Brian Stableford
45 кн.
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 talent to try to make contact with the aliens....
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
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 consequences be if they cannot? For once, the risks of...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
Peter Bell the Third, accidentally named from the title of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, is called upon to renew his old friendship with Rowland Usher, who was deliberately named after the protagonist of a story by Edgar Allan Poe. In the new House of Usher that Rowland is growing in the Orinoco Delta, Usher explains the scientific work in genetics that he’s doing there to Peter, while they both mourn Rowland’s dead twin sister, Magdalen, who has apparently committed suicide for reasons that...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
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 already worked out for themselves–and he's...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
After laboring for thousands of years, the people of Earth, fleeing ecological disaster, have built a new, clean, stable world on a worldwide platform erected over the entire land surface of the Earth. Everything is going well–except for Carl Magner, the man who's been having bad dreams. He shouldn't be having dreams at all, because dreams have been banished from the society of the Euchronian Millennium, but somehow he is, and his dreams are showing him the «Underworld.» The real...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
Eleven new tales of fantasy and horror based upon the classic originals by H. P. Lovecraft, Oscar Wilde, Hans Christian Andersen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, and Bram Stoker.
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
In an alternate England in which Cromwell's revolution succeeded, Michael Laurel attends a 19th-century party to witness the demonstration of the first time machine. But Michael comes to realize that the entire future of the world might be at stake–and the past as well–if the machine malfunctions. How can he, a mere artist, possibly make a difference to the ultimate fate of the universe? A grand adventure in the style of A. E. van Vogt and Thomas Love Peacock.
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
The people of the Euchronian Millennium had been reminded of the Underworld that existed beneath the platform on which they had constructed their better, cleaner, safer world–leaving the original surface of Earth a dark, dreary, and forgotten place. That awareness had become a political pawn, which many different people were trying to manipulate in their own interests. In the meantime, the search for more information about what actually existed in the Underworld went on, tentatively and ineptly....
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
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 emotion, is brought back by an obsessed media...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
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. <P>In the original novella, «The Seeds from the...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
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 Charlot has other plans, and Grainger suddenly finds...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
300 years in the future, biotechnology has altered the shape and substance of what it means to be a man. Only the 250-year-old «Dragon Man» can give Sara an understanding of what «e-mortality» might mean–for herself and for the entire human world.
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
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.»
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
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?
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
For hundreds of years the male members of the Kilcannon family have considered themselves to be the beneficiaries of distortions in the statistical distribution of chance, associating their most fortunate windfalls with visual distortions that they call “streaks.” This belief has led to the accumulation of a vast heritage of superstitions—rules which, if broken, might allegedly terminate the privilege. The current heir, Canny Kilcannon, is anxious to dispose of this burden, but is unsure as...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
Despite the development of a faster-than-light drive, Earth’s space program has been in the doldrums for centuries, as has Earth itself. Hyperspace being impossible to navigate without beacons at which to aim, there is no alternative but to wait for vessels sent out at sub-light speed decades previously to find somewhere worth going. <P> Unfortunately, when a worthwhile planet finally turns up, it doesn’t take long for political conflicts to materialize over its exploitation. Then, when...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
It is 1847, and Paris is edging closer to its next revolution, but something is also astir inside Mont Dragon in the Ardèche. This is a place of annual pilgrimage for a band of enigmatic nomads, and also a place of interest to the ambitious Bishop of Viviers. In spite of his distaste for travel, Auguste Dupin makes the long southward journey, in the hope that he might be able to help an old friend, the evolutionist Claude Guérande. Guérande believes that he has made discoveries in the caves of...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
The eleven stories in Designer Genes showcase the latest volume in this intriguing science fiction that explores intriguing future possibilities in biotechnology, ranging from stories of imminent technology reflecting issues that are already controversial, to stories that feature drastically altered worlds. Most of the stories are domestic dramas in which ordinary people are trying to get on with their everyday lives in circumstances that are altering in confusing ways by the year or by the day....
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
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 that it is echoing an earlier interstellar conflict whose...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
Decadent literature is intrinsically and proudly a literature of moral challenge; it is sceptical, cynical, and satirical. It recognizes that everyday morality does not work either in practical or in psychological terms, and is therefore a sham, but that ideal morality is – not necessarily unfortunately – unattainable. This volume collects the best of Brian Stableford's decadent work, including: «Salome,» «O For a Fiery Gloom and Thee,» «The Last Worshipper of Proteus,» «The Evil That Men...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
hey 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 secret that Alex must uncover, if the colony is...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
They call them the «rat-catchers.» They're the crew of the spaceship Daedalus, which an economically destitute Earth has dispatched on a mission to re-establish contact with its far-flung, long-lost space colonies. Alex Alexander, ship's biologist, must help solve the mysteries of human and alien ecosystems that he encounters light-years from home. The planet Floria initially appears to be one of the few Earth colonies that's actually prospered since its initial settlement. But...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
When Steve, a hapless school teacher, consults a hypnotherapist to solve his personal problems, he «remembers» being abducted by aliens. When he starts attending sessions of Alien Abductees Anonymous (AlAbAn), he sees a pattern in the stories being told, and thinks his own experiences might provide a key. While his love life continues to deteriorate, Steve must grapple with questions of where the aliens might originate, and what their activities portend for the future of the human race. A...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |
This collection brings together the ten earliest stories in Brian Stableford’s series of «Tales of the Biotech Revolution,» all written in the 1980s, except for one anomalous example from the 1960s. The dates in some of the stories, located a comfortable distance in the future when the stories were written, have now long past, revealing certain anomalies of early expectation; but they have been left unaltered, as nostalgic samples of yesterday’s long-dead and perhaps much-lamented tomorrows. The...
| Автор | Brian Stableford |