A science fiction classic by British master Philip E. High!Harcourt smiled his professional smile. “Now, you came to me because you felt something was wrong, some probably frightening aberration which we will deal with later. Were you under pressure at the time.”“A policeman is always under pressure.” Nevinson sighed. “Unfortunately this happened three weeks ago while on a holiday in Europe. Before I left everyone told me I should visit the Spatza, you’ve heard of it no dou...

In the far future, the world has fallen to chaos with the criminal elements controlling the cities and vast police forces ruling the unknown wilderness beyond.Only one man, unknowingly, holds the key to the state in which society finds itself - a man named Craig.Craig, however, is an outcast, a pariah, feared by organised crime and despised by the police who, despite themselves, are compelled to use him.This is the tale of how Craig fights back - against forces unkn...

Hudson looked round the command room with its cramped balsa-plast desk, single chair and wall bunk. Command room! His mouth twisted, half with amusement, half contempt. All the years of struggling and devoted service, service which had broken up his home and driven his wife to seek comfort elsewhere. All that until, finally, they had given him a command. A command! Not one of the new powerful cruisers or even a fleet of space tugs but a detector post on Ganymede. A hive-shaped dome on an a...

They captured the human and his puny ship. They had been ordered to interrogate him to find out humanity's strenths, weaknesses, and numbers...because their empire intended to expand into human space. But the human wanted to be captured and interrogated—for compassionate reasons. Human space was infected, he said...and any attempt at conquest was doomed!

They found the wrong planet...and prepared to fight the wrong enemy!

Aggression is out of date.After one war scare too many the human has suppressed it aggressive instincts by genetic manipulation.Make love, not war.Now mankind is faced with an enemy so superior, so ruthless, that it is fight or be wiped out - and humans can no longer fight; they cannot even order their robots to fight.Violence is decadent.Only a museum exhibit from a thousand years ago - a Royal Navy submarine complete with commander and crew, their ...

Earth and Firma were twin planets - mirror worlds in a single time-track. Now Firma was halted in its rotation around the sun by the Aliens. Unless Denning and Liston, twin humans, could destroy the Aliens and get Firma moving again, Earth would some day repeat Firma's tragedy and be burned to a cinder.The Aliens had an incredible array of weapons at their disposal.Denning and Liston had only their courage and their brains.

The conquest of a galaxy is relatively easy providing the aggressor has the necessary technology and, more important, a safe method of overcoming possible opposition without bleeding to death in the process. The Asdrake employed mutated micro-organisms which directly attacked the brain of the planet's intelligent life - they liked this method. They could fight if they had to but were inherently lazy. This method had worked successfully on twenty-two occasions - why should it fail on planet...

In some parts of the world, self-confessed murderer Leonard Graham would have been executed, or even given life imprisonment for his monstrous crime. At his trial, he had confirmed to the court that he'd only met the man he'd shot a few hours before. Prior to that one meeting, he'd never seen him before in his life. The accused had offered no reason for his apparently unprovoked and savage attack, shooting his victim repeatedly at point-blank range. He was sentenced to five years in a psyc...

They were technically superior to mankind—they made humans look like savages. So what could possibly go right when the two empires bumped up against each other?

Don't think new thoughts, don't improve anything, don't wander over the next hill: these were the commandments for the men and women of the experimental village - one of those careful nurtured settlements established after the collapse of world civilization.The rules were made by the benevolent Masters of the Island - and they had to be obeyed. To disobey was to be destroyed. But Robert Ventnor, villager with a dangerously high quotient of curiosity, was the exception. He fled - an...

Crichton was a brilliant chemist, but he had one great fear: being stranded on an alien world with no way to survive. It drove him to study woodcraft and survival techniques. But would it be enough if the impossible happened to their ship?