Showing results by publisher "Spoken Realms" in Science Fiction & Fantasy

It was very simple. Some combination of low temperature and high pressure had forced something from the seepage at the ocean bottom into combination with something in the water around them. And the impregnable armor around Subatlantic Oil's drilling chamber had discovered a weakness.

Lisbeth is labouring under the delusion that she is Catherine the Great. In today's world she would be confined to an asylum. However, in the future, a more imaginative method of treating people with discordant world views has been developed. Will this therapy work in Lisbeth's case?

Professor Carver and his assistant Fred are investigating the culture of the primitive Lorayan community. The snobbish professor is ready to dismiss the Lorayans as uneducated savages until he witnesses the healing power of the locally produced sersee juice. He is very keen to accumulate a store of this remarkable restorative in order to learn how to manufacture it on Earth and become extremely wealthy. However, he soon discovers that the application of the juice can produce unexpected effects.

Though written in the 1930s, Anthem addresses controversial subjects in society that are still relevant today: equality, environment, sexism, mental health, the role of government. In revisiting this book and its many subjects, one keeps catching glimpses of understandings, and connections with our society today.

A space portal to remote colonies held by Earth is captured by a hostile species, which wants to place a toll on it. While authorities on Earth and considering whether to wage war, they manage to capture an alien spaceship, and hand it over to a group of scientists for military research. Will the scientists succeed in discovering any secrets that will give humanity the upper hand in the impending conflict?

Although Angelina McFarland loves reading fairytales, she never dreamed of falling right into one. Literally! But who is this flying boy who saved her? And why doesn't he want to grow up? Desperately trying to find a way off this cursed island, Angelina runs into a ruthless pirate. Hook captures her and keeps her trapped on the Jolly Roger to lure the flying boy out of his hiding. But is James really the heartless man she heard about? The more time Angelina spends with him alone, the more she starts to wonder who actually is the bad guy in this story... and who isn't?

The Leech was waiting for food. For millennia it had been drifting, without consciousness, across the vast emptiness of space. A planet claimed it, with other stellar debris, and the leech fell, still dead—seeming within its tough spore case. One speck of dust among many, fell to the Earth. Nourishment soaked in, permeating the spore case. It grew—and began to feed.

When on Pru'ut, you must do as the natives do—and that includes dying as they do! Finding himself trapped on a planet inhabited by an unfriendly species, Earthman James Grady is searching for an ingenious way to escape execution resulting from his breaking a local taboo.

Yorkan Varr was exiled to the prison planet for a crime he knew he had never committed. Oddly, the man who had sent him there was a prisoner too!

Thunder on the Left is a story about—but not for—children. It's a public domain mystery by one of the foremost mystery writers of the early twentieth century, Christopher Morley. The title also has nothing to do with politics. It's a story about children who make some declarations at a birthday party about growing old, only to find themselves whisked into the future for all but the last chapter of the book. Here they live the lives of adults, wanting more out of life, struggling with issues unimagined in their childhood.

Twelve years ago, my mom picked her volatile boyfriend over me, and I was gifted with an unwanted stay in a London children's home. But in six weeks, I'll be eighteen...and free! Unfortunately, one ridiculously pilfered sweater—puts me in front of a judge. And my absentee mother decides to make an appearance, too. And then somebody whispers that she has cancer. The Judge sentences me to spend some 'quality time' in France with her, and so I'm stuck laboring in the vineyards of some unknown relatives now. My escape from France, however, isn't quite as easy as I thought. Because of him. Julian.

Giant Spiders. Death Ray Guns. Personal Flyers. Cannibals. Sword Fights. From the fertile mind of Edgar Rice Burroughs comes the tale of A Fighting Man of Mars. Hadron of Hastor sets out to rescue a lovely kidnapped woman he believes he is in love with. Along the way, his adventures among the little-known ancient cities of Mars, his comradeship with a brave warrior-woman named Tavia, and their struggle together against the hordes of a cunning monarch, make for an exciting classic science fiction adventure.

The city of Parole is burning. Like Venice slipping into the sea, Parole crumbles into fire. The entire population inside has been quarantined, cut off from the rest of the world, and left to die—directly over the open flame. Eye in the Sky, a deadly and merciless police force, ensures no one escapes. Ever. All that’s keeping Parole alive is faith in the midst of horrors and death, trust in the face of desperation… and their fantastic, terrifying, and beautiful superhuman abilities.

When a Terran outpost is destroyed by the menacing insectoid Throgs, two human (and two wolverines) survivors must find a way to survive being hunted on a hostile planet. Only an unlikely alliance with the telepathic saurian inhabitants—and the wisdom to distinguish between dreams and reality—will lead them out of darkness and towards a united future.

Ulysses Paxton, mortally wounded on the battlefields of WWI France, is transported to the planet of his dreams, Barsoom (Mars). There he becomes the assistant of the Master Mind of Mars, Ras Thavas, a medical genius. Burroughs anticipated such modern marvels as organ and limb transplants, exploding bullets, anti-grav fliers, and some we haven’t yet invented! When Ras Thavas switches the brains of an evil and wizened Jeddara (queen) into the body of a gorgeous young woman, our hero vows to right the wrong. Swords and sci-fi action abound in this sixth of ERB’s Mars series.

Experience the classic tale of a young mermaid's quest for love and humanity. Rebecca H. Lee narrates this traditional Hans Christian Andersen story of magical creatures and merfolk. The story has been translated into English, but not modified from its original version, which may contain darker themes than its modern retellings.

A physics professor at the American College in Istanbul, Dave Coglan, is visited by Lieutenant Ghalil of the Istanbul Police and M. Duval, a French scholar. After much deliberation, they query if, by any chance, he has been visiting the 13th Century. At first, Coglan does not take them seriously. Along with Ghalil and Duval, however, is a 700-year-old book with notations in English that includes his name and address. Further, the book has Coghlan's fingerprints and refers to an address and a reference to killing someone.

Here, it was almost inevitable that this subject would attract the interest of H.G Wells in the batch of sci-fi novels that he wrote between 1895 and 1901. In Well's story, the vehicle is not a balloon, as in many of the previous accounts, but a sphere made of a mysterious substance, named "cavorite" after its inventor, Cavor, who accompanies the narrator, Bedford, on the trek to the moon. The ascent is made possible by the fact the "cavorite" is, in Well's words, "transparent to gravity."

In the future, Earth is ruled by women and many of the men have fled to other planets. Ferdinand is a boy on a spaceship headed to Venus where the men are said to be plentiful. He's with his older sister, Evelyn, who decided to leave Earth in search of a husband. After Ferdinand stumbles on a stowaway named Butt Lee Brown, a battle of the sexes ensues. Satire and humor abound in this tale from William Tenn.

The pompous businessman Paul Bultitude is farewelling his son who is about to set off for his first year at boarding school. Due to the action of a magical stone, the personalities of each are switched into the body of the other. The businessman is forced to relive the experiences of his schoolboy days and the boy takes charge of his father's business.