«Если», 1993 № 10

When Peder Forbath finds a legendary garment that endows him with undreamed-of powers, he is naturally delighted. But is Peder wearing the suit? Or is the suit wearing him…?

THE GARMENTS OF CAEAN are forbidden in the Ziode Cluster, their qualities little understood. So when Peder Forbath finds the legendary Frachonard suit on a wrecked Caeanic freighter, he immediately tries it on. To his delight he finds that the garment endows him with undreamed-of powers. But is Peder wearing the suit – or is the suit wearing him?

The alien ruins that dotted Earth’s landscape were an enigma.

Archaeologist Rond Heshke dismissed as a ridiculous hoax the photographic evidence which suggested that the ruins disobeyed the laws of time. The Titanium Legions believed that the ruins had been left behind by an invading force from space, which had been repelled in a past age and whose imminent return was feared.

It was not until the Titanium scientists perfected their time machines that the truth began to emerge piece by piece: that the builders of the ruins belonged not to the stars but to Earth’s own future, and that the dreaded confrontation was indeed shortly due - not with aliens, but in a form more horrifying, more calamitous, than anything imaginable…

For Earth was to be the victim of an extraordinary cosmic accident. Time itself was about to collide! Mankind’s leaders became even more fanatical, pressing on with new plans, determined at all costs to survive…

The sails were the product of the old technology, lost long ago in the depleted Earth, and they were priceless. For with those fantastic sheets of etheric material, ships could sail the sky and even brave the radiant tides between worlds and stars.

The alchemists who had replaced the scientists still sought the ancient secrets… and Rachad, apprentice to such a would-be wizard, learned that the key to his quest lay in a book abandoned in a Martian colonial ruin long, long ago.

But how to get to Mars ? There was one way left—take a sea vessel, caulk it airtight, steal new sails, and fly the star winds in the way of the ancient windjammers.

Here is an intriguing, unusual and colorful novel of ships that sail the stars riding before the solar breeze that blows between the worlds.

Life was not possible on that watery world except on the Hundred Islands. The Empire of Arelia ruled them all—all except one. Peldain was entirely covered with a forest so impenetrable and so deadly that all attempts to explore it were disastrous. Then a man came out of that jungle—a human—who told the Arelians that at the center of the island a secret kingdom flourished.

There was nothing for it but to organise an expedition. However deadly the alien forest might be, if one man could get out, an army could get in. So Lord Vorduthe landed and began the assault on the great green enemy.

Nobody could have foreseen the horrors with which the forest defended itself. Nobody could have foreseen the price that would be paid by Vorduthe’s men. And only Vorduthe himself would learn the incredible secret of the island… if his mind could stand it!

When empires hung on the turn of a card Cheyne Scarne was a gambler—a lucky one. What he didn’t know about randomatics wasn’t worth knowing. He had brains to get right to the heart of the Grand Wheel—the syndicate that controlled all illegal activity in the planets under human control. But what Scarne had staked to get that far was chickenfeed compared to what he would risk to get into the real big time—the massive intergalactic combine that dwarfed the empires of mere men. For Scarne, double-crossing at every deal, had laid his life on the line to win a game where no one knew the value of the cards and the rules changed with every trick!

Karl Krabbe and Boris Bouche, partners, explorers, interstellar chancers, don’t care much for the law. They don’t care much for anything—except profit. Their staff bondman nuclear engineer Roncie Northrop doesn’t care much about anything either, except that he’s already tried to abscond from the control of the rapacious and illegally operating pair once.

When K&B’s exploration ship comes upon the small planet Tenacity, they see a good business opportunity. Tenacity is waterless, a desert planet. But it had water once, and they realize that with some adroit but spectacular geological engineering it can be given its oceans back. That suits the dominant lobster-like Tlixix fine. They are tired of living like aliens in their domed refuges. Of course, the numerous intelligent species which have evolved since the great dehydration will perish, but so what? As for Roncie, whose part in the project is crucial, he doesn’t like it much, but what can he do? He’s only a bondman.

Krabbe and Bouche strike a deal, and business is business…

Robot evolution has advanced to the point that intelligent robots have liberated themselves from servitude, defending themselves from servitude, defending themselves against the humans who work to exterminate them using super-machines.

The ultimate hope of the most powerfully intelligent robots lies in the attainment of human consciousness. And they are willing to steal men’s souls if they must, to get this final elusive quality for themselves.

Only one free robot, Jasperodus, has been granted true consciousness—a soul—by his maker, now long dead. Brought into the soul research project by force, Jasperodus faces a moral dilemma: to release his secret and bring about the final downfall of humanity to a new race of super-robots, or to keep his own kind forever from the light of consciousness. And the mechanized armies of the humans press ever forward, seeking the robot hideout.

After , here is a second collection of endlessly inventive stories by Barrington J. Bayley; dark fables resounding with sombre undertones—love used as a weapon, God assassinated by the ingenuity of man, the secret of death revealed, the inexplicable explained! Tales which will be pondered on, and remembered.

The Sinners of Erspia

Together they start on a hallucinatory journey to understand and to escape from the surreal world that holds them prisoner.

This is a novel about the susceptibility of the human mind and how it adapts to the extremes of terror and delight. A novel that could only have escaped from the astounding imagination of Barrington Bayley.

WE DEMAND THAT YOU HAND OVER THE OBJECT.

Impossible. Ownership is in the hands of our clients.

HUMAN OWNERSHIP OF THE OBJECT IS NOT ADMISSIBLE. STREALL CLAIM IS ABSOLUTE. YOU WILL NOTIFY US OF WHEREABOUTS

It is already in transit.

WE WILL INTERCEPT. NOTIFY.

Your claim must be made through the courts.

HUMAN COURTS MEAN NOTHING TO THE STREALL. EITHER YOU COMPLY OR STREALL FLEETS WILL OCCUPY YOUR SYSTEM.

A NOVEL ABOUT:

The absolute ultimate weapon that can ever exist…

The sub-human who found it and tried to use it…

The beasts who manned humanity’s last star fleet…

The widening rip in the space-time continuum…

The brief cosmic empire of the pigs…

The theory of gravitational recession…

The super-samurai who served the Zen-gunner…

The colonial girl who defied the galactic empire…

And many more “nova” ideas from the author of whom Michael Moorcock said: “There is no one else to match him.”