Showing results by narrator "Gabrielle de Cuir and Stefan Rudnicki" in All Categories

In this ninth volume of Glenn G. Thater’s Harbinger of Doom saga, Theta arrives at Jutenheim, hot on the heels of Korrgonn and the League of Shadows. Their fateful confrontation is fast approaching, if only they pass the Black Elf king and the ancient evils that lurk in his subterranean domain. But do the Black Elves serve the dark powers or the light?

Imagine… Ghosts, gods, and devils - heavens and hells - cities in the sky and cities beneath the sea. Time machines, spaceships - certainly you can imagine Martians, but what about interplanetary vampires? Or a mouse that isn't a mouse? Honeymoon in Hell proves that Fredric Brown has a special vision, a sight beyond our wildest nightmares, a perception of things we couldn't even begin to imagine.

These stories are set in the familiar quasi-medieval worlds to which modern listeners are accustomed, and also stories rooted in the authentic myth-constructs of high antiquity, along with several that depend for their power on the juxtaposition of fantastic situations and terribly contemporary aspects of modern life on Earth. Together these stories make up a collection which provides reassuring proof of fantasy's eternal power in this technological age.

Lord Angle Theta and his men seemed unstoppable and unbeatable, no matter the odds. But when they met their match in the swamps of storied jutenheim, Lomerian blood ran like rivers. Ector and Malcolm Eotrus had a simple duty: Keep their family's mighty fortress safe, as had their ancestors for untold centuries. They failed. Time and again, Lomerian wizards conquered challenges that brawn and brain alone could not master. But magic has a weighty price. Even the greatest sorcerers cannot escape the Wizard's Toll.

Do zombies scare the stuffing out of you? I'm not talking the slow ones that mindlessly stumble around moaning and tripping over their own feet. I'm talking fast zombies. Ones that will run you down, tear you to pieces, and eat you for supper. Ones that keep coming no matter what damage you do to them. Did any such creatures ever exist, except in people's imaginations? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. This seventh volume of the Harbinger of Doom saga reveals the truth about them.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has submitted ten of its best of 2002. Although the collection is a veritable cornucopia of styles and subjects, each story is somehow notable for its compassion and humanity.

Avram Davidson was one of the great original American writers of this century. He was erudite, cranky, Jewish, wildly creative, and sold most of his wonderful stories to pulp magazines. Now, his estate and his friends have brought together a definitive collection of his finest work, each story introduced by an SF luminary: writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, Poul Anderson, Gene Wolfe, Guy Davenport, Peter S. Beagle, Gregory Benford, Thomas M. Disch, and dozens of others. This is a volume every lover of fantasy will need to own.

At first blush, Widdershins is a conventional haunted house story involving an unsuccessful writer who moves into an empty house in hope that isolation will help his failing creativity. His sensitivity and imagination are enhanced by his seclusion, but his art, his only friend, and his sanity are all destroyed in the process. It can be interpreted as narrating the gradual possession of the protagonist by a mysterious, possessive feminine spirit, or as a realistic description of a psychotic outbreak culminating in catatonia and murder, told from the psychotic subject’s view.

From the haunted hills of Roman Britain to the sewers of occupied Warsaw … in the bloodied streets of Revolutionary Paris, and the anarchy World War II Shanghai … out of the wilds of America, India, Africa and Europe … down the long savage darkness of the centuries, monsters have fed upon us. They are shapeshifters, vampires, sorcerers and spirits—things named only in myth, and things for which we have no name. They are our demons, our reflections, our desires and our nightmares. And all too often, they are … only human.

A collection of horror stories by the iconic Charles Beaumont. When The Hunger and Other Stories first appeared in 1957, it heralded the arrival of Charles Beaumont as an important and highly original new voice in American fiction. Although he is best known today for his scripts for television and film, including several classic episodes of The Twilight Zone, Beaumont is being rediscovered as a master of weird tales, and this, his first published collection, contains some of his best.

Fairytales are a universal part of childhood. No matter what time or what place you grew up, you have at one point or another heard that classic phrase “once upon a time.” They are usually the first stories we ever hear or read. These types of tales set us up to understand the art of stories and storytelling, and they are certainly worth revisiting. Here in The Blue Fairy Book, the first of Andrew Lang’s beloved collections of classic fairy stories, you will return to the tales you already know.

Here are six stories from the January and February 2003 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, at once more current and more human than today's headlines.

Dr. Becky Sorenson has found a cache of frogs with a very high mutation rate...and some odd behaviors. Dr. David Carter’s core earth samples seem to indicate the next polar reversal will be worse than predicted. And CDC researchers Jordan and Jillian are looking at a strange new disease. When the four scientists delve deeper, they discover they are all looking at the leading edge of a sweeping magnetic polar reversal. As humanity ignores their increasingly panicked warnings, the scientists will have to fight to save everyone...if they even can.

No matter what strange forms the future takes, says Ben Bova in his introduction, crime and criminals will always be with us - and with them, the need for law enforcement. Included in this collection of short stories are the full-length novel City of Darkness and "Brillo" - the famous collaboration between Bova and Harlan Ellison.

In the Kingdom of Estala, sorcerers called the Menti are outlawed, and religious fervour spreads throughout the realm. When Reva Avalon's parents are murdered during the Menti uprising, King Davead of Estala takes her into his care. But instead of marrying Prince Luca, as the King promised, she is sold to the severe General Unna of the King's army. When she is abruptly released from his clutches, Reva embarks on a journey through Estala, with more adventure, danger, and heartbreak than she could ever have imagined. Prince Luca, the king's second son, has always lived in the shadow of his beloved older brother. Sickly and weak, Luca fears he may be on his deathbed, but in a shocking turn of events, Luca finds himself at the centre of a power so great it may consume him. Luca must learn to control his powers in order to hide them, but can he hide his new gifts of sorcery from his father?

Originally published in 1886, the nine stories in this collection encapsulate Sarah Orne Jewett’s love and reverence for nature; her affinity for understanding complex, nuanced, and often strained relationships; and—just as her father encouraged her—her ability to write not about things, but to “write the things themselves just as they are.”

It's been almost 2,000 years since the mer-shifter Skyla walked the streets of Athens - not since her heart was broken by a human man and she exchanged the land and sky for the ocean depths. Ever since, she has lived in the underwater ruins of Atlantis, studying with the priestesses of the goddess Amphitrite, refining her mermaid powers and ignoring her human half.

Aurora, Queen of the Light Fae, is a former Virtue angel sent to earth to nurture the planet in preparation for humanity. Jarvok, King of the Dark Fae, was once a nameless foot soldier from the Power Brigade angels cast down to earth to fight against the demon horde.

Nothing is as it seems to be. The ancient past is not dead. The hand of the Wizard Kings still reaches out to challenge the Androfrancine Order, to control the magick and technology that they sought to understand and claim for their own. Nebios, the boy who watched the destruction of the city of Windwir, now runs the vast deserts of the world, far from his beloved Marsh Queen. He is being hunted by strange women warriors, while his dreams are invaded by warnings from his dead father.

Dib is an Earthlike planet, only slightly smaller, with shorter days and longer years, in orbit around twin suns. On the continent of Geo, in the city of Velon in the nation of Inimata, a man lies dead in his study. In life, Professor Orno Linus was a world-class scholar: an astrophysicist, a dead-language linguist, and an expert in (and apparent true believer of) the religious concept of the Cull, i.e., the end of the world. Widely respected, nothing about Linus’s expertise suggests somebody might want him dead.