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“Heard of you?” The princess spoke with a great weariness. “We hear about all the adventurers of the galaxy. So far all have failed. You will fail too. I know it – but I must go on trying to find the prince. When you are dead and scattered into the atoms we shall find another strong man and try again.

One day, perhaps, we shall succeed. Maybe you will, but I doubt it. You too will be destroyed like all the others.”

With these words of confidence ringing in his ears, Big Bill Jarrett was sent out on an impossible journey – one he knew could kill him if he went, and would kill him if he didn’t.

Man has already entered space and lived to tell the tale. Science Fiction is on the verge of being overtaken by science fact. Tomorrow is here . . . today. The space age is no longer the dream of the writer or the hope of the scientist. It has already dawned.

Man is galloping towards the stars. The roaring hoofs of the rockets are beating out the trail to Infinity. There will be no turning back. Boundless possibilities stretch out before us. Endless opportunities beckon us. Will we use them for good or ill?

Space holds a million unknown factors. We are like children plunging into a vast ocean and striking out bravely for an unseen shore, the shore of the unexplored land. As we swim into the future we tell ourselves stories about the wonders that lie ahead of us. This is one of those stories.

Coming in fast and low, the huge ship made planetfall. Three years out from Terra, the colony ship Omega had reached her destination, and the crew began to off-load the cargo and passengers.

Then the ship vanished.

Against the vast panorama of an unexplored universe, Keith Laumer sets this first volume of the history of the world called Colmar – mankind’s first venture among the stars.

Mercury is slowly dying. Each year its air grows thinner. Each month thousands of broken Mercurians are ordered to leave their planet.

They have only one hope. Captain Future, the Solar System’s most daring agent, has promised to restore their world – a next to impossible task.

The solution lies beyond the stars…at the very core of the universe where no man has ventured before. There, in the shadow of doom, Captain Future meets the mightiest of all evil beings – creatures he may not live to describe…

As the final ship of Project Starseed makes its landing on the dead star, the colonists venture out to search the area, only to discover something shocking hidden in the ice.

Lucius Shepard is a grand master of dark fantasy, famed for his baroque yet utterly contemporary visions of existential subversion and hallucinatory collapse. In Dagger Key, his fifth major story collection, Shepard confronts hard-bitten loners and self-deceiving operators with the shadowy emptiness within themselves and the insinuating darkness without, to ends sardonic and terrifying. The stories in this book, including six novellas, are:


“Stars Seen Through Stone” – in a small Pennsylvania town, mediocrity suddenly blossoms into genius; but at what terrible cost?


“Emerald Street Expansions” – in near-future Seattle, echoes of the life of a medieval French poet hint at either reincarnation or a dire conspiracy.


“Limbo” – a retired criminal on the run from the Mafia encounters ghosts, and much worse, on the shores of a haunted lake.


“Liar’s House” – in the grip of the legendary dragon Griaule, destiny is a treacherous and transformative thing.


“Dead Monty” – a small-time New Orleans criminal ventures outside his proper territory, and poker and voudoun conspire to bring him down.


“Dinner at Baldassaro’s” – a gang of immortals debates the future in an Italian resort, only for events to outrun any of their expectations.


“Abimagique” – a glib college loser falls in love with a witch, becoming an involuntary part of a world-saving – or world-destroying – magical ritual.


“The Lepidopertrist” – a small boy on a Caribbean island witnesses the creation of preternatural beings by a Yankee wizard…


“Dagger Key” – off the coast of Belize, the ghost of a famous pirate seems to control a spiral of murder and intrigue; or is someone else responsible?