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Brian Stableford

    July 25, 1948 – February 24, 2024

    This author explores the boundaries of human existence and consciousness through his science fiction writing. His works frequently delve into the complex societal and ethical questions arising from technological advancements. With a distinctive style and profound insight into the human psyche, he offers readers thought-provoking and challenging narratives. His extensive body of work represents a significant contribution to the science fiction genre.

    The City of the Sun
    Swan Song
    Frankenstein in London (the Empire of the Necromancers 3)
    Rhapsody in Black
    The Paradise Game
    Promised Land
    • Promised Land

      Hooded Swan, Book Three

      • 170 pages
      • 6 hours of reading

      Set in a diverse galactic culture, the story follows Grainger, a legendary Star-Pilot known for flying the revolutionary ship, Hooded Swan. His latest mission takes him to the perilous jungle planet of Chao Phrya, where he faces crazed colonists and mysterious indigenous people. As he embarks on a daunting journey through dense rainforests, challenges mount, including the unexpected threat of giant spiders. Grainger's quest is fraught with danger and uncertainty, pushing him to confront the unknown in this thrilling installment.

      Promised Land
      4.8
    • The Paradise Game

      Hooded Swan, Book Four

      • 174 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      Set in a diverse galactic culture, the story follows Grainger, a legendary Star-Pilot, as he navigates the tensions between commercial interests and conservationists over the seemingly idyllic planet of Pharos. As his employer, Titus Charlot, attempts to broker a deal, they find themselves in a rigged game. Just when all seems lost, the planet's own ecosystem intervenes, transforming paradise into a perilous battleground. This thrilling narrative explores themes of environmentalism and corporate greed within the expansive Hooded Swan series.

      The Paradise Game
      5.0
    • Rhapsody in Black

      Hooded Swan, Book Two

      • 180 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      Set in a galaxy where Star-Pilots are celebrated as heroes, Grainger emerges as a legendary figure. He is chosen to pilot the prototype starship, the Hooded Swan, which promises to transform space travel. This adventure explores themes of heroism and innovation against a backdrop of cosmic exploration.

      Rhapsody in Black
      5.0
    • Set in 1823, the story explores the implications of Victor Frankenstein's resurrection technique, which has ignited a struggle among various factions aiming to manipulate this power. Scotland Yard Superintendent Gregory Temple allies with Frankenstein and Count Szandor to confront a secret Illuminati cabal led by Joseph Balsamo. Simultaneously, in Haiti, a resurrected Napoleon battles Marie Laveau's zombie armies, intertwining themes of power, resurrection, and supernatural conflict in a richly imagined world.

      Frankenstein in London (the Empire of the Necromancers 3)
      5.0
    • Swan Song

      Hooded Swan, Book Six

      • 186 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      Set in a vast galactic culture, the story follows Grainger, a legendary star-pilot who has escaped his contract with the Caradoc Company. As he is pursued for secrets about his former employer, Grainger is drawn back to the Hooded Swan for a perilous rescue mission in the enigmatic Nightingale Nebula. This final journey challenges him to confront not only life-threatening dangers but also the depths of his own soul, making it his most significant adventure yet.

      Swan Song
      4.5
    • The City of the Sun

      • 153 pages
      • 6 hours of reading

      It was a circular city - like the City of the Sun, a perfect community dreamed up by the seventeenth-century philosopher Campanella. Many utopian groups had emigrated into space to found their ideal settlements. And it was on one such colony world - appropriately named Arcadia - that the recontact ship Daedalus made its fourth planetfall. There in all its splendour stood the fulfillment of Campanella's dream - the real seven-circled City of the Sun. But the city was too ordered, the inhabitants too perfect, the world too Arcadian...and very soon the Daedalus 's scientists realized that in this particular utopia the idealists had unleashed a force that could undermine all human culture on other planets.

      The City of the Sun
      4.0
    • Set in 1821, the story follows Scotland Yard Superintendent Gregory Temple as he pursues the criminal John Devil, who aims to exploit Victor Frankenstein's resurrection technique. Teaming up with Paris Morgue supervisor Jean-Pierre Severin and Frankenstein's creation, they face a vampire cabal led by Count Szandor and the enchanting Countess Marcian Gregoryi, who also covet the secret of resurrection. The narrative weaves together themes of ambition, morality, and the consequences of tampering with life and death.

      Frankenstein and the Vampire Countess (the Empire of the Necromancers 2)
      4.4
    • Wildeblood's Empire

      • 169 pages
      • 6 hours of reading

      The colony was successful. That was evident as soon as the recontact ship Daedalus had landed. It was successful, prosperous, and everything was due to the work and genius of J. Wildeblood, biochemist and planetary leader. This world now bore the name of its benefactor. And it was truly his empire, with a grateful, hard-working people heeding every wish of his descendants. But the suspicious scientific minds of the Daedalus 's special crew were very uneasy. Was Wildeblood's Empire all it seemed - or was there a structure invisible to the eyewhich spelled out something a lot more blood-curdling?

      Wildeblood's Empire
      4.0
    • The Face of Heaven

      • 151 pages
      • 6 hours of reading

      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, the man who's been having bad dreams. He shouldn't be having dreams at all, because dreams have been banished from the society of the Euchronian Millennium, but somehow he is, and his dreams are showing him the "Underworld." The real surface of the Earth, the Underworld that the Euchronian Millennium has left behind, still maintains life, human and otherwise, life that's adapted to a world without sky or sun, still evolving in response to extreme environmental challenges. Dreams are only dreams, but they're a provocation nevertheless, not merely for Carl Magner, but for the whole of Euchronian society. Can Heaven be truly Heaven, if Hell still festers in its entrails? The first book in a stunning SF trilogy, The Realms of Tartarus!

      The Face of Heaven
      4.0
    • The Revelations of Time and Space

      • 384 pages
      • 14 hours of reading

      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 life on an Earth half alarmed and half fatalistic at the prospect of final catastrophe, he is headhunted for a reprise of his old job: being projected by the brilliant but asocial Walter Halleck’s Coincidence-driven Sling into the far future to make empathic contact with the various successors to the human race. In the meantime, he is discovering a close and mysterious bond with Denise, a doctor of evolutionary biology and the younger sister he has hardly known, who has been noticed by the same big players who have noticed Zeph. But nothing goes quite according to plan, and as the fate of humanity dangles on a thread grown very frayed, Zeph’s empathic skills are expanded in unexpected ways, not so much by coincidence, as by Coincidence, bringing Zeph and those around him into contact with what are perhaps only the beginning of ongoing revelations of time and space whose grandeur match the universe that Zeph and his colleagues must now begin to explore.

      The Revelations of Time and Space
      4.0