Edwin Balmer

Philip Wylie

When Worlds Collide

The female of the species vanished on the afternoon of the second Tuesday of February at four minutes and fifty-two seconds past four o'clock, Eastern Standard Time. The event occurred universally at the same instant, without regard to time belts, and was followed by such phenomena as might be expected after happenings of that nature. On a lazy, quiet afternoon, in the blink of an eye, our world shatters into two parallel universes, as men vanish from women and women from men. very different ways for men and women, boys and girls. An explosion of violence sweeps one world that still operates technologically; social stability and peace in the other are offset by famine and a widespread breakdown in machinery and science. And as we learn from the fascinating parallel stories of a brilliant couple, Bill and Paula Gaunt, the foundations of relationships, love, and sex are scrutinized, tested, and sometimes redefined in both worlds. The radically divergent trajectories of the gendered histories reveal stark truths about the rigidly defined expectations placed on men and women and their sexual relationships and make clear how much society depends on interconnection between the sexes. unsettling in its relevance today, The Disappearance is a masterpiece of modern speculative fiction. Philip Wylie (1902-71) is the author of Gladiator and the co-author of When Worlds Collide, both available in Bison Books editions. Acclaimed science-fiction writer Robert Silverberg is the recipient of many awards, including the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards, and the Grand Master designation from the Science Fiction Writers of America, the highest science-fiction honor available. He is the author of Lord Valentine's Castle.

The Disappearance

Gladiator

his notions and opinions together with a haphazard history of his career and amours in these moody years, as well as sundry rhymes, fables, diatribes and literary misdemeanors: a novel in a new manner

Finnley Wren

Glenn Howard, publishing tycoon, got into his car and prepared to dictate a top-secret memo to the President of the United States. The Earth's atmosphere and waters were being poisoned. But he never finished the memo. Instead, Howard passed out. He awoke 47 years later to a strange underground world ruled by a cold-blooded dictatorship.

A.D. 2017

Los Angeles

"Newly annotated by the author. For the 20th edition of this explosive classic Philip Wylie has supplied a thoughtful preface-- and illuminating footnotes reflecting his current thinking on what he calls a survey of moral want, a philosophical discourse suitable only for the strong, a study of American types and archetypes and a signpost on the two thoroughfares of man, the Via Dolorosa and the Descensus Averno, together with sundry preachments, epithets-- moral adventures-- political impertinences-- allegories-- aspirations-- visions and jokes as well as homely hints for the care of the human soul."

Generation of Vipers

A team of scientists work hurriedly to build a spaceship in time to escape the doomed Earth.

And, After Worlds Collide

By Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie

Vincent DiFate

Two outlaw planets are hurtling toward earth ... and only a chosen few will escape to planet Beta B.

In When Worlds Collide, an unprecedented astronomical discovery heralds a coming apocalypse as two alien worlds hurtle towards our solar system. As scientists calculate the cataclysmic impact of these rogue planets, society grapples with impending doom and the possibility of escape. Amid widespread panic and chaos, individuals forge unexpected alliances, and a forbidden romance emerges against a backdrop of cosmic disaster. Desperate efforts to secure a future on a distant habitable world bring hope and sacrifice in equal measure. This classic science fiction adventure examines the limits of human resilience and the transformative power of love in the face of ultimate destruction.

When World Collide

Two lovers rush toward doom, as an unseen killer stalks the world. A novel of the fourth dimension's conquest of Earth.

The Murderer Invisible

A runaway planet hurtles toward the earth. As it draws near, massive tidal waves, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions wrack our planet, devastating continents, drowning cities, and wiping out millions. In central North America a team of scientists race to build a spacecraft powerful enough to escaped the doomed earth. Their greatest threat, they soon discover, comes not from the skies but from other humans.

Philip Wylie (1902-1971) was a prolific writer whose stories were, in the words of editor Bill Pronzini, '¿¿controversial, provocative, iconoclastic'¿¿ and unafraid to question cultural sensibilities and critique American mores. As a result, his detective fiction was among the most ingenious and innovative of his generation. Included in this collection are six of his best mysteries where, in order to discover the solution, you will be forced to see through the mayhem of a hurricane in the Florida Keys, find something unnatural in a death by heart attack, join an Olympic swimmer as he matches wits with a ruthless murderer, and find which weapon (out of ten thousand!) was used to bludgeon someone to death in the New York Museum of Natural History. Edited and with an introduction by Bill Pronzini.Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments is the 29th in Crippen & Landru'¿¿s '¿¿Lost Classics'¿¿ series '¿¿ new collections by great writers of traditional mysteries.

Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments and Other Tales of Mystery

Ten Thousand Blunt Instruments

This book may change your life. It may save it. It is one of the most important—and most shocking—books ever written. Tomorrow! is a story of average, nice Americans living in the neighboring cities of Green Prairie and River City in Middle America. It is—until the sudden blitz—the story of the girl next door and her boyfriend; of the accountant who saw what was coming, and the rich old lady who didn’t; of engaging young kids, babies, “hoods,” a bank official who “borrowed” from a customer’s account. Then, at the height of the Christmas shopping season, Condition Red is sounded, and this down-to-earth story of America’s Main Street becomes a shattering, vivid experience of the nightmare that human beings have cooked up for themselves. Tomorrow! can be read as a novel of pure suspense—if you dare. It is a thriller in which the apocalyptic technology of today is superimposed on the future. But the novel is also designed to show Philip Wylie’s conclusions about America’s dangerous vulnerability to dread, hysteria, and panic, as well as his recommendations about what must be done.

Tomorrow!

A graduate student stumbles across an insidious plot to unleash nuclear terror on America’s greatest cities in a blood-chillingly prescient tale from one of thriller fiction’s twentieth-century masters Personable, good-looking, and a whiz at physics, graduate student Allan Diffenduffer “Duff” Bogan has a bright future ahead of him. But while staying at the home of an invalid widow in Florida, Duff makes a discovery that freezes his blood: a cache of uranium hidden in the locked closet of a fellow guest. The FBI is initially skeptical, but Duff knows all too well what his findings portend. Suddenly, not only is his future in jeopardy, the fate of millions of Americans hangs in the balance as well. If he cannot expose the horrific plot his nation’s enemies set in motion years before, entire cities will be reduced to piles of radioactive rubble in an unthinkable nuclear nightmare stretching from coast to coast. And time, it seems, is rapidly running out.

The Smuggled Atom Bomb

In the world?s upper hemisphere, only one small group has survived World War III: fourteen people, sheltered deep within a limestone mountain in Connecticut and with enough supplies and equipment to maintain their subsistence for upwards of two years. The group includes a forward-thinking millionaire and his family, a levelheaded Jewish scientist, a playboy, an aging African American servant and his daughter, a gigolo and the glamorous woman who has been his mistress, a beautiful Chinese girl, a young meter reader, two children, and a Japanese engineer. Fully aware of the outcome of the war that had raged briefly above them, the survivors seethe with hatred, fall into depression over their losses, rise to moments of superhuman bravery, and lapse into behavior that reflects their human weaknesses. Philip Wylie mercilessly predicts the inevitable end of a world that continues to function as selfishly and as barbarously as our own.

Triumph

Philip Wylie describes 51 years of confusion until he eventually unveils his family's sinister secrets relating to ancestral genetics and identity fraud. Philip's journey was both extreme and extensive - covering everything from offshore money laundering and consulting in Saudi Arabia to meeting faith healers in the Philippines and self-realisation "revelations" in Cambodia - with passionate narrative about his heroes, George Orwell, Carl Jung, Joe Strummer, John Peel and his namesake Philip Wylie. "This is a unique autobiography written in an individualistic style. Phil Wylie states that in relation to the book that it may seem "stranger than fiction." This crossed my mind as I read it. It is a real "page-turner" with the family history covering the post-British Empire period. The book is written by a highly intelligent person but through the lens of a person with a late diagnosis of Aspergers Syndrome in adult life. The occupational and interpersonal stresses caused by the Aspergers Syndrome are well illustrated in this book. Mental health professionals working in the area of autism and adult psychiatry, psychologists and the lay reader interested in Aspergers Syndrome will find the book hugely rewarding. I felt the book illustrated creativity I described in my own book called "Genius Genes."" Professor Michael Fitzgerald

Philip Wylie

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