Search Results for: city

Classic police procedural by a ‘born storyteller’ (Sunday Times), who combined natural flair with his experience in the police to truly authentic effect.

Hell is a City is the first of Maurice Procter’s Inspector Martineau series and was made into taut, fast-paced film in 1959 by Hammer Studios, set against the grimy back streets and rain-streaked bright lights of Manchester.

When hardened criminal Don Starling escapes from jail, killing a prison guard in the process, Inspector Philip Martineau knows he will stop at nothing to make good his escape. The two men have known each other since childhood, and Starling blames Martineau for his incarceration a decade earlier. As the story hurtles to its conclusion, the two men meet in a final, violent confrontation.

Life on the moon under anything less than optimal conditions had always been a nightmare, and as Joe Kenmore and his colleague, Moreau, drove back to the City On The Moon on that day the Earth shuttle was due to land, the nearby mountain supporting critical elements of the shuttle’s landing mechanisms crumbled causing an avalanche and resulting in chaos.

Optimal conditions were no where in sight that day and as Kenmore and Moreau’s investigations lead to their conclusion that explosions had been responsible for the avalanche. Now they realized that they were in a race against the clock to restore the landing beam before the shuttle had reached it’s point of no return prior to landing.

Kenmore had more than strictly humanitarian reasons for wanting to prevent a mishap aboard the shuttle that day, because on this particular mission, Arlene Gray was aboard. Kenmore had been anxiously awaiting her arrival, and now his love’s life might hang in the balance.

Pinnacle City is many things to many people. To some it is a glittering metropolis, a symbol of prosperity watched over by the all-star superhero team, the Pinnacle City Guardians. Beyond the glitz and glamour, there is another city, one still feeling the physical and economic damage of the superhero-villain battles of generations past. The lower class, immigrants, criminals, aliens, sorcerers, and non-humans alike call this city home, looking to make a living, which is becoming increasingly difficult as the two sides of the city seem prepared to boil over into a violent conflict.
Private investigator Eddie Enriquez, born with the ability to read the histories of objects by touch, still bears the scars of his time as a youthful minion for a low-level supervillain, followed by stints in prison and the military. Though now trying to live a straight-and-narrow life, he supports a drinking problem and painkiller addiction by using his powers to track down insurance cheats. When a mysterious woman enters his office asking him to investigate the death of prominent non-human rights activist Quentin Julian, a crime the police and heroes are ignoring, he takes the case in the hopes of doing something good.
Superhero Kimberly Kline has just hit it big, graduating from her team of young heroes to the Pinnacle City Guardians with the new codename of Solar Flare. With good looks, powers that include flight, energy manipulation, superhuman strength, durability, and speed, as well as a good family name, the sky is the limit for her. Upbeat, optimistic, and perhaps a little naïve from the upper-crust life she was raised in, she hopes to make her family, and the world, proud by being the greatest superhero she can be . . . but things aren’t always as they seem.

An all-powerful computer takes control of a great metropolis as a man and a woman are drawn into a love affair that may save – or destroy – their world.

As the sun gleamed off the gilded domes of Videssos the city, Abivard, marshal of Makuran and son of Godarz, pondered the impossible. How could he carry out the command of Sharbaraz, King of Kings, to destroy the invincible Empire of Videssos?
Then, against all expectations, the Emperor of Videssos invaded Makuran itself. Abivard was thrust on the defensive, forced homeward to drive the invaders from the fabled land of the Thousand Cities.
Abivard needed not only his greatest battle skills but his most powerful magicians, for no one doubted that Videssian military strategy would be accompanied by the finest sorcery. Yet even as reality reversed itself and renegades plotted Abivard’s ruin, the undaunted warrior vowed never to surrender…

“My lover, my protector, my friend, my doctor, my brother – they’re all killing me.”
Peter Roos cannot help knowing the thoughts of those around him. A rare physical condition has given him that power. Now he has “heard” about the government’s secret plan to give up control of America to the military – to build an underground city for themselves in the event of a nuclear attack. Unfortunately for Roos, the government knows he knows. And the project’s sponsors – including his senator brother – have no choice.
They must get him out of the way – permanently!

In a governmental Punishment and Protection centre, Charge Nurse Landon is wondering why one of the new inductees seems familiar. Meanwhile Chief Inspector Duncan is driving home from a stakeout in Liverpool. When the two men’s destinies meet, the result is a complex mystery with a political edge.

For countless years the enigmatic city of Klagan had rested beneath the racing moons of ancient Mars. Forbidden, guarded, sheltered in the cup of the Blue Mountains and surrounded by waterless desert. It rested there, a place of a thousand rumours and whispered fantasies, and gave birth to muttered tales of incredible wealth and riches.

To this city came Halmar, the guide; Lorna, the dancer from Venus; and the man called Smith. Defying the ban of the Terran Authorities, the fanatical Drylanders, and the harsh desert, they reached the crystal walls of the strange city. There they found a tremendous mystery, the deserted artefacts of a vanquished civilisation – and found themselves snared in an incredible trap.

For Klagan was more than a city. It was. . .
What it was and how the intrepid adventurers solved the incredible secret of the mysterious city makes this an exciting tale of science and plausible speculation, action and human motivations.

The most expensive, the most luxurious resort in the history of man. Where no request, no whim or pleasure, was denied. Where anything was possible – for a price.

SATELLITE CITY

The haven and the playground of only the very rich and the most powerful. It was the most amazing pleasure complex ever built – and it looked down on the Earth from an orbit 22,000 miles high.

Yet, for all its glitter, there was something ominous about Satellite City – no nation or international body had any jurisdiction there, it was a law unto itself; no one knew who owned it; or what went on within its secret council rooms.

Until one man penetrated the wall of secrecy and discovered satellite city’s hidden masters.

The Million Cities covered every inch of Earth’s surface with a gleaming metal skin – and penetrated almost to the planet’s core. Billions of people crowded them, using up the last depleted resources of an aging world. There was no hope for mankind but exploring and colonizing new frontiers beyond the sky.

The Chartists were the only people with the ability to build a spaceship -were within reach of success…

And then the government outlawed space travel – and began a vicious reign of terror against the Chartists!

Teenage camera operator Alfonso Petrov joins a research mission bound for the edge of the solar system. But survival becomes another mission when the research team’s tiny spacecraft strays into the Fiction Dimension. A madcap tale blending classic science fiction with Gothic horror.

‘She is unique. She is legend’ THE TIMES

‘A tour de force’ EVENING STANDARD

‘A wonderfully mordant analyst of human weakness’ Martin Amis

Earth, like the rest of the Known Worlds, has fallen to the Shing. Scattered here and there, small groups of humans live in a state of semi-barbarism. They have lost the skills, science and knowledge that had been Earth’s in the golden age of the League of Worlds, and whenever a colony of humans tries to rekindle the embers of a half-forgotten technology, the Shing, with their strange, mindlying power, crush them out. There is one man who can stand against the malign Shing, but he is an alien with amber eyes and must first prove to paranoid humanity that he himself is not a creature of the Shing.

Ciudad de Vados was the pride of Latin America – a gleaming city of the future where only ten years before there had been barren rock and wasteland.

But Vados had problems. When Boyd Hakluyt was called in, his brief seemed simple: reroute the traffic to drive out the shanty towns that disfigured the city. It was an easy job – until Hakluyt found himself unwillingly involved in a web of deadly political rivalries. Then came the first murder . . .

Hakluyt started getting answers to questions he hadn’t asked. Too many people got too interested in him. And the pattern that started emerging was sinister, terrifying – and almost unbelievable . . .

First published in 1965.

From the opening reared a head, wide, flat, huge. Below it stretched a body beautiful with iridescent scales of gold edged with ruby. Nictitating membranes lifted over enormous eyes, deep, limpid pools of ancient wisdom, catching and reflecting the light of the miniature sun, turning the glowing orb into a scatter of stars shimmering in an ebon sea. From open jaws a forked tongue flickered with a soft susurration. Its scent was dry, acrid, tinged with that of living fur on a summer’s day. The head rose higher, swaying over the three men on the ledge, the sinuous length of the body almost filling the passage through which it had come. From it radiated an impression of incredible age.

“A serpent,” whispered Thagamista. “A creature from the beginning of time. Somehow surviving to find this place and feast on those who well here. It was inevitable they should think it a god.”

THE SLEEPING CITY continues the dynamic saga of the Chronicles of Malkar, E.C. Tubb’s newest fantasy hero!

In Veritas, people have been conditioned to always tell the truth, no matter how unnerving the truth may be. Jack Sperry must learn to lie in order to save his son in this witty science fiction novella. Recipient of a 1992 Nebula Award.

A rich and joyous collection of tales of myth, magic and necromancy, by authors ancient and modern – all the way from the anonymous chronicler of perhaps the oldest of written fantasies – the Sumarian Angalta Kigalshe – to Anatole France and his Merrie Tales of Jacques Tournebroche. Here you will find extracts from the Egyptian Book of Thoth, from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso from Voltaire, Alfred Noyes, and many more – a veritable feast of fantasy.

MARS: THE SKULL OF A PLANET PICKED CLEAN BY THE WIND OF TIME

North Beyond the desert of Meroe, past the ancient cliffs of the dust-locked continents, past the dry wharfs of a city that was old when Earth was new, the caravan crept into the unmapped waste called Umbra. It was into this shadowed land that the lost nation of the People had ridden and vanished-in a time beyond memory. It was here that the outworlder Ryker followed the golden-eyed Valarda and found the Child-of-Stars.

The magician’s eyes gleamed with emerald hellfires as he looked at the council of nine.

“Let us enact upon Thongor of Valkarth the most terrible punishment conceivable to the human intelligence…the eternal slavery of the soul to Chaos.”

If the curse is carried out, Thongor’s body and soul will suffer throughout eternity. But much more than only Thongor’s fate is at stake. The Magicians of Zaar plan the conquest of the whole of Lemuria – and only Thongor stands in their way.

Can Thongor’s mighty sword keep his world from being enslaved by the sinister servants of Chaos?

Far, far Upriver, where knowledge failed and fable ruled, in a frozen land of demons and monsters, the City of the Dead stood guard over a great treasure.

Now the Mai, Delta-dwellers of the planet Horseye, as befitted a race of busy traders and merchants, had a great respect and love for wealth. But, a prudent species, they knew also that danger was, well, dangerous. So their thoughts turned to the Humanx couple, Lyra and Etienne Redowl, impatiently waiting permission to explore the planet.

Suddenly bureaucracy was benign, permits permitted and their epic voyage up the most spectacular river chasm in the whole Humanx Commonwealth was underway…

These 15 works from the Nebula Award winner and Hugo and World Fantasy Awards nominee, Michael Bishop, previously appeared in Omni, Asimov’s The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and other magazines and anthologies between 1981 and 1996.

Jeremy Dodge knew the Earth would face starvation if it were not for the new science of “aquaculture”. With the world’s population numbering many billions, only the extra food being cultivated on the bottom of the sea could feed everyone.

But, like the rest of the surface-dwellers, Jeremy did not know what a vicious monopoly underwater cultivation had become. That is, until the dreadful moment when he himself was kidnapped and dragged beneath the depths.

And there he was to learn that just making his own escape would not be enough – he would have to save mankind from the tyranny of a new race of water-breathing human monsters!

The war was over. The great computer which had arranged and directed the complex military operations of that future nation was to be dismantled. But the computer had become expert in the science of self-defence…and it resisted.
The government buildings were blasted. Rockets rained on the great city, and the Empire of Toromon, the first great hope of humanity after the millennia of radiation wreckage, faced disaster at the hands of a super-scientific monster of its own creation.
But, unknown even to Toromon’s desperate leaders, was the fact that behind the berserk computer lurked the unearthly mind of a real enemy – a foe from the most distant realm of space, intent on making the Earth the first victim of galactic conquest.

The Empire of Toromon had finally declared war. The attacks on its planes had been nothing compared to the final insult – the kidnapping of the Crown Prince.

But how would the members of this civilisation – one of the few that survived the Great Fire – get beyond the deadly radiation barrier, behind which the enemy lay? And assuming they got beyond the barrier, how would they deal with that enemy – the Lord of the Flames – whose very presence was unknown to the people among whom he lived?

Tarzan cared little for the fate of adventurer Brian Gregory, drawn to the legendary city of Ashair by the rumor of the Father of Diamonds, the world’s hugest gem. But to the ape-man the tie of friendship was unbreakable, and Paul d’Arnot’s pleas moved him to agree to guide the expedition Gregory’s father and sister organized for his rescue. The enigmatic Atan Thome was also obsessed with the Father of Diamonds, and planted agents in the Gregory safari to spy out its route and sabotage its efforts. Both parties reached their goal, remote Ashair . . . as prisoners of its priests, doomed to die in loathsome rites.