Author: jmstine

Swords, Sorcery and Spaceships in Science Fantasy Classic!

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

Available for the first time ever in book form, Last Days of Thronas is one of the rarest of the fabled science fiction adventures from the golden days of the pulp magazines. It appeared only in a rare 1954 issue of Science Stories and has never been reprinted.

After five years of slavery, Garthanas, the Hamarian Sword and defender of his oppressed people, returns to find the woman he loves has deserted him and his best friend has betrayed him. Now Garthanas lives only for revenge. But his plans change suddenly when he learns of a plot by Thamas I, the planet's evil ruler, to liquidate the entire Hamarian race. It's a plan Garthanas swears to stop, even if he has to fight his way through every guard and soldier in the palace. And he will! But what can one lone swordsman do when Thamas I is protected by the might of the golden Godship, relic of a now lost science?

Evoking echoes of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, legendary pulp author Stuart J. Byrne's dazzling novel goes far beyond mere action to blend swordplay, feats of heroism, tangled family relationships, sexual psychology, social criticism, spirituality, and even echoes of the holocaust. This is one of the don't-miss novels from the pulps with overtones of sophistication and scientific thought rarely found there. 

"Thrilling! The Logical Successor to Edgar Rice Burroughs!"

...raved Ray Palmer, editor of Amazing Stories, when the first John Bloodstone (Byrne's nom de plume) story appeared. If you like high adventure on far worlds, tales of strong men and women pitted against dangers both human and alien, if you love John Carter or Tarzan, then you will love Thundar: Man of Two Worlds!

Michael Storm, a twentieth-century archaeologist, has stumbled upon a strange new world. Deep in the mountains of Peru, he crosses a gateway leading to a world of mutated monsters, tribal apemen, and wondrous futuristic technology. The key to Storm's survival in this bizarre new reality is his very identity--is he the godlike warrior Thundar, spoken of in the prophecies, or merely a man in the wrong place at the wrong time? A tale of myth and adventure in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

"EXCELLENT!"

That's how Harlan Ellison described veteran pulpster Stuart J. Byrne's SF novella "Beyond the Darkness" after it appeared in Other Worlds for July 1951. It's no wonder he was so enthusiastic; that story, like "Martian Honeymoon" with which it is paired in this eBook edition, contained Byrne's compelling blend of adult romance, hard physics and hard metaphysics.

"Beyond the door was darkness," read the original magazine blurb, "and beyond that darkness, what? Nad knew it was important that he find out what secret the Navigators guarded so jealously, even though he knew that disaster had a habit of overtaking those who asked too many questions." The author says that "In 'Beyond the Darkness' I take the Doppler effect idea to the extreme."

Then strap yourself in for the most heartbreakingly happy ending, or the happiest heart-breaking ending, in the history of science fiction, in "Martian Honeymoon." Here is the very human story of a man and woman from different worlds whose love, and lives, were put to the test when each was forced to betray the other to save their own world from peril! According to the original blurb, "The Vanyans came from outer space bearing invaluable gifts, and Earth received them and their gifts with open arms. But what was behind it all? What would the Vanyans ask in payment? With these questions came fear, and distrust, and hatred." The author warns that in this story he uses that "favorite tool of the writer's trade, which is known as the surprise twist. In 'Martian Honeymoon,' if you don't cheat by over-leaping the story plants, you may also experience the jolt of that extra twist." Another enthralling read at the enduring legacy of the writer Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry admired so much he said he would "stand in the rain for one of Stu Byrne's stories." Cover art: Jeff Fisher

Who Could Love a Sexless Metal Man?

That's the question that faces two very different women from two very different worlds in the final volume of this classic pulp magazine saga. Michael Flannigan had emerged victorious from his combat with a man who had usurped awesome alien powers. But Flannigan was human no longer. Instead, his brain had been transferred to the body of a towering gold robot!

And that's not even his biggest problem. Back on Earth, an evil empire has conquered the U.S. and subjugated its citizens as slaves. Only Flannigan's godlike powers can free the nation from its bondage. But when he passes back through the lens to Earth, Flannigan soon discovers all his powers are useless. For the enemy holds Flannigan's friends hostage and their lives are forfeit unless he surrenders immediately!

"Prime adventure continues in the high standard and tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs!" wrote science fiction editor Ray Palmer when the Michael Flannigan Trilogy first appeared in a rival publication. Don't miss the off-the-wall, thought-provoking ending to this delicious and increasingly bizarre trilogy from the pen of veteran pulpster Stuart J. Byrne.

Classic Horror Novel, First Time in Book Form!

First published in 1916, this debut novel of terror launched the career of Francis Stevens (aka Gertrude Barrows Bennett), the grandmistress of horror, author of Possessed!, Citadel of Fear, Claimed!, and other classic novels of terror. Nightmare! was never reprinted in book form due to the author's untimely death. Horror master H. P. Lovecraft hailed Francis Stevens as among "the top grade of horror writers." In Nightmare!, writes historian-critic Sam Moskowitz, "The air of mystery and the atmospheric buildup are superbly done, indicating a ranking talent."

When a tourist from New York sails on the ill-fated liner Lusitania, he wakens from a night's sleep to find himself struggling in the seas off an uncharted island. There, he encounters man-eating plants, spiders as big as a dining-room table, bears as large as elephants, and bats of similar proportions. He also finds himself caught in a rivalry between two dangerous groups competing to extract a rare substance found only on the island which turns lead into gold. Then he meets the strong-minded woman who opposes both groups—and joins her cause. But, the horrors of nature and the evil plans of greedy men are only the least of the dangers they must overcome, if they are to escape their nightmare!

Cover: Elspeth Fahey

3 Classics of Eerie Horror from the Creator of Fu-Manchu!

Here are three legendary novels, over 1,000 pages in hardcover, featuring the fiendish arch-villains, ethereally beautiful women, and intrepid heroes his legions of fans have come to expect from the author of the immortal Dr. Fu-Manchu.

In Quest of the Sacred Slipper, terror comes to Britain when a self-centered archeologist unearths one of Islam's holiest relics, the sacred slipper of the prophet Mohammed. Until it is returned to its rightful people, the implacable Hassan of Allepo vows his reign of death and destruction shall not cease.

In Bat-Wing, the imperturbable detective Paul Harley nearly loses his cool, and his life, when he comes face to face with a case of vampirism in the streets of modern London. Soon medieval deviltry is afoot among motorcars and beneath glittering electric lights.

Finally, in one of his best and most celebrated novels, Brood of the Witch Queen, Rohmer weaves a tale of ancient Egyptian magics around the contemporary figure of Antony Ferrara, a black magician (modeled on the author's fellow member of the magical order known as the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley), armed with awesome powers, determined on world conquest.

Here are three of the greatest novels of horror and dark fantasy ever written, in one low-priced, bargain omnibus edition.

The Evil Genius of Crime!

That fiendish, brilliant turn-of-the century villain is back again. Read the original trilogy that launched his celebrated career—together in one ebook. A brow like Shakespeare, a face like Satan, and eyes of hypnotic green—and an army of the weirdest, most fiendish cohorts, tortures, and death-dealing devices in history.

Penned by the immortal Sax Rohmer, authority on obscure cults and even more obscure murder methods, the Fu-Manchu books have enthralled audiences for nearly one hundred years. They have been filmed, become radio series, and even appeared as a television series. Your flesh will creep when you learn about how a man was murdered with the Zayat Kiss, of tortures like the Wire-Jackets, and the invisible murderer who could slay a victim in the locked room of a penthouse.

Can Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard and his friend Dr. Petrie possibly thwart this evil mastermind who aims at nothing less than to make himself supreme dictator of the World? If they fail, Fu-Manchu will destroy civilization in order to remake it in his own image. And what of Fu-Manchu's beautiful, nameless slave woman? Has she truly fallen in love with Petrie's instinctive decency—or is she a willing pawn in Fu-Manchu's plot to destroy both Smith and the good doctor?

As one reader writes, "It's amazing how much action Sax Rohmer crams into his books. Before all is said and done in book one, we have dealt with poisonous centipedes, opium dens, trapdoors, memory drugs, mummies, poison gas, thugees and dacoits, ship raids, hashish, zombies, poison mushrooms, swamp adder drugs and on and on... This is a ripper of a yarn!"

Three complete classic 1900s British thrillers—Insidious Fu-Manchu, Return of Fu-Manchu, Hand of Fu-Manchu—complete in one convenient ebook.

Classic Haunted House Novel in the Lovecraft Tradition!

More terrifying than Steven King, more unsettling than Peter Straub! The House on the Borderland is the ultimate haunted house story. Horror grandmaster H. P. Lovecraft hailed it as "something unique in literature ... everywhere there is manifest the author's power to suggest vague, ambushed horrors in natural scenery ... a classic of the first water." Editor/Writer/publisher Donald A. Wollheim called it "a classic no one who enjoys imaginative literature should ignore."

The House on the Borderland's atmosphere of ineluctable skin-crawling suspense, created by William Hope Hodgson in his too-short career as an author of supernatural horror, is unparalleled. On a fishing trip in a desolate part of Ireland, the narrator and his friend come upon a ruinous and deserted house set in an unmapped wilderness of forest and stone. Neither speaks the local language, and so are unwarned about the sinister house—or rather, what is left of a house, on the edge of an apparently bottomless chasm.

With foreboding, they try to ignore the isolation and unsettling noises from the pit and the surrounding wood. They explore the ruins, and discover there a moldering book, which portrays—but doesn't explain—the unseen life of the brooding house and the ultimate fate of its vanished inhabitants. Hodgson's mastery of mood setting, coupled with his ability to transform an ordinary fishing trip into a journey through the abysses of time, space and Utter Darkness, place The House on the Borderland in a category of its own in the literature of horror.

This Horror Tale Gave Lovecraft Chills!

...and according to him, The Ghost Pirates was "one of the greatest supernatural stories of the sea, written by probably the greatest writer of horror at sea who ever lived. It is a literary feat of the first magnitude."

Relentless doom and grisly death are the fate of a doomed ship when it crosses the path of a ghostly vessel manned by the living dead. One by one the narrator watches his fellows disappear in the night, until he and the ships' captain and doctor resolve on a desperate plan to save themselves.

H. P. Lovecraft raved that "With its command of maritime knowledge, and its clever selection of hints and incidents suggestive of latent horrors in nature, [The Ghost Pirates] reaches enviable peaks of power." Clark Ashton Smith wrote that "One must also accord a more than formal praise to The Ghost Pirates which is really one of the few successful long stories dealing with the phantasmal. Its rout of ghastly and persistent specters will follow the reader long after they have seized the haunted ship!" Fritz Leiber hailed it as a novel that "...fulfills at book length all the canons of the spectral tale laid down by Lovecraft, James, and others... There is a steady progress toward doom, in which the suspense builds with an almost unparalleled uninterruptedness."

By the author of The House on the Borderland, also available from Futures Past Editions.

Cover: Elspeth Fahey

"One of the Truly Great Classics of Science Fiction!" —Amazing Stories

The Darkness and Dawn Trilogy is pioneering science fiction writer George Allan England's masterwork. The Last New Yorkers, the first novel, begins when secretary Beatrice Kendrick and her boss, a young engineer named Allan Stern, awaken on an upper floor of a ruined Manhattan skyscraper, thousands of years in the future when civilization has been destroyed. The pair has been in a state of suspended animation for fifteen hundred years.

Changes in the earth's features as well as monstrously mutated "humans" make it clear they have little hope of survival. The pair organize their resources to face the savage alternatives about them and the closeness created by their mutual interdependency inevitably kindles romance between Allan and Beatrice.

In Book Two, Beyond the Great Oblivion, Allan and Beatrice begin to discover the nature of the catastrophe that has split the Earth open. Rebuilding an airplane, they find a "bottomless" chasm near Pittsburgh where a huge portion of the Earth has been torn away to become a second moon. Alan and Beatrice earn the loyalty of the People of this Abyss and lead them from the chasm to New York.

In Book Three, The Afterglow, Allan and Beatrice, with the People of the Abyss, prepare to recolonize the Earth's surface. But first, they must defeat the devolved, cannibalistic survivors who populate Earth's cities.

Analog calls Darkness and Dawn "a classic trilogy," while historian/critic Sam Moskowitz terms it "a masterpiece."

Cover art: Original magazine cover.