Norman Spinrad

Genetic warfare and the invasion of Europe by mutants from outer space are the tenets of this science fiction novel written as if the author had been Adolf Hitler

The Iron Dream

In the Second Starfaring Age, humans travel the universe via a technology they barely understand, propelled by a space drive consisting of mysteriously complex mechanisms and, symbiotically linked to it, a living woman, the Void Pilot. Pilots are rare, and the ability to be a Pilot also entails physical wasting and a shortened life. But Pilots live only for the timeless moments of Transition, when their ships cross the emptiness of space in an instant. Now Void Pilot Dominique Alia Wu has begun to catch a glimpse of something more, something transcendent in that eternal moment . . . and she needs the cooperation of her Captain to achieve it permanently. Even at risk to the survival of the Ship. Norman Spinrad has been one of SF’s most adventurous writers since the 1960s, an internationally praised peer of such writers as Harlan Ellison, Michael Moorcock, and Samuel R. Delany. His stories of the Second Starfaring Age, The Void Captain’s Tale and the later novel Child of Fortune, form a single epic praised by the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as “an eroticized vision of the Galaxy . . . an elated Wanderjahr among the sparkling worlds.”

The Void Captain's Tale

Norman Spinrad, a National Book Award finalist for his short fiction collection The Star-Spangled Future, has now written The People's Police, a sharp commentary on politics with an interesting twist. Martin Luther Martin is a hard-working New Orleans cop, who has come up from the gangland of Alligator Swamp through hard work. When he has to serve his own eviction notice, he decides he's had enough and agrees to spearhead a police strike. Brothel owner and entrepreneur J. B. Lafitte also finds himself in a tight spot when his whorehouse in the Garden District goes into foreclosure. Those same Fat Cats responsible for the real estate collapse after Katrina didn't differentiate between social strata or vocation. MaryLou Boudreau, aka Mama Legba, is a television star and voodoo queen--with a difference. The loa really do ride and speak through her. These three, disparate people are pulled together by a single moment in the television studio when Martin, hoping for publicity and support from the people against the banks, corporate fat cats, and corrupt politicians. But no one expects Papa Legba himself to answer, and his question changes everything. "What do you offer?"

A Novel

The People's Police

This narrative in the heroic tradition tells the tale of a young wanderer, Wendi Shasta Leonardo, who sought her destiny on an odyssey of self-discovery amid the many worlds of man. The spoiled, sheltered, carefree girl from the small planet of Glade sets out on her trip to the decadent world of Edoku. Penniless on the streets of the strange new world, she encounters Pater Pan, the legendary leader of an itinerant band of artisans called Gypsy Jokers. He becomes her lover and teacher, and gives her the name Sunshine, as she masters the art of ruespieler (yarnspinner). She then undertakes a reckless journey with the dashing Merchant Prince Guy Vlad Boca through the forest of Bloomenveldt, and finds the end of her odyssey. Spinrad calls the youthful wanderers who set out on the road from innocence to experience in the exotic, intersteller civilization of the Second Starfaring Age, the children of fortune. ISBN 0-553-05089-3 : $16.95.

Child of Fortune

Centuries after the big smash, the civilization of Aquaria flour-ishes on what was the West Coast of the United States. Science fic-tion.

Songs from the Stars

Bug Jack Barron

Roman

Champion Jack Barron

Sex means death when a virus, originating in Africa, is unleashed on the world for twenty terrible years, until a cure is finally found, in a new edition of this science fiction fable featuring commentary by the author. Original.

Journals of the Plague Years

The Men in the Jungle

Michael Moorcock

Lover and hero, Jack Barron, the sold-out media god of the Bug Jack Barron Show, has one last chance to hit it big when he meets Benedict Howards, the power-mad man who possesses the secret to immortality. Reprint.

Barry N. Malzberg

First published in the 1960s, Spinrad was one of the first writers to perceive the totalitarian implications of the cradle-to-grave welfare state. But at the same time he was too organically a radical ever to be confused with a conservative. Result: "Agent of Chaos!" Boris Johnson thinks he wants democracy. But in the course of his adventures he discovers that democracy to him means freedom. It's a banned concept from the Millennium of Religion. Like God. He finds himself dealing with a byzantine political situation worthy of anything from the banned past. The dictatorship is the Hegemony. Opposition is provided by the aptly named agents of C.H.A.O.S. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood of Assassins plays a game that no one can fathom. Whose side are they on? Whose fool are you? Spinrad explores his philosophical theme in a manner all too rare in contemporary science fiction. The problem is that Order will always try to eliminate any random factors. By its very nature, it encourages opposition and that feeds the forces of chaos. But chaos has built in problems as well. Its victories cannot help but feed the forces of reaction, of order. The heroes in this novel ultimately opt for personal freedom. The villains try to establish a dictatorship over the very nature of reality itself. And then Spinrad throws in the discovery of aliens. A starship sets forth to meet them, the Prometheus. The Hegemony doesn't like that.

Agent of Chaos

Little Heroes

Centuries after the big smash, the successor civilization of Aquaria more or less flourishes on the west coast of what was once the United States, a society built on White Science, following the "law of muscle, sun, wind and water." Only the sorcerers of Space Systems, Inc., dare traffic in the "Black Sciences" of atomic, petroleum and physics which destroyed the old golden age of space, for they alone know of the higher destiny that awaits man in the abandoned Big Ear space station. For centuries, they have secretly infiltrated Aquarius through the gray town of La Mirage while crafting a spaceship capable of reaching the Big Ear and turning man's ears once more to the mysterious Songs from the Stars.Now, through the Aquarians Clear Blue Lou, perfect master of the Clear Blue Way, and Sunshine Sue, queen of the Word of Mouth communication network, they scheme to bring their ultimate scenario to fruition.Sex, love, emotion, karma, destiny, perhaps even The Way itself, all become elements in the scenario of Arnold Harker, Black Scientist, sorcerer, project manager of Operation Enterprise.But when Clear Blue Lou, Sunshine Sue and Arnold Harker finally confront the interstellar brotherhood of sentient beings, they find, each in his way, that The Galactic Way utterly transcends their hopes, wildest dreams and darkest fears. In this novel of science, mysticism and their ultimate synergistic fusion, Spinrad once again demonstrates his power to create a vivid future that encompasses our dreams of space."Dense and meaty, multi-layered...Spinrad leads the reader gently toward wider and more awesome vistas, expanding his mind as he goes"-Larry Niven"This is perhaps Spinrad's finest novel-deft, powerful, with ideas that ricochet through the story"-Greg Benford"Songs from the Stars is good old-fashioned science fiction set free from its old-fashioned puritan taboos"-Walter M. Miller, Jr."Remarkable...beautiful.... This is one of the most uplifting works I've read"-Philip Jose Farmer"Norman Spinrad is in top form for this one. A fine book, brilliantly written. I enjoyed every page of it."-Roger Zelazny

Earth was programmed for destruction in the mad war of the computer worlds - unless the Solarians could stop the machines! Three hundred years ago the Solarians retreated to the safety of their Fortress as Earth became embroiled in the first of the computer wars with the dread Duglaari Empire. The Solarians' final word to all humanity was a promise to reappear one day and bring it to victory. Suddenly, with Earth on the verge of becoming a helpless victim of the merciless Duglaars, the Solarians made contact with Fleet Commander Jay Palmer. It was an offer of aid. But the Solarians' plan was so cunning, so fraught with danger, that Jay faced the greatest decision of his life - and that of Earth's: Accept their ingenious strategy as a stroke of genius or reject it as a trick designed to destroy human life forever.

The Solarians

Alfred Bester

Marion Zimmer Bradley

Three Essays on Science Fiction

Experiment Perilous

The year is 1531. In a small hut on the slopes of the volcano Popocateptl, scholar and poet Alvaro de Sevilla reflects on his extraordinary life. For Alvaro was one of the small army of conquistadors who, some years earlier, set out to conquer an empire. Hernando Cortes was proclaimed a reincarnation of the god Quetzacoatl shortly after his arrival in the New World, and he took advantage and forced his way to the capital city. There he met Montezuma, the Aztec Emperor, who at first welcomed the conquistadors to his city, showering them with gold. But it was an encounter between two civilizations that could only end in chaos, death, and destruction.Published in Britain as a major historical novel, a best-seller in Spanish translation, MEXICA is the amazing full true story of Hernando Cortes' conquest of Mexico, told in depth as only a novel could tell it--from both the Spanish and Aztec points of view, by Cortes, by Montezuma and by the only character in the novel who is not a real historical character, Alvaro de Sevilla, a secret Jew who presents yet a third and passionately neutral point of view. A novel that restored their own true name, Mexica, to the so-called "Aztecs" (an insult meaning "barbarians from nowhere" in Nahuatl) in Mexico.

Mexica

When hack agent Jimmy "Tex" Balaban discovers Ralf on a Borscht Belt stage, his act appears to be a clever joke. Ralf claims to be from the future, shouting foul-mouthed prophecies of where we went wrong. And he delivers a harrowing message. The world is in chaos. Our biosphere has been devastated, our air is unbreathable and the final stalwarts of mankind have taken refuge in pressurized shopping malls. Humanity clings to the last mediocre vestiges of life on a dead planet that we did not know how to save. But it might not be too late. Has Ralf returned to the past to awaken our consciences? Is he who he says he is or is he insane? And if we have one last chance to save the world, does any of this matter? Then Dexter D. Lampkin, a fading science fiction writer, and Amanda Robin, a New Age guru-wannabe, magnificently transform Ralf into what the world really needs: a messenger sent from the future to save us from ourselves. Together with Tex they polish Ralf's television persona to captivate America. The problem is that Ralf never goes out of character. He truly believes he is a prophet. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

He Walked Among Us

Chronicles the odyssey of Wendi Shasta Leonardo and her encounter in the majestic land of Edoku with Pater Pan and his followers, the Gypsy Jokers. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

As an ambitious, alienated, and awesomely talented kid from the Bronx, Norman Spinrad rode the revolutionary “New Wave” of 1960s science fiction to fame, if not fortune. His usually angry, often hilarious, and always radical novels changed the field forever. Once devoted to interplanetary adventure, SF began to explore the uneasy intersection between today’s illusions and tomorrow’s dystopian disasters. It grew dark, grew wild, grew up. An all-new novella designed to take a poke at both Christian fundamentalists and corporate CEOs, Raising Hell is a rousing account of the fight to improve working conditions in Hell, for both demons and the damned, with the help of such deceased immortals as Jimmy Hoffa, John L. Lewis, and César Chávez. Plus… “The Abnormal New Normal,” an impolite inquiry into today’s high-finance low-jinks, which unmasks the manipulations of the 1% and proposes a radical fix. And Featuring: our Outspoken Interview, the usual mix of intimate revelation, gossip, and tales from the front lines of writing and publishing.

Raising Hell

The world of the future is in a lot of trouble. Pollution, overpopulation, and ecological disasters have left the rich nations still rich, and the poor nations dying. Still, for international businesses it is business as usual. It is better to be rich. But is it all coming to a terrible end? A scientist has predicted Condition Venus, the sudden greenhouse end of the planet - but she can't say when. So the attention of the world is on a UN conference in Paris, where all hell is about to break loose.

Norman Spinrad

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