The Margaret St. Clair Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

The Margaret St. Clair Science Fiction MEGAPACK®
Author: Margaret St. Clair
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Total Pages: 101
Release: 2021-08-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1479462306

"Startlingly original!" —Ramsey Campbell Margaret St. Clair (1911–1995) was an American fantasy and science fiction author who published about 130 stories in the pulps, mostly in the 1950s. She also wrote eight novels, four of which were published in the Ace Double series. St. Clair's pioneering role as a woman writing science fiction was noted by Eric Leif Davin in his book Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965. This collection assembles six great tales: FLOWERING EVIL GARDEN OF EVIL RETURN ENGAGEMENT THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT THE DANCERS THE VANDERLARK

The Best of Margaret St Clair

The Best of Margaret St Clair
Author: Margaret St Clair
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2017-03-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1473214610

Margaret St Clair is best known for her shorter science fiction and fantasy, much of the latter written under the pen name of Idris Seabright. She has a remarkably ironic sense of humor, and many of her stories have social or philosophical themes. Contents: Idris' Pig (1964) The Gardener (1949) Child of Void (1949) Hathor's Pets (1950) The Pillows (1950) The Listening Child (1950) Brightness Falls from the Air (1951) The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles (1951) The Causes (1952) An Egg a Month from All Over (1952) Prott (1953) New Ritual (1953) Brenda (1954) Short in the Chest (1954) Horrer Howce (1956) The Wines of Earth (1957) The Invested Libido (1958) The Nuse Man (1960) An Old-Fashioned Bird Christmas (1961) Wryneck, Draw Me (1980)

Black Cat Weekly #69

Black Cat Weekly #69
Author: Peter Lovesey
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Total Pages: 703
Release: 2022-12-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1667660853

Our 69th issue is being put together in the chaos of the holiday season. It’s hard, but the team always manages to pull things together at the last minute! So I’ll just say best wishes from everyone at Wildside and Black Cat Weekly…Michael Bracken, Barb Goffman, Sam Hogan, Darrell Schweitzer, Cynthia Ward, Karl Wurf, and me. And I will note that we have two original stories this issue, by Phyllis Ann Karr and James A. Hearn, along with our usual mix of classics and modern tales. And some manage to fit neatly into both mystery and the fantastic categories (see the contents list below.) Here’s this issue’s lineup: Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure: “The Third Wish,” by James A. Hearn [Michael Bracken Presents short story] “Where There’s Fire,” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery] “Bertie and the Christmas Tree,” by Peter Lovesey [Barb Goffman Presents short story] “The 1961 Twelve,” by James Holding [short story] “For Safe Deposit,” by Hal Meredith [short story] The Rider of the Mohave, by James Fellom [novel] “The Hammering Man,” by Edwin Balmer and William B. MacHarg [short story] Science Fiction & Fantasy: “The Third Wish,” by James A. Hearn [Michael Bracken Presents short story] “The Hammering Man,” by Edwin Balmer and William B. MacHarg [short story] “Not-Quite-Living Treasure,” by Phyllis Ann Karr [short story] “Come Home from Earth,” by Edmond Hamilton [short story] “Piety,” by Margaret St. Clair [short story] Planet Explorer, by Murray Leinster [novel]

Sign of the Labrys

Sign of the Labrys
Author: Margaret St. Clair
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2016-11-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0486804100

Like others who withstood the pandemic, Sam Sewell lives in a subterranean shelter. The vast catacombs were built before the military's biological weapon leaked out, killing nine out of ten people and leaving the survivors so traumatized that they can barely tolerate each other's company. So it's quite peculiar that some government agents seem to think that Sam lives with a woman, Despoina, who's suspected of conducting germ warfare. Pressured by the agents to locate Despoina, Sam must literally go underground to discover the truth about a hidden world of witchcraft and secret rituals. This Wiccan-themed science fiction novel was cited by Gary Gygax as an inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons. Enthusiasts of the role-playing game will recognize the forerunner of Castle Greyhawk and its labyrinthine setting of multiple levels connected by secret passages. Other readers will savor the fantasy on its own terms, as the poetic recounting of an otherworldly mystery.

Rocket Science

Rocket Science
Author: Ian Sales
Publisher:
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2012
Genre: Science fiction
ISBN: 9781907553035

Rocket Science is a collection of 17 original stories of hard science fiction, accompanied by 5 original non-fiction essays on space exploration. Too much science fiction seems to rely on magical technology or trivialises the astonishing size and wonder of the real universe. Though it is difficult, dangerous and expensive to get into space, the rewards for doing so more than outweigh any risk or cost. It may even prove to be the human race's only hope of survival. Given all that, science fiction's predilection for action-adventure stories set in galactic empires does feel like a squandering of the genre's potential. The stories and essays in Rocket Science are about the real world, either now or in the future. They are about real science - not just rocket science, but also quantum physics, genetics, computer science... They are not just stories of exploration, but family dramas, love triangles, alternate histories, hubris...

Different Class

Different Class
Author: Joanne Harris
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2017-01-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501155512

Originally published: Great Britain: Doubleday, 2016.

Death Do Us Part

Death Do Us Part
Author: Robert Silverberg
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Total Pages: 20
Release: 2020-01-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1479445002

This modern classic of science fiction—first published in 1996—has been reprinted more than 15 more times since its original appearance, including in a Year's Best volume. * * * * It was her first, his seventh. She was 32, he was 363: the good old April/September number. They honeymooned in Venice, Nairobi, the Malaysia Pleasure Dome, and one of the posh L-5 resorts, a shimmering glassy sphere with round-the-clock sunlight and waterfalls that tumbled like cascades of diamonds, and then they came home to his lovely sky-house suspended on tremulous guy-wires a thousand meters above the Pacific to begin the everyday part of their life together. Her friends couldn’t get over it. “He’s ten times your age!” they would exclaim. “How could you possibly want anybody that old?”

The Wheel Spins

The Wheel Spins
Author: Ethel Lina White
Publisher: DigiCat
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2022-11-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

The Wheel Spins is the novel about young and bright Iris Carr, who is on her way back to England after spending a holiday somewhere in the Balkans. After she is left alone by her friends, Iris catches the train for Trieste and finds company in Miss Froy, chatty elderly English woman. When she wakes up from a short nap, she discovers that her elderly travelling companion seems to have disappeared from the train. After her fellow passengers deny ever having seen the elderly lady, the young woman is on the verge of her nerves. She is helped by a young English traveler, and the two proceed to search the train for clues to the old woman's disappearance. Ethel Lina White (1876-1944) was a British crime writer, best known for her novel The Wheel Spins, on which the Alfred Hitchcock film, The Lady Vanishes, was based.

The Abbot's Tale

The Abbot's Tale
Author: Conn Iggulden
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2018-05-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1681778084

In the year 937, the new king of England, a grandson of Alfred the Great, readies himself to go to war in the north. His dream of a united kingdom of all England will stand or fall on one field—on the passage of a single day. At his side is the priest Dunstan of Glastonbury, full of ambition and wit (perhaps enough to damn his soul). His talents will take him from the villages of Wessex to the royal court, to the hills of Rome—from exile to exaltation. Through Dunstan’s vision, by his guiding hand, England will either come together as one great country or fall back into anarchy and misrule . . . From one of our finest historical writers, The Abbott’s Tale is an intimate portrait of a priest and performer, a visionary, a traitor and confessor to kings—the man who can change the fate of England.