Author: jmstine

The First Three Oz Books in One Omnibus eBook!

Curl up in the corner for a long visit to everyone's favorite magical realm with the first three books the legendary L. Frank Baum wrote about Oz. In the first book, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale and her little dog Toto are transported to a wondrous world of Gillikins, Munchkins, witches good and bad, talking scarecrows, tin men, cowardly lions, lunchpail trees, and an endless variety of delights and perils.

In the second, The Land of Oz, the boy Tip escapes a long captivity under an evil witch. Along the way he is joined by our old Ozzy friends like the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, and new ones like Professor Woggle-Bug, H. M., Jack Pumpkinhead, the Animated Saw-Horse and the Gump. Soon they are all on a quest to find the long-lost Princess Ozma, the country's rightful ruler.

In the third book, Ozma of Oz, everyone important in the kingdom falls under the spell of the evil Nome King, and only that intrepid intruder from beyond the Deadly Desert can save them. But, what can one small girl with no magical powers do against the mighty sorcery of the Nomes?

Tarzan's Only True Rival!

From the pages of the magazine that gave birth to Tarzan of the Apes comes Charles B. Stilson's immortal classic, Polaris of the Snows, a magnificent adventure of a boy raised in the Antarctic wilderness—a boy who grows to be a giant of a man, nearly impervious to the frigid cold of the wastelands, with iron muscles equal to those of the mightiest polar bear. Raised by a taciturn old man, Polaris has never seen any other humans or known any other life. Then the old man's death, and a promise to carry a message North to civilization, sets Polaris on an adventure that will try him body and soul.

First, he meets the young American heiress Rose Emer, cut off from her party and lost in this world of frozen white. Then the two of them stumble into a strange inner world, where they find the strange civilization of Sardanes, preserved like a hothouse flower for thousands of years by the heat of nearby volcanoes. There Polaris will discover his love for Rose Emer even as he fights against hopeless odds to save her—and the world—from a cruel despot. Meanwhile in the outer world, a man who wants Rose searches the icy wastes, determined that no one but he will return with her, mad with lust for her fortune.

Here, in the immortal tradition, is an unforgettable classic: the thrilling adventures of a fur-clad Viking waif of the ice floes, in a fantastic hidden empire beyond the South Pole.

First time in book form, complete and uncut.

"[Weinbaum] Burst into the Field Like a Nova!" —Isaac Asimov

Dawn of Flame & Other Science Fiction Stories reprints six acknowledged masterpieces by Science Fiction Hall of Fame author Stanley G. Weinbaum, whose short career changed the field forever. The stories in this collection showcase "the vigor and talent of the writer whose first story make him, as Isaac Asimov points out, 'Instantly recognized as the word's best living science fiction writer.'" (Lester del Rey).

The title story, originally published as a full-length novel in the magazines, is a rare blending of science fiction and romance, featuring Black Margot, Margaret of Urbs, aka The Black Flame, the immortal woman warrior, one of the guardians of civilization who ruthlessly enforce peace after a nuclear apocalypse drives much of humankind back into barbarism.

Forced to hold herself above love by both duty and her immortality, the Black Flame finds herself tempted when she meets idealist Hull Tarvish; but Tarvish loves another and has sworn to help free Earth of the yoke of Black Margot's iron rule and betray her to her enemies!

"'Dawn of Flame' revealed Weinbaum as a completely mature literary craftsman, tremendously talented in dialogue, and superbly skilled in characterization. There is high poetry in the closing passages." (Sam Moskowitz in Explorers of the Infinite)

In addition to the title novel, this collection features all three of the hilarious misadventures of that most hapless, if irrepressible, of inventors, Professor Haskel van Manderpootz: "The Worlds of If," "The Ideal," and "The Point of View" ("a light touch—and genuine suspense," rejoiced H. P. Lovecraft). Also includes two rarely reprinted Weinbaum novelettes, "Shifting Seas" and "Brink of Infinity."

Stanley G. Weinbaum died in 1935, having altered the face of science fiction in only eighteen short months of writing.

How will women affect the future, and how will the future affect the lives of women? You'll find out in Future Eves: Great Science Fiction About Women by Women edited by Jean Marie Stine.

Written between 1931 and 1959, these stories show how different women have, in different eras, envisioned their future. Leslie F. Stone was so far ahead of her time that nothing like her novelette, "The Conquest of Gola" (1931), an encounter with Earth males told from the point of view of an alien matriarch, would be attempted again in science fiction until the work of Alice Sheldon (AKA James Tiptree, Jr.) in the 1970s.

The scientific detective story is a subgenre of science fiction that flourished in the early 1900s with the adventures of Arthur B. Reeve's Craig Kennedy character; and Margarette Rea is one of the few women of the time to have, in "Delilah" (1933), written in the subgenre (in this instance utilizing the newly emergent science of "psychology").

Hazel Heald's novelette, "The Man of Stone," is searingly feminist, all the more so since her heroine, like so many women of the time, takes her brutalized situation so much for granted; the title can be seen as having both a literal meaning and a metaphorical one in relation to the heart of the principle male character (Lovecraft fans are in for a real treat.)

On a more modern note, Evelyn Goldsmith offers what is both a legitimate science fiction puzzle story and one of character in her "Days of Darkness" (1959), the tale of a spinster's encounter with an invisible, vampiric alien invader.

Although "Alien Invasion" (1954) by Marcia Kamen is short, it is one many heterosexual women (or, perhaps, women who have attempted heterosexuality) will sympathize with—after all, what else is sex between a man and a woman?

In "Miss Millie's Rose" (1959), Joy Leache manages what so few male science fiction writers of the era seemed able to do: portray a character whose psychology arises out of her own future world and not our own.

Betsy Curtis is a deceptively mild name for someone able to produce a work like "The Goddess of Planet Delight," a short novel in the classic mode that mixes a sociological puzzle with pointed satire, high adventure and romance in its story of a traveling salesman who has to stop over one night at the planet named Delight.

"Cocktails at Eight" seems a deceptively mild domestic comedy, until you realize what author Beth Elliot is saying about the children her heroine has produced.

Finally, Helen Clarkson offers "The Last Day," a haunting poignant short-short so prophetic that, though chosen prior to 9/11/2001, hits home all the harder in the aftermath of that horrendous tragedy.

Future Eves is fascinating reading, both as science fiction and as an eye-opening view into futures past.

True Accounts of Men and Women Turned into Wolves!

The 1890s classic that launched the 20th century fascination with werewolves. A fascinating and shuddersome compilation of authentic cases of lycanthropy—men and women transformed into wolves—throughout history and around the world.

You will read about Scandinavian werewolves in the Völsung Saga and Hrolf's Saga; those of the middle ages like the Courland Werewolves, Pierre Bourgot and Michel Verdung, the Gandillon Family, and the famous case of Jean Grenier. You will also learn the lore of werewolves and protections against them dawn from around the world: Scotland, Norway, Russia, Poland, India, Abyssinia, Greece and more. You will also discover the causes of lycanthropy, such as innate or extreme cruelty, fascination with blood, hallucination and mental illness. This is the sourcebook for early-twentieth century horror writers and film makers, from Lovecraft to Siodmak.

"Fascinating! Every were-fan should read it!" —Forrest Ackerman.

From Planet Stories' Sister Pulp and Editor!

Dark atrocities—hundreds slaughtered or vanished! Many blamed the Martians. Yet the Martians had come in peace and brought many benefits to humankind. Why would they suddenly turn into cruel, vicious killers? Mary Dunham knew better.

The man she loved had actually witnessed the Cructar Death. But no one else wanted to believe him. For he was "Bottleneck" Blodgett—that inconvenient, flat-footed, prophetic fool. He was the man who cried, "The Cructars are coming!"

Paul L. Payne was editor of the legendary Planet Stories and its companion pulp Two Complete Science-Adventure Novels. This never-reprinted masterpiece was scheduled for Planet but switched to its sister publication.

A Trio of Legendary Science Fiction Masterworks!

In Alan Nourse's Star Surgeon, Dal Timgar, of all his medical class, was denied assignment to a general practice patrol ship going out from Hospital Earth to serve the medical needs of the Galactic Confederation. It seemed to him that his eight years of study in the great medical center of the galaxy had ended in failure. He had worked hard and stood at the head of his class, but Dal was different from his medical colleagues in one important way. Born on a planet of a distant star, he was the first son of an alien race to attempt to become qualified physician of Hospital Earth.

In George O. Smith's The Fourth "R", meet Jimmy Holden. An advanced teaching machine had given him a mutant brain, vastly superior to that of other human beings, but the machine hadn't taught him he what he needed to know to survive among his fellow men and women. ...Yet he held knowledge that could turn everyone into superhumans—or destroy them.

Then read our third "novel", which is ...actually comprised of two short classic science fantasy novels by Lester Del Rey. In The Sky is Falling, Dave Hanson was summoned from Earth by magic to help an alternate Earth named Terah, whose sky has shattered, and he may be the one man in all the universe who can restore it. But science and sorcery, beautiful women, and fantastic monsters are just the beginning of his problems. And in Del Rey's Badge of Infamy, Dr. Daniel Feldman, made an outcast by Earth's dictatorial government, is sentenced to join other outcasts and shipped to Mars in what seems a premature and doomed attempt to colonize the red planet. To live, they will have to do the impossible—with time running out with each passing moment.

Read all these sf masterworks for the price a single eBook in this bargain omnibus edition.

Three Great Science Fiction Novels for Less than the Cost of a Paperback!

Andre Norton's masterpiece, Plague Ship, is the story of the tramp-freighter spaceship, Solar Queen. In a universe of interstellar commerce, where trade was pretty well sewn up by the giant companies, tramps like the Solar Queen were up against it. Their only tools were ingenuity and personal fearlessness, the qualities which had gained the Solar Queen exclusive trading rights to Sargol and its fabulous gems. But those qualities would be strained to the breaking point to meet Sargol's three challenges: First was the enigmatic obstinacy of the catlike natives. Second was the ruthless incursion of an illegal competitor. But the third and worst was to be the invisible, undetectable stowaway that would brand the Solar Queen anathema to the inhabited worlds.

J. F. Bone's The Lani People tells of a race of alien women enslaved by Earth's men. The Lani are exported to every planet in the galaxy. What man, their slave traders ask, wants to be bothered by a human woman when you can get a whole harem of Lani so cheap? All Lani are exactly like humans with one minor "addition": they are happy only in their natural naked state. And the Lani are expertly trained to make a man feel like a god. The man simply specifies pedigree, Silver Dawn out of White Magic for a platinum-blonde model, or he can take his pick from the adoring herd. But behind the Lani lies a dark scientific secret...

Hugo winner Murray Leinster's Operation Terror is a hard-hitting tale of what happens to the men and women caught in the vortex of an alien invasion. The novel starts when a radar complex picks up a strange object of considerable side nearing the Earth's surface. The impact of its landing at Boulder Lake Park, Colorado, is felt on every seismograph in the world. Then the first reports begin to trickle in: There are "creatures" on board, creatures who soon leave their ship and begin exploring the area. They are armed with a terrifying paralysis ray that blinds its victims, and fills their nostrils with a reptilian odor of the jungle... Where is the ship from, and what is the quest of these alien visitors?

Never-Reprinted Continuation of the Legendary Hawk Carse Saga!

Hawk Carse faced his greatest problem when he found that the sinister Kui Sui still lived; and with him seven other men who had died! But the Space Hawk faced an even greater peril when he found himself battling with the mysterious unborn "Q", whose powers were greater than any human!

From the pages of the golden age Amazing Stories comes this 1942 "complete book-length novel" penned by Space Hawk's creator, Harry Bates, almost a decade after the original stories. Originally titled The Return of Hawk Carse, this volume brings the Space Hawk face to face with enemies old and new, unexpected and unforeseen.

The Climactic Yarn in the Legendary Science Fiction Series from the Golden Days of the Pulps!

Even Space Hawk stands aghast as Ku Sui's dreams of Empire seem within the archfiend's grasp. Before Hawk Carse, during the Hugo Gernsback/Amazing Stories era of science fiction, the typical story involved reams of scientific exposition by a group of friends, one of whom invented a space ship, taking a trip to another planet and a tour of that world's futuristic technology, participating in or witnessing a revolt or warfare of some kind involving imaginative weaponry, and sometimes a princess in need of rescue—with each invention and incident explained at length.

When editor Harry Bates founded Astounding Stories of Super Science, the magazine that would eclipse Amazing Stories—and all other science fiction magazines—for the next two decades, he created Hawk Carse, the Space Hawk, as a model of the streamlined, action-oriented science fiction he envisioned writers producing for the magazine, with the scientific explanations worked briefly into the narrative flow, rather than dominating it. Space Hawk was an immediate hit with readers, and it is easy to see why, for the interplanetary adventure never stops in this series. Although Bates meant his portrayal of the pilot of Carse's ship as African-American to be revolutionary at a time when most characters of color in pulp magazine fiction played only menial roles or were villains, the effect is marred today by stereotyped aspects of the man's character and the unfortunate choice of the name "Friday." Such was Bates' range as an author that hardly a decade later, he would pen a series of groundbreaking "thought variant" stories for Astounding, including "Farewell to the Master," which became the film adaptations we know as The Day the Earth Stood Still.