Search Worlds Without End

Tad Dameron's assignment was routine enough: escort Bjonn, the alien from Farhome on the final leg of his journey to Earth--and learn what he could about the alien's culture.

But from the beginning Dameron realized that there was something strange and ominous about Bjonn--something in his eyes and the way he spoke, even the way he held himself, that forewarned of danger.

Then Bjonn was gone, slipped away to mingle with Earth's teeming millions, and with him the beautiful Dian, Dameron's woman. When next he surfaced, Bjonn was heading a new religion--one which threatened to subvert all humanly. Dameron found himself embarked upon the most dangerous, most isolating job of his career in an attempt to halt the...

ALIEN MENACE

For untold centuries humanity had dreamed of realities like these.

- An ideal agrarian community, run by women and ruled by love and harmony.

- A city state that mirrored history's most famous utopian vision.

- A society aglow with the wit and style that only Regency England had briefly achieved.

All were real. All were flourishing. All were waiting to astound and entrap four space voyagers from Earth who had violated all odds by landing on this unknown planet, and who now broke all laws to learn the terrifying secret of -

FORBIDDEN WORLD

As a newly minted graduate of space school, Paul lands space station duty and is given the tricky and dangerous assignment of salvaging defunct satellites. But there's more up there than anyone bargained for...

One minute I was in New York... walking down Sixth Avenue, a private eye on a two-bit job... Next minute I was in New York... a crazy town I almost recognized--but Goebbels was speaking in Union Square, Hitler invited me to a cocktail party, and aliens from outer space were running the whole show. Fun City it wasn't...

Plucked from his own 'time', a pawn in a Galactic power play, Ron Archer fights his way through a deadly maze of intrigue and conspiracy to an incredible destiny at the end of the star lanes!

You are riding home from work on the subway. There is a jolt - and as you fall against your neighbour you discover - he is a manikin.

You investigate. The entire train is filled with manikins. Are there no humans in this world...?

You approach a door. There is only an opaque blackness on the other side. You are wary. You put through only one arm. It disappears completely. You are curious. You must find out what lies beyond.

You walk through the door into the void...

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1965. The story can also be found in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF (2009) edited by Mike Ashley.

Larry is home from grad school to work on his father's project to save the world from starvation, and finds himself the target of a plot to sabotage the whole project and kill them all...

The Altar on Asconel

Whether or not he had wanted to turn back at the last minute, he couldn't have - the wave of dirty, hungry people carried him helplessly along in their fervour reach the temple. Like dope addicts, he told himself, they don't even care about themselves, only about the thing that is inside the temple!

He remembered the day ten years ago when his older brother had been made a Warden of Asconel, a prosperous and happy planet, and he and his other brothers had left in the interests of their people. Now they returned to a world where a fanatical cult had usurped the Warden's chair, and men and women were offering themselves up as human sacrifices to Belizuek - whoever or whatever that being from beyond the galaxy was...

I'll find out, he told himself grimly, when I enter these doors...

Android Avenger

All of a sudden I was moving faster than usual. The other passengers standing on the subway platform seemed rooted to their places. It took me only seconds to reach the top of the six flights of stairs, and then I was out of the station and moving down Fulton Street at better than forty miles an hour!

What was happening to me? It was as though I were the helpless passenger in a runaway car. Something else had assumed control and was guiding me.

My body turned into an office building and raced down the corridor to a room where a man was sitting at a console. He'd begun to swing around in his chair when my mouth opened, and a thin, blood-red ray shot out, cleaving the man from head to abdomen.

Then it was over. My mouth closed, and I stood there, stunned. Up to today I was Bob Tanner, an average, sane Citizen. Now what was I, man or murder machine?

The dream of being a superman came true for Max Quest - and immediately turned into a nightmare.

He was not alone. There were Others with extraordinary powers, and the last thing they wanted was another superman on Earth - especially one working for good instead of evil.

They couldn't kill him. But they could send him... elsewhere.

Elsewhere was the viciously hostile world of Qanar, where Max's powers didn't work and sorcery was a more potent weapon than science, where shadows were as menacing as steel. Max Quest still had to save Earth from the corrupt threat of the Others - but he found his destiny intricately linked with that of Qanar as well. And somewhere in space-time was his lost love.

TWO PATHS TO ARMAGEDDON

Two valiant humans: swashbuckling Elron and the Sorceress Shannara... two implacably evil "Others"... two kinds of weapons with which to fight... and many kinds of doom awaiting an entire world if the battle is lost!

Again Ted White takes us to the strange, paradoxical world of Qanar, where a weird age-old magic exists as everyday reality, side by side with the remnants of an equally ancient but less understood science. The alien "Others" are making a new bid to take over the planet... and only the noble Elron stands against them. But not entirely alone after he meets the beautiful Shannara, and she adds her limited psionic powers to his great strength to vanquish the enemy. Together they share an outstanding Odyssey - through unpredictable matter transmitters and over treacherous terrain - to reach a hair-raising climax... IN THIS GREAT SEQUEL TO PHOENIX PRIME!

Makstarn was ugly, an outcast in the midst of the beautiful people of his tribe. Where they were tall and slender, he was short and squat. Where they were golden, touched with the beauty of the dawn, he was black and hairy... and hated by those of his own generation. It little mattered that the Elders respected him for what he was... and for what his father, Max Quest, had been; the young were all that mattered.

And their hatred drove him at last from the tribe, and on an impossible journey in search of the memory of his father... and in search of his own manhood.