Author: jmstine

One of the biggest bargains in fantastic reading today. Seven short stories by this modern master of science fiction, fantasy and horror never-before reprinted, plus "Saturn Stolen", formerly published under the title "Cosmic Wheel" as an independent novel—all for $4.99.

Here are unforgettable tales seasoned with biting satire and a dash of humor. Hugo and Nebula winner Larry Niven call's J. D. Crayne's work "Dark humor. Funny stuff." Inside you will find a pair of stories featuring her small town detective Lt. Mark Stoddard; a brand new tale of that feline genius with a nose for detection, Lucky Pierre; three horror tales guaranteed to shock the most jaded; and "Dogmeat Man", a science fiction short you will not soon forget. Then there is the dangerously provocative "Saturn Stolen", in which a strange fate befalls our only ringed neighbor, the jewel of the solar system.

The author calls this title novel, "A black comedy, not recommended for the staid or easily offended."

Cover art: Laura Givens

Dazzling science fiction from Asimov's, Amazing Stories, etc. by J. D. Crayne!

Hugo and Nebula winner Larry Niven calls J. D. Crayne's S-F, "Dark humor. Funny stuff." This long-awaited collection features all the Cheryl Harbottle stories. A printer gives Cheryl problems in "...and Settle Down With a Good Book." Her search through the internet for family genealogy goes awry in "Of Days Gone By." Cheryl moves to a new home—not on the range but on a space station in "No Homelike Place," where she has to get used to low-gravity living, among other things. A robot pet dog is her bane in "Katzenjammer."

Non-Harbottle tales include: "A Piece of the Kingdom," wherein a group of criminals conspire to put medical science to illicit uses, but there is more than one slip between their cup and lip. We meet extraterrestrial life in the still largely unexplored solar system of "Invisible Encounter." A daring woman time-travels to get the lowdown on whether Bacon really did write the works of Shakespeare.

Also includes "The Medal," "Point of View," and her celebrated collaboration with Larry Niven, "Talisman."

Cover: Elspeth Fahey.

Interstellar Adventuring Has Never Been so Funny—Or so Dangerous!

Move over Robert Asprin and Piers Anthony, science fiction has a new uncrowned king of comedy—and space opera! Hard on the heels of the side-splitting, hair-raising bestseller Tetragravitron, comes an all new adventure of space heroine Captain Spycer and her trusty crew—robot Peter Decade, scaly red Col. Krabchake, lewd and lecherous Prof. Groppe, and that wide-eyed innocent Brian Lefarge—off to save the universe in their cosmic-powered ship.

In this new challenge, our stalwart crew is looking for the evil masterminds behind some mysterious force that sucks the power out of stars, leaving their satellites frigid and lifeless. This hilarious adventure pits our courageous heroes against the rulers of a lost colony. The colonists' aim? To set off an explosion at the center of the universe which will equal the Big Bang and return the cosmos to utter chaos!

The Captain and her trusty crew pit their collective wits against the Archchancellor and his evil College of Chancellors, who claim that mystic revelations from a mysterious Dreamer at the core of the world command them to commit suicide on a grand scale—taking the rest of the universe along with them. Along the way, our intrepid band of rescuers meet a cast of fascinating characters that pay homage to science fiction and fantasy greats of the past. The gorgeous Captain meets a merciless Emperor while timid Brian Lefarge finds romance with a platinum blonde. Prof. Groppe learns to push buttons without hands, and the crew learns the source of the tooth-resistant sausage in their backpacks.

Explosions, force fields, and tsunamis stand in their way, as well as giant insects, thundering avalanches, and freezing cold, but the Captain and her crew fight the odds and race against time to save the universe from dissolution. Meanwhile, the evil Archchancellor plots to send them all to Dreamland via his mysterious hypneratomachia system, a device that suspends heretics in limbo, at the mercy of the worst nightmares imaginable!

A Contemporary Woman's Experiences in the Far Future and Deep Time!

Following a heart attack, Anne Goodwood becomes the first person placed in an experimental hibernation chamber while a new heart is sought. She is awoken hundreds of years later, in a city she has never heard of, by the Curator, an unseen computer that maintains the city long years after the last humans left Earth to escape a plague that had killed the rest of the world's population.

The Curator asks Anne to write a history of these humans, now known as the Polothians, and the religion humanity had evolved during its last years on Earth. However, Ann discovers the Curator had concealed from the Polothians the fact that it had achieved consciousness. Not only is the computer conscious, it is also ambitious. It intends to make improvements to the construction of the universe, and may have seen the Polothians as an obstacle.

When the Curator realizes her suspicions, Anne is given two choices: immediate death or a return to the hibernation chambers. Anne finds she can't bear the loneliness of being the only human left on Earth and chooses death. But circumstances conspire to send her back into hibernation and further into deep time. Anne wakes again to find that her body is dead and the Earth completely deserted, the Curator having departed to explore the universe.

More shockingly, Anne realizes that she now exists only in the computer that controls the last city. It seems a hopeless situation. But, by now, Anne has become a very resourceful woman, and begins to hatch her own plan for ending her solitude and recreating the human race all over again! It's far more than a trillion-to-one shot, but what does that matter to a woman who is an immortal computer?

Romance, suspense and hi-tech engineering highlight this new science fiction novel. The Pendragon was the ultimate product of 1950s advances in engineering. A revolutionary steam locomotive, it mysteriously crashed on its first run, claiming many lives.

Rachel Ewen stumbles on the story of the Pendragon disaster doing research for a cable television series. Eager to learn more, she calls Peter Selfridge, an engineer on the project who is days from retirement and equally eager to put the whole mess behind him forever.  Though he tries to convince Rachel there's no story to pursue, she sees right through him and her professional curiosity only grows stronger. Before long, she's stumbled on another key piece of the puzzle: the locomotive in the accident was the prototype for an entire fleet.

The more research she does, the more convoluted the story becomes, and the more unclear its purpose. Everyone involved seemed to have been aware that the locomotive would never sell, for one thing. For another, it takes little effort for Rachel to show that the official conclusion can't be correct; she decides that the true cause of the accident had to be murder or sabotage, but neither stand up to scrutiny. Rachel becomes convinced that Selfridge is hiding something. An attempt to recreate the Pendragon and its deadly trial run lead to another death and a shattering series of revelations...

Would You Like a Merspouse? Or Marriage to a Centaur/Ess?

Where love leads, people follow. Whether for the love of a sweetheart, a job, or a parent, people find extreme choices are sometimes necessary. This unique, ensorcelled collection of fantasy stories from the keyboard of world-famed artist/creator of "photomorphs," Brian Brookwell of the web-based Mermaids Tail galleries, follows people (and others) as they make these choices to get what they want regardless of cost.

If you love the work of Jack Vance or Thomas Burnett Swain, you will love such lovers as Willy and Gillian, a honeymoon couple tragically injured in a car accident that leaves them financially set for life—except that she's in a coma. The only hope is an experimental project that will take them from their homes and jobs and drop them in an underwater colony on a world not even in this universe. Willy is faced with losing everything in this world and, becoming a merman, to follow his transformed wife in "His Merwife."

An unrequited love for the man of her dreams leads a teen to make a deal with an alien. It turns out that the woman of his dreams isn't quite what Kira expected and she is returned to him a centauress.

A junior researcher, as part of an undercover operation to prove a life-changing institute is a fraud, must become a mermaid to get that Proof, or lose his job!

An accident with a magical brew that created a magical evening's fantasy for Jim and Tina becomes a lifetime on a distant water world in "Tea for Two."

Follow the plight of a desperate alien child accidentally trapped in our universe as it causes havoc attempting to make contact in "Open a Channel." You will find all these and more in this unforgettable, one-of-a-kind collection.

A Dazzling Collection of Metamorphic Tales!

Here's a book everyone has been anticipating for far too long, a delightful, science fictional updating of a very old favorite, Ovid Revisited. Only artist Brian Brookwell, author of His Merwife and Other Metamorphic Fantasies, could have unleashed the imagination to pen this story of geneticist Dr. James Westland, who discovers how to free people to live out their wildest dreams by transforming the human body into almost any desired shape. Soon the good Doctor has more clients than he can handle, as people beg to become human fish, bats, canines, crabs, bears, and hornets—and some go even further, transforming themselves into plants and furniture.

The possibilities are mind-bending but Brookwell keeps the focus on the human, taking us into the lives of these new metamorphic individuals as they go through their radical transformations. He shows us the motivations that drive them and the satisfactions and frustrations they encounter in their new lives.

The stories in Ovid Revisited are based on Brookwell's wonderful images of people metamorphosed into various real and mythic creatures which can be found at www.mermaidstail.info.

All-new, never-before-published climax to the David Duqayne duology!

As evil aliens using psychic powers prepare to launch their final bid to conquer Earth, Lillian Hart must choose between Duqayne and his best friend Mike Havelin, members of an elite team whose psychic wild talents may give Earth an edge in the coming apocalypse.

Here is the last unpublished Stuart Byrne science-fantasy novel, a rare treat for lovers of sf/f/h.

"A compelling read, SF in its primal form!" —Ardath Mayhar, Balrog Award winner, Nebula Award nominee.

Written in response to a request from Gene Roddenberry and dedicated to him, Star Quest is master science fictioneer Stuart J. Byrne's Stu's magnum opus. Written at the height of Byrne's powers, Star Quest was intended for a multimillion dollar science fiction movie, but this brilliantly crafted and carefully thought out novel took so long in the making that Roddenberry's final illness precluded his involvement as producer.

Byrne, a former space industry executive and metaphysician, poured an entire lifetime's learning and thought into this extraordinary novel. Star Quest is an enthralling story, based on cutting-edge physics, that asks why the speed of light is the limiting factor in our universe. Sure to please fans of John Baxter, Isaac Asimov, C. J. Cherryh, and the many Star Treks, Star Quest suggests the startling answer that this limitation may be a chastity belt imposed on the universe by infinitely evolved beings to prevent contamination by unstable, immature cultures.

Star Quest tells the engrossing, human story of what happens to the first men and women who break through the light speed barrier, and what they encounter in the universe they find beyond it. Filled with high adventure, romance, hard science and hard metaphysics, it's is an unforgettable science fiction novel in a league by itself. Charles Nuetzel, author of The Nova Incident and the Noomas saga calls Star Quest a book by "a masterful story teller with an amazingly complex mind ... at the very top of his game ... a novel so intense, right from the first sentence, that it is almost impossible to stop reading ... amazingly crisp and alarmingly precise in style. Recommended to all readers who want to discover the rich, poetic depths of Stu Bryne's amazing imagination."

Rescued from Certain Death by a Man who Wasn't There!

On the trail of a lost civilization in the South American jungles! Spying for a high-tech firm in Brussels! Strange recurrences of the mystic number seven! Personal encounters with the Mahatmas of the Hierarchy of Risen Masters! Discovering proof the legendary Shaver Mystery is true! Out-of-body experiences! A magical romance with his wife Joey that transcended time and space—and even death itself!

Here is one of science fiction's most unique books as told by one of its most unique talents. Legendary sf writer Stuart J. Byrne's life has led him down paths mysterious, occult, illuminating... and in this frank tell-all confession he lays his reputation and career on the line describing real-life events most other science fiction writers would never dream of admitting. Plus asides on friends like Ray Bradbury, Forest J Ackerman, the notorious Shaver, and others; along with anecdotes about working on early science fiction television series like Men into Space. Set against a background of his career working for early Space Age companies. A must-read book!