read it at one sitting. First rate!" —W. Paul Ganley, Weirdbook