Recipe: Recommended. Ingredients: ~ A few well-chosen characters - human or otherwise. ~ A sprinkle of suspense. ~ A dash of danger. ~ A pinch of peculiarity. ~ One tablespoon of terror. Blend the above with the bygone and beyond, sifting in the supernatural. Mix at the high speed of magic, then season to the taste of science-fiction lovers. Now cook over a low flame of fantasy and allow to cool. Yields: An unmeasurable serving of pleasure in A Cupful of Space. Contents: First Lesson (1956) Stickeney and the Critic (1953) Stair Trick (1952) Minister without Portfolio (1952) Birds Can't Count (1955) The Word (1953) The Day of the Green Velvet Cloak (1958) Winning Recipe (1952) Letters from Laura (1954) The Last Prophet (1955) Mr. Sakrison's Halt (1956) The Wild Wood (1957) The Little Witch of Elm Street (1956) A Day for Waving (1957) The Gay Deceiver (1961) A Red Heart and Blue Roses (1961)

A young girl spends her summer vacation in a country house where a tiger roams . . . A man reading a mystery finds out too late that he is the murderer's victim . . . In the fifteen stories collected here—including "Blow-Up," which was the basis for Michelangelo Antonioni's film of the same name—Julio Cortazar explores the boundary where the everyday meets the mysterious, perhaps even the terrible. Axolotl House taken over Distances Idol of the Cyclades Letter to a young lady in Paris Yellow flower Continuity of parks Night face up Bestiary Gates of heaven Blow-up End of the game At your service Pursuer Secret weapons.

Translated by Miroslaw Lipinski. The greatest author of fantastic fiction in the Polish language is Stefan Grabinski (1877-1936), the master of the short story form. Grabinski's stories, which he termed psychofantasies, are explorations of the extreme in human behaviour, where the macabre and the bizarre combine to send a chill down the reader's spine. When it comes to the erotic, few authors can match Grabinski's depiction of seething sexual frenzy.

He was the Archduke Friedrich Georg,and he lived, during the second half of the last century, in the fantastic castle at Neuheim. Why did he commission the building, at unimaginable cost, of the Black Room: a panelled rococo masterpiece in black ebony and gold-work with gilt furniture? How did he plan to use the room, with its hidden entrance? Was it to further his undercover relationship with Andre, or the other young men to whom he was attracted, or was it a bridal chamber for his future wife, the Princess Anne? Was it merely an escape to counter the tedium of his aristocratic life? Or was it a symbol that he had given into the side of his nature that he so despised? The Archduke, as revealed in the pages of his diary, becomes more and more obsessed with his lavish programme of the sumptuous bed-chamber. And as the room nears completion it takes a more and more sinister and mysterious hold on him...

When a strange magician and renegade scientist steals the secrets that could save a distant planet from being annihilated by its own oceans' tides, a man is sent to Miranda to retrieve those secrets before it is too late. Winner of the Nebula Award. Reprint.