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The final contact made by the Daedalus Mission begins badly, even before the ship makes a hard landing in the middle of nowhere. The situation of the colony doesn't seem to make any sense, and neither does the situation of the indigenous aliens--the Sets--that have helped the colony survive and thrive. Alex Alexander doesn't take long to work out a hypothesis that might explain the mystery--a hypothesis that the people on the ground have alrea...

The planet Attica has two continents: Lambda and Delta. The indigenous alien population being restricted to Delta, Earth's colony was planted on Lambda. Before the arrival of the Daedalus, two sailing ships had set out from Lambda to cross the ocean separating the two continents, and neither had returned. Now a third is on its way, and Mariel Valory and Alex Alexander of the Daedalus have hitched a lift, in order that Mariel might use her tale...

They call them the "rat-catchers." They're the crew of the spaceship Daedalus, which a declining Earth has sent to re-establish contact with its long-lost colonies. Biologist Alex Alexander, together with his staff, must help solve the mysteries of human and alien ecosystems that they encounter far from home. On the world called Wildeblood, named for the ecologist/Emperor who founded it, the settlers' descendants harbor a terrible secret--a se...

In the not-so-distant future, when biology is changing the human form and structure, Peter Bell the Third renews his friendship with Rowland Usher. In the new House of Usher that Rowland is creating in the Orinoco Delta, Usher is conducting experiments in genetics. Rowland's twin sister, Magdalen, who has committed suicide for reasons that no one understands, suddenly begins "haunting" the house. But this can be no supernatural apparition, no ...

In the world of the future, dying is easy--it's the afterliving that's hard! When Nicky is killed at the age of 27 by a suicide bomber, he wakes up in a Resurrection Center, having been made into an albino, pink-eyed "zombie." The beleagued community of zombies is dominated by the very old, and subject to all manner of social discrimination. Nicky has lost his girlfriend, and no one will now laugh at his jokes. But when the Rehabilitation faci...

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, starship pilots have become the great romantic heroes of the day. When Star-Pilot Grainger is rescued from a shipwreck, he finds himself pressed into reluctant service to fly the Hooded Swan, the prototype of a new kind of interstellar ship. He's also picked up an alien parasite that's determined to share his brain. Under t...

During an August heat-wave, the Comte de Saint-Germain seeks the help of detective Auguste Dupin. Someone--or someTHING--is trying to kill him! The Comte has inherited a magical cello and a mysterious sealed box. A psychic vampire (an "egregore") intends to use the cello and a magical musical composition to steal another soul. Can Dupin and his faithful companion unravel the puzzle in time to save the Comte?

In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds such as New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots have become the great heroes of the day. Grainger has become a legend in his own time, flying the prototype vessel of a new starship.... Having escaped from his contract with Charlot, Grainger is hounded by the Caradoc Commpany, who wants to extract everything from his brain about his former employer. But...

The fourth landing of the Daedalus Mission confronts Alex and his companions with a colonial culture seemingly modeled on a classic Utopian dream, but all of its inhabitants are infected with a mysterious alien parasite, and they no longer seem entirely human. Are they being controlled by the parasite, or has the parasite merely enabled them to transform themselves? Can the visitors from Earth avoid infection themselves, and what will the cons...

First published in 1976, "The Mind-Riders" features a remarkable anticipation of virtual reality gaming, in which the revised sport of boxing pits physically identical virtual fighters against one another, operated by electronically-connected "handlers" -- with viewers receiving transmissions of the combatants' emotions as their simulations slug it out. Ryan Hart, banished from the sport in its early days because of his lack of marketable emot...

Although the problems of writing fantasy and science fiction include all those pertaining to the writing of any kind of fiction, particular problems arise in stories in which unprecedented things can and do happen, as well as stories that often involve unhuman characters of various sorts, and that might require the elaborate design of entire imaginary worlds. This book provides an elementary introduction to problems of those kinds, and the way...

In the longest of the four Cthulhu Mythos stories in this collection, "The Legacy of Erich Zann, " the violin and the music that the ill-fated musician left behind become the target, some fifteen years later, for a mysterious searcher who will stop at nothing--including murder--to obtain them. Edgar Allan Poe's great detective, Auguste Dupin, who's endangered because of his connection to Zann, must not only figure out who--but why. In the orig...

This collection of stories about possible future developments in biotechnology juxtaposes the ultra-large scale of "Mortimer Gray's History of Death", which encapsulates several thousand years of human history, both past and future, with the intimate scale of "Next to Godliness, " in which a dinner party goes wrong, in a fashion obliquely connected to the psychotropic drug-patches worn by all the guests. Among the other tales are "Some like it...

Throughout the centuries that have passed since humans first ventured into interstellar space, they have been at war with the alien Veich. The human race has, in consequence, been fully militarized, its educational system being a form of military training--which includes, among other disciplines, the elimination of fear from the human psyche. Attitudes to the war have, however, been colored by the gradual discovery of relics revealing t...

THE EARTH IS DYING! In the far future Earth is dying. Society has reverted to a more primitive life, much like the Middle Ages. Two men, Matthew and his brother John, who calls himself "Firefly, " set out to find the time traveller, the one person who can give purpose to their existence, the one individual who can still access past technology. The Firefly, he who lights his own way, seeks the age of Man's greatness, the time when the human ra...

THE EARTH IS DYING! In the far future Earth is dying. Society has reverted to a more primitive life, much like the Middle Ages. Two men, Matthew and his brother John, who calls himself "Firefly, " set out to find the time traveller, the one person who can give purpose to their existence, the one individual who can still access past technology. The Firefly, he who lights his own way, seeks the age of Man's greatness, the time when the human ra...

1899. The mood of fin-de-siècle Paris is one of the old order crumbling away, as ancient superstitions are replaced by scientific discoveries. The director of the Théâtre Tragicomique is intent on staging an updated version of Faust to usher in the new century -- and stave off bankruptcy. But some supernatural agency is determined to rewrite the play, striking dead every actor playing the part of Faust. Is it a manifestation of the Devil, as t...

This new collection of critical essays on science fiction and fantasy literature and media features the following pieces: "The Last Chocolate Bar and the Majesty of Truth: Reflections on the Concept of 'Hardness' in Science Fiction, " "How Should a Science Fiction Story End?", "The Third Generation of Genre Science Fiction, " "Deus ex Machina, or, How to Achieve a Perfect Science-Fictional Climax, " "Biotechnology and Utopia, " "Far Futures, "...

This new collection of critical essays on science fiction and fantasy literature and media features the following pieces: "The Last Chocolate Bar and the Majesty of Truth: Reflections on the Concept of 'Hardness' in Science Fiction, " "How Should a Science Fiction Story End?", "The Third Generation of Genre Science Fiction, " "Deus ex Machina, or, How to Achieve a Perfect Science-Fictional Climax, " "Biotechnology and Utopia, " "Far Futures, "...

This collection of nine proto-science fiction tales, translated and edited by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford, ranges from Louis-Sébastien Mercier's 1768 opening tale, in which the hero communicates with the dead through a beam that anticipates a modern-day laser, to an 1887 story by Guy de Maupassant that speculates on Martian life. In between, we have tales of a heart transplant, a device that can see through tim...