Search Results for: frozen-planet

They were suspended in frozen animation billions of years ago. Now the Searcher was looking for them, scattered across the universe. Would he find them before those set on destruction could?

Between the frozen wastes of the night side and the searing inferno of the dayside, the Twilight Belt held all that was Human on the tiny world of Mercury, Hell Planet of the Solar System. A strange world, airless, subject to the alien distortions of Einsteinian mathematics, Mercury was both a promise and a challenge, for here could be found torrents of cheap power essential to the ships and men in space. Lee Correy, Commander of the Station, plunges into the frigid wastes in a desperate race against time to find and rescue both his brother and the essential component of the beam control. Fighting impossible conditions and incredible alien life he is up against the enigmatic mystery of the sand devils; a dead man who walked, and a machine that could not fail-but did.

Here is a story of the future, of the planets and the men who will colonise them, of the way they will live and the problems they will face. With mystery, adventure, exciting action and scientifically correct detail. A story of what might well be in the days to come . . .

All the known planets had been conquered and colonized. Pluto was the last – as far as man could go into space. Beyond the frozen planet lay an immeasurable gulf of light years which no man could cross in a single lifetime. But one man kept trying to find the answer.

The Colloghi Conspiracy continues the adventures of Del Curb, begun in Fraxilly Fracas. This time the self-styled hero is troubled by a frozen astronaut, a media star called Highlight Heart-throb, and the treacherous nature of the planet Colloghi.

For Ethan Frome Fortune and his musclebound sidekick Skua September, the frozen planet of Tran-ky-ky had become too much of a cold thing. Aboard their giant icerigger Slanderscree, they headed for the trading post of Brass Monkey to book a passage home.
Then fate intervened with the news that their Tran friends were being exploited by ruthless off-world profiteers. To help, Ethan and Skua – interplanetary sales team extraordinaire – must make a desperate mission to Moulokin, the fabled fortified city across the frozen seas and ringed with chilling peril…

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…

The second Ice Age came – and civilisation was buried beneath the glaciers. Then all men became barbarians. But out of the frozen chaos three cultures emerged. The Seafolk and the Rogaviki were simple, primitive people. Ranged against them was the mighty Rahidian-Barommian Empire, a nation hungry for power, eager to exploit its superior technical knowledge. If the Empire fulfilled its ambitions, its neighbours knew they would not survive. On the day of the intended conquest they must be ready to engage the powers of science in a bloody, apocalyptic struggle for the destiny of the planet.

Arcot, Wade, Morey, and their computer, Fuller, put together a ship which will travel faster than light; they gave us what may have been the first space-warp drive. The concept was simple, to make it plausible wasn’t – unless you were John W. Campbell.

With this out-of-space drive they hightail it among the stars. They locate the fugitive planets of the Black Star, find a frozen cemetery-world of a lost race, then head out for another galaxy and wind up in a knock-down-drag-out interplanetary war!

There were two: Rosslyn, the pilot, and Comain, the dreamer. Rosslyn died in space, frozen, preserved for two centuries until found and resurrected by a miracle of future surgery. Comain . . . ?

Comain remained on Earth and crystallised his dreams, and when Rosslyn returned he found a civilisation beyond his wildest imaginings. Women ruled the planet, guided solely by the automatic and relentless predictions of a tremendous and frightening machine. A machine that foretold the future and determined the actions of an entire world with devastating accuracy. Into this assured and new civilisation Rosslyn came – and the impact of his presence brought near chaos.

He had to be assimilated – or eliminated.

Honor White Jackson was a human being. But his planet was not Earth, nor his time Now. His world was dominated by a giant Iron Thorn. Beyond the reach of this tower there was supposedly, nothing – except a frozen, airless desert where huge winged beasts called Amsirs roamed.

The duty of Jackson’s caste was to hunt and kill the Amsir. And it was not until Jackson had made his first kill that he discovered the secret of his world. As the creature lay dying at his feet, Honor White Jackson partook of the fruit of knowledge. Forevermore he was committed to another life – and the bitter discovery of genius, cruelty and the human paradox.

‘We reap and we thresh; grain for half the world. We are the Grain Kings raised of old.’

They call them the Grain Kings. Gigantic mechanical monarchs of the wheat-bearing plains that were once the frozen Alaskan wastes. Whole eco-systems in themselves, they can supply the food so desperately needed by the teeming millions of our overpopulated planet. But even now, as the whole world waits in hungry suspense, the great powers battle for control of the prairies and two competing combine harvesters find they are heading on a course of collision. A collision with catastrophic consequences – not only for the hundreds of crewmen aboard each massive machine but for the future survival of all mankind.

As author and illustrator, Keith Roberts did more than most to define the look of UK science fiction magazines in the 1960s. In addition to his BFSA Award wins, he was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. He is perhaps best known for his seminal alternate history novel, Pavane, but his work covered a broad range of SF’s tropes and settings, as can be seen from the titles collected in this omnibus: The Chalk Giants, Kiteworld and The Grain Kings.

THE CHALK GIANTS: After the apocalypse the hazardous evolution of mankind continues. And in primeval response to the disaster, humanity’s solutions to catastrophe carve the harsh new world in violent patterns of magic and myth, rite and religion. Brave images scar the ancient hills, the clash of swords and the ageless power of sexuality sign-post another, bloodsoaked path to civilisation.

KITEWORLD: Powerful churches have long kept their grip on the people with a theology of fear that makes formidable demons out of the poor, weak mutants of the surrounding badlands. To ward off these specters, an elaborate, tradition-encrusted system of kites with hex signs or armed observers fly over the realm. The men of this Kite Corps, performing hazardous duty to sustain a myth, are driven to find a separate peace, to transform, if they can, disillusionment into enlightenment, to move forward from an assumption of guilt to an assumption of responsibility.

THE GRAIN KINGS: They call them The Grain Kings. Gigantic mechanical monarchs of the wheat-bearing plains that were once the frozen Alaskan wastes. Whole eco-systems in themselves, they can supply the food so desperately needed by the teeming millions of our overpopulated planet. But even now, as the whole world waits in hungry suspense, the great powers battle for control of the prairies and two competing combine harvesters find they are heading on a course of collision.