Bøger af Brian Stableford

"Cthulhu has many instruments, but all of them are possessed of free will, and magnetic power can only operate mysteriously, even on the most primitive and stubborn brains." Written to complete and conclude a series of metaphysical fantasies featuring Auguste Dupin, a character invented by Edgar Poe, which involve him with characters and entities invented by H. P. Lovecraft, as well as actual historical figures and occasional devices appropriated from other works of weird fiction, The Cthulhu Palimpsest, A Romance of Termination is a must-have, both for fans of the series and for fans of Brian Stableford, who produced this long-projected final volume with the pen of a master story-teller.

When Tom Andersley returns to his family in Yorkshire after World War I, he is a changed man. Unable to connect with others, he becomes obsessed with working on experiments in cross-breeding fruit trees. Then an old friend, Lawrence Oates, visits him. The odd thing is, everyone believes Lawrence died in an Antarctic blizzard years ago. Perhaps more odd, Lawrence explains that he was preserved by aliens--aliens now under attack from mysterious adversaries. And they need Tom's help and his expertise in plants in order to win their war.

In this breathless sequel to Revelations of Time and Space, Brian Stableford guides us through the hours aboard the spaceship Minerva during which psychic contact with the Saturnian intelligences now known as "the Bells" is renewed. In the claustrophobic, would-be Utopia of the small spaceship, with the fate of the disaster-stricken human race at stake, the minutes and hours are as expansive as those during experimental surgery, and that's without the subtle manipulations of time that Denise Corcoran senses are taking place, with the spaceship under the Bells' influence. Will Zephaniah Corcoran's second contact with the Bells answer the questions raised by the first contact? Can Captain Kemmering keep the pressure cooker of the Saturn-orbiting spaceship from exploding? Can the crew of the Minerva, and the human race who are watching from Earth, trust these unearthly intelligences? After the Revelation, a brilliant novel by one of science fiction's great veterans, takes us into the real-time suspense of the characters facing these questions.

"The Postmortal Reservation might not be Heaven exactly, but for Peterkin the piano player it's good enough. His afterlife is unclouded by the anxieties of mortality. After all, he's a skeleton. He only has to look in the mirror to see what squishy folk take for the image of death itself. True to their permanent smile, skellies are a happy-go-lucky species. There is nothing they love more than dancing, and cutting a rug with Melissa at the Palais de Danse Macabre, Peterkin thinks he might be at the start of something beautiful. It's true he's not in the best of neighbourhoods, but things are looking up, until ... the incident with the zombies at the train track and the appearance of a suspicious-looking discoloration spreading from the carpal area of his left arm. Soon he has to place himself in the hands, both fleshy and spectral, of experts who might not have his best interests at heart and, humble piano player though he is, play his own part in the fate of the Ghetto itself. Set in a future world where ghosts, vampires, werewolves and zombies are finally recognised as real, Meat on the Bone is a unique excursion into modes of possible human existence beyond our familiar fleshy mortality. Part grinning graveyard caper, part science fiction, part oddball existentialism, this is a novel in which we learn that one man's death is another man's dance hall."--Back cover.

Zephaniah Corcoran has just returned to Earth after a seven-year jaunt to Jupiter where his special—some would say dubious—talents were put to the test in attempted communication with the Jovian cloud-whales. With no time to adjust to life on an Earth half alarmed and half fatalistic at the prospect of final catastrophe, he is headhunted for a reprise of his old job: being projected by the brilliant but asocial Walter Halleck’s Coincidence-driven Sling into the far future to make empathic contact with the various successors to the human race. In the meantime, he is discovering a close and mysterious bond with Denise, a doctor of evolutionary biology and the younger sister he has hardly known, who has been noticed by the same big players who have noticed Zeph. But nothing goes quite according to plan, and as the fate of humanity dangles on a thread grown very frayed, Zeph’s empathic skills are expanded in unexpected ways, not so much by coincidence, as by Coincidence, bringing Zeph and those around him into contact with what are perhaps only the beginning of ongoing revelations of time and space whose grandeur match the universe that Zeph and his colleagues must now begin to explore.

Works of science fiction use the ideas and the vocabulary of all sciences to create valid narratives that explore the future effects of science on events and human beings. This book examines in how science has propelled science-fiction and, to a lesser extent, how science fiction has influenced the sciences.

They call them the "e;rat-catchers."e; They're the crew of the spaceship Daedalus, which an economically destitute Earth has dispatched on a mission to re-establish contact with its far-flung, long-lost colonies in space. Alex Alexander, the ship's biologist, together with his staff, must help solve the mysteries of human and alien ecosystems that he encounters light-years from home. Dendra is a stable world, covered by a huge, unchanging forest-except that nothing living can really be free of change. The planet has no seasons, but its animal life still undergoes life-cycles involving birth, maturation, metamorphosis, and death. The Earth colony sent to tame the world has failed, at least in the terms expected of it, and seems beyond redemption; but the crew of the Daedalus still has to find out exactly why and how the program has gone wrong. Provided, of course, that they can survive the investigation itself!

Once upon a time all literature was fantasy, set in a mythical past when magic existed, animals talked, and the gods took an active hand in earthly affairs. As the mythical past was displaced in Western estimation by the historical past and novelists became increasingly preoccupied with the present, fantasy was temporarily marginalized until the late 20th century, when it enjoyed a spectacular resurgence in every stratum of the literary marketplace. Stableford provides an invaluable guide to this sequence of events and to the current state of the field. The chronology tracks the evolution of fantasy from the origins of literature to the 21st century. The introduction explains the nature of the impulses creating and shaping fantasy literature, the problems of its definition and the reasons for its changing historical fortunes. The dictionary includes cross-referenced entries on more than 700 authors, ranging across the entire historical spectrum, while more than 200 other entries describe the fantasy subgenres, key images in fantasy literature, technical terms used in fantasy criticism, and the intimately convoluted relationship between literary fantasies, scholarly fantasies, and lifestyle fantasies. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography that ranges from general textbooks and specialized accounts of the history and scholarship of fantasy literature, through bibliographies and accounts of the fantasy literature of different nations, to individual author studies and useful websites.

The concluding volume of the trilogy, Living with the Dead is set in and around Toulouse, shortly after the death in Paris of Jane de La Vaudère. Madame Louvot is now serving as Paul Furneret's housekeeper. He is living close to an old convent leased by the residents of which apparently have orders not to communicate with him, although they supply gods from their farm and their distillery to him via Madame Louvot.Seven years later, Paul Furneret is visited in his Toulousan cottage by Victor Marvaud and Gaston Lambrunet, who are keen to persuade him to return to Paris. Their visit coincides with a "coup" in the cult launched by Madame Zosima and now operated as quasi-Fouierist feminist "phalanstery." Zosima is deposed, and her "convent" is taken over by a "trinity" led by Lilith, who have their own ideas regarding the supposed revelations of anterior lives. Also visiting are the Megisters, an English couple who owns both the convent and Paul's cottage..Lilith has researched Paul's background and discovered information that might help him to identify his mysterious "guardian angel" and to decipher the mystery of his supernatural ability, which she plans to exploit. Paul, who no longer needs the help of hypnotists to contact the dead, begins to develop new psychic powers, but not the ones Lilith sought to use. Those psychic phenomena have unintended fatal results, leaving Paul in no doubt as to the dangers inherent in his powers, confronting him with a stark challenge and an awkward dilemma...Brian M. Stableford has been a professional writer since 1965. He has published more than 60 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as several authoritative non-fiction books. He is also translating the works of Paul Féval and other French writers of the fantastique for Black Coat Press which also published his most two recent fantasy novels: The New Faust at the Tragicomique and The Stones of Camelot.

Paul Furneret returns to Paris after a four-year interval. He again contacts Camille Flammarion, Jane de La Vaudère and Madame Zosima;, who now runs a women's refuge and employs hypnosis to enable women to "remember" their alleged past incarnations.One night, he is intercepted by Baron de Rochemure, who had recognized his daughter in the sketch Paul produced during his first attempt at automatic drawing, and is very enthusiastic for Paul to try again. To that end, Rochemore convenes a séance to which he invites Flammarion, Zosima and Jane, as well as Henri Lemastur, the hypnotist involved in the first séance, his patroness, and Gabriel de Lautrec. The baron, who is dying of cancer, reveals for the first time the harrowing story of how his daughter died and why he has been so anxious to make contact with her.Paul again produces four drawings while hypnotized by Zosima, but they are not what he expected; he does, however contrive a telepathic link between several of the people present, which enables Jane, the baron and his housekeeper to share a common vision, which satisfies the baron, but convinces Jane that Paul almost died in the process, only to be saved by a mysterious "angel". As a result, she forbids Paul to have any further contact with Zosima...Brian M. Stableford has been a professional writer since 1965. He has published more than 60 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as several authoritative non-fiction books. He is also translating the works of Paul Féval and other French writers of the fantastique for Black Coat Press which also published his most two recent fantasy novels: The New Faust at the Tragicomique and The Stones of Camelot.

Paul Furneret, a young artist working in Paris in 1901, is invited to attend a séance at Camille Flammarion's observatory after having participated in an experiment in "automatic drawing" at another séance a week earlier, in which he drew a picture, while unconscious under hypnosis, of a young woman recognized by one of the participants as his dead daughter. Paul's friend, Victor Marvaud, is unable to accompany him, as arranged, because a ship carrying another of their friends, Gaston Lambrunet, has struck a rock in the Channel, and although all the passengers have been put into lifeboats, the one containing Gaston's mother and sister has not yet reached land. Victor insists however, that Flammarion's séance is too important for him to miss, and, in order to make sure that he gets there, has asked his physician, Antoine Cros, to take Paul to the observatory in his stead.The skeptical Cros is also escorting the writer Jane de La Vaudère, who has previously taken part in Flammarion's experiments, and the two of them provide Paul with a great deal of food for thought on the journey. Their contrasted perspectives become all the more significant when Paul, hypnotized by a "magnetizer" named Madame Zosima, produces four images, including one of Gaston's sister, whose lifeboat still has not landed yet, Dr. Cros's late brother Charles, and a woman tentatively identified as Jane's long-dead mother. Cros tries hard to provide a naturalistic explanations of what Paul has done, but the uncertainty as to the fate of the lifeboat turns Paul's artwork and its apparent supernatural nature into headline news, spurring the participants in the séance to meet up again in Dr. Cros's house the following night in order to discuss the implications of Paul's seeming ability to draw the dead, albeit unconsciously.A second experiment produces even more challenging results, which throw Paul's life into dire confusion, nearly cost a young model her life, and also affect the lives of his new acquaintances, leaving Paul with difficult dilemmas to address and an intriguing metaphysical mystery to resolve...Brian M. Stableford has been a professional writer since 1965. He has published more than 60 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as several authoritative non-fiction books. He is also translating the works of Paul Féval and other French writers of the fantastique for Black Coat Press which also published his most two recent fantasy novels: The New Faust at the Tragicomique and The Stones of Camelot.

Here, presented in English in a long-belated translation by Brian Stableford, is Isis, the first novel of the acclaimed author of Contes cruels, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. Deserving to be reckoned as one of the foundation-stones of Decadent prose fiction, redolent with echoes of Byron and Poe, reconfigured in the Baudelairean manner, and flamboyant with Gautieresque elements, this book is a tour de force of extravagant implication and esthetic dexterity: a work of peculiar genius.In its vaulting ambitions, its quirky mannerisms, its philosophical posturing and its lush descriptions, Isis is certainly a tale given to excess, but that excess is the essence of the endeavor, the wand of its enchantment.

The novel is set in the 1480s, during the war in which the French annexed Bretagne. At the Benedictine Abbey in Paimpol, a scholarly monk named Ollivier, reputed to have practiced necromancy, is buried under the watchful eyes of two Dominican heresy hunters, the burial only attended by his fellow scholar Brother Primael, who believes him to be innocent of any wrongdoing, and believes the same of Gilles de Rais, whose court at Tiffauges both men visited in their youth. Before falling ill, Ollivier had spent three months at the Château de Tardivel and the forested region of Herbriant, where the epileptic chatelaine was once locked away by her husband as a madwoman, and her daughter Aidrena, is also chronically ill, while the young Vicomte who has recently inherited the title, Corentin, has indeed been practicing necromancy with Ollivier's aid. Primael is sent to Tardivel at Corentin's request, ostensibly to give succor to his mother and sister, but actually to assist him in his experiments in necromancy, now aimed at the summoning of Ollivier's spirit. Primael is immediately engulfed in a nightmarish series of events, both hallucinatory and real, through which he must negotiate a path in the hope of deciding in which direction virtue really lies, and solving the puzzle of exactly what Ollivier and Corentin had accomplished in their necromancy, and what its consequences might be for the inhabitants of Tardivel.

The Contes de fées, defined here as tales that contain fées, i.e.: "fays" (as opposed to "fairies," which in British literary history referred to imaginary entities often different from the French fées), were invented by aristocratic women of the 17th century, such as Madame d'Aulnoy, the Comtesse de Murat, Madame Leprince de Beaumont, etc.In making visible the operations of the human heart, they also did so with their torments, fears and resentments: the tightly-laced corset of social convention, the catastrophe of arranged marriages; the tyranny and frequent brutality of those in legal control of their lives and fortunes.Such aspects of everyday life were exaggerated by the conventions of the genre: the princesses were the most beautiful in the world, or the ugliest; the prisons in which they were contained were inaccessibly tall towers or lightless subterrains, often guarded by dragons; their captors were ogres, hags or giants, often addicted to setting them impossible tasks to complete, under the threat of dire punishment. And the fantasies of their salvation were exaggerated in consequence, beyond all reasonable expectation: the magic wand of a good fay, and, perhaps even more implausibly, the trustworthy love of a good man.Since the 1970s, there has been a spectacular increase in the popularity of a kind of fantasy that has revivified many of the imaginative materials previously developed in the contes de fées, and they can now be seen as a key link in a strand of imaginative literature that extends forwards from Classical literature and Medieval Romance all the way to a significant sector of contemporary literary production, and its extensions into visual media, connected not merely by the complex transference of imagery, but by the underlying psychology of composition and consumption. In order to understand modern fantasy fully, it is therefore necessary to understand its roots in previous literary genres, and one of the most important is the conte de fées.This volume also includes 38 exemplary stories sampled from 1696 to 1914, forming the most complete anthology devoted to the History of the Faerie to-date.Brian M. Stableford has been a professional writer since 1965. He has published more than 70 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as several authoritative non-fiction books. He has also translated many of the works reviewed herein for Black Coat Press.