With the publication, in the July 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, of the story Seesaw, van Vogt began unfolding the complex tale of the oppressive Empire of Isher and the mysterious Weapon Shops. This volume, The Weapon Shops of Isher, includes the first three parts of the saga and introduces perhaps the most famous political slogan of science fiction: The Right to Buy Weapons is the Right to Be Free. Born at the height of Nazi conquest, the Isher stories suggested that ...

From its first publication as a serial in Astounding Science Fiction magazine in 1940, Slan was acclaimed by readers as one of, if not THE, novel of Golden Age science fiction. Telling the story of Jommy Cross, a young slan, and his quest to discover his father's legacy as well as to find others like him, while fleeing from a repressive dictatorship, Slan was both a ground-breaking SF novel, and perhaps the first Young Adult paranormal adventure.At the opening of the novel, Jommy i...

A. E. van Vogt: Science Fantasy's Icon presents a study of select works by van Vogt and some limited biographical data. The main thrust of this book is to explain how, and why, van Vogt's various real life interests were often included in his fiction and nonfiction. Van Vogt went to work immediately after finishing high school in Canada, but he devoted the rest of his life to self-education. Van Vogt believed that his eye sight could be improved by using the William Bates trai...

The alien was deadly, dangerous and inhuman—but he was not the most feared enemy on the ship!Lesbee recognized that his plan to take control of the ship had been discovered. But what other options did he have? What else could he do? And then, of course, there were the aliens that they all had to deal with.

Five stories. Five very different excursions into the imaginative worlds of vintage science fiction, where interplanetary conflict, deadly mysteries, strange technology, and unexpected twists are waiting.Battle of the Solar System by Ray Cummings launches into a sweeping adventure on a cosmic scale, carrying readers into a future where danger stretches across the planets and the stakes could not be higher.The Grip of Death by Robert Bloch b...

Featuring North America’s foremost thriller authors, Thriller is the first collection of pure thriller stories ever published. Offering up heart-pumping tales of suspense in all its guises are thirty-two of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning names in the business. From the signature characters that made such authors as David Morrell and John Lescroart famous to four of the hottest new voices in the genre, this blockbuster will tantalize and terrify.LOCK THE DO...

Earth is about to become a feeding ground for the Dreeghs, vampire aliens who need the blood of humans to survive . . . William Leigh, a reporter hot on the trail of a strange murder that looks like the victim was drained of blood, meets a young woman who claims to have information . . . After she holds a device in front of his face and flashes a light, Leigh forgets all that he has seen, and she loads him on her spaceship and transports him to the asteroid where she lives. He's her best h...

A swashbuckling pirate yarn with a twist; no, a time-travel yarn with aliens causing the time dilation. All that and more; a fun read from beginning to end. Captain Nathan Fletcher, a British aristocrat-turned-pirate, is bent on his usual pursuits in the Caribbean: overtaking vessels, stealing cargo, tossing women prisoners overboard. The arrival of a mysterious “cabin boy” from out of the high seas is taken in stride, but when the Orinda is overtaken and boarded by a group of robots, it’s...

In 1939, World War II had just begun and the Nazis were advancing on all fronts. Fantasy, as a literature, was a rare and not well understood form, mostly confined to short works of horror or drawn from mythology. In that year, the very successful science fiction editor of Astounding Stories magazine, John W. Campbell, launched a sister publication Unknown (later Unknown Worlds). He encouraged his top authors such as Robert Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, L. Sprague de Camp, Jack WIlliamson, Theo...

Identity theft, multi-layer interlocking conspiracies, and mind control. Who can you trust?With the unhappy task of bringing the verdict of the Council – death in one week’s time for sedition – to his friend, scientist Wade Trask, David Marin agrees to meet Trask at his lab. Too late he realizes he knew too little about his friend, and too little about Trask’s experiments; Marin awakes to find his consciousness transferred into the body of Wade Trask. A body that is scheduled to be...

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Well, Jim Pendrake is about to find out.Little does Jim Pendrake imagine, when he stumbles across an engine the like of which he's never seen before embedded in a hillside near his ranch, that he will soon be sucked into government conspiracies; have a complete memory reboot with a different life and a different wife (all part of the conspiracy); be kidnapped and sent to the moon, barely escaping the Neanderthal who rules the moon colo...