With a life as wild as his fiction, the award-winning sci-fi screenwriter and novelist serves up an “addictive” anthology of short stories (Andrew Kaplan, author of the Homeland novels). A larger-than-life character before picking up the pen, Ib Melchior fought the Nazis as a counterintelligence officer and decoded Shakespeare’s tomb. He was an actor in Paris and a Nordic student of Viking history. He honed his craft at the dawn of television’s “golden age” in the 1950s, imagining the realms beyond as a writer and director of some of the most memorable science-fiction cult films of the 1960s, including Robinson Crusoe on Mars and The Time Travelers. In this rich volume, Melchior draws on all these life experiences to deliver a literary epicurean’s smorgasbord of short fiction—historical, speculative, and visionary. One story explores a woman’s reawakening in post-war Europe; others investigate the war zones of Iraq; expose the backstage havoc of a television quiz show; and cover the life-and-death challenge in a dystopian future—and more. Melchior serves up an addendum of “desserts” in which he reveals the inspiration for each story, from the debatable identity of the Bard, to a Gestapo dog, to Hans Christian Andersen. Featuring twenty-one stories in all, Melchior À La Carte “is more than a potpourri of delicacies—it is a feast of literary delights, reminiscent of the tales told by those master storytellers, Conrad and Maugham. In short . . . Melchior’s book is a must have” (S. L. Stebel, author of Spring Thaw). “The Racer,” featured in this collection, was adapted twice for film as Death Race 2000 and Death Race. “An extraordinary storyteller . . . always provocative and wise, as he lays out the stuff of which dreams are made.” —Mann Rubin, screenwriter of The Best of Everythin
Our top-secret weapon is missing. And America’s top test pilot is missing too. Full of a fierce, obsessive will to live, Tom Darby is about to test-fire the USA’s ultimate weapon—when something goes tragically wrong. His F-15 fighter explodes in a ball of fire. He ejects into the killing heat of Death Valley. Crazed by injuries, he becomes a wild beast running for his life from unseen enemies—and from his rescuers. Even from his beautiful wife. American teams want him. So do sinister East German agents, headed by an ex-Nazi. Because they believe he possesses . . . The Marcus Device
Is another Hitler rising to power? Tom Jaeger’s war with the Nazis began the day World War II ended . . . During those last days in the bunker, Hitler and Bormann created a plan that would perpetuate the cause of Nazism long after they were dead. A small band of highly trained agents were to be planted all over the world, someday to come together and bring final glory to the Fatherland. Rudolph Kessler was one of those sleeper agents. He was letter-perfect in English, incredibly smart, and highly resourceful. All he had to do was get through the enemy lines once the war was over, make his way to the United States, and then prepare incognito for the precise moment when the worldwide Fascist movement would once again rear its ugly head. And only one man stood in his way: Tom Jaeger. Only Tom understood the lethal, far-ranging depths of this daring plan. And he couldn’t get anyone to listen—except for one woman . . .
Hitler’s desperate plot to save his longtime mistress . . . Counter Intelligence Corp agent Woody Ward uncovers evidence that it might not have been Eva Braun on Hitler’s funeral pyre. Indeed, at that very moment, Eva is being escorted along the top-secret route mapped for the escape of the Nazi elite. It is a tortuous path where disaster appears at every turn to thwart their arrival at the Italian port of Bari. Ward persuades his superiors to let him go underground and pursue Eva in an attempt to prevent her escape. The chase that ensues holds constant deadly dangers for both fugitives and pursuer, as they make their way from the eerie caves of the Harz Mountains in Germany to a startling and spectacular climax in Bari. There, a ship is waiting to carry Eva to Argentina, where she will nurture the seed of the Fourth Reich. Only CIC Agent Ward has any chance of stopping the second coming of Hitler’s Third Reich!
Hitler’s minions live in Los Angeles A brutal street killing. A tough LA cop. A faded snapshot. A poster adorned with a swastika. A cruel nightmare of bloody intrigue. A sensational thriller, violent as a burst of machine gun fire. Hitler’s evil is reborn. The Third Reich will rise again!
British Intelligence had learned on the eve of D-Day that the Nazis were racing to complete some sort of secret weapon that would threaten the destruction of the whole invasion operation . . .
It was World War II’s master weapon, and Hitler had it first. As Germany crumbled, Hitler feverishly raged against final defeat. Every qualified citizen in the Reich was committed to developing an atomic bomb. In 1945, they almost succeeded. The code name was the Haigerloch Project. The shock-a-second thriller of a brilliant scientist and a deadly spy threat to the most crucial Allied mission of the war, The Haigerloch Project is a heart-pounding race against time that explodes with more page-searing excitement than The Eagle Has Landed.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to fathom and explain what makes a film a cult film. It is not simply because of excellence in creation or production: many a cult film can be found wanting in those areas. There must be...something else. "In the 1920s, Hollywood experienced a phenomenon concerning a young actress who totally captured the interest and affection of her audiences; whenever she appeared on the screen, she was - IT. She was, of course, talented and appealing, but there was something else, and she had it. The entertainment world dubbed her - 'The IT Girl'; she even starred in a film called It (1927). Her name was Clara Bow; she was born in 1905 and died in 1965. "There is a correlation between Clara's 'IT' and the appeal of a cult film, which does not depend on the enormity of the budget or the names of the stars, but on - something else. It might be a certain innovation, uniqueness or execution - anything. But it cannot be defined, any more than Clara's 'IT.' "No motion picture is ever produced without a host of incidents and mishaps which, voluntarily or involuntarily, become an integral part of the production. In this collection of my own six cult films - the only films I can talk about with first-hand authority - I shall endeavor to give you a no-holds-barred account of the making of those films." Ib Melchior
An assassination attempt on General Eisenhower looms as agents race to take down a Nazi terrorist organization in this “undeniably exciting” thriller (The Washington Post). Written by an author with personal experience as a counterintelligence agent during World War II, Order of Battle is set during the waning days of Nazi Germany, as plans are hatched for a covert terrorist organization known as the Werewolves, meant to carry on Hitler’s legacy even in the face of defeat. High on their list of goals: the death of America’s heroic Dwight D. Eisenhower. But the secret Nazi resistance will have trouble eluding the Allied forces lying in wait for them—especially one dedicated American intelligence officer who suspects that danger lurks underground amid the chaos of a collapsing empire—in this novel inspired by real events and filled with “maximum tension” (The New York Times).
This was Ib's final screenplay. "When in 1987 I was contacted by a young German citizen who wanted me to write a book about his exploits while looking into Germany's Nazi past, to learn the truth, I declined. I have my own stories to tell, but I did consent to talk with him. And-after listening to him for a while-I said, "When do we start?" His investigations, taped interviews, narrow escapes and photographs were startling-but, were they true? Were they factual? Before I became involved I had to know. I contacted two men Frank had mentioned as being helpful to him. One was Eugene K. Bird, Col. US Army (Ret) former US Commandant, Spandau Allied Prison, West Berlin, where all the top Nazi war criminals were interred, and the second was Robert M.W. Kempner, A prominent US prosecutor in the 1945-46 Nuremberg Trials of the top Nazi war criminals. Both these men fully and unhesitatingly corroborated Frank's accounts. I wrote the book, which I called Quest, with the detailed input of Frank... ...At the time there was a certain interest in such subject matters in the film world, but "Quest" did not really lend itself to make a motion picture. A storyline had to be created without jeopardizing the original material. It took me a while to write such a script based on the tales of Frank but with a definite storyline." - from "Introduction to the Film Manuscript The Brandenburg Quest" by Ib Melchior
With a life as wild as his fiction, the award-winning sci-fi screenwriter and novelist serves up an “addictive” anthology of short stories (Andrew Kaplan, author of the Homeland novels). A larger-than-life character before picking up the pen, Ib Melchior fought the Nazis as a counterintelligence officer and decoded Shakespeare’s tomb. He was an actor in Paris and a Nordic student of Viking history. He honed his craft at the dawn of television’s “golden age” in the 1950s, imagining the realms beyond as a writer and director of some of the most memorable science-fiction cult films of the 1960s, including Robinson Crusoe on Mars and The Time Travelers. In this rich volume, Melchior draws on all these life experiences to deliver a literary epicurean’s smorgasbord of short fiction—historical, speculative, and visionary. One story explores a woman’s reawakening in post-war Europe; others investigate the war zones of Iraq; expose the backstage havoc of a television quiz show; and cover the life-and-death challenge in a dystopian future—and more. Melchior serves up an addendum of “desserts” in which he reveals the inspiration for each story, from the debatable identity of the Bard, to a Gestapo dog, to Hans Christian Andersen. Featuring twenty-one stories in all, Melchior À La Carte “is more than a potpourri of delicacies—it is a feast of literary delights, reminiscent of the tales told by those master storytellers, Conrad and Maugham. In short . . . Melchior’s book is a must have” (S. L. Stebel, author of Spring Thaw). “The Racer,” featured in this collection, was adapted twice for film as Death Race 2000 and Death Race. “An extraordinary storyteller . . . always provocative and wise, as he lays out the stuff of which dreams are made.” —Mann Rubin, screenwriter of The Best of Everythin
A manhunt in Death Valley which becomes a desperate race between U.S. officials and East German agents follows the crash landing of a test pilot who has lost his memory and whose plane was carrying a homing device for intercontinental missiles
Fire For Effect is a WWII story, but not of the ordinary kind. Based on a true incident, it involves a little known, but vitally important branch of Military Intelligence - the IPWs - Interrogators of Prisoners of War. It is the story of a battle of wits between two officers, good men both, with strong convictions, integrity and a firm sense of duty - but on opposite sides. And it concerns a potentially catastrophic event about to happen.
The jungle is wild and tropical - and a deadly hush of anticipation hangs in the humid air. A man eludes pursuit in the murky water of a swamp pool. His scant clothing ripped and torn, he is obviously exhausted - and terrorized. His face is wild with panic, and he is near collapse. Cowering in fear, he is unaware of the threat of a deadly python, approaching silently from behind. Closer and closer...
Perhaps you've encountered that strange, unsettled feeling of familiarity - haven't you been here before? Hasn't this experience already happened in exactly the same way? What if that wasn't you. What if that was your duplicate, the result of an atomic experiment that has taken an unexpected turn, creating a process that can replicate and manipulate living matter - with untold potential, but terrifying consequences.
Every one of us is the host to an almost unimaginable array of independent microscopic organisms - such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi - with which we share a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship. They have evolved along with the human species, and their survival is the key to ours. There are ten times as many of these microbial cells as human cells in the body. What if these microorganisms were sentient?
A test pilot, veteran of Desert Storm, crashes while testing a top secret military device. His injuries rob him of his memory, reducing him to the level of an animal - but an animal with the intelligence and reasoning power of a man, and the fear and desperation of a hunted beast. He leads the men who would save him on a fantastic chase through the desolate and hostile country of Death Valley, pitting animal instinct against sophisticated technology.
In the 1960's, the US Government was experimenting with something called a Cybernetic Organism - or Cyborg. A human individual, a man, who by replacing some of his organs, and substituting and adding mechanical or chemical devices or compounds, was given the capacity of existing and functioning in different atmospheres and climactic conditions. In other word, creating a man with the means to exist on other worlds.
U.S. intelligence officers set out to stop the Werewolves, Hitler's secret terrorist organization, whose ultimate goal is the assassination of General Eisenhower
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