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We call it a gismo.
That’s right, a gismo.

A bit difficult to describe. Like a cross, I suppose, without the top part. Sort of two arms on a stand.

What happens is this. You hang something on one arm. Anything at all. A watch, a bracelet, money, anything. I supposed you could hang a locomotive on, only it’s a bit heavy.

But anyway you hang something on and there on the opposite arm appears an exact replica. And I mean exact.

You can’t tell the difference.

So nobody need make anything any more. What you need you hang on the gismo. No work. No want. No starvation. No nothing.

When you’ve got a gismo, you’ve got everything.

On trial is young tearaway Ian Tanner, accused of the accidental but reckless hit-and-run killing of his own buddy. What really happened? The answer involves a ruthless gang, a gang that nearly disposes of yet another victim before Detective Constable Patrick Bramley figures it all out.

Meanwhile the judge is facing a personal predicament so closely associated with the case itself that he doubts whether he should proceed …

‘Excellent’ Current Crime

Clay Burden married his wife Rhonda because he was tired of being on his own. Val had walked out on him – and if he couldn’t have Val, maybe marriage might make him forget her. Six years later, working in Paradise City, Clay meets Val again. Married to the sinister Henry Vidal, she’s changed: still beautiful and passionate, still compelling, but tense and nervous and driven by odd fears and anxieties.

When Clay leaves his job and joins the Vidal empire, what begins as a sneaking feeling of unease hardens into stone cold certainty. Val must be released from the hypnotic influence exerted over her by her husband – even if Clay has to murder to set her free …

Once again Kemlo and his friends find themselves in the thick of a plot – a plot to overthrow the complete organisation of the Satellite. And they are not up against anything they can understand.

These mysterious black-suited men who are not men, but who can do with the utmost efficiency anything they are told, cause considerable, and not unwarranted, alarm on Satellite K.

Frank Wimble never doubted his ability to do anything he wanted. When he set out to commit the perfect murder he was entirely confident.

When his wife vanishes the locals all assume Wimble has done it, especially when he starts to go around with his young mistress. But with no body and no evidence the police can’t do much. They can’t do anything, in fact, until Wimble gets unlucky and a most damning piece of evidence suddenly appears. But is it enough to convict Wimble at trial?

He was designed to be the perfect man. And at first the experiment seemed a success. John Shaw – the product of secret government research into enhanced intelligence – was from birth far beyond anything human. Brilliant and charismatic, John could have been anything he wanted – except that which he longed for more than anything. To be normal.


So John created Benjamin: an alternative persona, a way of coping with people who hated what they could not understand. He was everything that John wasn’t – but now those very differences are killing him. Benjamin has become the dominant personality, more and more often in control. John’s altered body has left his mind at risk – and unless he can discover the truth that will fuse both parts together, both he and Benjamin will die.


Robert Charles Wilson spins one of his most stirring, tightly woven tales with The Divide. Reminiscent of Flowers for Algernon, it is at once an adventure story and a sensitive look at the consequences of man’s actions – and of one man’s quite literal search for himself.

He’s the perfect Spaceship Trooper: big, strong, and completely brainwashed. He’s the perfect hero: willing to do almost anything to save his neck (perhaps one of the only body parts that’s still his own.)

Bill is in the hospital, vainly hoping for a real foot to replace the satyr’s foot he’s been lumbered with. Not that he has anything against satyrs – at least not until one grabs him by the foot and pulls him under the ocean. Into a world of unspeakable and endless pleasures! Roaming this dimension of primordial desires, Bill faces dragons and gunslingers for the sake of true love – and a really good beer!

Kainui is one of a pair of double planets circling a pair of binary stars. Mike Hoani has come there to study the languarge of the colonists. But Kainui is an ocean planet, covered in water 1700 miles deep, with no solid ground anywhere. The population is scattered in cities on floating artificial islands with no fixed locations. The atmosphere isn’t breathable, and lightning, water-spouts, and tsunamis are constant. Out on the great planetary ocean, self-sufficiency is crucial, and far from any floating city, on a small working-family ship, anything can happen. Mike’s academic research turns into an exotic nautical adventure unlike anything he could have imagined.

D. D. Harriman is a billionaire with a dream: the dream of Space for All Mankind. The method? Anything that works. Maybe, in fact, Harriman goes too far.

But he will give us the stars…

In McAdam City, Kentucky, people are fed up with big government interfering with their lives, telling them what they can’t do, sticking its nose into their private business, trying to keep them from protecting their legitimate interests from Uncle Sam.
When an invisible barrier is put up to protect McAdam City, everything changes. This “silicone shell” is impervious to anything the army can throw against it. People are dying for the cause of personal freedom in this small Kentucky town, but they’ve finally found a way to fight big government with a digital technology greater than anything in the government’s vast arsenal.
Can one small town declare its independence from the United States?
With the silicone dagger poised at the throat of the republic, just maybe…

BILL – the perfect Starship Trooper: big, brawny, and brainwashed. Possessor of two right arms (impressive when it comes to saluting) and a foot that is threatening to turn into something more suited to being an umbrella stand than anything that could be squeezed into a size 11 sneaker.



BILL – a perfect recruit for the good ship Bounty, bound for the Chinger war and carrying a cargo of as nice a company of homicidal misfits and maniacs as you could wish to meet outside of a penitentiary asylum (which is where they’ve just come from).



BILL, THE GALACTIC HERO – he’s back, he’s bad and about to meet the most hideous alien lifeform of his entire career. He’d do anything to save his skin without rocking the boat – but mutiny? On the Bounty?

And through the shimmering gates they left for us, there are stars beyond stars: universes to be discovered on a voyage more awesome, an adventure more incredible, than anything humankind has ever dared to dream before!

Two novellas by an author who has earned a reputation for original and imaginative writing, with a spark-bladed humour that is unlike anything ever written.

Contents:

Where have You been Sandaliotis?
The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeney

Tattooed on a woman-sized tumour, these tales, told to it as bedtime stories, are by turns surreal, satiric, erotic, obscene, ingenious, hilarious, and quite, quite brilliant. Together, they combine to create a weird and wonderful love story, unlike anything told before.

Karl Krabbe and Boris Bouche, partners, explorers, interstellar chancers, don’t care much for the law. They don’t care much for anything – except profit. Their staff bondman nuclear engineer Roncie Northrop doesn’t care much about anything either, except that he’s already tried to abscond from the control of the rapacious and illegally operating pair once.

When K&B’s exploration ship comes upon the small planet Tenacity, they see a good business opportunity. Tenacity is waterless, a desert planet. But it had water once, and they realize that with some adroit but spectacular geological engineering it can be given its oceans back. That suits the dominant lobster-like Tlixix fine. They are tired of living like aliens in their domed refuges. Of course, the numerous intelligent species which have evolved since the great dehydration will perish, but so what? As for Roncie, whose part in the project is crucial, he doesn’t like it much, but what can he do? He’s only a bondman.

Krabbe and Bouche strike a deal, and business is business…

The Last Transaction is a deep and fascinating glimpse into the memories, inner compulsions, torments, triumphs, and events in the life of a President of the United States in a world gone mad, from 1980 to 1985. Even more, it is a perceptive vision of the major issues our society will face tomorrow. Sure to be a controversial, possibly prophetic, like anything Barry Malzberg writes, this novel is an experience you will not forget.

It was the highest and most coveted award of all time. It was given only to the bravest among those defending Earth from the mysterious Kradens. Many had sacrificed their lives for it. The current bearer of the medal became the idol of all mankind – a man above the law, a man who would never want for anything. Everyone on Earth sought that medal. One man was going to cheat to win it – and live to regret it.

Brilliant government scientist Richard Seaton discovers a remarkable faster-than-light fuel that will power his interstellar spaceship, The Skylark.
His ruthless rival, Marc DuQuesne, and the sinister World Steel Corporation will do anything to get their hands on the fuel.

When they kidnap Seaton’s fiancee and friends, they unleash a furious pursuit and ignite a burning desire for revenge that will propel The Skylark across the galaxy and back.

VOLKHAVAAR is a novel of witchcraft and wonders on a world far removed from those we know. Here the gods contend for power – the Dark forces against the Light – and here an entire city and its land is plunged into the shadow of an eil beyond anything conceivable.

It is the story of Shaina the slave girl and of Volk the outcast who enslaved himself to cosmic forces to gain total power – and of how they were finally to meet and flash – with an entire world as their prize.

The Tavona and its crew of intrepid heroes, led by Tiger Clinton, are back and exploring the galaxy once again.

On a routine trip to Mars, a chance visit to a new planetoid leads to kidnap! Another planet is populated entirely by identical twins. Even simple streams are not as they appear, and everything holds hidden and unexpected dangers.

Using their wits, their skills, and with the help of friends made on their travels, Tiger Clinton and his team are ready to face anything – and they’ll have to!

Boston landlady Harriet Sutton discovers a note about a conspiracy to murder someone – a note that must have come from one of her tenants.

When a tenant is murdered, she asks psychiatrist-sleuth Dr Basil Willing to investigate. Her son, a Vietnam veteran whom the police consider a victim of combat fatigue who may be capable of anything, is under suspicion. And as the mystery unfolds, Harriet Sutton tries desperately to prove them wrong.

Thief, criminal and probably a coward, would Hyson have had the courage to kill himself or did someone catch up with him? Did his death have anything to do with Mrs Telford, who committed suicide shortly before?

The Inspector, anticipating a routine investigation, finds conflicting stories, poison pen letters, and damning information about Hyson. It takes Sir Clinton Driffield to untangle the case and prove that the cast-iron alibi is the one which should arouse suspicion.

Bertha Cool was in a flap. The distinguished Mr Homer Breckinridge had been waiting twenty minutes for Donald Lam to make an appearance, and around Mr Breckinridge was the heady aroma of C-A-S-H.

Then Donald appeared and in no time found himself hired to investigate an insurance claim. ‘Such nice, safe, respectable work’, purred Bertha, ‘and it’s up for grabs.’

But it didn’t take Donald long to find out he was anything but safe and that he was the one up for grabs …