Ghastly Beyond Belief: Main Page

‘Today’s hero is tomorrow’s thug.’

Tony Brant, lean and tough as a whipcoard (sic), with that sharp ageless cast of feature that personified the men of the 25th century. Neither physically, mentally nor biologically, Brant hadn’t aged a day since he was twenty.

‘I’ll introduce myself. Name’s Lt John MacGregor, as a matter of fact, in the I.P.F.’

‘Interplanetary Force,’ goggled Fred.

‘Precisely,’ said MacGregor with an exaggerated bow.

‘My man, you are now in the presence of the John MacGregor who has shot down seventeen of the Martian invasion fleet.’

Doc nodded. He had already noticed that, but he did not say so. He made it a policy never to disillusion one of his men who thought he had been first to notice something or get an idea, although Doc himself might have discovered it far earlier. It was this modesty of Doc’s which helped endear him to everybody he was associated with.

‘I have never known her to be wrong. She knew you were good, Blade!’

Richard Blade was, after all, an Englishman. Now he was embarrassed.

‘Hell’s - jingling - bells!’ he wrenched out, finally, and waved a hand at the points of light crowding so thickly his tactical tank. ‘A thing that the whole damned Grand Fleet couldn’t do,. and he does it alone, and then he apologizes for it as thought he ought to be stood up in a corner or sent to bed without any supper!’

‘Uh-huh, that’s the way he is,’ Kinnison breathed, in awe. ‘What a brain! ... What a man!’

A murmur ran through the listeners. Heads turned to look at Cliff Davenport. For once in his life he felt slightly embarrassed. Proud too. The safety of the human race lay in his hands. He was being asked to deliver them from this peril of the deep. It was one helluva responsibility.

They have incredible powers, such as telepathy:

‘I am a mind reader par excellence. I intend to use my ability to work a great deal of good in the,world, such as in detecting criminals and in showing up corrupt public officials.’

WILLIAM K. SONNEMANN, The Master Minds of Venus

Seeing escape impossible, the stranger halted, sank to one knee and levelled a ray-gun at the approaching figure of the earthman. Carter saw his finger whiten as he squeezed the trigger.

‘Carter!’ Kantos Kan shouted, ‘Throw yourself to the floor.’

With the speed of light, Carter dropped prone. A long blade whizzed over his head and buried itself to the hilt in the heart of the stranger.

‘I’ve been all over the three worlds and three moons, and, in my time I have enjoyed quite a number of harrowing. death-defying adventures and thrills, but in all my career I profess I haven’t had one which matches that of the death’s head meteor.’

‘Here we go again,’ agreed the co-pilot; It didn’t seem a particularly original remark, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. A conversational gambit like ‘here we go again’ isn’t the kind of scintillating witticism that calls for a reply which would have delighted Dr Johnson or Voltaire!

‘Let me tell you here and now, the Chief is far from being "bonkers" as you so respectfully suggest! He’s got a theory…

Paul laughed. ‘You mean the old rumours about the Yellow Peril and all that? We used to read paperbacks about it, when I was a kid. A bit far fetched, isn’t it?’

Barry grunted. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Something about making a world filled with their own sort of people. Asians.’

(Elric, tortured albino prince:) ‘I should admit that I scream in my sleep sometimes and am often tortured by incommunicable self-loathing. Go while you can, lady, and forget Elric for he can only bring grief to your soul.’

The Khad twisted on his throne and there was mingled rage and amazement in his tone. ‘You dare to stand before me.’

Blade now was playing it by intuition. ‘I stand,’ he said calmly. ‘Sir Blade bows to no man.’

‘I find your voice rather pleasant.’

‘It’s a good job somebody does,’ said Salford. ‘There have been occasions when my voice has been the last sound that some people hear.’ He sounded grim.

‘How is that? Please explain?’ asked the robot.

‘Perhaps the meaning will make itself evident when I say that the last words they heard were, "Reach for your blaster!...

‘How much air have we got left in our emergency, supplies?’ asked Conrad Danes.

‘Three, four hours, perhaps.’

‘As narrow as that!’ exclaimed Alex.

"Fraid so,’ replied Jerry. ‘Pretty grim, isn’t it?’

‘I talk to you first, because I gather that you are the commander of your party ... I know that you must be a man of some courage, and I hope that you will consider it sweet to die for your country, when the time comes.’

Barry squared his jaw. It sounded bad. Very bad.

‘I’m not getting at you. I’m glad to know a man who can take things with a smile. Take it on the chin with a grin. Stiff upper lip, and all that jazz.’ Hal Delaney smiled too. A cynical smile, there were too many blisters on his face for it to be anything else. It was one of those wry, painful smiles that only a hero can produce, in moments of extremity.

‘Rasczak’s Roughnecks have got a reputation to uphold. The Lieutenant told me before he bought it to tell you that he will always have his eye on you every minute ... and that he expects your names to shine!’

He had gained fame, and lost the trust of the one person in the world, apart from his mother, on whom he could really depend.

‘Sending a woman to talk about rocket-engines! The man must be off his head! See you later Mum!’

‘I’m just about done here. I’ll be ready tomorrow, I think, to visit their library and tape up some planetographical and planetological - notice how insouciantly I toss off those two-credit words? - data on this here planet Hodell.’

‘My name is Brant,’ said Tony. ‘I’m the leader of this expedition. We come from the planet earth. It’s so far away I don’t suppose your half-wit chemists have ever heard of it!’

‘That’s the stuff!’ applauded Joe. ‘Put the fatheads in their place! Did you ever see such a crummy lot of ‘em?’

A universe for his freedom. And a woman like Mai Valoris to call his own. It was a good exchange, Reed Norvack thought. It was worth the killing of an evil god.

Science fiction is one of the few places where a pretty girl can be a damned nuisance.

The first was a woman of about forty-five and she’d been attractive until someone had hewn her almost in half.

She was so pretty, just the kind of girl he liked best dark hair curling softly around her face, big brown eyes a mouth just meant for kissing.

He gazed down at her face from his six feet two inches of strongly muscled frame. She was pretty in a dainty, delicate kind of way, with a pale face from which Arthur assumed that she had perhaps recently had a severe illness, which might account for her presence on the bracing, but gusty, east coast, so early in the year.

TOM WADE, The World of Tbeda

This body was built for intercontinental hauling and had the apparatus that was made for endurance. It had everything a man could want in a woman. It was the wanton, uncivilised body that all men had longed to possess since the days of the cave man. It exuded purely animal sexuality.

SUE PAYER, Second Body

‘Don’t be dumb, Norman. That woman’s a knockout a riot - a regular tri-planet call-out!’

‘Oh,, she’s all x, as far as that goes. She’s a good little egg, too - not half as dumb as she acts - and she’s one of the squarest little aces that ever waved a plume.’

‘Still, if that’s actually your picture of Brownie, just what kind of a woman could you love? If any?’

‘Belle.’

‘Belle? Belle Bellamy? For godsake! That iceberg? That egomaniac? She’s a pure, unalloyed bitch!’

‘Right, on all counts. She’s also crooked and treacherous. She’s a liar by instinct and training. I could add a lot more. But she’s got brains, ability, and guts. She’s got the spine and the bottom and the drive. So just imagine her, thawed out. Back to back with you when you’re surrounded - she wouldn’t cave and she wouldn’t give. Or wing and wing - holding the beam come hell or space-warps. Roll that one around on your tongue, jim, and give your taste-buds a treat.’

1. E. ‘DOC’ SMITH, The Galaxy Primes

The huge electronic brain was a matter for constant concern. She was new and raw and sometimes temperamental. That was a trait which was almost expected in anything feminine, even if only declared so arbitrarily, as was the case with the big brain.

‘This little jaunt of ours is strictly business, and don’t any of you forget it! I mean about Mandy. She’s coming as our secretary. She’s fully trained for space travel. She’s tough as they come.’

‘[The space ship] has been given to the five of us,’ he concluded.

‘Four of you,’ smiled Ena. ‘A woman has more important work to do on Earth, than wander around in space ... especially a married woman.’

‘I let them dry. But I wash now. I think I do more better than you.’

He laughed. ‘It’s instinctive, I guess - something carried in the genes that make women want to wash clothes!’

Helen Powell kept her head and began working away bravely at the gag. She was glad that she had washed her cardigan in soft, gentle soap flakes, in accordance with the instructions on its ticket. She would not have fancied chewing her way through wool that might have been flavoured with powerful detergent!

She frowned. ‘I’ve felt so guilty and useless, running about cleaning house, while you two were fighting for my life.’

He read the note she had left him: ‘Darling Alex, Something bad to be done. I have destroyed the thing in the engine ro om. Unfortunately there was rather a lot of radiation and I didn’t fancy going that way, so I went through the lock instead. I expect it will be quite fun in hyper-space.’

PEL TORRO, The Last Astronaut 57

She would be betraying her friends who expected so much from her. Too much, she often thought. Did they forget she was a mere woman?

Orlande Price struggled with forces that were pulling her facial contours out of shape. Her struggles seemed to epitomise woman’s life-long struggles to keep up with fashion and not to keep up with the passage of the years.

The cybernetic control of New Society had not prevented its housewives from calling on each other at odd times of the day while their mutual menfolk were working. Like housewives everywhere, they had snippets of mutually interesting information to exchange. Like housewives everywhere, they rushed into each other’s kitchens in times of crisis when the men were absent.

This running away was not in their line of duty. How could they ever contact their home base if they remained hidden in the hills for ever, dependent upon the whims and the know-how of a female scientist with the welfare of Tibet and China at heart?

Consequently she hadn’t been in Horton’s Crossing more than a few hours before in addition to gleaning considerably more information than her contemporaries by virtue of vastly differing approach and unscrupulous methods only a woman could employ she established her first conquest in the stocky, hairy-chested person of Corporal Danny Mareno ...

In the instant that our glances had met I had seen that she, whom I took to be a woman, would, if she had had the power, make men slaves, but in that same instant she had seen, in my eyes, that it was men who were the stronger, who held the power, and that it would be she, if any, who would be the slave.

JOHN NORMAN, Raiders of Gor

‘You do know my name,’ the stranger’s thought came clearly now. ‘I am the "Toots", the "Rep-Top", the "Queen of Sheba", the "Cleopatra", the Elder Person of Lyrane II. Do you remember me, Kinnison of Tellus?’

‘I certainly do!’ he shot back. What a brain - what .a terrific brain - that sexless woman had!

‘Weapons, weapons - always weapons! The eternal male! If it were not for your huge vessel and the peculiar airplane hoverin over us I would claw your eyes out and strangle you with my bare hands.’

‘If I do not please you,’ she screamed, ‘beat me or kill me!’ He kissed her swiftly, and turned to defend a wall.

JOHN NORMAN, Raiders of Gor

She held Hilda to her and let her have a good cry, and this was a wonderful relief after all the pent up feelings of those last few days of prison and cruel treatment by the octopoids.

‘And I suppose you got the thought it must have jumped up and smacked you’ - Lola’s hot blush was visible even through her heavy tan - ‘how many times I’ve felt like running my fingers up and down your ribs and grabbing a handful of those muscles of yours, just to see if they’re as hard as they look?’

1. E. ‘DOC’ SMITH, The Galaxy Primes

He released me quickly, for I was left standing, kissless.

The men of Port Kar, I said, know well how to treat women. The men of Port Kar, I said to myself, know well how to keep women.

As slaves and slaves alone!

Worthless are they for aught else!

JOHN NORMAN, Raiders of Gor

‘Technology! How can any man who means to keep his sanity go far in such an art?’

His Lordship, J conceded, looked full of beans today The yellow eyes were clear and even the poliostricken legs had a new energy. Today Lord L was wearing a discreetly chalk-striped grey lounge suit that omewhat mitigated his hump. His tie was a horror, of course, but then it always was.

She flipped the coin dexterously. ‘Heads it is, Lola, so I get Jim - James James James the Ninth himself. You have the honor of pairing with Clee - or should I say His Learnedness Right the Honourable Director Doctor Cleander Simmsworth Garlock, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Science, Prime Operator, President and First Fellow of the Galaxian Society, First Fellow of the Gunther Society, Fellow of the Institute of Paraphysics, of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, of the College of Mathematics, of the Congress of Psiontists, and of all the other top-bracket brain-gangs you ever heard of. Also, for your information, his men have given him a couple of informal degrees - P.D.Q. and S.O.B.’

E. E. ‘DOC’ SMITH, The Galaxy Primes

‘And now tell us of yourself,’ said 25X-987, ‘and about your world.’

Professor Jameson, noted in college as a lecturer of no mean ability and perfectly capable of relating Intelligently to them the story of the Earth’s history, evolution and march of events following the birth of civilization up until the time when he had died, began his story.

LARRY NIVEN AND STEVEN BARNES, The Descent of Anansi

‘I will not follow the capitalist herring,’ Lepilov growled.

‘I’ve never seen anything like them before,’ said Jerry.

‘No, they’re a new species,’ said Ursula. ‘I’ve just made them.’

‘Fantastic!’ said Jerry.

PEL TORRO, The Last Astronaut 63

‘In a moment I predict that you will do one of two things. You will either get up and hit me, or you will burst into jolly, jovial, tension-releasing laughter, and we may soon be the best of friends…’

‘You can’t be serious,’ Eve said.

‘If this is true how come the public doesn’t know about it?’ Jonathan demanded.

‘But who will submit to such an experiment?’ queried the professor weakly, plainly aghast at this man’s inhuman attitude, with its cruel disregard for human life and suffering.

‘You will!’ snapped the human-robot with terrible finality in his tone, and a merciless sneer of contempt upon his pale features.

‘No - no - no, not that!’ pleaded Crayton, shivering so dreadfully that he tottered weakly to his knees and sought support by grasping a near-by table. ‘I’ll do anything but that!’

‘I’ve never really agreed with that harmless, crazy scientist picture,’ Peruge said. ‘I don’t think they’re all innocent and harmless. To me no atomic physicist is completely responsible and trustworthy.’

‘Ohh, come now, Mr Peruge ... the doc makes movies about bugs.’

‘Some kind of force field - these boffins are experimenting with them, I believe.’ Jinks was an intelligent man. He read and understood the novels of Fanthorpe, Muller and Fane.

KARL ZEIGFREID, Projection Infinity

SAMUEL DELANY, Ballad of Beta 2 65

The professor was on the verge of exploding. ‘No man can have lived since the days of Moses. Four thousand years! It’s absurd. I happen to be an anthropologist, and I know!’

Scientists of over fifty are good for nothing except board meetings and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory.

‘Diana’s a smart girl, and a damn fine chemist, and she learned a lot from her father. So did I, and if Diana’s theory about vibrations is correct, and I can’t find a single flaw in it taking it at face value, between us we can contrive the destruction of that creature this very afternoon…’