Mike Ashley

A look at the legend of King Arthur features sixteen retellings--by John Steinbeck, Andre Norton, John Brunner, and other writers--that capture all the romance and excitement of earlier accounts.

After the runaway success of The Pendragon Chronicles, Mike Ashley brings together further stories of heroism and virtue from the age of the Knights of the Round Table, written by some of fantasy's bestselling authors, as well as famous names from literature. 18 tales of Arthur and his court have been retold in contemporary language in this wonderful collection. Any reader interested in the timeless legends of King Arthur and the days of Camelot will take pleasure in these unique tales. Contents: * Introduction (The Camelot Chronicles) (1992) • essay by Mike Ashley * Interior artwork (1992) • by Howard Pyle (variant of Excalibur the Sword 1903) * To Camelot (1934) • poem by Theodore Goodridge Roberts * Dramatis Personae (The Camelot Chronicles) (1992) • essay by Mike Ashley * Belle Dame, Sans Merci (1992) / short fiction by Vera Chapman * The Winning of a Sword [King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table] (1992) / novelette by Howard Pyle * The Storming Bone (1991) / novelette by Ian McDowell * The Oath of the Saxon (1992) / novelette by Peter Tremayne * Blueflow (1992) / novelette by Don Wilcox * The Brotherhood of Britain (1992) / novella by Keith Taylor * John, the Knight of the Lion (1992) / novelette by H. Shück [as by Professor Schük] * Morte d'un Marcheant (1992) / short story by Maxey Brooke * Sir Lanval (1913) / short story by A. R. Hope Moncrieff * The True Story of Guenever (1876) / short story by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps * Sir Borlays and the Dark Knight (1933) / short story by Anthony Armstrong (1897-1976) * Sir Agravaine (1912) / short story by P. G. Wodehouse * The Romance of Tristan and Iseult (1913) / novella by Hilaire Belloc * The Coming of the Light (1992) / short story by Phyllis Ann Karr * Told by Moonlight (1992) / short story by Darrell Schweitzer * The Quiet Monk (1988) / short story by Jane Yolen * The Sad Wizard (1985) / novelette by John T. Aquino * Appendix: Mountainy Madness (1992) • essay by Theodore Goodridge Roberts .

From atop the choppy waves to the choking darkness of the abyss, the seas are full of mystery and rife with tales of inexplicable events and encounters with the unknown. In this anthology, we see a thrilling spread of narratives; sailors are pitched against a nightmare from the depths, invisible to the naked eye; a German U-boat commander is tormented by an impossible transmission via Morse Code; a ship ensnares itself int eh kelp of the Sargasso Sea and dooms a crew of mutineers, seemingly out of revenge for her lost captain . . . The supernatural is set alongside the grim affairs of sailors scorned in these salt-soaked tales, recovered from obscurity for the 21st century.

Occult or psychic detective tales have been chilling readers for almost as long as there have been ghost stories. This beguiling subgenre follows specialists in occult lore – often with years of arcane training – investigating strange supernatural occurrences and pitting their wits against the bizarre and inexplicable. With tales featuring the most prominent psychic detectives such as William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, the Ghost Finder and Algernon Blackwood’s Dr. Silence, this new collection also includes rare and never-before-reprinted cases investigated by the likes of Flaxman Low, Cosmo Thor, Aylmer Vance and Mesmer Milann.

LA PAURA SI SVEGLIA AL TRAMONTO. LA PAURA SI NUTRE DEL BUIO. LA PAURA È UN ANIMALE NOTTURNO. Quando calano le tenebre, una donna si aggira per i corridoi di un antico palazzo. Ha gli occhi chiusi, dorme, eppure le sue azioni la tradiscono. Forse è posseduta. Forse è un’assassina. In un museo, un quadro maledetto ossessiona un giovane visitatore, che vede il suo riflesso nel volto dell’uomo dipinto, straziato dalle ferite. Un’illusione o il passato che riaffiora? Solo l’oscurità conosce la risposta. Un arazzo di storie notturne per immergersi nel cuore delle tenebre

What if aliens were to attack the earth tomorrow? Or supposing we could bend time, could we meet ourselves in a parallel universe? Or what if machines began to think and feel? Science fiction begins by posing such questions of the unknown and imagining the future world to come. Sometimes its stories zero in on our fears of technology, while at other times they give us ideas and inspiration for innovations yet to come. Out of This World , which accompanies a major British Library exhibition on the scope and nature of science fiction, celebrates the long history and many achievements of science fiction.   Organized into six sections—Alien Worlds, Time and Parallel Worlds, Future Worlds, Virtual Worlds, the End of the World, and Perfect Worlds—the book explores how science fiction has responded to the impact of science, technology, and socio-political change over time. From Mary Shelley to Margaret Atwood and J. G. Ballard, Out of This World reveals the glorious heritage and creativity of science fiction. It is illustrated throughout with examples of manuscripts, books, and magazines from some of the best science fiction artists in history, including Galileo’s drawings from 1610 of the surface of the moon; twentieth-century magazines such as Amazing Stories , Analog , Space Travel , Astounding , Asimov’s Science Fiction , Interzone , and Galaxy ; book covers for such classic science fictions authors as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, William Gibson, Aldous Huxley, and Philip K. Dick; and film stills from iconic movies such as Iron Man, The Matrix, Metropolis, and Blade Runner .   This accessible and visually inspiring book brings together a wealth of literary and artistic material to honor and explore this continually growing and rich genre of ideas and imagination.

In this exciting anthology spanning more than a century, Stephen King leads a roster of ten great novelists of horror, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Algernon Blackwood, Lucius Shepard, Russell Kirk, A.C. Benson, T.E.D. Klein, John Metcalf, Oliver Onions, and David Case.

An anthology of science-fiction stories since 1950 by such masters of the genre as: Stephen Baxter; Brian W. Aldiss; Michael Swanwick; Philip K. Dick; and Peter Hamilton. The collection includes tales of travel through space and time, aliens coming to Earth and the pull of black holes.

A compendium of comic fantasy writing. Most of the stories are modern, with many especially written for this collection. The book also includes classic reprints and rare gems from comic fantasy's roots in past years.

Here are 25 stories of science fiction that push the boundaries, by the biggest names in an emerging crop of high-tech futuristic writers including Charles Stross, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton and Neal Asher.

This thought-provoking collection not only takes us into the past and the future, but also explores what might happen if we attempt to manipulate time to our own advantage. These stories show what happen once you start to meddle with time and the paradoxes that might arise. It also raises questions about whether we understand time, and how we perceive it. Once we move outside the present day, can we ever return or do we move into an alternate world? What happens if our meddling with Nature leads to time flowing backwards, or slowing down or stopping all together? Or if we get trapped in a constant loop from which we can never escape. Is the past and future immutable or will we ever be able to escape the inevitable? These are just some of the questions that are raised in these challenging, exciting and sometimes amusing stories by Kage Baker, Simon Clark, Fritz Leiber, Christopher Priest, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Robert Silverberg, Michael Swanwick, John Varley and many others.

This collection of 21 innovative and mind-blowing stories includes contributions from Sci-Fi pioneers such as Stephen Baxter, Robert Reed, J. G. Ballard, Arthur C. Clarke, Alastair Reynolds, and Geoffrey Landis. Contents: Out of the sun / Arthur C. Clarke -- The Pevatron rats / Stephen Baxter -- The edge of the map / Ian Creasey -- Cascade Point / Timothy Zahn -- A dance to strange musics / Gregory Benford -- Palindromic / Peter Crowther -- Castle in the sky / Robert Reed -- The hole in the hole / Terry Bisson -- Hotrider / Keith Brooke -- Mother grasshopper / Michael Swanwick -- Waves and smart magma / Paul Di Filippo -- The black hole passes / John Varley -- The peacock king / Ted White, Larry McCombs -- Bridge / James Blish -- Anhedonia / Adam Roberts -- Tiger burning / Alastair Reynolds -- The width of the world / Ian Watson -- Our lady of the sauropods / Robert Silverberg -- Into the Miranda Rift / G. David Nordley -- The rest is speculation / Eric Brown -- Vacuum states / Geoffrey A. Landis

There have been full of stories of one or other possible Armageddon, whether by nuclear war, plague, cosmic catastrophe or, more recently, global warming, terrorism, genetic engineering, AIDS and other pandemics. These stories describe the fall of civilization, the destruction of the entire Earth, or the end of the Universe itself. Contents: When we went to see the end of the world - Robert Silverberg The End of the World - Sushma Joshi The Clockwork Atom Bomb - Dominic Green Bloodletting - Kate Wilhelm When Sysadmins ruled the World - Cory Doctorow The Rain at the End of the World - Dale Bailey The Flood - Linda Nagata The End of the World Show - David Barnett Fermi and Frost - Frederik Pohl Sleepover - Alastair Reynolds The Last Sunset - Geoffrey Landis Moments of Inertia - William Barton The Books - Kage Baker Pallbearer - Robert Reed And the Deep Blue Sea - Elizabeth Bear The Meek - Damien Broderick The Man who Walked Home - James Tiptree JR A Pail of Air - Fritz Leiber Guardians of the Phoenix - Eric Brown Life in the Anthropocene - Paul di Filippo Terraforming Terra - Jack Williamson World Without End - F Gwynplaine MacIntyre The Children of Time - Stephen Baxter The Star called Wormwood - Elizabeth Counihan

In one portable volume, A Brief History of British Kings and Queens offers a royal biographical A–Z, its pages lavish in details on all the rulers of the kingdoms within the British Isles, together with their wives or consorts, pretenders, usurpers, and regents, from Queen Boadicea of the early Britons to today's Elizabeth II. This complete record of Britain's kings and queens contains more than 1,000 monarchs and 2,000 years of fascinating history. "Everything its title promises. The pages are filled with ... everything anyone might ever want to know about the royals."—Publishers Weekly "Highly recommended."—Choice

"In addition to drawing attention to these overlooked female sci-fi authors, The Feminine Future is valuable for the perspective it provides on a period of transition for the genre." — Los Angeles Review of Books Featuring hard-to-find short stories published between 1873 and 1930, this original anthology spotlights a variety of important sci-fi pioneers, including Ethel Watts Mumford, Edith Nesbit, and Clare Winger Harris. Imaginative scenarios include a feminist society in another dimension, the east/west division of the United States with men and women on opposite sides, a man who converts himself into a cyborg, a drug that confers superhuman qualities, and many other curious situations. Editor Mike Ashley provides an informative introduction to the stories. Highlights include "When Time Turned" (1901), which centers on a grieving widower who contrives to relive his life backwards; "The Painter of Dead Women" (1910), the tale of a woman in thrall to a Svengali-like character who promises to preserve her beauty forever; "The Automaton Ear" (1876), in which an inventor struggles to create a machine to detect sounds from the distant past; "Ely's Automatic Housemaid" (1899), a lighthearted fable concerning a robot housemaid; and ten other captivating tales. "Glad that Mike Ashley and Dover Publications have put together early science fiction by women authors. Great resource for classes!" — University of Maine at Machias