Showing results by narrator "Arthur Vincet" in All Categories

A sci-fi novel by Edmond Hamilton, originally published in 1951. A nuclear war could cause the end of the world, but not really the way you would imagine it! An entirely new kind of atomic bomb explodes over the community of Middletown, but instead of the immediately anticipated destruction, the whole town is sent ahead millions of years into the future! The sun is dying and so is the earth. As for humanity, it will have to try its utmost in order to survive.

"Lone Star Planet" is a science fiction novel by H. Beam Piper. It presents a world on which the assassination of politicians is accepted practice. After a political gaffe, our hero Stephen Silk is assigned to be the Solar League's new ambassador to the people of Capella IV, New Texas. The position is open because the previous ambassador, Silas Cumshaw, was assassinated. On the starship taking him to his new posting, Silk meets his secretary/bodyguard, a native New Texan named Hoddy Ringo.

H. Beam Piper's "Time Crime" is part of his series of alternate history stories which concern the Paratime Police, a law enforcement outfit from a parallel world which has learned how to move between timelines. They jealously guard the secret, even as they mine other worlds for their resources. Notably, it appears that humans are in fact Martian refugees who escaped a calamity on their home planet and migrated to Earth!

"The Bright Messenger" is a horror/fantastic novel by Algernon Blackwood. Though Blackwood wrote a number of horror stories, his most typical work seeks less to frighten than to induce a sense of awe. Good examples are the novels "The Centaur", which climaxes with a traveler's sight of a herd of the mythical creatures; and "The Bright Messenger", which deals with reincarnation and the possibility of a new, mystical evolution of human consciousness.

"Indiscretions of Archie" is a 1921 comedic novel by the British master of the genre, P. G. Wodehouse. The novel tells the story of impoverished, embarrassment-prone Archibald "Archie" Moffam (pronounced "Moom") and his difficult relationship with his art-collecting, hotel-owning, millionaire father-in-law Daniel Brewster, who is the father of Archie's new bride Lucille. Archie's attempts to ingratiate himself with Brewster only get him further into trouble. The story takes place in New York City.

A sci-fi novel by Murray Leinster, published in 1962. An unidentified space ship lands in a Colorado lake. The creatures subsequently begin taking human prisoners with paralyzing laser weapons. A land surveyor and a journalist are the only remaining hope for humankind now, as the army is powerless.

"Thuvia, Maid of Mars" is a science fantasy novel from the "Barsoom" series. The principal characters are Carthoris (the son of John Carter of Mars) and Thuvia of Ptarth, each of whom appeared in the previous two novels. Carthoris is madly in love with Thuvia. This love was foreshadowed at the end of the previous novel. Unfortunately Thuvia is promised to Kulan Tith, Jeddak of Kaol. On Barsoom nothing can break an engagement between a man and woman except death, although the new suitor may not cause that death.

The planet Fenris has an extremely slow rotation rate, causing days and nights lasting 1000 hours each! This makes its population live underground but for sunrise and sunset. The story unfolds around a conflict between corrupt local politicians and the equivalent of earthly whale hunters. A robust and action-packed sci-fi tale by H. Beam Piper, published in 1961.

"Joe Kenmore heard the airlock close with a sickening wheeze and then a clank. In desperation he turned toward Haney. 'My God, we've been locked out!' Through the transparent domes of their space helmets, Joe could see a look of horror and disbelief pass across Haney's face. But it was true! Joe and his crew were locked out of the Space Platform. Four thousand miles below circled the Earth. Under Joe's feet rested the solid steel hull of his home in outer space. But without tools there was no hope of getting back inside. Joe looked at his oxygen meter. It registered thirty minutes to live."

"The Dunwich Horror" takes place in a fictional town in Massachusetts, its main hero being the distinctly not ordinarily human Wilbur, a product of a deformed albino mother and an unknown father. Strange events surround his birth and precocious development. Wilbur matures at an abnormal rate, reaching manhood within a decade. Locals shun him and his family, and animals fear and despise him (due to his odor). All the while, his sorcerer grandfather indoctrinates him into certain dark rituals and the study of witchcraft.

"The Warlord of Mars" is a fantasy novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, part of his series about the fictional "hollow earth" land of Pellucidar. After the horrendous battle which ended with the destruction of the religion of Issus, John Carter's wife and two other women were locked in a slowly rotating prison attached to the Temple of the Sun, each of whose hundreds of cells are only open to the outside world once every year.

This classic is a French Romantic/Gothic novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1831. The story centers on the famous cathedral. Esmeralda captures the hearts of men, including those of Captain Phoebus and Pierre Gringoire, but also Quasimodo and his adoptive father, Archdeacon Claude Frollo. Frollo is torn between his obsessive lust and the rules of the church. He orders Quasimodo to kidnap her, but the hunchback is captured by Phoebus and his guards, who save Esmeralda.

"The Steam Man of the Prairies" by Edward S. Ellis was the first U.S science fiction dime novel and an archetype of the "Frank Reade" series. It is one of the earliest examples of the so-called "Edisonade" genre. The novel starts with Ethan Hopkins and Mickey McSquizzle-a "Yankee" and an "Irishman"-encountering a colossal, steam-powered man in the American prairies. This steam-man was constructed by Johnny Brainerd, a teenage boy, who uses the steam-man to carry him in a carriage on various adventures.

"Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet" is a young adult science fiction novel written by Harold L. Goodwin under the pseudonym Blake Savage. Freshly graduated and commissioned Planeteer Lt. Richard Ingalls Peter ("Rip") Foster, already contending with inter-service rivalry with the Space Force (equivalent to Navy) crewmen with whom he serves, is tasked with retrieving an asteroid made of pure thorium from the asteroid belt and bringing it to Earth for use as fissionable material.

"The Defiant Agents" tells of an encounter between Western heroes, and the Russian Communists, and a mysterious alien race that has used time travel to alter Earth. The alien library discovered in the previous novel ("Galactic Derelict", published in 1959) proved to have locations of many unknown worlds. Finding the secure location of planet Topaz compromised, Apache operatives, including Travis Fox, are sent on an emergency trip by Earth with a mind-altering machine, Redax, that crash lands.

"Shadows in Zamboula" is one of the original Conan the Cimmerian (a.k.a. Conan the Barbarian) books, first published in 1935. Its original title was "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula". The story takes place over the course of a night in the desert city of Zamboula, with political intrigue amidst streets filled with roaming cannibals. It features the character Baalpteor, one of the few humans in the Conan stories to be a physical challenge for the main Cimmerian character himself.

"Islands of Space" is a science fiction novel generally credited with introducing the concepts of hyperspace and the warp drive to science fiction. The novel concerns the adventures of a trio of heroes, Arcot, Morey and Wade... "As Earth's faster-than-light spaceship hung in the void between galaxies, Arcot, Wade, Morey and Fuller could see below them, like a vast shining horizon, the mass of stars that formed their own island universe.

"The Little Nugget" is a novel by the undisputed master of comedy P. G. Wodehouse, first published in 1913. Mrs. Nesta Ford, in her London hotel room, reveals to her new friend Lord Mountry that she hopes to take her son Ogden on a yachting trip proposed by Mountry, despite her ex-husband having won custody of the boy. As Mountry leaves, Cynthia Drassilis arrives with Ogden, whom she has led away from his father's country house.

"Lord Tedric" was a smith (both blacksmith and whitesmith) residing in a small town near a castle in a situation approximately equivalent to England of the 1200s. He received instruction in advanced metallurgy from a time-traveler that wanted to change the situation in his own time by modifying certain events of the past. From this instruction he was able to build better suits of armor and help defeat the villains of the piece... in this case, the villain is Time itself, and its immutability; but as always Tedric and Skandos One come up with a great idea and distraction: a naked woman.

Generally by now thought to be Machen's greatest work, the novel, published in 1907, recounts the life of a young man, Lucian Taylor, focusing on his dreamy childhood in rural Wales, in a town based on Caerleon. "The Hill of Dreams" of the title is an old Roman fort where Lucian has strange sensual visions, including ones of the town in the time of Roman Britain. Later it describes Lucian's attempts to make a living as an author in London, enduring poverty and suffering in the pursuit of art.