Before his death in 2002, Dr. Lloyd Biggle, Jr. compiled a list of his early science fiction stories that he considered his finest works. His children, Kenneth Lloyd Biggle and Donna Biggle Emerson, have meticulously transcribed them from their original magazine and anthology publications and assembled this great "best of" collection -- plus one previously unpublished work, "Alien By Any Other Name." Included in this volume are: BEACHHEAD IN UTOPIA HORNET'S NEST MATING INSTINCT THE MADDER THEY COME TRAVELING SALESMAN ESIDARAP OT PIRT DNUOR LESSON IN BIOLOGY ON THE DOUBLE THEY LIVE FOREVER WHO STEALS MY MIND... AN ALIEN BY ANY OTHER NAME And if you enjoy this volume, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see all the 175+ other entries in this great series, covering science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, westerns, classics -- and much, much more!
Before his death in 2002, Dr. Lloyd Biggle, Jr. compiled a list of his early science fiction stories that he considered his finest works. His children, Kenneth Lloyd Biggle and Donna Biggle Emerson, have meticulously transcribed them from their original magazine and anthology publications and assembled this great "best of" collection -- plus one previously unpublished work, "Alien By Any Other Name." Included in this volume are: BEACHHEAD IN UTOPIA HORNET'S NEST MATING INSTINCT THE MADDER THEY COME TRAVELING SALESMAN ESIDARAP OT PIRT DNUOR LESSON IN BIOLOGY ON THE DOUBLE THEY LIVE FOREVER WHO STEALS MY MIND... AN ALIEN BY ANY OTHER NAME And if you enjoy this volume, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see all the 175+ other entries in this great series, covering science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, westerns, classics -- and much, much more!
Lloyd Biggie is not only a writer, but also a musician. In THE METALLIC MUSE he has included seven science fiction stories, written over several years, all of which in some way relate to the arts. Thoroughly entertaining and provocative, many of the stories explore the intricate relationship between life and art, and all of them contain very pertinent ideas about present and future experience. Superbly demonstrating their author's depth of insight to the human condition, they offer to all who read them an intriguing blend of accurate analysis and sometimes devastating speculation.
This volume collects 9 classic science fiction stories by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Included are: "The Rule of the Door," "Petty Larceny," "On the Dotted Line," "Judgement Day," "Secret Weapon," "The Perfect Punishment," "A Slight Case of Limbo," "D.F.C.," and "Wings of Song." Also included is the original 1967 introduction by the author. In "The Rule of the Door": The owner had a positive mania for closets and doors. Along one entire wall of that spacious living room were closets, large, window-less closets. Their doors were structural monstrosities, fully two feet thick, that functioned strangely. They were hung with a strange type of hinge none of the carpenters had ever seen before. And the doors opened inward. Who ever heard of a closet with a door that opened inward? There were eleven of them, and the central closet was left unfinished and doorless...
Sweeping through the Small Magellanic Cloud, leaving a trail of ravished worlds and destroyed civilization, is the Udef -- the Unidentified Death Force. The best scientific minds of two galaxies can make nothing of it. The Udef is invisible. No scientific instrument can detect its presence. The only marks of its passing are the screams of its victims and the piles of dead left in its wake. Momentarily safe on the world of Montura, Jan Darzek's strategy against the Udeffalters. He and his assistant Effie have been ordered there by a supreme computer -- that isn't telling why. There is nothing to do on Montura but frantically wheel and deal in its spectacular interworld trading market. Supreme has also sent a perplexed Dr. Malina Darr from Earth, whose apparent purpose is to cure an unknown disease in an alien life form no one has ever seen ... The three of them must content with a mad mixture of Montura's mysterious race of natives, the melange of self-serving life forms in the marketplace, and the Kloatraz -- the universe's strangest "living" computer -- while the Udef comes ever closer to wiping out every intelligent life form in the universe. Somehow it must be stopped before no one is left to fight it.
Branoff IV is a planet famous for its aristocratic culture and mistreatment of its indigenous population. When Cedd Farrari and a team of Cultural Survey experts are sent to Branoff IV to help bring about a shift to democratic goverment, the world seems an ideal candidate for political change. But all is not as it seems... A thrilling science fiction novel from the author of All the Colors of Darkness!
The patrol car swerved, came to a halt; Ron Webber opened his eyes and looked about dazedly: "Where are we?" "Municipal Hospital," the officer said. The ceremony was brief: the sheet was raised, and Webber glanced and nodded: "It's him. It's Frank..." Webber performs background checks for insurance companies, alongside his best friend, Frank Milford. Now Frank's dead, and so's the young woman whom he was investigating. Ron wants to know why, and teams up with Homicide Lieut. Robert Hendricks to search for answers. But Ron's father, Chief of Police in Carter City, objects to his son playing detective. As the body count mounts, Ron suddenly realizes he's on his own! A thrilling mystery novel by a first-rate storyteller--now published for the very first time!
His name was Vladislav Kuznetsov, and he had been a twenty-one-year-old student at Mount Harwell College in Mount Harwell, Ohio. On a Friday afternoon, March 24, 2001, he succumbed to a sudden attack of spring fever and cut his classes for a stroll in a public park near the campus. Even after fifty years and several hundred centuries, he remembered it as vividly as though it had happened an hour before. It was a warm, fresh day with a promise of spring--the first really pleasant day of the year after the usual vagaries of a midwest winter. He strolled leisurely through the park, thinking with shameless delight of the stuffy classrooms he was avoiding. Eventually he seated himself on a patch of greening grass with a convenient tree to lean against and enjoyed the soft breeze and the peaceful surroundings while he absently whittled on a twig he had picked up. He felt sleepy. Probably he dozed off. Then came a tremendous jerk, like having a chair pulled from under him at the same instant that a truck hit him, and he almost lost consciousness. He landed with a painful bump and skidded for a short distance along a very rough wood floor. For a moment he sat gazing about him dazedly. He had been abruptly translated from his seat on the ground in a pleasant park on a lovely spring day to a seat on a wood floor in a large, dim room with a thunderstorm raging outside. He had a distinct impression that the two scenes had been linked by an earthquake. He tried hard to focus his thoughts, staring first at a table where a candle burned brightly and then at an animal tied to one of the table's legs by a short leash. It was a hairy pig. He raised his eyes to the room's two small, water-streaked windows and saw nothing beyond but branches swaying in a strong wind...
The IPR Bureau (whose motto is "Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny") works to bring newly discovered planets up to the point where they have a planetary democratic government and then induct them into the galactic federation. Unfortunately, the planet Furnil offers problems. The continent of Kurr has a well-entrenched monarchy, and the citizens seem little inclined to change. In fact, they immerse themselves in art rather than politics...and have been doing so for more than 400 years! So what's a poor IPR agent to do...? Classic science fiction!
?My missing person did not hunt, fish, or engage in any type of sport that one would do in a Louisiana fishing village. And after a cursory look at what was called Pointe Nueve, I doubted a decent antique could be found to buy in the entire collection of rusty, metal-roofed buildings. At least I knew not to expect to find a body there. The alligators would have taken care of that weeks ago. OK, so I can be wrong once in a while...? Louisiana antique dealer Marc DeVarney, a well-respected businessman, has suddenly gone missing, and J. Pletcher and Raina Lambert, investigative consultants, are hired by his family to locate the man--or his remains. Their quest sends them scurrying through the area around New Orleans, from the wealthy mansions of the Garden District to the swamps and bayous of small, nearby fishing villages. With the aid of a unique cast of New Orleans characters, including a licensed witch, a game warden, local ?royalty,? a brilliant attorney, flea market vendors, and assorted street people, they must sort through a myriad of deceptions to confront the twisted evil secrets of the past. A marvelously evocative mystery thriller.
Sinister, invisible forces of a secret mental weapon known only as The Dark are threatening the entire Primores galaxy, several transmitting leaps away from Earth. By the time a bizarre Mr. Smith comes to detective Jan Darzek's New York office, whole planets have been lain waste. Darzek is offered a million dollars by Smith to accept a job that will almost certainly be fatal: identify the incredible power that is about to overwhelm the few remaining planets in the beleagered galaxy, so that these worlds might somehow halt the rampage. A superb science fiction novel by a master of the genre!
The top drawer of the second cabinet felt empty as she began to pull it open, but she never saw its interior. The floor dropped from under her. As she fell, she clutched wildly at the handle of the cabinet’s drawer, but her grip had been too loose. It slipped through her fingers, and for an instant she fell into nothingness. Then she landed on a steep incline of smooth metal. Her feet hit first and instantly shot out from under her, and she fell backward with a thud that stunned her. She caught a glimpse of a trap door closing over her head as she slid rapidly down the incline into darkness." A-Z Publications has provided Adelle Gernyan with a great salary and office but the mundane work assigned her doesn’t merit such treatment. Annoying colleagues, spying maintenance men and a mysterious boss add to the puzzle of her strange job. Adelle’s boredom changes to terror when she is trapped under her office building with her fellow employees. Subjected to hunger, sleep deprivation, deadly traps and the horrors of armed attack, Adelle doesn’t know that she has become part of a vicious experiment on the human mind labeled only as “The Telo-um Test”... a test with death as its final grade. This is a griping suspense story from an acknowledged master of mystery and science fiction, Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
The object arrived without warning, tearing a spiral path of devastation across the rural landscape. After the explotion, searchers sifted through the immense pile of debris ... to discover a fantastically instrumented capsule, and a strangely human pilot, stone dead. Bowden Karvel's theory, that the capsule's port of origin lay in the distant future, seemed a plausible explanation. But while investigating, the capsule was accidentally dispatched again through time ... only to reappear with an alien navigator, this time destroying a small French town. One thing seemed imperative: a human operator must man the intricate controls of the capsule, riding it forward to its mysterious point of origin. And Bowden Karvel seemed the perfect choice to make the trip...
The year was 1900, the place was London, and the night, an unusually warm one for September, began and ended with horrors. I was caught up in them almost without warning as I turned into a narrow, poorly lit, cobbled lane and instinctively slowed my pace. Ahead of me, where the passage took a sudden bend to the right, a small gas lamp glowed feebly, and its uncertain, wavering light produced oddly distorted shadows." "Byways to Evil" takes the reader through the rich atmosphere of turn-of-the-century London, from the drawing rooms of the wealthy and titled to the dim shadows of narrow lanes populated by London's poor, as detective extraordinaire Lady Sara and her "secretary" Colin Quick search for the solution to a series of horrendous murders and baffling robberies. Lady Sara's giant cribbage board, her “Byways to Evil” twists and turns as much as their distorted clues as the murderers and thieves elude discovery. Plotted by a master storyteller, full of details of turn-of-the century life and crime, this is a satisfying period mystery.
In the first place, Grandfather Rastin never should have bought that house in Wiston. It happened several years ago, when he was only about seventy-eight, but even so he was old enough to know better. He admits that himself. In the second place, he should have asked his tenants for references. He did buy the house, and he didn't ask for references, and that's where the trouble started... Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (1923-2002) is most famous as a science-fiction writer who used genuine science while emphasizing human and cultural elements, especially art and music (he held a Ph.D. in Musicology.) His detective stories about Grandfather Bill Rastin in the fictitious Borg County, Michigan show this emphasis on the human element in a nostalgic, Norman Rockwell-esque world.
Twenty agents of the Galactic Sythesis are missing on the Silent Planet of Kamm -- the victims, it seems, of the most powerful death ray the universe has ever known. But how could the primitive technology of the Kammians have produced such a weapon? And why would they unleashed its power against the Sythesis? It's Jan Darzek's mission to find out...
This volume collects 9 classic science fiction stories by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Included are: "The Rule of the Door," "Petty Larceny," "On the Dotted Line," "Judgement Day," "Secret Weapon," "The Perfect Punishment," "A Slight Case of Limbo," "D.F.C.," and "Wings of Song." Also included is the original 1967 introduction by the author. In "The Rule of the Door": The owner had a positive mania for closets and doors. Along one entire wall of that spacious living room were closets, large, window-less closets. Their doors were structural monstrosities, fully two feet thick, that functioned strangely. They were hung with a strange type of hinge none of the carpenters had ever seen before. And the doors opened inward. Who ever heard of a closet with a door that opened inward? There were eleven of them, and the central closet was left unfinished and doorless...
To the paradise world of Langri comes H. Harlow Wembling, a ruthless billionaire promoter. He obtains Langri and begins construction to make money. The only weapon the matives have to face Wembling and Company is the legacy of Cern Obrien. He devised a plan and taught the natives. Now is the time to use it.
The 14th Science Fiction MEGAPACK® collects 28 science fiction stories, 1 novel, and interviews with Larry Niven and Joe W. Haldeman. Included are: A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER INTERVIEW WITH LARRY NIVEN INTERVIEW WITH JOE W. HALDEMAN THE AUTUMN VISITORS, by Frank Belknap Long ADVANCE AGENT, by Christopher Anvil INNOCENT AT LARGE, by Poul and Karen Anderson A COLD NIGHT FOR CRYING, by Milton Lesser ESCAPE VELOCITY, by Charles L. Fontenay FIRST STAGE: MOON, by Dick Hetschel GAMES, by Katherine MacLean INFINITY’S CHILD, by Charles V. DeVet JUNGLE IN THE SKY, by Milton Lesser LITTLE BOY, by Harry Neal MIRACLE BY PRICE, by Irving E. Cox, Jr. NO GREAT MAGIC, by Fritz Leiber PEACE, by Norman Arkawy and Stanley Henig QUICKIE, by Milton Lesser SPATIAL DELIVERY, by Randall Garrett STAR PERFORMER, by Robert J. Shea STUDENT BODY, by F. L. Wallace IT TAKES A THIEF, by Walter Miller, Jr. DANGEROUS TECHNOLOGY, by Kenneth Lloyd Biggle TELEMPATHY, by Vance Simonds RESURRECTION SEVEN, by Stephen Marlowe THE CREATURE INSIDE, by Jack Sharkey THE DEMI-URGE, by Thomas M. Disch THE HERMIT OF MARS, by Stephen Bartholomew THE LONELY, by Judith Merril THE PLANET WITH NO NIGHTMARE, by Jim Harmon THE EARTH QUARTER, by Damon Knight OUR TOWN, by Jerome Bixby THE ANGRY ESPERS, by Lloyd Biggle Jr.
The IPR Bureau (whose motto is "Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny") works to bring newly discovered planets up to the point where they have a planetary democratic government and then induct them into the galactic federation. Unfortunately, the planet Furnil offers problems. The continent of Kurr has a well-entrenched monarchy, and the citizens seem little inclined to change. In fact, they immerse themselves in art rather than politics...and have been doing so for more than 400 years! So what's a poor IPR agent to do...?
Sweeping through the Small Magellanic Cloud, leaving a trail of ravished worlds and destroyed civilization, is the Udef -- the Unidentified Death Force. The best scientific minds of two galaxies can make nothing of it. The Udef is invisible. No scientific instrument can detect its presence. The only marks of its passing are the screams of its victims and the piles of dead left in its wake. Momentarily safe on the world of Montura, Jan Darzek's strategy against the Udeffalters. He and his assistant Effie have been ordered there by a supreme computer -- that isn't telling why. There is nothing to do on Montura but frantically wheel and deal in its spectacular interworld trading market. Supreme has also sent a perplexed Dr. Malina Darr from Earth, whose apparent purpose is to cure an unknown disease in an alien life form no one has ever seen ... The three of them must content with a mad mixture of Montura's mysterious race of natives, the melange of self-serving life forms in the marketplace, and the Kloatraz -- the universe's strangest "living" computer -- while the Udef comes ever closer to wiping out every intelligent life form in the universe. Somehow it must be stopped before no one is left to fight it.
The top drawer of the second cabinet felt empty as she began to pull it open, but she never saw its interior. The floor dropped from under her. As she fell, she clutched wildly at the handle of the cabinet's drawer, but her grip had been too loose. It slipped through her fingers, and for an instant she fell into nothingness. Then she landed on a steep incline of smooth metal. Her feet hit first and instantly shot out from under her, and she fell backward with a thud that stunned her. She caught a glimpse of a trap door closing over her head as she slid rapidly down the incline into darkness." A-Z Publications has provided Adelle Gernyan with a great salary and office but the mundane work assigned her doesn't merit such treatment. Annoying colleagues, spying maintenance men and a mysterious boss add to the puzzle of her strange job. Adelle's boredom changes to terror when she is trapped under her office building with her fellow employees. Subjected to hunger, sleep deprivation, deadly traps and the horrors of armed attack, Adelle doesn't know that she has become part of a vicious experiment on the human mind labeled only as "The Telo-um Test..". a test with death as its final grade. This is a griping suspense story from an acknowledged master of mystery and science fiction, Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
?My missing person did not hunt, fish, or engage in any type of sport that one would do in a Louisiana fishing village. And after a cursory look at what was called Pointe Nueve, I doubted a decent antique could be found to buy in the entire collection of rusty, metal-roofed buildings. At least I knew not to expect to find a body there. The alligators would have taken care of that weeks ago. OK, so I can be wrong once in a while...? Louisiana antique dealer Marc DeVarney, a well-respected businessman, has suddenly gone missing, and J. Pletcher and Raina Lambert, investigative consultants, are hired by his family to locate the man--or his remains. Their quest sends them scurrying through the area around New Orleans, from the wealthy mansions of the Garden District to the swamps and bayous of small, nearby fishing villages. With the aid of a unique cast of New Orleans characters, including a licensed witch, a game warden, local ?royalty,? a brilliant attorney, flea market vendors, and assorted street people, they must sort through a myriad of deceptions to confront the twisted evil secrets of the past. A marvelously evocative mystery thriller.
Twenty agents of the Galactic Sythesis are missing on the Silent Planet of Kamm -- the victims, it seems, of the most powerful death ray the universe has ever known. But how could the primitive technology of the Kammians have produced such a weapon? And why would they unleashed its power against the Sythesis? It's Jan Darzek's mission to find out...
Fifty years after the nearly total annihilation of Earth by war and disease, three agents of the galactic federation set out to reopen contact with the closed world and reestablish trade with the planet's shattered civilization
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