Search Results for: moon-children,-the

An international agency, COSMOS, is in charge of space exploration in the not very distant future. Odd forms of life have been discovered on Mars, Venus, and Jupiter; there may be a life form on Mercury; and finally something utterly mystifying is discovered on the moon. Three astronauts land and examine an installation that all three perceive as radically different – one sees a heap of gold, one a fort bristling with guns, one a space platform and space craft. They return to Earth with some crystals picked up at the mystery site.

All three soon produce children – the moon children, gifted, precocious, and seemingly damned by the crystals their fathers had handled. Two are eerily beautiful, the third a grotesque monster. And the three soon discover that they are Earth’s hope for survival, as interplanetary invasion brings overwhelming alien forces to bear on mankind.

In Operation Columbus a landing was made on the Moon. But the mystery of those sinister domes that had suddenly appeared there – and of the evil grey mist that gathered so unaccountably now and then – was as far from a solution as ever. There was only one possible course of action: to establish a permanent base. And once that was decided there wasn’t much doubt that young Chris Godfrey would be sent to man it.

But this time he isn’t alone in his rocket. His old friends Serge and Norrey are with hi,’ and he’s got a new friend – young Tony whose very life may depend on the expedition’s success. In charge of the whole fantastic project is Sir Leo Frayling, cold-blooded and ruthless as ever; and, of course, Sir George Benson and Whiskers Greatrex play their part too.

A reporter, a young mother and a shadowy band of former schoolmates play out a drama to an end none of them anticipated.

Still reeling from the miscarriage that ended her marriage, columnist Kate Turner, is lashing out at anyone in her wake. Equally miserable is Laurie Moon, who defied her parents by carrying her precious son Sam to term only to place him at Rudolf Mann House because he has Down’s syndrome.

One winter afternoon Kate is escaping the city to lick her wounds. While just miles away, Laurie counts the hours till she sees Sam. Neither knows that a game has been created for them. A killing game.

The astronomers at the International Symposium were faced with an alarming discovery. An unexpectedly early solar eclipse had caused the Moon’s orbit to contract. Evidence from a hurried investigation all pointed in one direction: the Moon was drawing nearer to Earth, and in five years the two would collide and both would be destroyed.

What were the astronomers to do? They knew that once the news became public there would be a world-wide panic, and they turned for advice to Billy Gillanders, the head of the United Nations Exploration Agency. Gillanders and his deputy, Chris Godfrey, had one faint hope to offer, and it lay in the experiments of an eccentric retired professor…

After the radiation bombardment from those mysterious structures on the Moon – chronicled in The Domes of Pico – it was inevitable, of course, that a lunar landing would have to be made; and Chris thought, too, that it was inevitable that he should be chosen for the job. But things didn’t work out quite as planned. There was an American candidate for the honour of piloting the first Western rocket to the Moon; and the Russians had their own schemes for turning it into a Soviet satellite…

When Tony, Morrey and Serge were summoned by Sir Billy Gillanders to the U.N.E.X.A. headquarters they hoped they were to be sent on yet another mission to some distant planet. Instead they learned that they were to go to the moon, not as astronauts, but as detectives. Sir Billy wanted them to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances fro, Lunar City…

Those mysterious domes on the Moon – what were they? Who built them? Thanks to young Chris Godfrey and his historic rocket-flight they had been photographed from outside the atmosphere; they had been under constant observation by the world’s astronomers – but the answer was as baffling as ever. Until one day every single atomic power station on Earth suddenly and disastrously went out of action. There could only be one explanation – the extra-terrestrial radiation bombardment of appalling magnitude. And only one possible source of it: the domes of Pico.

If the ladder hadn’t slipped when Chris Godfrey was chalking up the sports results – and if Sir George Benson hadn’t been passing at that very moment – it might never have happened.

It had become imperative to fire a conscious human being into space and Sir George, who was Director of Research at Woomera, couldn’t see how it was to be done until he met Chris. Once Chris agreed, things moved fast. Whisked to London by the R.A.F., he started his training, was fitted for a G-suit, got to know the landscape of the Moon as well as he knew the school sports ground. Then on to Woomera; and, at last, into space…

They came out of the void, from Venus, only to find there was no answer to their radio signals. Earth seemed dead. And on the Moon, Man’s greatest achievement, the Lunar Military Base was a mass of rubble and blasted wreckage.

Here, the crew of the Stellar Polaris, led by Commander John Forrest, discovered one sole survivor. He was mad! To their questions he could only answer that the children had destroyed the armed might of the Military Base.

When they finally reached Earth, they found that what he had said was true. The children had taken over control of the world. But then, these were no ordinary children – and their little weapons were almost enough to overthrow the armed superiority of the Stellar Polaris herself!

From the vaults of the SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal introduction to the extraordinary work of the grandmaster of SF, Robert A. Heinlein.

This one-volume omnibus of Heinlein’s famous ‘Future History’ timeline, contains all of the stories, novellas and novels that make up one of the richest coherent narratives in all of science fiction literature. The collections and novels comprising THE PAST THROUGH TOMORROW are THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON, THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH, REVOLT IN 2100, METHUSELAH’S CHILDREN and ORPHANS OF THE SKY.