Showing results by narrator "Arthur Vincet" in All Categories

"Lone Star Planet" is a science fiction novel by H. Beam Piper. It presents a world on which the assassination of politicians is accepted practice. After a political gaffe, our hero Stephen Silk is assigned to be the Solar League's new ambassador to the people of Capella IV, New Texas. The position is open because the previous ambassador, Silas Cumshaw, was assassinated. On the starship taking him to his new posting, Silk meets his secretary/bodyguard, a native New Texan named Hoddy Ringo.

"The Planet Savers" is a 1962 science fiction book by Marion Zimmer Bradley. It is part of her "Darkover" (a fictional world) series. Desperate to discover a cure for the cyclical 48-year-fever, known as "Trailmen's fever", Dr. Randall Forth persuades a colleague, Dr. Jay Allison, to undergo hypnosis. He calls forth a secondary personality, Jason Allison, who is gregarious and an experienced mountain climber, while Dr. Jay Allison is a cold, clinical man with no outdoor skills...

"Orejas de ellos" ("the things that listen") whispered the superstitious fishermen when the strange occurrences began off the Philippine coast. How else explain the sudden disappearance of a vessel beneath a mysterious curtain of foam? The writhings of thousands of maddened fish trapped in a coffin-like area of ocean? What monsters gorged at the bottom of the Luzon Deep and what were their plans? Radar expert Terry Holt and the crew of the Esperance had to devise a weapon against the horrifying creatures.

"Storm Over Warlock" combines science fiction with fantasy, technology with witchcraft. Shann Lantee is lucky to be alive. He had snuck out of the small Terran base on the planet Warlock in the Circe system to find two artificially evolved wolverines, Taggi and his mate Togi, and bring them back to the base before anyone notices that they are missing. While he is gone, a force of Throgs, implacably hostile insectoid aliens, attacks the base and kills all of its occupants.

"The Defiant Agents" tells of an encounter between Western heroes, and the Russian Communists, and a mysterious alien race that has used time travel to alter Earth. The alien library discovered in the previous novel ("Galactic Derelict", published in 1959) proved to have locations of many unknown worlds. Finding the secure location of planet Topaz compromised, Apache operatives, including Travis Fox, are sent on an emergency trip by Earth with a mind-altering machine, Redax, that crash lands.

H. Beam Piper's "Time Crime" is part of his series of alternate history stories which concern the Paratime Police, a law enforcement outfit from a parallel world which has learned how to move between timelines. They jealously guard the secret, even as they mine other worlds for their resources. Notably, it appears that humans are in fact Martian refugees who escaped a calamity on their home planet and migrated to Earth!

"The Warlord of Mars" is a fantasy novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, part of his series about the fictional "hollow earth" land of Pellucidar. After the horrendous battle which ended with the destruction of the religion of Issus, John Carter's wife and two other women were locked in a slowly rotating prison attached to the Temple of the Sun, each of whose hundreds of cells are only open to the outside world once every year.

Tom Swift is the main character in the book series of science fiction and adventure novels that emphasize science, invention and technology. First published in 1910, the series total more than 100 volumes. The character was created by Edward Stratemeyer. Tom's adventures have been written by various ghostwriters. Most of the books are credited to the collective pseudonym Victor Appleton. Most of the various series emphasized Tom's inventions.

"The Steam Man of the Prairies" by Edward S. Ellis was the first U.S science fiction dime novel and an archetype of the "Frank Reade" series. It is one of the earliest examples of the so-called "Edisonade" genre. The novel starts with Ethan Hopkins and Mickey McSquizzle-a "Yankee" and an "Irishman"-encountering a colossal, steam-powered man in the American prairies. This steam-man was constructed by Johnny Brainerd, a teenage boy, who uses the steam-man to carry him in a carriage on various adventures.

"The Dunwich Horror" takes place in a fictional town in Massachusetts, its main hero being the distinctly not ordinarily human Wilbur, a product of a deformed albino mother and an unknown father. Strange events surround his birth and precocious development. Wilbur matures at an abnormal rate, reaching manhood within a decade. Locals shun him and his family, and animals fear and despise him (due to his odor). All the while, his sorcerer grandfather indoctrinates him into certain dark rituals and the study of witchcraft.

"Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet" is a young adult science fiction novel written by Harold L. Goodwin under the pseudonym Blake Savage. Freshly graduated and commissioned Planeteer Lt. Richard Ingalls Peter ("Rip") Foster, already contending with inter-service rivalry with the Space Force (equivalent to Navy) crewmen with whom he serves, is tasked with retrieving an asteroid made of pure thorium from the asteroid belt and bringing it to Earth for use as fissionable material.

"Islands of Space" is a science fiction novel generally credited with introducing the concepts of hyperspace and the warp drive to science fiction. The novel concerns the adventures of a trio of heroes, Arcot, Morey and Wade... "As Earth's faster-than-light spaceship hung in the void between galaxies, Arcot, Wade, Morey and Fuller could see below them, like a vast shining horizon, the mass of stars that formed their own island universe.

This work by Keith Laumer, published in 1959, stems from the classic age of science fiction! The Earth is dying from something mysterious. Humanity has to find a colony deep in space that will enable them a sufficient level of technology to fight back. Surprisingly though, almost the whole crew of the ship sent to search for the colony want go back to Earth... Will our hero, Captain Greylorn, be able to suppress the mutiny and make some kind of future for mankind?

A sci-fi novel by Edmond Hamilton, originally published in 1951. A nuclear war could cause the end of the world, but not really the way you would imagine it! An entirely new kind of atomic bomb explodes over the community of Middletown, but instead of the immediately anticipated destruction, the whole town is sent ahead millions of years into the future! The sun is dying and so is the earth. As for humanity, it will have to try its utmost in order to survive.

"We simply listened in silence; for what could we say? The facts were more eloquent than any words, and called for no commentary. Here we were, out in the middle of space; and "there" was the earth, hanging on nothing, like a summer cloud. At least we knew where we were if we didn't quite understand how we had got there."

"Operation: Outer Space" is a science fiction novel by Murray Leinster. It was first published in 1954. The novel introduces the first interstellar flight, financed by making it into a television show! In fact, this very funny work is much more of a biting satire on the world of television, the media and the rich than a regular space opera but with some elements of sci-fi still there of course.

"Shadows in Zamboula" is one of the original Conan the Cimmerian (a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian) books, first published in 1935. Its original title was "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula". The story takes place over the course of a night in the desert city of Zamboula, with political intrigue amidst streets filled with roaming cannibals. It features the character Baalpteor, one of the few humans in the Conan stories to be a physical challenge for the main Cimmerian character himself.

"Indiscretions of Archie" is a 1921 comedic novel by the British master of the genre, P. G. Wodehouse. The novel tells the story of impoverished, embarrassment-prone Archibald "Archie" Moffam (pronounced "Moom") and his difficult relationship with his art-collecting, hotel-owning, millionaire father-in-law Daniel Brewster, who is the father of Archie's new bride Lucille. Archie's attempts to ingratiate himself with Brewster only get him further into trouble. The story takes place in New York City.

When the Inter-Planetary Corporation's (IPC) crack liner, "IPV Arcturus", took off on a routine flight to Mars, it turned out to be the beginning of an unexpected and long voyage. There had been too many reports of errors in ship's flight positions from the Check Stations and brilliant physicist Dr. Percival Stevens is aboard the Arcturus on a fact-finding mission to find out what's really happening, and hopefully save the honor of the brave pilots of the space-liner Arcturus.

"Last Enemy" is a science fiction story written by H. Beam Piper, and is a part of his "Paratime" series. The title is a reference to 1 Corinthians 15:26, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." (KJV) It made its first appearance in August 1950, in Astounding Science Fiction magazine (now Analog). The story begins at a dinner party given by Garnon of Roxor. The party is a voluntary discarnation feast, or suicide party.