John Russell Fearn

When drifter Terry Carlton encounters the little town of Verdure in Arizona, he&apos;s only seeking some hospitality and shelter for the night, before moving on. But what he learns from his hosts, old man Marchland and his daughter Hilda, piques his curiosity. <P> Their home, like all the others in town, is boarded up at night; the entire community is living in fear of four ghostly horsemen, who ride only at night. Refusing to share the terrified townsfolk&apos;s fear of the...

The Cosmic Crusaders are plunged into a strange new space, where all the probabilities of electronic law are strangely altered, a complete and stunning inversion of all so-called natural laws. They discover the mysterious silver planet of Tuca, and deep below its surface they find an enigmatic machine–the legacy of a vanished race. Masters of science, they had overreached themselves by constructing a strange machine that could alter the very laws of nature. But the machine had destroyed its...

When financier Emerson Drew&apos;s hired killer pushes scientist-inventor Rajek Quinton down an abandoned mineshaft, Drew and his conspirators believe that the way&apos;s clear to exploit Quinton&apos;s amazing new invention, which will make them millions. But he reckons without Larry Clark of the C.I.D.–plus Quinton’s uncanny scientific genius. The police detective, aided by Drew&apos;s secretary Joyce Sutton, forges a chain of evidence to send Drew and his cohorts to their doom. But who is...

Voyaging into a sector of interstellar space that is plunged into total darkness with an absolute absence of any light, the four Cosmic Crusaders encounter their most powerful and sinister enemy yet–an alien mastermind who is regarded as a God by the race he has created. This scientist has altered the nature of space itself, so that it no longer conducts light, forcing the slaves he&apos;s created to evolve without eyes, and to develop extrasensory perception. Not content with shaping the...

The Cosmic Crusaders find themselves on a truly strange world–a misfit planet that seems mysteriously cursed. Instead of evolving naturally from birth to death, it&apos;s a world out of step with the universe, leaping ahead into the future at unexpected moments. With each 50-year «step,» much of the population dies, and the young replace them as middle-aged individuals. The Crusaders are suspicious that the adviser to the planet ruler is actually an alien from another world, and is causing the...

The Cosmic Crusaders discover a planet whose people are subject to a baleful influence from outer space that sweeps across their world once a month, affecting every man, woman, and child. It stirs the emotions of the sexes against each other: men want only to destroy women, and women men. Only those with higher types of mind can resist the mental attack–the less fortunate are left dead or maimed after the Wave has passed. But when the Crusaders identify and destroy the apparent source of the...

Science fiction author Stanley G. Weinbaum died from cancer at 33 in December 1935. Short though his career was, his scientific imagination, smooth characterizations, and pervasive humor completely revolutionized the field, and profoundly influenced his contemporaries. Among his many imitators was English writer John Russell Fearn. Although his own distinctive work was very popular in the SF magazines of the time, the ambitious Fearn wanted to increase his number of acceptances by writing under...

Continuing their cosmic crusade among the stars, the Golden Amazon and her three companions discover a planet in another space where intelligent beings are being created, not through normal biological processes, but spontaneously, fully-grown, fashioned from the very chemicals of another planet. The mystery deepens when they discover that the synthetic race (and the planet it inhabits) is evolving backwards! Determined to solve these mysteries, the Crusaders find themselves up against the...

When Milly Morton, confidential secretary to industrialist Mortimer Bland, deliberately smashes several astronomical plates created by Anton Drew, she does more than express her pique against Bland&apos;s Chief Scientist. She also destroys irreplaceable data that might have enabled Drew to convince a skeptical world that it needs to prepare for the coming cosmic disaster. Without proof, no government official takes Drew&apos;s theories seriously. And so the world continues on its way, living in...

In «Robbery Without Violence,» gold worth fifty million pounds vanishes overnight from an impregnable bank vault, Chief Inspector Hargraves of Scotland Yard finds himself completely baffled. And when the owner of the bank then dies under mysterious circumstances, Hargraves is again spurred to seek outside help from scientist Sawley Garson, a specialist in solving «impossible» crimes. But can even he explain the inexplicable? Also included in this collection is «Death at the Observatory.» Two...

It came originally from the merciless, frost-bound wilderness of the night side of Mercury, the hellish planet nearest to the Sun. But when space explorer Harry Dagenham brings a long-dead, petrified snake–or something–back to Earth from Mercury, he discovers–quite suddenly–that the rock-hard creature is not quite so inert as it first appears! Here are six extraordinary stories from the golden age of the pulps: «Something from Mercury,» «The World That Dissolved,» «Pre-Natal,» «Beyond Zero,»...

Randle Manton has brought the Earth back from the brink of nuclear disaster, painstakingly rebuilding a nearly destroyed civilization, even reaching out to space. But now he&apos;s told that the clouds covering the world will soon unleash upon the reeling planet yet another disaster: a great flood that will cover most of the Earth&apos;s surface. Despite his wealth, despite his great power, Manton knows that he&apos;ll only be able to save a fraction of humanity. Can mankind rebuild and survive...

BEFORE EARTH CAME launches a new series collecting the early pioneering pulp magazine novelettes of John Russell Fearn, with the first-ever reprinting of «Before Earth Came» and «Subconscious.»<P> Both stories abound with unbridled imagination and a sense of wonder, examples of the pioneering stories being written in SF more than 80 years ago.<P> In «Before Earth Came,» Fearn’s storyline of how alien scientists, facing the imminent utter destruction of their planet, seek to...

Baffling robberies from locked rooms, cunning crimes and mysterious murders…these were all part of the stock-in-trade of Miss Victoria Lincoln, private detective. Called in to investigate the case of the Haunted Gallery, she had occasion to call on the help of Caroline Gerrard, a pupil at her old College. Impressed, she invited the girl to become her assistant after she left College. Thereafter Caroline assisted the detective in a series of bizarre cases that had baffled the police and appeared...

Jeffrey Collins’s fate was sealed when he stopped his car to help a man who appeared to be an injured motorcyclist. When the injured man vanished before his eyes, Collins turned to a scientist, Dr. Whittaker, to make sense of the mystery. But when Whittaker was found dead, a victim of poisoning, Collins was accused of his murder. The evidence against him was damning. Where had he been during the period when Dr. Whittaker had died? Had he not quarrelled with him, and had they not both stood to...

Gyron de London, most powerful–and most hated–industrialist of the year 2190, is warned by a mysterious letter that his doom is due on the 30th March, three weeks hence. Further anonymous letters repeat the message. The frightened tycoon takes every precaution, even to sealing himself in a steel, radiation-proof cube surrounded by armed guards – but death overtakes him on the specified day, exactly as forecast! <P> Since no one had entered the cube after the industrialist was seen to...

Three scientists proposed to construct a synthetic man, endowed with some five times the intelligence of the ordinary human being. This creature matures quickly, and eventually there steps into being a synthetic man – «The Intelligence Gigantic.» His intellectuality and his occult powers are impressive, but are backed by no humanity, no thought of the happiness of mankind. He has the desire and the power to control the whole world of humanity and to operate the life of the world on principles of...

In this sequel to John Russell Fearn’s classic Liners of Time, Time Liner Pilot Sandford Lee continues his battle against Elnek Jelfel, the Jovian wizard of science intent on galactic domination. Zagribud carries out their contests against an interstellar canvas, with Jelfel using his scientific powers to ultimately take possession of the Earth and carry out mass vivisection on humanity.<P> This is the first unabridged book edition of a classic pre-war serial from the pages of Amazing...

Nick Hansley and his young wife and father-in-law soon find that The Cedars, the isolated country house Ena has inherited, has more than just a sinister appearance – it radiates a positively evil aura.<P> Soon after moving in, they are visited by a strange figure of a man – Dr. Lexton, their nearest neighbour, who tries to persuade them to sell the house to him. But who is Dr. Lexton, and what was the nature of the secret experiment that Ena.&apos;’s deceased uncle, entomologist Cyrus...