Ted
Barton is trapped in a town that is not
the Millgate,
Virginia, he was born in. In this Millgate, Ted Barton died when he was
five years old. Here figures of light and darkness stand in the sky at
the edges of town, and golems and spiders walk abroad, clay figures
brought to life under the fingers of two strange children. Is Ted
Barton himself just such a puppet or simulacrum in some cosmic rivalry?
Eye in the Sky
While
sightseeing at the Belmont Bevatron, Jack Hamilton, along with
seven others, is caught in a lab accident. When he regains
consciousness, he is in a fantasy world of Old Testament morality gone
awry—a place of instant plagues, immediate damnations, and death to all
perceived infidels. Hamilton figures out how he and his compatriots can
escape this world and return to their own, but first they must pass
through three other vividly fantastical worlds, each more perilous and
hilarious than the one before.
Time Out of Joint
The
year is 1998, although Ragle Gumm doesn’t know that. He thinks it’s
1959. He also thinks that he served in World War II, that he lives in a
quiet little community, and that he really is the world’s long-standing
champion of newspaper puzzle contests. It is only after a series of
troubling hallucinations that he begins to suspect otherwise. And once
he pursues his suspicions, he begins to see how he is the center of a
universe gone terribly awry.
Dr.
Futurity
He
had a moment of shattering, blinding
terror. One minute he'd been driving along the familiar road to
his city office, next he was hurtled centuries into the future.
In seconds he had traversed centuries. But why had the tribesmen
of the Wolf chosen him for such a grimly dangerous task? Could he
- alone in a future world - tamper with the threads of destiny?
Above all, was there a chance that he could escape the
frightening future and find his way back to his own time?
Vulcan's
Hammer
Humans
and supercomputers (Vulcan III and its supposedly obsoleted
predecessors) plot for dominance and security in a future America.
The
Man in the High
Castle
It's
America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who
still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco the I Ching is
as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the
United States lost a war -- and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany
and Japan.
The Game Players of
Titan
Except
for the Vugs, of course, Pete Garden is the best Bluff player
there is. Ever since the Red Chinese germ weapon against Titan
backfired on the human race, the vugs are here to stay, and skill at
the Monopoly-like Bluff- usually just called The Game- is a requisite
for sexual privilege and social status. But Pete Garden is unhappy, and
not just because 'Lucky' Luckman is trying to muscle his way into their
California group. Pete hasn't had any luck,
and the thought of
himself as a genetic dead end has him depressed. That's why he got
sloppy last night and lost Berkeley. Pete's luck may be about to
change...but someone is about to change the rules of The Game to
include a deadly new element...murder.
Martian Time Slip/All
We Marsmen
Arnie
Kott, head of the powerful Water Workers union on Mars, suspects
that 10-year-old autistic Manfred Steiner can see into the future.
Seeking information about real estate investments, Kott cajoles
schizophrenic Jack Bohlen to befriend the boy. Will Manfred's visions
of a deteriorated future corrupt the present?
Clans of the
Alphane
Moon
When
CIA agent Chuck Rittersdorf and his psychiatrist wife, Mary, file
for divorce, they have no idea that in a few weeks they’ll be shooting
it out on Alpha III M2, the distant moon ruled by various psychotics
liberated from a mental ward. Nor do they suspect that Chuck’s new
employer, the famous TV comedian Bunny Hentman, will also be there
aiming his own laser gun. How things came to such a darkly hilarious
pass is the subject of Clans of the Alphane Moon, an astutely shrewd
and acerbic tale that blurs all conventional distinctions between
sanity and madness.
The Simulacra
Set
in the middle of the twenty-first century, The Simulacra is the
story of an America where the whole government is a fraud and the
President is an android. Against this backdrop Dr. Superb, the sole
remaining psychotherapist, is struggling to practice in a world full of
the maladjusted. Ian Duncan is desperately in love with the first lady,
Nicole Thibideaux, who he has never met. Richard Kongrosian refuses to
see anyone because he is convinced his body odor is lethal. And the
fascistic Bertold Goltz is trying to overthrow the government.
The Unteleported Man/Lies Inc.
Nobody
would want to spend 18 years on a spaceship when you can make
the journey via teleportation in an instant. In seconds, the Telpor
effect could teleport you from an overcrowded Earth. 40 million
emigrants had found it a solution to Earth's problems of pollution and
overcrowding. But Rachmael ben Applebaum wasn't sure. Because there was
a problem with the gateway to paradise. No one had ever returned.
The
Penultimate Truth
What
if you discovered that everything you knew about the world was a lie?
It's
A. D. 2025. The world's population
lives underground in small factories called "Tanks". They are
making complex robots to fight world War 111.
Information
about the war effort comes from
a few brave politicians chancing their lives on the highly
radioactive surface.
What
the few brave politicians forget to
mention is that the war finished ten years ago. And the robots
make great servants on their thousand-acre estates.
What
they do mention is that anyone who
comes to the surface will die instantly and horribly from the
enemy's bacteria.
If
you think mankind is too advanced for
this kind of medieval oppression, read The Penultimate
Truth.
Dr. Bloodmoney
Hoppy
Harrington, a deformed mutant with telekinetic powers; Walt
Dangerfield, a selfless disc jockey stranded in a satellite circling
the globe; Dr. Bluthgeld, the megalomaniac physicist largely
responsible for the decimated state of the world; and Stuart McConchie
and Bonnie Keller, two unremarkable people bent the survival of
goodness in a world devastated by evil.
The Three Stigmata of
Palmer Eldritch
Not
too long from now, when exiles from a blistering Earth huddle
miserably in Martian colonies, the only things that make life bearable
are the drugs. Can-D "translates" those who take it into the bodies of
Barbie-like dolls. Now there's competition--a substance called Chew-Z,
marketed under the slogan: "God promises eternal life. We can deliver
it." The question is: What kind of eternity? And who--or what--is the
deliverer?
Now Wait for Last Year
Dr.
Eric Sweetscent has problems. His planet is enmeshed in an
unwinnable war. His wife is lethally addicted to a drug that whips its
users helplessly back and forth across time — and is hell-bent on
making Eric suffer along with her. And Sweetscent's newest patient is
not only the most important man on the embattled planet Earth but quite
possibly the sickest. For Secretary Gino Molinari has turned his mortal
illness into an instrument of political policy — and Eric cannot tell
if his job is to make the Male better or to keep him poised just this
side of death.
The Crack
In Space/
Cantata-140
A
repairman discovers that a hole in a faulty Jifi-scuttler leads to a
parallel world. Jim Briskin, campaigning to be the first black
president of the United States, thinks alter-Earth is the solution to
the chronic overpopulation that has seventy million people
cryogenically frozen; Tito Cravelli, a shadowy private detective, wants
to know why Dr Lurton Sands is hiding his mistress on the planet;
billionaire mutant George Walt wants to make the empty world all his
own. But when the other earth turns out to be inhabited, everything
changes.
Counter-Clock
World
The
world has entered the Hobart Phase - a vast sidereal process in
which time moves in reverse. As a result, libraries are busy
eradicating books, copulation signifies the end of pregnancy, people
greet with, 'Good-bye', and part with, 'Hello', and underneath the
world's tombstones, the dead are coming back to life. One imminent
oldborn is Anarch Peak, a vibrant religious leader whose followers
continued to flourish long after his death. His return from the dead
has such awesome implications that those who apprehend him will very
likely be those who control the fate of the world.
The Ganymede
Takeover
w/Ray Nelson
Discovering
a hitherto unsuspected intelligent species inhabiting their
solar system, the Worm-Kings of Ganymede effortlessly conquered Earth
using electronically augmented illusion technology. They did not
suspect how inventively troublesome humans could be once they
themselves got the hang of that technology...!
The Zap Gun/Operation
Plowshare
Lars
Powderdry of Wes-Bloc is the world's leading weapons fashion
designer...until a prodigy from Peep-East threatens his creative
domination. Even worse, the annoying prodigy, Lilo Topchev, is very
desirable, which is interfering with Lars's ability to drop into
trance. The situation could well spell disaster for Mr. Lars, Inc.
sexually as well as professionally, leading inevitably to Peep-East
domination of the Plowshare project.
Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep?/Blade Runner
War
had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins, bounty hunter
Rick Deckard stalked, in search of the renegade replicants who were his
prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them, he dreamed of owning the ultimate
status symbol - a live animal. Then Rick got his big assignment: to
kill six Nexus-6 targets, for a huge reward. But things were never that
simple, and Rick's life quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of
subterfuge and deceit.
Ubik
2nd Review
Glen
Runciter is dead. Or is he? Someone died in the explosion
orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is
scheduled, his mourning employees are receiving bewildering messages
from their boss. And the world around them is warping and regressing in
ways which suggest that their own time is running out. If it hasn't
already.
A Maze of Death
A
faithful reader of Spectowksy's classic How
I Rose From the Dead in My Spare Time,
ex-kibbutznik Seth Morley is not astonished when the intervention of
the Walker-on-Earth saves him and his wife, Mary, from certain death in
a defective noser, the Morbid
Chicken.
But when the Morleys
arrive to begin a new life on the colony planet, Delmak-O,
contemplation of The Book seems to offer little clue to the dilemma
facing Seth and his fellow colonists. Cut off from communication with
the outer cosmos, they must struggle against individual personal
obsessions to discover their mission; and- when the deaths begin- under
the increasing suspicion that they may be pawns in a secret government
experiment in madness...or something even more sinister.
Our Friends
From
Frolix 8
WHAT
HAD ANSWERED MANKIND'S CALL FOR HELP?
Thors
Provoni had gone to the stars to seek help for his fellow men.
So far there was no evidence that any other intelligent race existed
out there at all, let alone one willing to aid ordinary homo sapiens on
an Earth where he had become a second-class citizen. For in the 22nd
Century dominance in human affairs had passed to a cabal of genetic
freaks - telepaths, precogs, 'New Men' with IQs which went off the
scale - and ordinary men didn't have much of a chance. Suddenly a
message came from Provoni. He was coming back, miraculously, with
friends from Frolix 8 to champion the 'Old Men'. But who, or what, and
just how friendly, were these friends?
We Can Build You
Louis
Rosen and his partners sell people—ingeniously designed,
historically authentic simulacra of personages such as Edwin M. Stanton
and Abraham Lincoln. The problem is that the only prospective buyer is
a rapacious billionaire whose plans for the simulacra could land Louis
in jail. Then there's the added complication that someone—or
something—like Abraham Lincoln may not want to be sold.
Is
an electronic Lincoln any less alive than his creators? Is a
machine that cares and suffers inferior to the woman Louis loves—a
borderline psychopath who does neither?
Flow My Tears, The
Policeman Said
Jason
Taverner, idol of thirty million
viewers, wakes up one morning in a sleazy hotel bedroom and finds
himself a complete unknown (with no direction home) - the
ultimate unidentified walking object. And that's just the start
of his nightmare adventures in an American police sate of the
terrifyingly near future that makes 1984 look like the Age of
Enlightenment.
Deus Irae w/Roger
Zelazny
What
chance has Tibor McMasters - one limbless heretic - against the
awesome powers of the legendary Deus Irae, the wrathful entity behind
WWIII? Commissioned to paint the deity's likeness, Tibor must...travel
across the nightmare landscape of the post-holocaust world, braving its
terrifying mutations while his Christian companion acts on orders to
sabotage his mission.
A Scanner Darkly
Cops
and criminals have always been interdependent, but no novel has
explored that perverse symbiosis more powerfully than A
Scanner Darkly.
Bob Arctor is a dealer of the lethally addictive drug called Substance
D. Fred is the police agent assigned to tail and eventually bust him.
To do so, he has taken on the identity of a drug dealer named Bob
Arctor. And since Substance D—which Arctor takes in mammoth
doses—gradually splits the user's brain into two distinct, combative
entities, Fred doesn't realize that he is narcing on himself.
The
Man Whose Teeth
Were All Exactly Alike
He
is too excitable and too pushy. His wife drinks too much.
He may be a man of principle, but Leo Runcible of Runcible Realty
is an outsider in Carquinez, Marin County. When he gets into an
argument with his neighbour Walt Dombrosio, the resulting
ramifications follow a bizarre logic of cause and effect to lead
in entirely unexpected directions. . .
Voices From the Street
Stuart
Hadley is a young radio electronics salesman in early 1950s
Oakland, California. He has what many would consider the ideal life; a
nice house, a pretty wife, and a decent job with prospects for
advancement. Yet he still feels unfulfilled; something is missing from
his life. Hadley is an angry young manan artist, a dreamer, a screw-up.
He tries to fill his void first with drinking and sex, and then with
religious fanaticism, but nothing seems to be working, and it is
driving him crazy. He reacts to the love of his wife and the kindness
of his employer with anxiety and fear.
