Brian Stableford

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Brian Stableford's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    168 Books (7 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1972
  • Latest Book:
    January 2024
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Full Series List in Order

The Asgard Trilogy

1 - Asgard's Secret (Oct-2004)
2 - Asgard's Conquerors (Dec-2004)
3 - Asgard's Heart (Mar-2005)

Daedalus Mission

1 - The Florians (Oct-1976)
2 - Critical Threshold (Feb-1977)
3 - Wildeblood's Empire (Oct-1977)
4 - City of the Sun (May-1978)
5 - Balance of Power (Jan-1979)

Emortality

1 - Inherit the Earth (Aug-1998)
2 - Architects of Emortality (May-2000)
3 - The Fountains of Youth (May-2000)
4 - The Cassandra Complex (Mar-2001)
5 - Dark Ararat (Mar-2002)
6 - The Omega Expedition (Jul-2003)

The Empire of the Necromancers

1 - The Shadow of Frankenstein (Dec-2008)
2 - Frankenstein And The Vampire Countess (Dec-2009)
3 - Frankenstein In London (Jan-2011)

Hooded Swan

3 - Promised Land (Mar-2011)
4 - The Paradise Game (Mar-2011)
5 - The Fenris Device (Apr-2011)
6 - Swan Song (May-2011)

Magic Quest

17 - The Last Days of the Edge of the World (Sep-1985)

The Realms of Tartarus

1 - The Face of Heaven (Dec-2012)
2 - A Vision of Hell (Nov-2012)
3 - A Glimpse of Infinity (Dec-2012)

Book List in Order: 168 titles

  • To Challenge Chaos

  • Mind Riders

  • The Florians

    Daedalus Mission - 1

    They call them the "rat-catchers." 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 space colonies. Alex Alexander, ship...

  • Critical Threshold

    Daedalus Mission - 2

    They call them the “rat-catchers.” 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...

  • The Realms of Tartarus

  • Wildeblood's Empire

    Daedalus Mission - 3

    They call them the "rat-catchers." They're the crew of the spaceship Daedalus, which a declining Earth has sent to re-establish contact with its long-lost colonies. Biologist Alex Alexander, together with his staff, must help solve the my...

  • City of the Sun

    Daedalus Mission - 4

    The fourth landing of the Daedalus Mission confronts Alex and his companions with a colonial culture seemingly modeled on a classic Utopian dream, but all of its inhabitants are infected with a mysterious alien parasite, and they no longer seem entir...

  • Balance of Power

    Daedalus Mission - 5

    The planet Attica has two continents: Lambda and Delta. The indigenous alien population being restricted to Delta, Earth's colony was planted on Lambda. Before the arrival of the Daedalus, two sailing ships had set out from Lambda to cross the oc...

  • Paradox of the Sets

    The final contact made by the Daedalus Mission begins badly, even before the ship makes a hard landing in the middle of nowhere. The situation of the colony doesn't seem to make any sense, and neither does the situation of the indigenous aliens--...



  • Optiman

  • Castaways of Tanagar

    A few starships had set out from Earth before civilization ended. One of them found a new world, created a new home for mankind, an ideal intellectual society on Tanagar. Humane, its deviants and criminals were sent into space in deep freeze forever....

  • Journey to the Center

    Original novel. First book in the "Asgard" sequence. Publication here preceded by a Science Fiction Book Club edition. Later rewritten and published as "Asgard's Secret" (2004). Followed by "Invaders from the Centre" (US title, "Asgard's Conquerors")...

  • The Gates of Eden

    Despite the development of a faster-than-light drive, Earth’s space program has been in the doldrums for centuries, as has Earth itself. Hyperspace being impossible to navigate without beacons at which to aim, there is no alternative but to wait fo...

  • The Last Days of the Edge of the World

    Magic Quest - 17

    In order to regain his magic, the king of Caramorn promises that his ugly son will marry Helen, the headstrong daughter of wizard Sirion Hilversun, who gives the prince three impossible tasks to prevent the unwanted wedding...

  • The Walking Shadow

    Paul Heisenberg is mysteriously endowed with the ability to jump through time. Together with thousands of eventual followers, he begins a journey that eventually takes him a billion years into the future. The Earth has been devastated by war with an ...

  • The Angel of Pain

    The second in the trilogy that began with The Werewolves of London, continues the chronicle of the fallen angels, who manipulate earthly events through human instruments. Twenty-one years after David's first mission, he is called upon again to discov...

  • The Empire of Fear

    "Terrific vampire fiction."
    THE KIRKUS REVIEWS
    Since the sixteentj century, England has been a land ruled by the Undead. Vampires rule with terror and the darkly-seductive promise of life eternal for the lucky few. Edmund Cordery, member of the...

  • Young Blood

    A vampire who calls himself Maldureve comes out of the shadowy borderlands of existence in response to the unvoiced desires of philosophy student Anne Charet. By choosing to see him she gives him substance; after feeding him, she too begins to hunger...

  • The Werewolves of London

    • / Science Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    An extraordinary story of suspense set in 1872, The Werewolves of London tells of David and Gabriel, unknowing hosts for enormously powerful beings--the fallen angels of Biblical mythology. As the fallen angels move toward their final confrontati...



  • Sexual Chemistry

  • Tales of the Wandering Jew

  • The Carnival of Destruction

    God is dead, and seven remaining fallen angels carry on their eternal battle through human agents. Now, while the Great War rages in Europe, David Lydyard embarks on his final supernatural quest. With a French soldier miraculously rescued from death ...

  • The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires

    In London in 1895, Professor Edward Copplestone recounts his visits to the future under the influence of drugs to a group of historical and imaginary personages, including H.G. Welles, Oscar Wilde, and the mysterious Count Lugard, revealing that huma...

  • Chimera's Cradle

    After successfully negotiating the perils of Salamander's Fire, Andris Myrazol, Princess Lucrezia and their companions are now spread far and wide. But all are prepared to face more danger as they struggle towards the centre of the mysteries that fir...

  • Inherit the Earth

    Emortality - 1

    In the twenty-second century, biomedical nanotechnology has given everyone in the world long life and robust health. It is the New Utopia, and all live in the expectation that true immortality will soon be realized. Damon Hart, son of the scientis...

  • Dictionary of Science Fiction Places

    GILEAD, Margaret Atwood's sexually oppressive society in The Handmaid's Tale A. E. Van Vogt's IMPERIAL CITY, the seat of power of the Isher dynasty, which ruled Earth, Mars, and Venus for nearly five thousand years MONARCH TOWER, the twenty-third-cen...

  • Architects of Emortality

    Emortality - 2

    Brian Stableford launched an ambitious future history series with Inherit the Earth, to widespread praise. "Stableford has created in this novel a totally believable world, and wrapped it around a series of mysterious events, surprise revelations, do...

  • The Fountains of Youth

    Emortality - 3

    This is a science fiction novel of enormous scope and ambition, filled with wonders that expands Brian Stableford's on-going future history series. Hundreds of years in the future, further ahead than the settings of Inherit the Earth and Architects o...

  • The Cassandra Complex

    Emortality - 4

    It is the 21st century, a world of rapid change and biotech threats and promises. World War Three, the biotech war, is on the horizon and the world as we know it is going to end. The fateful question is, who is going to choose what kind of future com...



  • The Eleventh Hour

    Long ago, Iridia was isolated from the stream of time by magicians trying to preserve the golden age of magic forever. Unfortunately, the land's slow, comfortable decline is about to be forever interrupted by four teenagers, former playmates of Princ...

  • The Home Front

    in 30th Anniversary DAW: Science Fiction
    • / Science Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    Such masters of the Science Fiction genre as Tad Williams, Brian Aldiss, Frederik Pohl, Kate Elliot, C.J. Cherryh, and Julie E. Czerneda contribute all new, original pieces of short fiction to this commemorative volume honoring DAW Books thirtieth ye...

  • Tread Softly

    in Year's Best Fantasy 3

    The door to fantastic worlds, skewed realities, and breathtaking other realms is opened wide to you once more in this third anthology of the finest short fantasy fiction to emerge over the past year, compiled by acclaimed editor David G. Hartwell....

  • Dark Ararat

    Emortality - 5

    Dark Ararat is the fifth novel in an overarching masterpiece. It extends into interstellar space Brian Stableford's ambitious ongoing future history series begun in Inherit the Earth and continued in The Architects of Emortality, The Fountains of You...

  • Plague Daemon: The Second Tale of Ordeo

  • Man in a Cage

    Harker Lee is a survivor. His mind withstands the threat of insanity and the pressure of imprisonment. His lifelong struggle to keep mind and body together in the face of the hostile environment of the maximum-security block is struggle against the s...

  • Year Zero

    "It's 1999, and most of the world's computers, according to common belief, are set to regard the coming year as ""Year Zero"" rather than 2000. The Devil certainly appears to think so, and is planning an apocalypse of evil for New Year's Eve. Unfortu...

  • The Omega Expedition

    Emortality - 6

    The sixth volume of Brian Stableford's future history concludes the series and also refers back to its beginnings. Through five earlier volumes, Inherit the Earth, Architects of Emortality, The Fountains of Youth, The Cassandra Complex, and Dark Arar...

  • Complications and Other Stories

  • Designer Genes

    The eleven stories in Designer Genes showcase the latest volume in this intriguing science fiction that explores intriguing future possibilities in biotechnology, ranging from stories of imminent technology reflecting issues that are already controve...



  • Salome and Other Decadent Fantasies

    Decadent literature is intrinsically and proudly a literature of moral challenge; it is sceptical, cynical, and satirical. It recognizes that everyday morality does not work either in practical or in psychological terms, and is therefore a sham, but ...

  • Asgard's Secret

    The Asgard Trilogy - 1

    They call it Asgard, the Home of the Gods. Beneath its artificial shell are at least three vast cave-systems, each one the size of an Earth-like world; and beneath those, possibly many more. No one knows how many layers there might be, and no one kno...

  • Curse of the Coral Bride

    In the far future, Earth is slowing dying, as the Sun has turned into a red giant that threatens to explode. The last inhabitants of the planet have no idea why they're still living, and why they seem to have been made in the image of earliest man--a...

  • Asgard's Conquerors

    The Asgard Trilogy - 2

    Asgard's not an easy world to get away from. Mike Rousseau only wants to take a vacation in his home system, but he's back before he has time to draw breath, and he's been drafted into the Space Force once again. His new mission is even m...

  • Asgard's Heart

    The Asgard Trilogy - 3

    The gods of Asgard are in deep trouble. If they can’t defeat their internal enemies, the starlet in the macroworld’s core will blow up, killing trillions humanoids in its various layers. Only one man can save this articifial planet, and he can on...

  • The Wayward Muse

    Meet the enigmatic immortal Axel Rathenius, the mournful Hecate Rain, the mysterious Nicodemus Rham, keeper of the Lucifer's Light on Devil's Rocks, the flamboyant antiquary Ragan Barling, the necromantically-inclined Madame Vashti Savage, Eirene Mag...

  • The Stones of Camelot

    Amory was once taken into Faerie as a changeling, but then returned. While being cared for by the Sisters of Saint Syncletica, he becomes preoccupied with the mystery of his origin, wanting to know why Faerie rejected him. When Amory travels with Mer...

  • Kiss the Goat

    "Kit is a twenty-five-year-old Yorkshire bus driver who isn't quite like the rest of us, as the old story goes. One day she hears a passenger playing a song-the Electric Hellfire Club's ""Kiss the Goat""-a song she never knew existed outside the ghos...

  • News from the Moon

    This collection of nine proto-science fiction tales, translated and edited by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford, ranges from Louis-Sébastien Mercier's 1768 opening tale, in which the hero communicates with the dead through...

  • Felifax the Tiger Man

    In Felifax, originally published in 1929, the son of Paul Féval took on the nearly impossible task of trying to bring together two archetypes: Sir Eric Palmer, the great British detective, a successor of Sherlock Holmes, against jungle-born Felifax,...



  • The Cure for Love and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution

    THE BIOTECH REVOLUTION!

    It's the new frontier of scientific development: genetic engineering, the crafting of species, and the self-alteration of man himself. Here are nine stories at the cutting edge of the biotechnology revolution--"The Cure fo...

  • The New Faust at the Tragicomique

    1899. The mood of fin-de-siècle Paris is one of the old order crumbling away, as ancient superstitions are replaced by scientific discoveries. The director of the Théâtre Tragicomique is intent on staging an updated version of Faust to usher in th...

  • Firefly

    In the far future Earth is dying. Society has reverted to a more primitive life, much like the Middle Ages. Two men, Matthew and his brother John, who calls himself "Firefly," set out to find the time traveller, the one person who can give pu...

  • The Haunted Bookshop and Other Apparitions

    The stories in this collection deal with apparitions of various sorts, five featuring ghosts produced by the troubled consciences of their protagonists, and three imagining harassments of a more tangible -- and hence more brutal -- stripe. One or two...

  • The Tree of Life

    It's the new frontier of scientific development: genetic engineering, the crafting of species, and the self-alteration of man himself. Here are eight stories at the cutting edge of the biotechnology revolution -- "The Tree of Life," "The Skin Trade,"...

  • An Oasis of Horror

    Long after he was dead, French poet Charles Baudelaire inspired a Decadent Movement in France, which became definitive of fin de siecle sensibility. One of the historical and influential links between Baudelaire and the new Decadents was the Comte de...

  • The Gardens of Tantalus and Other Delusions

    The stories contained herein deal, directly or indirectly, with manifest delusions. By representing the delusions they feature as delusions, they promote the delusion that delusion can eventually be undermined by the strong-minded, who will thus be e...

  • A Clash of Symbols

  • Yesterday's Bestsellers: A Voyage Through Literary History

  • The Shadow of Frankenstein

    The Empire of the Necromancers - 1

    1821. Thanks to the technique recently discovered by Victor Frankenstein, it is now possible to resurrect the dead. The British Crown put their best man, former Scotland Yard Superintendent Gregory Temple on the trail of criminal mastermind Henri de ...

  • Sherlock Holmes and the Vampires of Eternity

    From 1895, when the means of visiting the future through drug-induced "timeshadowing" is discovered by Professor Copplestone, to 12 million years AD, when the Universal Engine seeks to determine the cosmos' ultimate fate, the vast tapestry of time is...

  • The Highway Code

    in We Think Therefore We Are

    STEPHEN BAXTER * BRIAN STABLEFORD * ERIC BROWN JAMES LOVEGROVE * ADAM ROBERTS * TONY BALLANTYNE STEVEN UTLEY * MADLY YOUMANS * ROBERT REED PAUL DI FILIPPO * PATRICK O'LEARY * GARRY KILWORTH KEITH BROOKE * IAN WATSON * CHRIS ROBERSON Scientists...

  • The Dragon Man

    300 years in the future, biotechnology has altered the shape and substance of what it means to be a man. Only the 250-year-old "Dragon Man" can give Sara an understanding of what "e-mortality" might mean--for herself and for the entir...

  • Changelings and Other Metamorphic Tales

    Stories of humans metamorphosing into something else -- from vampires to aliens to animals -- fill modern fantasy and science fiction. Now a modern master of fantastic literature has collected together ten captivating pieces from his modern and ancie...

  • The Germans on Venus

    This second collection (after NEWS FROM THE MOON) of 13 proto-science fiction tales and other scientific romances, penned between 1796 and 1921, is translated and annotated by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford. From cosmic ...

  • In the Flesh and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution

    Most of these ten stories belong to a loosely-knit series tracking the potential effects of possible developments in biotechnology on the evolution of global society. "A master of the SF short story"--Robert Reginald....

  • The Innsmouth Heritage and Other Sequels

    Eleven new tales of fantasy and horror based upon the classic originals by H. P. Lovecraft, Oscar Wilde, Hans Christian Andersen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, and Bram Stoker....

  • The Moment of Truth

    A plastic surgeon of the future is charged with re-creating the face of Adam, the first man. Is he just a pawn in a scheme to defraud a billionaire, or does he seriously intend to fulfill his task. And if he's successful, what does it mean to the...

  • Jaunting on the Scoriac Tempests and Other Essays on Fantastic Literature

    In this new collection of essays, well-known critic Brian Stableford presents twelve pieces on science-fiction and fantasy writers M. P. Shiel, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Humphry Davy, Robert Hunt, Vernon Lee, J. G. Ballard, James Morrow, Dean Koontz, and...

  • News of the Black Feast and Other Random Reviews

    This new collection gathers together 45 of Stableford's best critical reviews on works of science fiction, fantasy, horror, decadent literature, and nonfiction books about these topics. His comments are witty, intelligent, and full of insight. Comple...

  • Beyond The Colors Of Darkness And Other Exotica

    Here are eleven stories of science fiction and fantasy by a master writer of the fantastic, including four pieces published for the first time. Contents: Beyond the Colors of Darkness, An Offer of Oblivion, Enlightenment, The Dragons Yetzirah and Alz...

  • The Cosmic Perspective and Other Black Comedies

    "Dying is easy," a great actor is reported to have said; "comedy is hard." The ten stories in this collection demonstrate that Brian Stableford has mastered the art of creating comedy in science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Contents: "The Cosmic Per...

  • The Best Of Both Worlds And Other Ambiguous Tales

    In the longest story in this collection, an eleven-year-old girl has a strange adventure in an overgrown garden, and probably saves the world from a fate worse than any conventional apocalypse. Her parents would undoubtedly think that she’s been dr...

  • The Great Chain Of Being And Other Tales Of The Biotech Revolution

    Here are seven tales of the near future, part of the author's long-running and cutting-edge "Biotech Revolution" series, including one story published for the first time. Contents: "Following the Pharmers," "The Unkindness of Ravens," "The Great Chai...

  • The Return of the Djinn and Other Black Melodramas

    Six stories of fantasy and science fiction by a modern master, including three pieces published for the first time: "The Path of Progess," "Kalamada's Blessing," "The Shepherd's Daughter," "Shadows of the Past,"...

  • The A to Z of Fantasy Literature

    Stableford provides an invaluable guide to this sequence of events and to the current state of the field. The dictionary includes cross-referenced entries on more than 700 authors, ranging across the entire historical spectrum, while more than 200 ot...

  • Alien Abduction

    When Steve, a hapless school teacher, consults a hypnotherapist to solve his personal problems, he "remembers" being abducted by aliens. When he starts attending sessions of Alien Abductees Anonymous (AlAbAn), he sees a pattern in the stories...

  • The Plurality Of Worlds

    In an alternate history of 1572, five intrepid British adventurers venture into the ether to seek out new life and new civilizations. They discover a galaxy-wide invertebrate empire, including the insect-like inhabitants of the moon. But the empire i...

  • Prelude To Eternity

    In an alternate England in which Cromwell's revolution succeeded, Michael Laurel attends a 19th-century party to witness the demonstration of the first time machine. But Michael comes to realize that the entire future of the world might be at sta...

  • The World Beyond

    S. Fowler Wright's novel, The World Below, one of the classics of British scientific romance, was hailed as a masterpiece of science fiction when it was published in the U.S. Originally intended as a trilogy, the novel was cut short when Wright's bus...

  • Frankenstein And The Vampire Countess

    The Empire of the Necromancers - 2

    1821. Thanks to the technique discovered by Victor Frankenstein, it is now possible to resurrect the dead. Scotland Yard Superintendent Gregory Temple, on the trail of criminal mastermind John Devil, who plans to use such technology to reshape the wo...

  • Sheena and Other Gothic Tales

    Sheena is a vampire from Leeds who works in a call center, and has a dark secret that even she doesn't know about. Her boyfriend has to discover it the hard way, alas. Like the other two vampire stories included in the book, both of which feature...

  • The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy

    Beginning in 1804 with Nathan Drake's 'Henry Fitzowen', The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy traces the development of the genre through the stories and poems of Coleridge, Keats, Dickens, Disraeli, William Morris, Christina Rossetti, Tennyson and Ver...

  • Les Fleurs Du Mal // The Undead

    In the tradition of the old "Ace Doubles," two-in-one books (flip one over to read the second title)--here is the fourth Wildside Double. "Les Fleurs du Mal: A Tale of the Biotech Revolution," by Brian Stableford. In the year 2550, where premediated ...

  • Luscinia

    Cris's life falls apart after he and his girlfriend Claire are tattooed by artist Devon Curtin--who's murdered shortly after. Twenty years later, Curtin's fans, who believe his art was magical, are putting together an exhibit of his work, including t...

  • A Brief History of Satanic Abuse

  • The Mad Trist

    The Comte de Saint-Germain has come into possession of a copy of The Mad Trist, the book from which Edgar Allan Poe and Roderick Usher read aloud before the collapse recorded in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” The Comte wants to make a present ...

  • Valdemar's Daughter

    Following the sad demise of Ernest Valdemar, as related in the story by Edgar Allan Poe, his mortal remains are dispatched to his daughter in Paris--but they do not arrive on schedule, and the Chevalier Auguste Dupin is forced to play detective yet a...

  • Valdemar's Daughter // The Mad Trist

    In the tradition of the old "Ace Doubles" (flip one book over to read the second title), here is the tenth Wildside Double:

    VALDEMAR'S DAUGHTER: A ROMANCE OF MESMERISM, by Brian Stableford

    Following the sad demise of Ernest Valdemar, as relat...

  • Frankenstein In London

    The Empire of the Necromancers - 3

    1823. Thanks to the technique discovered by Victor Frankenstein, it is now possible to resurrect the dead. Many competing factions now plans to use such technology to reshape the world. Scotland Yard Superintendent Gregory Temple is forced to team up...

  • The Quintessence Of August

    During an August heat-wave, the Comte de Saint-Germain seeks the help of detective Auguste Dupin. Someone--or someTHING--is trying to kill him! The Comte has inherited a magical cello and a mysterious sealed box. A psychic vampire (an "egregore") int...

  • The Undead

    In the world of the future, the newest rage among the rich and aged is to purchase computer-generated biotech simulations of their personalities before they die -- and thus to become, after their passing, “Undead,” immobile personalities trapped ...

  • Halcyon Drift

    In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, starship pilots have become the great romantic heroes of the day. When Star-Pilot Grainger is rescued from a shipwreck, he finds...

  • Rhapsody In Black

    In the culture of the galaxy, the Star-Pilots of the starships that link the cosmos together have become the great heroes of the day. Grainger, who has become a legend in his own lifetime, is drafted to fly the prototype (the Hooded Swan) of a new sh...

  • Zombies Don'T Cry

    In the world of the future, dying is easy--it's the afterliving that's hard! When Nicky is killed at the age of 27 by a suicide bomber, he wakes up in a Resurrection Center, having been made into an albino, pink-eyed "zombie." The beleagued community...

  • The Paradise Game

    Hooded Swan - 4

    In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-utopian worlds like New Alexandria to the vermin-infested slums of Old Earth, the Star-Pilots are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own time. Pharos is paradise--or so i...

  • Promised Land

    Hooded Swan - 3

    In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like new Rome to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own time, flying the revolutionary ship, Hood...

  • Xeno's Paradox

    In the near future, xenogenetist Carly Maclaine is the clone of a notorious pioneer in the field, who created an artificial intelligence called Napoleon. Napoleon has been on the run from the Commonwealth's secret police--but now they need Napoleon's...

  • The Cthulhu Encryption

    The Shoggoths attack: "They had been so horrible before that I dare not say that they were any MORE horrible when they came again.... They were still unspeakable, still unthinkable--but whether I could speak or think of them or not, they were HERE." ...

  • The Fenris Device

    Hooded Swan - 5

    In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds like New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots that link the cosmos are the great heroes of the day, and Grainger has become a legend in his own lifetime. The ...

  • Swan Song

    Hooded Swan - 6

    In a galactic culture that extends from quasi-Utopian worlds such as New Alexandria to vermin-infested slums like Old Earth, the Star-Pilots have become the great heroes of the day. Grainger has become a legend in his own time, flying the prototype v...

  • Nature's Shift

    Peter Bell the Third, accidentally named from the title of a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, is called upon to renew his old friendship with Rowland Usher, who was deliberately named after the protagonist of a story by Edgar Allan Poe. In the new House...

  • The Dedalus Book of Decadence: Moral Ruins

    The Dedalus Book of Decadence looks south to sample the essence of fine French decadent writing. It succeeds in delivering a range of writers either searching vigorously for the thrill of a healthy crime or lamenting their impuissance from a sickly s...

  • Streaking

    For hundreds of years the male members of the Kilcannon family have considered themselves to be the beneficiaries of distortions in the statistical distribution of chance, associating their most fortunate windfalls with visual distortions that they c...

  • Journey to the Core of Creation

    It is 1847, and Paris is edging closer to its next revolution, but something is also astir inside Mont Dragon in the Ardèche. This is a place of annual pilgrimage for a band of enigmatic nomads, and also a place of interest to the ambitious Bishop o...

  • The Mind-Riders

    First published in 1976, "The Mind-Riders" features a remarkable anticipation of virtual reality gaming, in which the revised sport of boxing pits physically identical virtual fighters against one another, operated by electronically-connected...

  • The Golden Fleece and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution

    This collection of stories about possible future developments in biotechnology juxtaposes the ultra-large scale of "Mortimer Gray's History of Death", which encapsulates several thousand years of human history, both past and future, with the intimate...

  • The Legacy of Erich Zann and Other Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

    In the longest of the four Cthulhu Mythos stories in this collection, "The Legacy of Erich Zann," the violin and the music that the ill-fated musician left behind become the target, some fifteen years later, for a mysterious searcher who will stop at...

  • War Games

    Throughout the centuries that have passed since humans first ventured into interstellar space, they have been at war with the alien Veich. The human race has, in consequence, been fully militarized, its educational system being a form of military tra...

  • Nemoville

    This is a new collection of 12 French proto-science fiction tales penned between 1757 and 1924, translated and annotated by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford. From a pioneering venture on the exploration of inner space by ...

  • The Supreme Progress

    This collection of 18 proto-science fiction tales, translated and edited by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford, includes such ground-breaking tales as Charles Cros' An Interastral Drama (1872), about an unlawful love between...

  • The World Above The World

    A balloon ascent to the Heavens... A man with X-ray vision... A utopian metal city built on giant pylons above Paris... A sexless world in which women reproduce parthenogenetically and man is unknown... Is science insane? Unholy? See nine French auth...

  • Investigations of the Future

    This is a new collection of seven French proto-science fiction stories devoted to explorations of the future, as imagined in the 1850s and early 1900s, translated and annotated by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford. This col...

  • Yesterday Never Dies

    At an 1847 revival of Meyerbeer’s opera Robert le Diable, the ghost of Blaise Thibodeaux, the author of La Résonance du temps, appears in one of the boxes, just as Thibodeaux had predicted to Auguste Dupin that it would, thirteen years before. Unf...

  • A Vision of Hell

    The Realms of Tartarus - 2

    The people of the Euchronian Millennium had been reminded of the Underworld that existed beneath the platform on which they had constructed their better, cleaner, safer world--leaving the original surface of Earth a dark, dreary, and forgotten place....

  • The Face of Heaven

    The Realms of Tartarus - 1

    After laboring for thousands of years, the people of Earth, fleeing ecological disaster, have built a new, clean, stable world on a worldwide platform erected over the entire land surface of the Earth. Everything is going well--except for Carl Magner...

  • A Glimpse of Infinity

    The Realms of Tartarus - 3

    The masters of the Euchronian Millennium are panicking. The fabric of their ideal society on the platform built over the Earth has been ripped, and the order that they hold so precious seems to be teetering on the brink of collapse. In order to save ...

  • Sexual Chemistry and Other Tales of the Biotech Revolution

    This collection brings together the ten earliest stories in Brian Stableford’s series of "Tales of the Biotech Revolution," all written in the 1980s, except for one anomalous example from the 1960s. The dates in some of the stories, located...

  • Sexual Chemistry and Other Tales

  • The Conqueror of Death

    In the 1890s, a generation before Hugo Gernsback, Louis Figuier, editor of the French popular science magazine La Science Illustrée, made a concerted effort to define and delimit the genre of roman scientifique, using that term to head a series of f...

  • Cybele

    One night, young Marius Foulane is mysteriously attracted by the light of the star Gemma and travels by astral projection to the planet Cybele which orbits it. He discovers a world identical to Earth, but historically displaced by 6000 years in the f...

  • The Revolt of the Machines

    The Revolt of the Machines, translated and annotated by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford, features eight stories written between 1865 and 1918, providing a cross-section of the early development of what the editor of the 1...

  • Eurydice's Lament

    The enigmatic immortal Axel Rathenius has been commissioned to paint a triptych illustrating the life of Orpheus. Meanwhile, an enigmatic legacy propels him, his agent Myrica Mavor, Madame Vashti Savage the medium,and the mournful poet Hecate Rain in...

  • Vampires of Atlantis

    Kirk Markham returns to his home town of Leeds in 1999 after three years at university "down south." In order to support himself while he tries to find a respectable career, he gets a job in a call center, which proves more challenging than h...

  • The Darkling Wood

    Long-undisturbed Tenebrion Wood, identified in the Domesday Book and named by the Romans after a kind of "night-sprit," stands in the way of a road development. Environmentalist Steve Pearlman recruits a number of investigators to examine the...

  • The Devil in Detail

    At last, the true story can finally be told of my participation in the investigation of a haunted bookshop in Barry, South Wales, organized by my good friend and fellow science fiction writer Reverend Lionel Fanthorpe. As a result of the haunting in ...

  • The Aerial Valley

    The Aerial Valley (1810) proves that a utopian society can only maintain stability if it remains technologically limited and isolated from outside influences; it is a sensitive challenge to the philosophy of progress as an instrument of perfectibilit...

  • The New Moon

    The New Moon (1770) follows in the footsteps of Cyrano de Bergerac's History of the States and Empires of the Moon, describing the epic journey of a lunar native, which takes him on a tour of the nations of the Moon, ending on the island of Eutoquia,...

  • Portals of Paradise

    Gabriel Bowlands, a young man taking the Grand Tour in the late 1780s, is less interested in absorbing the broad legacy of European culture than following up his own particular obsession with the theater, and particularly the art of comedy. Having...

  • Tangled Web of Time

    Mark and Jimmy are “astrological twins” born on the same day, but they have completely opposed personalities. Even so, when they met at university in the 1980s they formed a close friendship, which even survived a crisis point when the reckless J...

  • The Humanisphere

    Four French utopian fantasies by Paul Adam, Victor Considérant, Joseph Déjacque & Fernand Giraudeau. This collection, the fifteenth in this series, presents four French "utopian fantasies" which were all ground-breaking in their day. Victor Conside...

  • The Mirror of Dionysius

    Brian M. Stableford’s latest novel, The Mirror of Dionysus, explores the mystery of the origins of the  immortal Axel Rathenius, who lives on the artists’ colony of Mnemosyne, an island off the northern coast of what in our world is called Fr...

  • The Mirror of Present Events

    Ten French scientific romances by Georges de La Fouchardière, Henri Lanos, E.M. Laumann, Francois-Félix Nogaret, Jean Rameau & Régis Vombal. The Mirror of Present Events (1790) is an irreverent political allegory in which a Syracusan beauty, follo...

  • The Nickel Man

    Eleven French scientific romances by Jacques Boucher de Perthes, Pierre Bremond, Léon Daudet, Georges Espitallier, Louis Gallet, Pierre de Nolhac & Ralph Schropp. This is the twelfth in a series of anthologies of exemplary texts in the evolution of ...

  • On the Brink of the World's End

    Seven French scientific romances by Raoul Bigot, Jacques-Antoine Dulaure, Charles Epheyre, Jules Hoche, Joseph Mry and Colonel Royet. This is the thirteenth in a series of anthologies of exemplary texts in the evolution of the French genre of roman ...

  • Under the Moons of Mars

    Before the term "science fiction" was adopted in the 1920s, there were "scientific romances," tales of amazing journeys beyond the limits of the known world. Jules Verne's imaginative novels of the mid-nineteenth century met with international succes...

  • Slaves of the Death Spiders and Other Essays on Fantastic Literature

    Acclaimed author and scholar Brian Stableford turns his penetrating mind to matters of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in this collection of essays. He covers such diverse topics as: SLAVES OF THE DEATH SPIDERS: Colin Wilson and Existentialist S...

  • Further Beyond

    Crawford Tillinghast was killed when a machine that he built in order to break down the barriers between dimensions exploded, and his three domestic servants disappeared, leaving his old friend David Dearden as the only witness to the catastrophe....

  • The Mirror of Dionysus

    Brian M. Stableford’s latest novel, The Mirror of Dionysus, explores the mystery of the origins of the immortal Axel Rathenius, who lives on the artists’ colony of Mnemosyne, an island off the northern coast of what in our world is called France...

  • The Death of Broceliande

    Alastor, the son of an iron-master, has no inclination to follow his father’s trade, preferring to work with wood. He and his musically-talented sister Catrianne leave the foundry to go and live in a town, where Alastor soon begins to specialize in...

  • Spirits of the Vasty Deep

    St. Madoc, on the coast of North Wales, seems like a suitably quiet place for an aging writer to work; when Simon Cannick moves into Raven Cottage he thinks it might even be too quiet. Stopping by the pub, he learns of local lore concerning mermai...

  • The Pool of Mnemosyne

    Brian M. Stableford’s latest novel, The Pool of Mnemosyne, concludes the saga of the immortal Axel Rathenius, from the artists’ colony of Mnemosyne, an island located off the northern coast of what in our world is called France, in the Everlas...

  • The Alchemy of Blood

    Mathieu Galmier, formerly of the Pasteur Institute, has to leave Paris under a cloud when one of his pioneering experiments in hematology goes awry. He is given refuge -- of sorts -- in London by Sir Juliam Templeforth. Unfortunately, the rewards bot...

  • The Insubstantial Pageant

    "As above, so below."

    This is the message Simon Cannick receives from his ailing mother, approaching her life's end, the first time he meets her. A mystical commonplace, or is there more to it?

    While Simon connects with his newly disco...

  • TALES OF ENCHANTMENT AND DISENCHANTMENT

    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 wo...

  • The Companions of the Silence 2

    In 1823, a mysterious stranger walks into the midst of the Companions of the Silence, claiming to be the notorious bandit Bel Demonio, but in fact, he is Mario Monteleone’s eldest son, Fulvio, Prince Coriolani. He then takes over the Companions and...

  • The Mysterious Hermit of the Tomb

    In Etienne-Leon de Lamothe-Langon’s The Mysterious Hermit of the Tomb, translated here for the first time, the evil Arembert consigns his father to a dark dungeon, and has his brother assassinated in order to get his hands on the vast family estate...

  • Pans Flute

    Pan’s Flute is the eighth volume in a set published by Black Coat Press devoted to presenting the classic works of this giant of French science fiction and fantasy. J.-H. Rosny Aîné is the second most important figure in modern French science fic...

  • Penelopes Secret

    Penelope’s Secret is a collection of three novellas translated here for the first time. The eponymous story picks up where Homer’s Odyssey ends, after the slaying of Penelope’s suitors and the discovery that her stubborn virtue was somewhat exa...

  • The Ring of Light

    In March 1913, a nuclear rocket-powered spaceship leaves France to explore the planets of the Solar System. On board are the intrepid Marquis de Valsorres, the eminent Dr. Portier, the beautiful Zabeth and their loyal companion, Thomas. After a long ...

  • Singular Amours

    Singular Amours is a collection of three novellas translated here for the first time and the fruit of the author’s interest in psychological science, and represents a significant contribution to the evolving subgenre of “case study” fiction. W...

  • The Truths of Darkness

    Simon Cannick, with the dubious assistance of possible extraterrestrial influence, seems to have largely recovered from his temporary death, his peculiar and continual lapses into dreamspace notwithstanding. However, fate, like the neider, is hydr...

  • The Tyranny of the Word

    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 Domini...

  • The Painter of Spirits

    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 ...

  • The Quiet Dead

    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 pas...

  • Living with the Dead

    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 ...

  • JOURNEY TO THE ISLES OF ATLANTIS AND OTHER FANCIFUL EXCURSIONS

    Contents: Introduction and Notes by Brian StablefordParis in 5839: A Dream. Anonymous, perhaps by Félix Bodin The Clockmaker of Nuremberg by Julie Lavergne The Inventor by Gaston Derys King Beta by Louis Lemercier de Neuville Humans in the Yea...

  • FUNESTINE & OTHER ADVENTURES IN ROMANCIA

    The remarkable stories included in this volume show a marked evolution in the contes de fées, each being more substantial, and more imaginatively innovative than its predecessor. Although they clearly attempt to take up where Baronne d’Aulnoy and ...

  • THE ORIGIN OF THE FAYS AND OTHER TALES OF FAERIE

    As the contes de fées suffered a decline in fashionability, they began to rely on hybridization with Oriental and Medieval fantasies. The thirteen stories collected in this volume may be replete with fays, ogres, magic swords and other motifs, but t...

  • Automata

    In 1737, French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson (1709-1782) constructed a life-sized automaton known as the Flute Player, which established him as a pioneer in the field. It was swiftly followed by a Tambourine Player and the Digesting Duck.

    ...

  • Weird Fiction in France

    Weird fiction has long been not only unappreciated but actively maltreated by orthodox esthetic evaluation, but its stature has improved considerably in modern times, and that has encouraged a reexamination of the genre's history.

    It has re...

  • The Revelations of Time and Space

    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 lif...

  • Snuggly Tales of Hashish and Opium

    What benevolent demon must I thank for thus surrounding me with mystery, silence, peace and perfumes? O bliss! That which we ordinarily call life, even when it can encompass happiness, has nothing to compare with this life beyond life which I have co...

  • The Elusive Shadows

    They're essentially frustrating-things I glimpse out of the corner of my eye, but which disappear as soon as I try to look at them directly. For me, they're always peripheral. Elusive shadows, as you say. They modify the color of whatever they're gli...

  • Meat on the Bone

    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 fo...

  • After the Revelation

    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 claustrophob...

  • The Second Dedalus Book of Decadence

    The Decadence Movement which flourished in the 1890s produced some of Europe's most striking and exotic works of literature The Decadents, convinced that civilization was in a state of terminal decline, refused to rebel as the Romantics had, but set ...

  • Beyond the Mountains of Madness

    Tom Andersley returns to his family estate in Yorkshire after serving in France throughout the Great War of 1914-18, but like many of his fellow survivors he finds the estate very different and is not the same man who departed: a victim of shell ...

  • The Cthulthu Palimpsest

    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...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Brian Stableford has published 168 books.

Brian Stableford does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Cthulthu Palimpsest, was published in January 2024.

The first book by Brian Stableford, To Challenge Chaos, was published in January 1972.

Yes. Brian Stableford has 7 series.
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