Author: jmstine

Toffee Saves the World! But Not Without Turning it Upside Down!

Forget Topper and his ghosts. When staid advertising man Marc Pillsworth's dream girl, Toffee, materializes from his fantasies, the real fun starts! Fans of screwball comedy and humorous fantasy will love the classic adventures and misadventures of author Charles F, Myers' Toffee.

First, the hijinks start when rejuvenation pills work too well and Marc becomes the babe on Toffee's knee. Things get worse when his condition must be concealed from Marc's wife, clients, and a couple of goons. But just when things look darkest, Toffee turns the trick.

Then, in the second complete Toffee short novel, when heads of state butt heads and doomsday looms imminent, Toffee decides the world's leaders need a good kick in the pants. Literally! It's all part of her plan to save Marc Pillsworth—and that means saving the world! It's no mean feat, even for a carefree spirit with magical powers like Toffee. First she's off to Washington to set a few senators straight, then it's on into the heart of deadly danger for a foot-to-posterior meeting with the world's bloodiest tyrant. And most of the time she is carrying the hapless Marc along in her wake. Before it's over, Toffee will have made a shambles out of dictators, congress, the Department of Defense, at least one courtroom, and Mark's domestic life.

Chuckle your way through "Toffee Turns the Trick" and "The Vengeance of Toffee," two unforgettable Charles F. Myers fantasy classics from the early 1950s, first time ever in book form.

More Fantasy Hijinks in the Ghostly Tradition of "Topper"!

Toffee was Marc Pillsworth's dream girl. Just a picture in his imagination—until he concentrated too hard one day, and brought her to life from the spirit realm. Here is the second installment of this first-ever reprinting of the misadventures of the classic pulp heroine. Part spirit, part gamin, Toffee always manages to fill Marc's life with hilarious and often dangerous complications when he is foolish enough to think of her.

But this time Toffee meets her match, when Marc's ghost appears a tad early by several decades, and decides that arranging Marc's death now will neaten everything up. With a pixelated ghost trying to kill him and Toffee trying to save him, Marc's life just goes from bad to worse. Soon the police, outraged citizens, and gangsters are all after him.

But that's not what scares Marc. What scares him is that his not-so-understanding wife, Julie, is also on his trail, convinced he's cheating. If Toffee's going to save him, there is only thing for her to do—haunt his ghost until it gives up and returns to the spirit world.

Toffee is a spirit all right, the spirit of side-splitting fun! Don't miss what award-winning writer Frank Robinson calls "Thorne-Smith-type fantasies by Charles Myers about a rollicking, ribald girl named Toffee." Or, as author Richard Lupoff puts it, "Toffee was incredibly sexy, generously yet gracefully endowed, sweet in nature unless you got her peeved, cheerily playful, often very funny, and she didn't wear many clothes. Toffee made perfect reading material. ...I was more than slightly in love with her..."

The cover is one of the original Toffee covers painted by Harold McCauley for Imaginative Tales.

The final adventure of science fiction's most adroit conman!

His career cut short by the death of the pulps, interstellar grifter Leland Hale makes his final bow in this brain-puzzling tale of a futuristic cons and their marks.

From the text: "The Galaxy is big, and, as far as the Interstellar Police of a century ago were concerned, too damned big. With five billion major wanted criminals moving about the Galaxy at any one time, plus sixty or seventy billion stay-at-homes, finding or tracking one man was not an easy job by a long shot. Even a normally intelligent criminal had a pretty good chance of eluding capture for years, and with a man like Leland Hale, the odds against nabbing him were even higher. They couldn’t possibly keep tabs on every crook in the known Universe, so it should not be considered surprising that The Planetary Police of the world Giffer did not immediately leap from their swivel chairs when, as a matter of routine, they received the passenger list on the luxury liner Bencolin when it docked at the major spaceport of the planet on what was, in that hemisphere, a fine summer day."

Reprinted from the Feb. 1960 Fantastic Universe. Cover art: Laura Givens

Hale may be the cleverest crook in the galaxy, but can even he crack a closely guarded time capsule?

Hugo Finalist and Sidewise Award winner faces his most endearing character, future conman Leland Hale, with his most daunting challenge. From the creator of Lord Darcy comes another short novel from the glory days of the pulps featuring Randall Garrett's rarest and never-reprinted series character.

But beware, Leland Hale will steal your heart—and all your money! Hale thinks the universe owes him a living, and he is collecting on the installment plan. Fraud, larceny and murder are all in the day's work for this master interstellar confidence man. The backwater planet Apfahl doesn't know what is about to descend on them. Lock up your daughters—and your valuables. Leland Hale is in town.

Reprinted from the 1950s pulp, Infinity.

Leland Hale thought the universe owed him a living, and he was collecting on the installment plan.

Lord Darcy Creator, award winner Randall Garrett's rarest and never-reprinted series character, Leland Hale, will steal your heart—and all your money! Fraud, larceny and murder are all in the day's work for this master interstellar confidence man.

In To Make a Hero, Hale is about to descend on the planet Cardigan's Green with a nefarious planetary scam designed to make him rich at the population's expense. He doesn't know he is about to become a savior!

First of the three Leland Hale capers—don't miss the other two in the "Related Products" tab. Reprinted from the 1950s pulp, Infinity.

Cover: T. L. Mars, inspired by an Ed Valigursky cover for Fantastic Stories.

First Volume in "Lost" Future History Series!

In the 1930s–1940s, at the same time that Heinlein was writing his famed future history series and Asimov was at work on the Foundation saga, Henry Hasse was busy writing a future history series of his own—a longer one than Heinlein and Asimov's put together. Here, reprinted for the first time ever since their original magazine appearance, is the first volume of stories in this long ignored series. (You won't find it mentioned in any sf reference work or website!)

First, a scientist working for the space program finds his body taken over by a Martian determined to prevent a manned mission from leaving for the red planet—for Earth's own good. Learn the deadly danger forced him to warn, "Don't Come to Mars!"

Next, a century later the first successful manned mission is the result of a world war and a race to be the first to seize the fourth world for its strategic importance. Trapped between ruthless enemy forces from Earth and the red planet's most blood-thirsty hoards, a lone Earthman and the priestess of an almost forgotten religion must pierce the secret of the mysterious Angular Stone her people have worshiped for centuries if they hope to save both their worlds from destruction.

Then, discover how a scientific breakthrough on the innermost world of the solar system led to the downfall of Earth's last tyrant, affecting the fate of Mars and all the other planets.

Finally, a man searching the canals of the red world's frozen polar cap for his lost brother unwittingly frees the very menace the Martian in the first story tried to warn humankind against—an ancient alien intelligence with the power to enslave every being on both planets!

"Fine adventure, good characterization!" —Milton Lesser/Stephen Marlow.

The Classic SF Horror Novel!

Here is the story of the strangest torture any man ever suffered. And he created that torture himself!

Suddenly, Dr. Charles Xavier had the most powerful eyes in the world! He could see through walls and learn anyone's secrets, read another card player's hand, strip a woman visually of her clothes—or even her flesh!

He had hoped to use his discovery as an aid in surgery. But the more he saw of humanity, the more horrible secrets he learned, the more he realized that his discovery was a curse and not the blessing he'd dreamed it would be.

Then, Charles Xavier found the worst was yet to come, for soon he would be able to see to the very core of the universe and look on the naked face of creation—which humankind was forbidden to see!

The 1960s novelization of the film classic.

Two More Never-Reprinted Classic Pulp Adventures of the Man Who Gave His Life to Save the Universe—Over and Over and Over Again!

An encounter with aliens had given Johnny Mayhem an extrahuman power: He could travel anywhere mentally and enter the body of anyone on any planet. But if he stayed in one body longer than thirty days, Mayhem died.

First, in this volume, Mayhem is given an assignment that proves "Magellan was a Piker," when he is told, "If you lose this one, you are indeed lost. But if you win it you can lose, too!"

Then, Johnny Mayhem is given a new body. It hasn't been tried out and no one can guarantee it won't be the death of him. But he can't turn it down because it comes with the assignment. He isn't too worried, though. His only concern, as he says, is "What's the trade-in value when I'm through with it?" It may not have any trade-in value, Johnny, because something strange says, "This Planet is Mine."

Cover: Original Amazing Stories cover for "This Planet is Mine".

Young Stephen Drew, Martian, Crosses Space to Visit an Earth He has Never Seen—and Finds that His Destination is the Planet of the Double Cross!

Follow the adventures of an Earthman who views a futuristic world of wonder—and longs for Mars! Stephen Drew is his Earth name, but Ark Avul is his Martian name, and he has never been off the Red Planet before. When he goes to the mother world and meets his late father's business partner, he finds himself the center of a scheme to frame him and bilk him of his share of the system's wealthiest Tranium mine.

With every Earthman's hand against him, he must run and fight for his life. His only hope is his enemy's secretary Josephine Duff, who is loyal to her boss—and the only Earthwoman who wants to help him, Gloria Shayne, is secretly in his enemy's pay. From Martian rock-dragons to super-cities of Tomorrow's science to floating gardens to the oppressed Martian ghetto, Ark Avul races to preserve his own life, liberate the suffering people of Mars, and bring a power-mad Earthman to justice.

Yet, when he does, it will cost him the one woman he truly loves!

Takes place early in Hamilton's trail-blazing future history chronicles, The Two Thousand Centuries.

Cover: from a painting by Rudolph Belarski for the original magazine appearance.

Classic Novelization of Famous SF/Horror Movie!

Here is the weird and terrifying adventure of a group of people shrunk to the size of dolls by a megalomaniac scientist. Alexander Thorkel, a nearsighted biologist, is pursuing a fantastic experiment deep in the heart of the Peruvian jungle. Using a new radioactive element, he has discovered a method for shrinking living matter. Dr. Thorkel aims to end hunger around the world, reasoning that if people were one-tenth their normal size, there would be ten times as much food to go around.

But when a party of Thorkel's fellow scientists penetrates his jungle fastness, the paranoid biologists decides the only way he can protect his secret is to shrink them down to size. When he has reduced the band of scientists to the height of dolls, Thorkel gloats over them, his (to them) gigantic eyes peering down terrifyingly through his glasses. Even then, the scientists defy him, and Thorkel kills one to demonstrate his power. That's when the scientists realize that if they ever truly believed in "brain over brawn," this is the time to prove it—or else any one of them could be the fiendish Thorkel's next victim.

Includes filmography of classic 1940s film's cast, crew, and more.