Download or read book Evil Water And Other Stories written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his fourth short-story collection, Watson again demonstrates the extraordinary scope of his imagination. The title story has ancient witchcraft meeting complacent modern suburbia in a tale of spine-chilling horror, while 'When the Timegate Failed' casts an unexpected light in the dangers of space travel and man's powers of self-delusion. Alien matters of a different kind crop up in 'Windows', in which mysterious artefacts found on Mars prove to be something of a problem for their chic human owners. Evil Water is a highly inventive collection which is a delight to read.
Download or read book Evil Water written by Ian Watson and published by Victor Gollancz. This book was released on 1987 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient witchcraft in modern suburbia, the dangers of space travel, divine power versus alien occupation, mysterious artifacts from Mars, and political allegory are some of the elements to be found in this collection of short stories
Download or read book Sunstroke And Other Stories written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second collection of Watson's short stories further demonstrates his seemingly inexhaustible imagination. In 'The Thousand Cuts' the entire human race finds its consciousness blanked out for varying periods, but life seems somehow to have gone on in the missing days, and indeed, previously intractable problems have moved towards a solution. In 'Sunstroke' a doctor blinded accidentally during the voyage to a seemingly benign new world becomes gradually aware of disturbing changes afflicting her sighted companions. These stories, and many others, confirm Watson's place in the forefront of contemporary SF writers.
Download or read book Salvage Rites And Other Stories written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ian Watson's latest collection shows the same range and apparently inexhaustible fund of ideas that have characterized all his previous books. No other contemporary figure in SF is so prolific or inventive a writer of short stories. In the title story we immediately encounter a phantasmagoric vision of a society increasingly dependent on recycling its usable material; other brilliant inventions include a planet inhabited by lemur-like aliens who bafflingly produce marvellously finished stone carvings without apparently having the tools to do so ('The Moon and Michelangelo'); people fighting their way through the various levels of what appears to be a real-life version of a computer adventure game ('Jewels in an Angel's Wing'); and a zoo in which are caged the extensions into our universe of four-dimensional hyberbeings ('Hyperzoo'). And that is only the beginning: there are fifteen stories in all, each one a state-of-the-art example of short science fiction at its finest.
Download or read book Stalin s Teardrops And Other Stories written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ian Watson is one of the most prolific short story writers in contemporary science fiction, with a range and invention that others might envy. In this collection we move from a ghostly occurrence in Catalonia to a memorably hallucinatory and atmospheric tale of eggs and ectoplasm in pre-glasnost Russia. The Times said of Watson that his 'stories are springloaded with effect, compressed with a drama that, in others, might take a novel to eke out', a judgement confirmed by he dozen stories collected here.
Download or read book The Coming of Vertumnus And Other Stories written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of science-fiction short stories by the author of "Lucky's Harvest". They feature dozens of characters, a new way of travelling between the stars, a strange planet, magical powers, bravura set-pieces, and manoeuvres of narrative.
Download or read book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil written by John Berendt and published by Random House. This book was released on 1994-01-13 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic of true crime, set in a most beguiling Southern city—now in a 30th anniversary edition with a new afterword by the author “Elegant and wicked . . . might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime.”—The New York Times Book Review Shots rang out in Savannah’s grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. In this sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative, John Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case. It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman’s Card Club; the turbulent young gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the “soul of pampered self-absorption”; the uproariously funny drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young people dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Science Fiction written by Don D'Ammassa and published by Infobase Learning. This book was released on 2015-04-22 with total page 2098 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents articles on the science fiction genre of literature, including authors, themes, significant works, and awards.
Download or read book The Book of Ian Watson written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British Science Fiction award winner Ian Watson graces us here with a brilliant new collection of short stories and essays. Though he dazzles the reader with his footwork in the kaleidoscope intensity of his vision, each piece is plainly the work of a master craftsman. Whether he is dealing with a future culture where whales control us ("The Culling") or taking a hilarious poke at the matter of government funding ("The President's Not for Turning"), his concepts are clear and undeniably logical. True to the highest ideal of science fiction, Watson carries present tendencies of our society to possible conclusions in "Roof Gardens under Saturn," and points a warning finger at the consequences of alienation from the environment. In an innovative style which borders on the experimental, Watson explores in "The Pharaoh and the Mademoiselle" the horrors of fascism. Ian Watson's writing stays with us. He entertains and he makes us think. If in some future and better world politicians were to take advice form writers, Watson should be one of them.
Download or read book The Butterflies of Memory written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ian Watson is one of the finest writers of SF and fantasy stories, and Butterflies of Memory is his 10th collection, a selection of stories that are by turns serious and playful, and always wildly imaginative... In the title story, what if mobile phones were to become truly mobile, flying about like butterflies? 'An Appeal to Adolf' tells of gay sailors on a Nazi battleship many kilometres long during a Second World War unfamiliar to us; 'Lover of Statues' of an enigmatic alien visiting the only statue of Satan in the world, in Madrid - while in the bubbling stew of faiths which is Jerusalem a doorway opens to reveal capricious godlike beings. And just suppose that Jules Verne undertook an actual journey to the centre of the Earth. Closer to home, in a Midlands town, a man who seems to have suddenly popped into existence tries to discover who and what he is. 'Hijack Holiday', written a year before 9/11, presciently if bizarrely anticipates events akin to those on that fateful day.
Download or read book The Great Escape written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Predictably unpredictable, normally abnormal. Watson combines science fiction and fantasy into an eclectic mix that includes stories about fallen angels in Hell rebelling and mounting a breakout, about the inconvenience of keeping aging parents in your brain instead of a nursing home, about Jesus' immortal brother as solo passenger on the first starship, about alien coffins bombarding the solar system, about right-wing U.S. militias stealing a quantum computer to commit nuclear blackmail, about a computer games designer haunted by the cyber-ghost of his murdered wife, about frozen heads and strange mind-changes, and how a cake decorator defeats a vampire with a sweet tooth. De-evolution, treasure-hunting via hang glider, dark animal fantasies, humanity as hive-entity, Hercules Poirot on a starship - Watson takes the strange, the eerie the weird, mixes his seasoned writing skills, and produces a potpourri of the fantastic. These nineteen stories are sure to amuse, bemuse and entertain.
Download or read book The Book of Being written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The megalomaniac Godmind is still planning to use all the minds in creation to make a vast 'lens', and if necessary it will burn out all life in the process. Back beside the river and literally born again, Yaleen represents to the guild of riverwomen the perfect proof of salvation, of life after death. In fact, she is desperately searching for a way to save the whole universe from imminent destruction.
Download or read book Miracle Visitors written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Deacon uses hypnosis to research altered states of consciousness. One of his subjects, Michael Peacocke, is unusually susceptible and in their first session together he recalls a Close Encounter which took place some years before. Deacon is sceptical of UFOs and dismisses Peacocke's story as an adolescent sexual fantasy. But then inexplicable things happen - the tape of the session is mysteriously erased, Deacon's dog is killed, he and Michael see a pterodactyl, Michael's girlfriend is menaced by Men in Black - and Deacon is forced to reconsider. Could UFOs be symbols projected from the collective unconscious? Are they messages from the biomatrix? Does the mind have the ability to project tulpas, objects and people which are physically real yet somehow illusory?
Download or read book Queenmagic Kingmagic written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In another world, somewhere in space and time, two countries - Bellogard and Chorny - are locked in perpetual war, conducted by magic. Each of the main members of the two countries' courts - king, queen, prince, bishop, knight and squire - has their own form of magic, and special ways of moving magically. A war may continue for centuries, until one side succeeds in killing the other side's king, at which point the whole world vanishes, only to reappear and have the cycle begin again. . . Pedino is a young Bellogardian who becomes the queen's squire and, as part of his training, is sent into a seedier part of the city to uncover a Chornian spy. During his adventures he meets and falls in love with a whore, Sara, who turns out to be a Chornian bishop's squire. Pedino succeeds in killing the other Chornian bishop - a remarkable achievement for a mere squire; but in the manoeuvres which follow Chorny proves to have outwitted its rival, and Pedino's whole world is threatened with extinction. There have been many stories modelled on chess games, but none so ingenious and enjoyable as Ian Watson's latest novel. And, as one would expect from Watson, the story of Bellogard and Chorny is only the beginning. When Pedino and Sara manage to escape the destruction of their universe, they find themselves in a series of even more bizarre worlds operating under still stranger rules, as they seek to discover the purpose of their existence, and the meaning of their universe. Queenmagic, Kingmagic is Ian Watson in sparkling, exuberant form.
Download or read book The Fire Worm written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Psychiatrist John Cunningham is secretly also "Jack Cannon", author of popular horror novels. Under hypnotic regression, John's patient Tony reveals a bizarre and horrifying tale of a "past life" lived on Tyneside in the 1950s, involving two schoolboys and a weird creature with paranormal powers lurking in caves beneath Tynemouth Castle. As John regresses Tony through earlier lives as far back as the 14th century it begins to seem that the local legend, captured in folksong, of a malevolent Lambton Worm may have had a basis in fact: that it was, in fact, the salamander of alchemical belief, summoned by an alchemist known as Raymond Lully, and possibly still locked below Tynemouth Castle And while John Cunningham is exploring Tony's multiple personalities, he begins to experience personality problems of his own, as Jack Cannon beings to assert his own individuality.
Download or read book Converts written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He is a financial giant but the Sponsor wants more - he wants to become a super human, to be the modern-day Adam, father to a new generation of humans with heightened DNA. He had the viral injection to change himself, the will to do it, and now all he needs is an Eve to join him on his journey. He thinks he's found the perfect match in Jean Sandra Norwich, a woman convinced she is trapped between the genes of her mother and daughter. The Sponsor offers her freedom - and so much more, the chance to be the mother of all Superbeings. But she will get more than she bargained for. CONVERTS is a masterpiece of science fiction and Ian Watson has superbly reworked Ovid's METAMORPHOSES to create an extraordinary futuristic tale.
Download or read book Deathhunter written by Ian Watson and published by Gateway. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The regions that have survived the holocaust in Watson's new novel have largely transformed themselves from prewar violence into a peaceful utopia, without either conflict or art. In place of belief in a religious afterlife, the old and ailing accept euthanasia at Houses of Death where priestlike guides counsel them. One of these guides is Jim Todhunter, who pursues research into the nature of death despite official censure. When he is assigned to guide that rarity in the new world - a murderer - he finds a natural ally in the obsessive Nathan Weinberger, himself an ex-guide. As usual with Watson, the initial impression of a green and pleasant land is revealed to be only one facet of a more complex and disturbing reality.