Alien Plot:

A man of our world is sent across the boundaries of an alien dimension. His task is to infiltrate the native culture- But once there he discovers that an alien plot of ground can become home.

This brand-new story leads off a collection of sixteen tales by Piers Anthony- including eleven stories published here for the first time in paperback!

Also included is a fascinating essay on writers and writing, written with insight, and revealing many facets of Anthony's extraordinary career.

Anthonology:

From humor to honor, fantasy to frenzy... Interstellar salesman and galactic orthodontists, time/space spanning puppy dogs and transdimentional love. Sentient clouds, lethal phogs, strange birds and stranger customs... 

Balook:

He was the largest land mammal of prehistoric times. Now computers, genetic engineering, and a touch of luck have brought one of these magnificent creatures back to life... and into the life a boy named Thoe Nemmen.

Nicknamed Balook, this nine-ton hornless rhinoceros has been living peacefully in his sealed-off scientific compound--content to play with his only friend, Thor. The world beyond the fence remains a mystery...

But now, Balook has broken free. He's become bigger and stronger--and he's suddenly ready to leave his quiet home, to encounter danger, excitement, and adventure. Balook is ready to the discover the world. But is the world ready for Balook?

But What of Earth?

"Pioneers Wanted" the heading proclaimed. Though he knew it was sheer promotional jazz, Scott felt a certain thrill, and his hands shook a little.

It described in general terms an uninhabited plant, "Conquest," circling the star Gienah in the constellation Cygnus. It was 63 light-years distant. Four small moons revolved around it, but apart from that it was quite Earthlike. Gravity was 1.03, slightly greater than that of Earth but hardly objectionable. There was more land area, less water, making the overall climate more vigorous- but so much of the land was near the equator that many more people could settle in the mild subtropics. In short, Conquest was highly habitable.

Firefly:

It lures you in with the sensual promise of ecstasy beyond imagining. It seduces with a scent erotic and carnal, unleashing the raw animal passion in its once-civilized human prey. And it kills with a terrible rapture no man or woman can resist. Beware the touch of.... Firefly.

In its unearthly embrace awaits heaven...and hell.

Starship Captain Shetland feels like a ghost on his own planet: Earth is an energy starved madhouse of compulsory sex and forced interbreeding, where eating meat and casting shadows are felonies- and spacers are hated as power "wasters". In fact, Shetland's life is dedicated to finding new energy for Earth- a search that takes him into deepest space...and deepest time.

For Shetland is commander of the Meg II, a time-ship assigned to explore the void beyond the universe. What Shetland and his crew find are- ghosts. First the ghost of the ship's dead chemist. Then ghosts of dead planets, dead stars, dead nebulae. A galaxy-sized black hole- the ghost of the cosmos, the ghost of all reality... and beyond it, beyond the specter of Time...

The most powerful, terrifying, malignant ghost of all...

Who'd be stupid enough to buy real estate on Mars?

Who'd drive a supersonic car in a suicide race?

Who'd go to a robot mortician for a free sample embalming?

Anyone who survives this kind of abuse is either a hero or a sucker. Or both.

Meet Mr. Fisk Centers.

Hasan:

Hasan, destitute son of a merchant, was lured by the infidel alchemist Bahram over seas of otherworldly treachery into the heart of mystery and magic.

Seeking the secret of transforming copper into gold, the young innocent reached the fabled land of Serendip, where seven king's daughters lived in enchanted exile. Here, the exquisite Bird Princess captured his heart, and he took her prisoner...only to have her escape him.

In pursuit of her, he would be transported through sorcerous lands of jinns and ifrits to a confrontation that threatened to tear the world- and his heart- asunder.

Killobyte:

In the game of Killobyte... a wheelchair-bound cop can stand and fight an army of sorcerers and dragons.

In the games of Killobyte... a heartbroken girl can heal her pain through role-playing magic and adventure.

In the games of Killobyte... a mystery player can satisfy his urge to kill and kill again. Until fantasy is not enough.

It's time to raise the stakes. Killobyte. The game is real. You lose, you die.

Avon 1969

Macroscope:

Near the end of the 20th century occurred the most epochal scientific breakthrough in the history of man: the discovery of the macroscope. In resolving and making coherent the information carried on macrons, it brought the entire universe within man's range of vision, revealing levels of technology vastly beyond anything dreamed by man.

But there was peril- when men attempted to unlock the secrets of the macroscope, it destroyed the minds of the best of them...

The Magic Fart

Mercycle:

Combine:

• one ordinary bicycle
• one fearless explorer
• one miracle of technology

Add:

• oceans of water
• a mermaid or two
• a dash of danger

Stir and Enjoy!

Interesting story about a young man and his bicycle and what happens when they encounter a mermaid.

Avon 1981

Mute:

Knot, mutant-bred and exiled from mankind to serve on an alien world, has personal reasons for opposing the Galactic Empire's omnipotent Coordinating Computer. But Finesse, sensuous, seductive imperial agent- aided by Hermine, a slyly psychic weasel, and Mit, a telepathic hermit crab- lures Knot into serving the Computer.

Their perilous odyssey takes them across time and space to a forbidding world ruled by the renegade Piebald, who has harnessed the fearsome extrasensory forces of his lobotomized minions...and who now threatens the very future of humanity.

Prostho Plus:

What's keeping you from your grand tour of the universe? Are you afraid of being caught out in the vastness of space with a painful cavity and no one capable of fixing it? Well fear not- the galaxy is simply teeming with dentists!

For Dr. Dillingham, dentist of Earth, it was the shock of his life- captured by aliens, forced to fix a strange cavity in an even stranger mouth; then whisked off to deep space. But luckily for the good dentist, Dillingham discovered that he liked zooming about the galaxy, solving unprecedented problems and making new and decidedly different acquaintances. And when he was offered the chance to apply to the Galactic University of Dentistry as Earth's first (and only) applicant, Dillingham had a choice to make: go back to his safe little world of bored housewives and miles of braces, or make a mark for mankind among the teeth of the stars.

It was really no choice at all.

John Smith is just a typical teenager growing up in a typical American town in 1960...Or is he?

He has a dog- that can climb trees and understand very complex commands.

He has parents- who watch him constantly, taking notes when they think he's not looking.

He has a girlfriend- a girl he's never met, whom he has been told he must marry.

John knows that something is wrong, but until he crosses the boundary fence late one night, he doesn't realize just how much. For wherever, whenever he lives, it is definitely not America, circa 1960!

Realty Check

With each new day they uncover more and more unexplainable facets of the house, until they have to ask themselves: What does this house want of them? Why were they, specifically, enticed to stay rent-free for a month? Should they leave it? Can they leave it?

Rings of Ice

Shade of the Tree:

New York had nearly destroyed Joshua Pinson. He had rejected his puritanical religious background for a high-powered urban career and the love of his wife, Mina. Now Mina was dead, murdered by a mugger; and Josh was left with their two small children, two large dogs, and a wealth of bad dreams. Suddenly, Josh was named sole heir to his eccentric Uncle Elijah's estate in rural Florida. Josh had never known his uncle, or seen the property, but it seemed a providential chance to take Sue and Chris away and begin like fresh.

Elijah's estate was at the end of a country road: thirty acres of forest and field, and abandoned mine, hidden caches of gold and gems, a warehouse of survivalist rations, chickens and a pony, and a solar house built beside a giant, ancient live-oak. There were just two problems. The house was only half built. And the land was rumored to be haunted-- by animals and machines, by creatures which couldn't exist, by ghosts of the dead... and ghosts of the living.

Strange phenomena soon began-- some eerie, some benign, all uncanny. A phantom train that ran on spectral tracks... a "possessed" chain saw... a specter washing dishes in a newly installed sink... a solar water tank that heated without sunlight. Then events turned darker, more menacing: an elderly neighbor found dead at the base of the tree; the pony turned murderous; a dog gored to death; hordes of hallucinatory, flesh-eating insects. Then skeletons rose from the earth to threaten the children; the Bigfoot-like Skunk Ape attacked Josh; and Sue fell victim to a weird, malignant disease.

But Josh refused to run, to abandon his family's new life, new friends... and his own new-found love. Not until he learned what pattern lay beneath the power, what force was in the land. Whether it could be reasoned with, or was beyond comprehension. Whether it was good, or evil; magic or necromancy. Whether he and his children had stumbled upon and confronted a horror... or a miracle

Steppe:

At the moment of his birth, Alp, a powerful and cunning Turkish warrior chieftain, is thrust naked, weaponless and horseless into a bewildering world that he perceives as hell. He soon discovers that the "hell" he inhabits is filled not with demons, but a race of humans known as Galactics from an age far removed from his own. He has been chosen to fight, and perhaps die again, in a vast intergalactic game called Steppe-- a strange recreation of his own era where "horses" are starships, "cities" are planets and "mountains" are suns.

Alp has always been a victor in the bloody struggle for survival among his people. Will his barbarian cunning be enough to defeat the intellectual might of the Galactics and by his knowledge of his own time win a place for himself among the stars?

Tathum Mound:

They inhabit the unspoiled swamplands, mountain plains and verdant forests of the vast North American continent - warriors, shamans, hunters and farmers of sundry tribes and cultures. And one man travels among them - a speaker of many tongues born "Hotfoot" but renamed "Throat Shot" as a cruel consequence of a hunting raid. From the burial mound of his ancestors, the spirits set him on his life's path - impelling the young brave through war and hardship, through magical wonder and passionate love, on a mystical quest to deliver his people from the devastation that bears relentlessly down upon them

Triple Detente