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One of the Author's Only Four SF Short Stories—Lost for Almost Fifty Years!

From the creator of Hannibal Fortune, Webley, and T.E.R.R.A., comes one of the rarest stories in science fiction history. Published only once in Imagination in the early 1950s, here is an intricate puzzler with two O'Henry-like twists, more than a pinch of humor, and a full measure of romance. Who was the disembodied man? How had he gotten that way? And who was the mysterious woman who watched over him?

Take a walk on the wild side of Larry Maddock's head. Larry Maddock is the author of The Nymph and the Satyr, The Mind Monsters, Unaccustomed as I am to Public Dying and more.

Space Opera at its Finest!

That's how readers in the know described the late, lamented pulp science fiction magazine Planet Stories. Famed for its vigorous, colorful covers and even more vigorous, colorful lead novels, the magazine of "strange adventures on other worlds and the universe of future centuries" (as the masthead read) has become a rare and highly prized item among collectors.

But now you can read two of its enthralling "book-length novels" in one ebook. If you love Star Trek, Star Wars, and other television and motion picture space operas, you will thrill to Nebula Nominee Ross Rocklynne's exciting blend of pulse-pounding adventure and hard science, "Captives of the Weir-Wind." Ruthless space pirate Julian Darnay finds himself in the power of Julie Gunndardsen, being swept on a terror-flight through the void by a woman who knows how to hold her trumps. Their objective—if they live to reach it—is a world beyond all worlds ... the planet where strange physics create the howling weir-winds that can sweep a man clean of sins or rip him to shreds in an instant, with only a lake of radium to mark his grave. And Darnay shudders, wondering which the weir-wind will make him, if he lives: sniveling saint or glowing corpse?

Then, travel through the dimensions with Eldon Carmichael who, regardless of his physical and mental challenges, is catapulted to a world of magical science and scientific magic to become the legendary El-ve-don fated to face Sin, raven-tressed witch of evil, in Erik Fennel's classic "Black Priestess of Varda." Sin is well-named—foul sorceress and raving beauty—and beloved of Sasso, the Dark Power from another dimension who seeks to conquer, with her help, the lovely, innocent world of Varda. Outlawed, sentenced to the Vat, only a few of Varda's people still defy foul Sasso's lovely witch. And Sasso's only fear is a whispered legend—El-ve-don, the Savior... But surely a God can have nothing to fear and Varda nothing to hope for from the apparently innocuous, seemingly incapable man who has blundered through a shower of sparks into their time and space. Surely he can not be El-ve-don, the Savior!

Classic SF Stories that Spawned Classic SF Movies!

Here are the original magazine stories, "The Cosmic Frame" and "Deadly City," both by famed science fiction writer-editor Paul W. Fairman, that became Invasion of the Saucer-Men and Target Earth when they were filmed in the 1950s. If you love classic exploitation SF films, then you have to read this pair of stories that inspired two of the most memorable movies of their era. It's like a drive-in movie double feature in an eBook.

Plus, just like a drive in movie, there's a selected short subject for a bonus: the Fairman short that became famous on Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone as "People Are the Same All Over."

In "The Cosmic Frame," a teenage boy and his girlfriend, hit something very strange while driving home from a date one night. They call their parents for help. In a switch, their parents believe them. And that's where the trouble starts.

In "Deadly City," a group of average people find themselves alone in a deserted city stalked by an unseen deadly force. As the tension mounts, each person's character is revealed.

And in the bonus story, "Brothers Beyond the Void," which was dramatized on The Twilight Zone as "People Are the Same All Over," an astronaut discovers that the aliens he encounters aren't so different from Earth people, after all.

This eBook edition also includes an introduction and filmography for all three stories.

Another Swashbuckling crusader for Justice makes her dramatic debut in four pulp-style adventures crammed into a single volume.

Meet Gillian Thorkel, a scientist who is forced to adopt the tools and techniques of the burglar to recover her intellectual property, stolen by unscrupulous businessmen. The outcome of her first “caper” shows her a new calling in life, protecting other inventors from swindlers, robbers, and Big Business, prompting her to create the character of Cat’s-Eye… the Mistress of Darkness.

Victimized by her employers, Jill Thorkel uses her wits and her amazing lens – that permits one to see in almost utterly light-less conditions – to not only turn the tables on them but to create an alibi for herself when she becomes the suspect in the burglary that recovers her property. To accomplish this she must create a very complex… “Optical Illusion.”

Jill Thorkel hopes to use her new alter-ego to aid other scientists, and sends out the word. When she gets a response, she finds Cat’s-Eye defending an inventor against not one but two adversaries, as the mysterious Wizard and the forces of Continent-Eight, the international Executive of Crime, each vie for new devices in a real… “Power Struggle.”

Having proved to herself the success of her idea to aid endangered scientists, Cat’-Eye journeys to Maryland where a professor’s latest invention is being threatened by a villain known as “the Eye”. She has no idea that Continent-Eight is on hand as well, nor does she realize the convolutions surrounding… “The Daycroft Periscope.”

It was only a matter of time; Cat’s-Eye, protectress of science, had to run up into Xavier Xavier, misappropriator of science! When Doctor Double X attacks Jill’s old college professor, she moves to the defense, and finds an ally in Sergeant Ed Green, close friend of the Emperor himself. Ed and Cat’s-Eye find that… “Double X Marks the Spot.”

"Wow! How does Jackson keep coming up with all these great new superheroines and superheroes?" —David McDaniel, spy novelist, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Dagger Affair (and many others within the series); The Prisoner: Who is Number Two.

It’s winter in 1938 and Republic Pictures has sent studio PR flack Sean “Curly” Woods to Iverson Ranch for the filming of the B-Western The Lone Ranger Rides Again. The star of that 15-chapter serial, Bob Livingston, is unhappy that the studio replaced him with John Wayne on his long-running series, The Three Mesquiteers. And his unhappiness has led to disruptive behavior.

Curly’s assignment is to rein in the disgruntled star so the production can stay on budget, while keeping all negative news away from the press. “Piece of cake,” Woods said. But then he finds Livingston’s hotel room trashed, blood on the floor and a ransom note warning that if the police become involved, the star of The Lone Ranger Rides Again will bite the dust.

Veteran western film villain Glenn Strange joins Woods and studio chauffeur Nick Danby in investigating the kidnapping. As time is running out for Livingston, the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives ride the range of the San Fernando Valley while tracking the kidnappers. Once again, the cowboy investigators discover that gun-blazing action is the only way to bring justice to the old west of the 1930s. A thrilling HCD novelette!

The Hollywood Cowboy Detectives ride again as Hoot Gibson, who has walked away from his western movie career, prepares a wild-west show for the circus. The Hooter invites Republic Pictures flack Sean “Curly” Woods and studio chauffeur Nick Danby for a few days of “rest and relaxation” at a Southern California ranch while he gets his act together.

Unfortunately, they find out the historic ranch house is known locally as Demon House. Built by Confederate Col. Jeb Reynolds following the Civil War, it has a history of death and evil.

Curly, Hoot and Nick are joined by legendary western star William S. Hart and 10-year-old stunt-rider Dick Jones as they battle a ghostly band of Confederate soldiers and a scaly green Banshee that appears out of an electrified, flying white cloud. The cowboys are unsure whether they are dealing with an international, supernatural or extraterrestrial enemy as they encounter the ghostly images, flying saucers and two strange beings with unearthly powers.

G-man Big Jim Webber joins the wild-west performers as the Hollywood Cowboy Detectives ride head-on into the Valley of the Banshee with gun-blazing action, amazing horsemanship and the knowledge that the survival of the civilized world hangs in the balance.

A tribute to Orson Welles as The Shadow!

It is the mid-1930s and Curly Woods, Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson and other Hollywood Cowboy Detectives characters, along with radio listeners across America, tune in every Wednesday night to hear the wildly popular adventures of The Man of the Mist, a crime-fighter with hypnotic powers who becomes almost invisible in the dark.

Radio listeners are under the impression that this amazing detective with the hypnotic powers is a fictional character. This manuscript should set the record straight and correct that misperception.

There is a real Man of the Mist. All of the characters created on the radio program are based on real people who, for their own safety, are referred to by fictitious names. On a monthly basis, program writers meet with him and his adventuresome secretary, "Moxie,” to listen to reports on their latest adventures and transcribe them for broadcast. The following story is true and should be considered a warning to all who think they can defeat law and justice.

Disillusioned crime reporter Sean "Curly" Woods, turned public relations flack for Mascot, the lowest of B-movie studios, is sent to keep hot-headed cowboy star Ken Maynard out of trouble and out of the headlines as he films the 12-chapter movie serial, Mystery Mountain.

Soon the pair become convinced that the production is being sabotaged and attempt to uncover who's behind it and why. Curly and Maynard's investigation brings them into contact with gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the ill-fated Thelma Todd, fanatic Nazi supporters, rabid Klansmen, a shadowy figure known only as the Viper, and a sadistic physician with a taste for torture. It also leads to a succession of attempts on their lives, beginning with the crosshairs of a professional assassin's rifle, followed by a murderous barroom brawl, and an attack by a single-winged experimental flying machine of German design.

As the scale of the plot behind the sabotage of Mystery Mountain becomes clear, the pair realize it represents nothing less than a threat to the existence of the United States. To thwart it, Curly and Maynard will need all the help they can get, including Maynard's friend, former cowhand and fellow star Hoot Gibson; an impressive but pugnacious stuntwoman; a shady ex-silent-film Valentino impersonator, and, with Thelma Todd as go-between, an unholy alliance of Lucky Luciano and the mob with J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, who join forces against a common enemy.

Horsemanship, gun fights, aerial battles, undercover reconnaissance, even a modern cavalry charge lie ahead. Can the outmoded Code of the West stand up against modern blitzkrieg warfare and the sinister dream of a Master Race? You will find all the spectacular, non-stop action of old-fashioned B-movies, pulp magazines and comic books in Mystery at Movie Ranch, side-by-side with looks at serious issues like corruption, racism, sexism, loyalty, ethics, and even the economics of low-budget filmmaking at the height of the Great Depression. You won't be able to put it down until the final game is played and the identity of the master manipulator is revealed.

Cover and interior illustrations by author, animator and political cartoonist, D. Purcell.

Who Was the Mysterious Rangeland Avenger Known as "Thunder Bird"?

From the author of the B-movie inspired bestseller, Trail Riders, comes the story of one of the most mysterious characters to appear in the West in the late nineteenth century. He was a fabulous individual, a man whose presence brought fear to the lawless and hope to the innocent. He protected Native Americans from the depredations of villainous white men, and the settlers from renegades. He was known to his contemporaries as Reed Gordon, a drifter and cowhand, but is known to history as the avenging kachina—Thunder Bird!

Drifter Reed Gordon wanders into trouble when he moseys into Sand Creek, Arizona Territory, finding himself caught between secret criminals and the law, forced to adopt a new identity for his own protection to escape the “Fury at Sand Creek”. With his new friends, two Pomo Indians and medicine-showman “Breezy” Hawkins, Reed Gordon finds himself and his alter-ego facing the still deadly remnants of the Clanton gang in Tombstone, AT—the town “Too Tough to Die”. Drifting down the valley of the Rio Grandé, Gordon and his friends put themselves in danger when they try to rescue a manatee being abused and mistreated by an unscrupulous showman, and con the conman with “The Mermaid of Matamoros”. On the trail of the only man who can clear his name and erase the murder charge against him, Reed Gordon finds that he must track the man into the worst desert in the American Southwest, the Jornada del Muerte, on a “Journey of Death”.

More exciting adventures drawn from the Emperor's Secret Files, set in Charles Lee Jackson II's pulp- and comic-book-inspired "Emperorverse," which has been compared to Lester Dent's over-the-top, widely beloved Doc Savage adventures.

The Making of the Legendary Science Fiction Cliffhangers!

Rocketing to the rescue, Flash Gordon and his friends hurtle straight into the beam of a fiendish ray-gun and are blown out of the skies! And meanwhile, the beautiful and menaced Dale Arden, eyes wide, bosom heaving, cringes at the approach of lascivious King Vultan and his shaggy pet, Urso.

This cliffhanger perhaps best exemplifies what sets the "Flash Gordon" serials apart from other motion picture serials of the day: raw, obvious (and sometimes questionable) sexual overtones. One of the aspects that drives all three serials is the Emperor's lust for "the Earthwoman" Dale Arden (and in fact, in the first serial, it seems every petty king on Mongo has the hots for Dale). In fact everyone in these serials is "hot", from pretty-boy-with-muscles Buster Crabbe (Flash Gordon), the ravishing Jean Rogers (Dale Arden), brainy and muscular Frank Shannon (Dr. Zarkov), and that embodiment of evil incarnate Charles Middleton (Emperor Ming).

Flash Gordon, released by Universal Pictures in the spring of 1936, was a tremendously popular production and a huge financial success for the studio. Filled with glitzy special effects, costumes, props, masterpieces of monster and alien makeup, like the hawkmen and mudpeople, and over-the-top scripting, it continues to win new followers every day, more than three quarters of a century later. Now Charles Lee Jackson II, Hollywood historian, former columnist for FILMFAX, and publisher of Extra Added Attractions magazine, who currently conducts a college-level course in Ephemeral Cinema in Southern California, tells the whole engrossing story of the making of these B-Movie classics.

This unique ebook edition features more than two dozen posters and stills from this now legendary series of filmic cliffhangers.

"Charles Lee Jackson's knowledge of film history is encyclopedic." —Forrest J Ackerman