LITMIR.BIZ

Mark and Jimmy are “astrological twins” born on the same day, but they have completely opposed personalities. Even so, when they met at university in the 1980s they formed a close friendship, which even survived a crisis point when the reckless Jimmy, having persuaded the sober Mark to sit with him and look after him while he experiments with LSD, accidentally slashed his friend’s face with a scalpel. While Mark settled down to teach history at his old school, Jimmy took his biochemical expertise to Big Pharma, where he eventually ended up as a specialist in ethnomedicine, searching the pharmacopeias of primitive tribes in search of exploitable medicines. Periodically, however, he has popped up again to disturb Mark’s quiet life, always trying to convince him that his latest method of obtaining drug-assisted access to visions of “hyperreality” will finally lead to success. The latest of those attempts, in 2016, promises to be more ambitious than its predecessors, and also far more complicated, involving both Jimmy’s current girl-friend and Mark’s wife in an experiment that threatens to change all their lives, as well as revealing discomfiting truths about the true nature of the universe.

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In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-utopian worlds like New Alexandria to the vermin-infested slums of Old Earth, the Star-Pilots are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own time. Pharos is paradise–or so it appears. But the champions of commerce want to package and sell the planet, and the conservationists want to stop them. Grainger's employer, Titus Charlot, is enlisted to negotiate a settlement, but the game is rigged. Charlot needs the Star-Pilot's help, but there seems to be nothing he can do–until the planet's ecosystem takes a hand, and «paradise» suddenly turns deadly! Hooded Swan, Book 4.

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Mathieu Galmier, formerly of the Pasteur Institute, has to leave Paris under a cloud when one of his pioneering experiments in hematology goes awry. He is given refuge—of sorts—in London by Sir Juliam Templeforth. Unfortunately, the rewards both men hope to reap from continuing the experiments are slow to materialize. The research hits snags, and its human costs are beginning to weigh on Mathieu’s conscience. <p> Complicating matters further, some of Sir Julian’s unruly Irish tenants have come to London to demand satisfaction, and Mathieu’s presence has been detected by Philippe and Myrtille de Valcoeur, who have an intense interest in his research—seemingly more mystical than scientific.<p> When complications lead to catastrophe, Mathieu has to flee. But his past proves exceedingly difficult to escape . . .

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Alastor, the son of an iron-master, has no inclination to follow his father’s trade, preferring to work with wood. He and his musically-talented sister Catrianne leave the foundry to go and live in a town, where Alastor soon begins to specialize in making musical instruments. One day, while delivering an unusual musical instrument to a hamlet high in the mountains, he is thrown by his horse during a storm. Temporarily lame, he is forced to take refuge in a strange cabin in the forest, where the mysterious Melusine lived with her daughter Lucinia. When Alastor returns to the town, he takes Lucinia with him and marries her. They have two children, Handsel and Chanterelle. Everything goes well with the family until disaster strikes, leaving Catrianne in sole charge of the children, obliged to seek shelter first at the iron-master’s foundry and then at the cabin in the mountains, where a great many surprises await them regarding their own identity and the peril overhanging the forest and the world of Faerie, which is under threat of extinction. Perhaps something can be saved, and if it can, the key to its salvation might lie, at least in part, in Catrianne’s music, Handsel’s uniqueness, and Chanterelle’s dreams.

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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 race once owned the stars, when great cities stood in places that have now become rust-bowls.

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A plastic surgeon of the future is charged with re-creating the face of Adam, the first man. Is he just a pawn in a scheme to defraud a billionaire, or does he seriously intend to fulfill his task. And if he's successful, what does it mean to the world at large?

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Six stories of fantasy and science fiction by a modern master, including three pieces published for the first time: «The Path of Progess,» «Kalamada's Blessing,» «The Shepherd's Daughter,» «Shadows of the Past,» «Reconstruction,» and the original short fantasy novel, «The Return of the Djinn.»

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Acclaimed author and scholar Brian Stableford turns his penetrating mind to matters of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in this collection of essays. He covers such diverse topics as: SLAVES OF THE DEATH SPIDERS: Colin Wilson and Existentialist Science Fiction<BR> IS THERE NO BALM IN GILEAD?: The Woeful Prophecies of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale<BR> A FEW MORE CROCODILE TEARS?: Gwyneth Jones<BR> THE ADVENTURES OF LORD HORROR: Across the Media Landscape<BR> FILLING IN THE MIDDLE: Robert Silverberg's The Queen of Springtime<BR> RICE'S RELAPSE: Memnoch the Devil<BR> FIELD OF BROKEN DREAMS: Michael Bishop's Brittle Innings<BR> THE MAGIC OF THE MOVIES<BR> H. G. WELLS AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE<BR> THE MANY RETURNS OF DRACULA<BR> TARZAN'S DIVIDED SELF<BR> SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL: Jacques Cazotte's The Devil in Love<BR> THE TWO THOUSAND YEAR QUEST: George Viereck's Erotic Odyssey<BR> THE PROFESSION OF SCIENCE FICTION

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At last, the true story can finally be told of my participation in the investigation of a haunted bookshop in Barry, South Wales, organized by my good friend and fellow science fiction writer Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe. As a result of the haunting in question, or perhaps the abundant coal dust that accompanied it, I was enabled to meet the Devil and make a mutually rewarding pact with him. The story also relates my subsequent close encounter with the Devil’s opposite number while participating as a volunteer in a psychology experiment at the University of Glamorgan, intended to open up a more effective conduit between the conscious and the unconscious mind. That one did not go as well, perhaps understandably given the inevitable conflict of interests, but was, and remains, no less intriguing.

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Long-undisturbed Tenebrion Wood, identified in the Domesday Book and named by the Romans after a kind of «night-sprit,» stands in the way of a road development. Environmentalist Steve Pearlman recruits a number of investigators to examine the site in order to find some justification for its defense, including entomologist John Hazard. At first, the wood does not seem to be of any special scientific interest, despite the occasional profusion of its beetle population, but Hazard makes a surprising discovery in the clearing in the middle of the wood that changes the nature of his investigation drastically – and suggests that the wood's «night-spirits» might be something far stranger than mere ghosts or goblins…

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