WANTED: ONE OUTLAWED SPACE PILOT!

Home, the spaceship's pilot, had been warned. "Don't forget the meteor swarm." And Home's directional calculations for the Vega Queen's course took that advice into account; the spaceship would go fifteen thousand miles out of its way to avoid those deadly celestial rocks.

But when Home went off duty, he felt himself numbed by a curious druglike leadenness. And the next thing he knew, he was in a lifeboat, speeding away from the floating wreckage of the Vega Queen.

Eighteen survivors out of one hundred and fifty-three passengers. And each one in the tiny space shell believed Home responsible . . . deliberate negligence, calculated destruction. . . .

Someone had drugged Home, he knew; someone had tampered with the ship to alter its course. But who And for what cosmic purpose

A CROWN FOR THE STAR-CROSSED

"It can't be true! It must be some kind of hoax!" These were the words that went spinning through Neil Banning's mind when the Greenville authorities told him that the house he had grown up in, the aunt and uncle who had raised him, had never existed.

So Banning found himself in jail, charged with disturbing the peace—and maybe insanity. But when a stranger from outer space came to his cell at midnight and hailed him as the Valkar of Katuun, then Banning decided that maybe the authorities were right, maybe he was crazy. Because the only alternative was to believe the impossible explanation of the Outworlder—that he really was the exiled ruler of a remote star-world, and the personality of Neil Banning was an elaborate fraud.

It didn't really matter, though, who was right. Banning was on his way to Katuun whether he liked it or not. And as Banning—or the Valkar—he would have to save that star-world from the terror of THE SUN SMASHER . . . or perish with the loyal subjects he might never even have known!

We stood petrified by horror in that foggy, stonewalled corridor, gazing cataleptically at the hideous creature whose reptilian head was rearing up from the curling white mists. Freya's slim figure had shrunk against me with a choking cry. Frey stood in front of us, his sword raised, his face wild as he looked up at the looming head.

The hideous, abnormally huge coils could only be glimpsed in the mists beyond. But the giant spade-shaped head that hung above us was clear to our appalled vision. The enormous, opaline eyes were brilliant as they stared down at us.

"The Midgard snake!" Frey whispered.

"Jarl Keith!" Freya screamed to me.

The great head of the snake Iormungandr abruptly darted toward us.

The sun shone brightly on this fateful morning, bringing to its planets warmth and life-giving rays. The brightness increased sharply as the morning grew older. The glare was blinding; the radiation not life-giving, but deadly. By mid-afternoon the brilliant, intense sun shone on barren space. It had blasted each of its four planets out of existence.

And someone had to be found who could prevent the takeover—or destruction—of the entire universe. Who Johnny Kettrick, as improbable a hero there never was. Johnny Kettrick who was banned from the Cluster World for his not-too-honest dealings was sent back there with his three equally unholy partners to search out the Doomstar . . . to find the Doomstar before it burned out another world.

Then the Sky Split Open

One moment Kenniston was strolling down the quiet street, lost in pleasant reverie. The next moment the sky split open!

It split wide open, and above them was a bum and a blaze of light—so swift, so violent, that the air itself seemed to have burst into flame.

Then there was silence—awful, suffocating silence.

Kenniston felt the chill of premonition—a shapeless terror that grew into a thing too evil to be borne alone.

THIS NOVEL DESCRIBES THE SHOCKING EXPERIENCE OF A GROUP OF ORDINARY PEOPLE, CATAPULTED BY A MYSTERIOUS EXPLOSION INTO THE TERRIFYINGLY STRANGE WORLD OF A MILLION YEARS HENCE. IT IS NOT A PROPHECY-BUT A WARNING!

Kirk Hammond was a man alone.

He had been chosen to ride in the first manned satellite to go out around the Moon and back to Earth. But when the satellite failed to orbit properly, it went on past the Moon into the vastness of outer space, and a whole world watched helplessly as he was borne toward an unthinkably lonely death.

Yet destiny decreed that Kirk Hammond should suffer, not death but a pseudo-death. And he awoke from it to find that a hundred centuries had passed and that the space age which had begun in the 20th Century had now grown into a vast galactic civilization that had carried the sons of Earth to countless stars and worlds. But, unexpectedly, the conquest of space had changed Man himself, and the human race had become not one but several species.

Hammond was plunged into the climactic struggle between the new races. And in his quest with a desperate band for the mysterious Star of Life that was the key to the struggle, in his relations with the strange and beautiful Thayn Marden who was not a human woman, in his odyssey through the mighty suns and earthly worlds of the galaxy, a man of the 20th Century found himself facing the dangers of the great space age which he himself helped pioneer.

BEASTS, MEN . . . OR ALIENS

In that hidden valley, land of strangely forbidding beauty, Eric Nelson, soldier of fortune, faced a battle weirder and more savage than any he had ever fought.

He was hired to fight for humanity, against beings that seemed to be both more and less than human.

The weapons of the enemy included centuries-old powers of magic and superstition.. :but Nelson fought grimly, even when his mind was helplessly trapped in the body of a wolf.

Then came the climactic test of his allegiance, the knowledge that more than just humanity was at stake... and the final mind-shattering discovery of the alien secret that lay buried in the Cavern of Creation!

Here is a masterpiece of sword-and-sorcery that belongs on your shelves next to those of Burroughs, Eddison, and R. E. Howard.

It meant little to young Robert Fairlie, a serious and dedicated philologist, that in this year 1966 the United States and Soviet Russia were contentious about the Moon. He had little interest in the first two rocket landings on the moon, and the bases that the two nations had built there. He knew nothing at all of the shattering discovery that the Americans had made there.

For what had been found was of such explosive potentialities that it had to be kept top-secret—the discovery that space had already been conquered long ago by races who had once spanned the stars. So that men who had expected to spend decades in reaching the nearest planet, found suddenly in their hands the way to the wider universe.

Fairlie, drawn unexpectedly because of his special knowledge into this greatest of secrets, finds that a guarded New Mexico rocket-base is only the first step of the way. That way leads out amid the unexplored stars to the lost heartworld of those space-conquerors of long ago. And it leads Fairlie and others into the appalling reality of stellar space still haunted by the past cosmic struggle whose scale in space and time dwarfs the rivalries of tiny Earth's quarreling nations.

Hail the King of Stars!

"Epic . . . lyrical . . . conceived on the grand scale," says the New York Herald Tribune. "Star-spinning allure," says The Washington Post. To which we add: "As adventurous and amazement-producing today as the day it was written."

Edmond Hamilton literally created space opera—and the flat-out weird, high-baroque far future that defines the genre. (Okay, to be truthful, we'd say he created it together with E.E. "Doc" Smith.) Yet, as formative as Hamilton's novels were, there's a richness in the world-creating combined with a sometimes downright cynical voice that keeps his tales as fresh today as ever.

"Edmond Hamilton's 'The Man Who Evolved' was the first science fiction short story to permanently impress me," Isaac Asimov famously remarked.

What was it that put a permanent dint in the young Asimov's mind

The ideas, of course!

A city blasted by a doomsday bomb into the unimaginable future—where humans must fare for themselves on a burnt-out husk of a planet! An alien archaeological site on the Moon decoded—and a galactic secret revealed. A fighter pilot drawn into Norse myth for a decidedly noir take on Ragnarok!

And the wonder-inducing concepts keep coming and coming!

These are the great Hamilton "stand-alone" novels. This mega-volume includes:

The Haunted Stars
The Valley of Creation
The Star of Life
City at World's End
Doomstar
Yank at Valhalla
The Sun Smasher
Fugitive of the Stars

Featuring art by Doug Chaffee, the entire mega-volume will be released September 15th, 2008. It will be available in the reader-friendly, unencrypted formats Webscriptions is known for. For the next 3 months, the "Best of the Rest of Hamilton" compilation will go for $20. Then the e-volume dissolves and individual ebook titles go for $4 each.

No shipping fees. No dead tree crumble. Welcome, traveler. Fate has landed you in the near-unimaginable future!

The Haunted Stars

by Edmond Hamilton

The Valley of Creation

by Edmond Hamilton

The Star of Life

by Edmond Hamilton

City at World's End

by Edmond Hamilton

Doomstar

by Edmond Hamilton

A Yank at Valhalla

by Edmond Hamilton

The Sun Smasher

by Edmond Hamilton

Fugitive of the Stars

by Edmond Hamilton

There are heroes in the mists...

. . . and ghost trees infiltrating the groves of the living.

The fabric of the world, on both sides of the keleigh, is unraveling.  The survival of the trees, the sea, and the world depend upon two wounded people -- Meripen Longeye, a Fey desperately tortured by humans; and Rebecca Beauvelley, a human enchanted and enslaved by Fey.

Can they learn to overcome their pasts to work together as Ranger and Gardener   Or will the world falter on its own cruelty

. . . Longeye is the final book in the duology begun in Duainfey.

Praise for Duainfey: 

The husband-and-wife writing team, authors of the "Liaden Universe" series (e.g., I Dare), begin a new series that blends the fantasy and romance genres in one seamless whole.
—Library Journal

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller are adept at creating characters and societies that, no matter how removed from our own experiences, seem as real as those in our own world.
—SFRevu

There are heroes in the mists...

. . . and ghost trees infiltrating the groves of the living.

The fabric of the world, on both sides of the keleigh, is unraveling.  The survival of the trees, the sea, and the world depend upon two wounded people -- Meripen Longeye, a Fey desperately tortured by humans; and Rebecca Beauvelley, a human enchanted and enslaved by Fey.

Can they learn to overcome their pasts to work together as Ranger and Gardener   Or will the world falter on its own cruelty

. . . Longeye is the final book in the duology begun in Duainfey.

Praise for Duainfey: 

The husband-and-wife writing team, authors of the "Liaden Universe" series (e.g., I Dare), begin a new series that blends the fantasy and romance genres in one seamless whole.
—Library Journal

Sharon Lee and Steve Miller are adept at creating characters and societies that, no matter how removed from our own experiences, seem as real as those in our own world.
—SFRevu

Howl Down the Galaxy!

The plan: wipe out and enslave those weed-eating, monkey-spawn humans and march on toward galactic domination!  Easy, right   Not quite.  Now the smarter Kzin see the writing on the wall and form alliances of convenience with humans.   But the battle rage on!  A strange OLD world seemingly settled by pre-Romans is about to have the honor of Kzin enslavement—unless a human and mercenary-Kzin team can stop it.  A human secret agent with wiped memories must evade a Kzin assassin until he can rediscover his mission and  save himself.  And a Kzin horde is racing toward a huge anti-matter cache in deep space as one reluctant human protector stands against this ultimate threat!

A hard-hitting, spellbinding addition to the 'Man-Kzin Wars' shared universe created by multiple New York Times best-seller, incomparable tale-spinner, and Nebula- and five-time Hugo-Award-winner, Larry Niven!

"[The Man-Kzin Wars series is] excellent . . .gripping . . .and expands well on Larry Niven's universe . . . ."
—Locus

Ideas Have Consequences – for Adventure!

Hard-SF master and renowned John W. Campbell Analog regular Christopher Anvil astounds with mind-bending ideas and their often deadly (and darkly humorous) consequences.  Morton Hommel, erstwhile Director of Banner Drug and Vitamin Laboratories, applies the science of pharmacology and the art of sweet reason to a world on the verge of a technological nervous breakdown.  These "Hommels" are Anvil at his speculative best— all edited by modern-day SF master, Eric Flint!

W200902 February 2009 Monthly Baen Bundle

Worlds

by Eric Flint

Man-Kzin Wars XII

by Larry Niven, Paul Chafe, Hal Colebatch and Matthew Harrington

Prescription for Chaos

by Christopher Anvil and Eric Flint

The Books of the Wars

by Mark Geston

Manxome Foe

by John Ringo and Travis S. Taylor

Ring of Fire II

by Eric Flint

From the Sea to the Stars

by Andre Norton

Super-science, Weirdness and Wonder!

Jack Vance. Gene Wolfe. Cordwainer Smith. If you like your SF evocative and full of amazingly bizarre ideas that recall the best of such writers, you're gonna love Mark Geston! First, the remnants of humanity attempt to build a cathedral-like spaceship to flee a devastated Earth—but are we still at the mercy of the dark forces that brought on the first apocalypse Next, it's been an 800-year battle after the invasion of Earth by transdimensional magic-users. Now humans finally grasp the secrets of thaumaturgy and are ready to turn it against their foes! Finally, a young prophet faces down a super-science Armageddon in a weirdly-baroque far future. Three Geston novels of startling imagination and strangeness, together for the first time!

"Remarkable."—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction on Mark Geston.

Flint Lights the Way to Adventure!

New York Times best-seller, master-class alternate historian, and creator of the "Ring of Fire" saga Eric Flint delivers an explosion of tales filled with well-turned action, wit and wonder.  First: a heart-wrenching saga of love, guts and daring as a husband and wife, forced into an arranged marriage, fall in love for the first time while fighting their way toward one another in the midst of an alternate Roman war.  Flint follows with stories set in David Weber's legendary "Honorverse" and Flint's own "1632" series.  It's all topped with the gem of a tongue-in-cheek sword and sorcery novella (and Writer's of the Future grand prize winner) that first announced Eric Flint's arrival on the SF scene like a cannon-shot a dawn!

The Thirty Years War continues to ravage 17th century Europe, but a new force is gathering power and influence: the Confederated Principalities of Europe, an alliance between Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and the West Virginians from the 20th century led by Mike Stearns who were hurled centuries into the past by a mysterious cosmic accident.

While the old entrenched rulers and manipulators continue to plot against this new upstart nation, everyday life goes on in Grantville, the town lost in time, with librarians, firefighters, and garbage collectors trying to make do under unusual circumstances. And what better place for an undercover spy from France than working with the garbage collectors, examining 20th century machines that others throw out and copying the technology (though he wishes one device—the paper shredder—had been left behind in the future).

There are more sinister agents at work, however. One of them, Ducos, almost succeeded in assassinating the Pope, but his plan was ruined by quick action by a few Americans. Now, the would-be assassin not only has a score to settle, but has also decided on two excellent targets: Grantville's leader Mike Stearns and his wife Rebecca. . . .

Space Opera Apotheosis!

"Edmond Hamilton's 'The Man Who Evolved' was the first science fiction short story to permanently impress me," Isaac Asimov famously remarked.

And it wasn't just Asimov. Hamilton literally created space opera—and the flat-out weird, high-baroque far future that defines the genre. (Okay, to be truthful, we'd say he created it together with E.E.

The Weapon From Beyond

by Edmond Hamilton

The Closed Worlds

by Edmond Hamilton

World of the Starwolves

by Edmond Hamilton

Crashing Suns

by Edmond Hamilton

Outside the Universe

by Edmond Hamilton

Battle for the Stars

by Edmond Hamilton

FOLLOWED IN SPACE!

The Starsong was beginning to pass between the two huge red binaries into the thicker sprawl of stars through which the channel led. The channel was not straight, and you could not take it too fast—in that swarm of suns the fabric of a ship could be torn apart in some deadly gravity drag or vaporized in collision. The only thing was that the Orionids were still following them.

But Birrel said nothing. This was Garstang's job and he let him do it. The enormous pairs of red suns flashed past them on either side and were gone, and they were in the channel. Under his feet he could feel the Starsong quiver, wincing and flinching like a live thing. On either side the overhanging cliffs of stars seemed to topple toward them. He looked upward at the nebula, like a glowing thundercloud roofing the channel, and then down at the shoaling suns below.

Garstang said flatly, "We didn't get away quite fast enough. They'll be barrelling in here after us and they'll have us in range before we ever get through the channel."

"As far as I can see," said Birrel, "we've only got one way out of it."

He looked up at the screens again, at the vast glow of the nebula overhead.

Garstang was silent for a moment. Then he said, "I hoped you wouldn't think of that."