They laughed at his ideas of heavier-than-air flying machines. But he had the last laugh with the Albatross -- the most incredible flying machine ever built. Lord of the skies, Robur became the would-be conqueror of the world!

A fascinating companion to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Robur the Conqueror explores many of the same themes. The Wildside Press edition contains a newly revised version of the first English-language translation.

A thrill-a minute ride set in the days of Spanish colonialism in California, where thugs and greedy tyrants try to wrest every penny from peasants . . . and the one hero who defends the common man is the mysterious masked stranger who calls himself Zorro--The Fox The first Zorro story appeared as a 5-part serial in All-Story Weekly, a famous American pulp fiction magazine, starting in the August 9, 1919 issue. In a case of fortunate timing, Douglas Fairbanks, the silent movie star, was in the process of trying to change his image at the time, and he chose Zorro as his next starring role. In 1920, when the romantic swashbuckler debuted, it set movie box office records. Riot police had to disperse the huge crowds that showed up at the New York opening. Zorro entered the public consciousness and is now a part of popular culture, the same as such heroes as Superman, Tarzan, and The Lone Ranger. The rest is history.

Mystery and science fiction writer Fredric Brown (1906-1972) remains best-known for his short fiction. His story "Arena" (in this volume) became the basis for a "Star Trek" episode of the same title. "Arena" was also voted by the membership of the Science Fiction Writers of America as one of the twenty finest SF stories of all time.

In addition to "Arena," this volume contains five more of Brown's classic tales: "Daymare," "The Little Lamb," "The Geezenstacks," "The Hat Trick," and "Don't Look Behind You."

A baker's dozen of classic pulp stories, by a master of the genre! "Satan's Daughter and Other Tales from the Pulps" include such rare gems as the title story, "Scourge of the Silver Dragon," "Revolt of the Damned," "Pit of Madness," "The Walking Dead," "Drink or Draw," and many more.

Originally published as a four-part serial in the legendary pulp magazine "The Thrill Book," here is the story of Sir Gerald Desmond, late officer in His Majesty's Royal Flying Corps. Broke and drunk in Manila, he befriends a consumptive Irish fiddler, Michael O'Sullivan, and the two become involved in a free fight with the native constabulary. From this brawl they are rescued by an unknown benefactor -- but when they come to their senses, they find themselves shanghaied aboard the schooner 'San Gregorio', bound for Mindoro Island. Typhoons, smugglers, beautiful women, opium, and mutiny are just the beginning of their adventures!

" Dunsany's] rich language, his cosmic point of view, his remote dream-worlds, and his exquisite sense of the fantastic, all appeal to me more than anything else in modern literature." ?

When one thinks of the classic adventure-story authors of the pulp fiction era, H. Rider Haggard, Talbot Mundy, and Rafael Sabatini may come first to mind. But Arthur O. Friel's stellar contributions -- particularly his stories featuring Lourenco and Pedro, two workers on a rubber-tree plantation in the Amazon Jungle. Their adventures in the Amazon's mysterious back-country certainly deserve honorable mention. Here are tales of peril and last-minute rescue, brutal savages and men of honor, snake-worshipping armies and half-ape Lost Races-and many more! For in the shadows of the rain-forest, many evils lurk . . . human and otherwise! Features a new introduction by Darrell Schweitzer, eight short stories, and The Jararaca, a complete novel.

What do the world's most imaginative minds feast upon? Spiderfish Stew... Shrimp Anarchy... Surrealistic Fudge... Pa's Peasant Soup... and Marvellous Morphed Meat. How do the world's great science fiction and fantasy authors feed themselves when they're not whipping up tales of wonder? What did they eat before they were famous-and what do they serve to their friends? Compiled and annotated by best-selling author Anne McCaffrey, Serve It Forth is an unparalleled collection of recipes submitted by the writers themselves, so you can eat like Patricia Anthony (The I've-Been-to-Brazil-I-Know-What-Black-Beans-Are Dip), David Gerrold (Death to the Enemies of the Revolution Chili), and Poul Anderson (The Great Pumpkin). Each wonderful, dunce-proof recipe is accompanied by personal notes from the author-chefs, as they guide you into the preparation of such repasts as: Sherried Walnut Cake by Lois McMaster Bujold; Pig by David Drake; Comforting Clam Chowder by Peter S. Beagle; Night of the Living Meatloaf by Allen Steele; How (and Why) to Dress and Prepare Texas Armadillo by Ardath Mayhar; Catfish and Red Meat Flavouring by Larry Niven; And over 100 more Kurtz, Mercedes Lackey, John Brunner, Joan Vinge, M. K. Wren, and many more.

The strange adventures and escapes of Thomas Wingfield, half English and half Spanish, in the years after Cortes's conquest of Mexico.

When Strange Tales first appeared in 1931 as a pulp magazine, it was clearly something new. Edited by Harry Bates as a companion to Astounding Stories, it combined the supernatural horror and fantasy of Weird Tales with vigorous action plots. Strange Tales rapidly attracted the most imaginative and capable writers of the day, including such Weird Tales regulars as Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Henry S. Whitehead, Hugh B. Cave, Ray Cummings, and numerous others. Had the Great Depression not intervened and killed it after seven issues, the whole history of fantastic fiction might have been different.

The October 1932 issue features work by Clark Ashton Smith ("The Hunters from Beyond"), Victor Rousseau, Henry S. Whitehead, Hugh B. Cave, Frank Belknap Long, Jr, and many more.

Facsimile reprint of the July, 1933 issue of the legendary pulp magazine, "The Magic Carpet." Included in this volume are works by H. Bedford-Jones, Robert E. Howard, Seabury Quinn, more.

Achmed Abdullah's name was once synonymous with adventure. He published dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories in the pulp magazines of the early 20th century, thrilling millions of readers throughout the world. He wrote with authority about exotic peoples and places because he had lived a life filled with adventure, serving in the British army and travelling extensively to exotic locales before settling down to a literary career. Here is the first new book of Adbullah's stories in almost seventy years, sampling a broad range of his work. "A Charmed Life" tells of one life-changing night in India, when a white man glimpses a beautiful woman in danger and acts to rescue her. "Framed at the Benefactor's Club" is a fascinating, intricately plotted mystery set in Manhattan. "The Yellow Wife" is a chilling look at Chinese life in Chinatown. "Bismallah!" is a light adventure in Africa, as crooked traders try to put a successful rival company out of business. "Light" is a surprisingly effective supernatural tale. "A Yarkand Survey" tells the story of a corrupt governor sent on a survey mission that might cost him his life -- if he isn't careful! And "Fear" is the tale of two thieving white men in Africa and the weird fates that awaited them. Ranging from mystery to adventure to outright horror, from the streets of New York to the rooftops of Calcutta, from London's Chinatown to the jungles of Africa, here are tales of men caught up by plots and mysteries beyond their wildest imaginings! Features a new introduction by pulp scholar Darrell Schweitzer.

Operator No.5, America's Secret Service Ace, appeared in 48 novels in the classic pulp magazine bearing his name. From April 1934 to November 1939, Jimmy Christopher fought villains from inside the United States and invaders from without. With World War II looming on the horizon, the Operator No.5 novels became a reflection of the times, showcasing American fears of technology and oppression. In The Dawn that Shook the World, Jimmy Christopher leads a band of agents into Europe, battlling a dictator with plans for world dominations (shades of Adolph Hitler ) One of the bloodiest pulp magazines ever produced, Operator No.5 has a well-deserved reputation for thrill-a-minute action and peril. If you like pulp fiction, you'll love Operator No.5.

Clark Ashton Smith was a prodigy, who wrote Arabian Nights novels in his mid-teens and was heralded as a major voice in American poetry by the time he was nineteen. In one frantic burst in the middle 1930s, he wrote nearly a hundred strange, wondrous, and grotesque stories, most of which were published in Weird Tales, Strange Tales, Wonder Stories, and other pulps, but he was by no means a conventional pulp writer. A direct heir to Edgar Allan Poe and to the late Romantics and Decadents, a translator of Baudelaire, Smith wrote in baroque, jeweled prose of distant times and remote planets, of baleful magics and reanimated corpses, lost lovers, eldritch gods, and inexorable fate. He is also a writer whose works refuse to die, even after nearly a century. Think of him as the sorcerer-poet, alone in his eyrie in the dry California hills, dreaming his strange dreams and creating his unique worlds-of Zothique, the Earth's haunted last conti- nent at the end of time, Hyperborea, a prehistoric land, Posei- donis, the last foundering isle of Atlantis, and Averoigne, an unhistoried province of medieval France, thick with vampires. runes, transported from the sorcerer's lair by in- describable genii or winged spirits. His stories are altogether unlike anyone else's and quite wonderful, among the treasures of fantastic literature. This fine collection of Clark Ashton Smith's work reprints eight of his classic fantasies, including two set in Hyperborea.

If Haggard?one of the greatest adventure writers of all time?is remembered now, it is for his novels featuring Allan Quatermain, a hero whose exploits form the most important sequence of his books. Quatermain's life is chronicled in such novels as King Solomon's Mines, Allan Quaterman, She, and many others. However, despite the importance of the Quaterman books, many of Haggard's other novels are interesting in their own right. Nada the Lily is the first of four books about the Zulus, all of which are excellent. Eric Brighteyes is rich, fantasy-laden Icelandic saga. The World's Desire (written with Andrew Lang) is a fantasy about the characters in The Odyssey. And there are numerous other titles (many of them reprinted by Wildside Press as part of the Wildside Fantasy Classics series) which bring undeservingly lost Haggard books back into print. The Yellow Idol, originally published in 1908, is another of Haggard's African novels, and it features many elements of the fantastic, such as a magic mask and fetish objects, a lost race, reincarnation, and an immortal woman whose many husbands she has preserved as mummies It certainly deserved a place alongside Haggards other African novels and more than stands its own as a thrilling adventure novel.

Moon of Israel (1918) was one of the earliest Haggard books to be filmed (in 1924, as a silent movie directed by Michael Curtiz). The movie adaptation has been released both as Moon of Israel and The Slave Queen. Interestingly, Paramount bought the original film and suppressed it so it wouldn't complete with the release of DeMille's original silent version of The Ten Commandments. As a book, it is an exceptional retelling of the Biblical story of the Exodus. I?m certain most modern readers will be familiar with the original story. By selecting an unlikely viewpoint character?the scribe Ana?Haggard provides a down-to-earth narrator for a story of fantastic proportion. The novel was first serialized in The Cornhill Magazine from January through October in 1918 and released in book for in October 1918. Author and critic Jessica Amanda Salmonson has called Moon of Israel ?a beautifully written Jewish legend, ? and adds, ?Haggard was pro-Zionist advocating a Jewish homeland in Palestine as early as 1915.

If Haggard?one of the greatest adventure writers of all time?is remembered now, it is for his novels featuring Allan Quatermain, a heroic adventurer whose exploits in Africa form the most important sequence of Haggard's books. Quatermain's adventures are chronicled in such novels as King Solomon's Mines, Allan Quaterman, She, and 11 others.However, despite the importance of the Quaterman books, many of Haggard's other novels are interesting in their own right. Nada the Lily is the first of four books about the Zulus, all of which are excellent. Eric Brighteyes is rich, fantasy-laden Icelandic saga. The World's Desire (written with Andrew Lang) is a fantasy about the characters in The Odyssey. And there are numerous other titles (many of them reprinted by Wildside Press as part of the Wildside Fantasy Classics series) which bring undeservingly lost Haggard books back into print. Mr. Meeson's Will is just such a book.Here we get a glimpse of what H. Rider Haggard must have gone through as a starting author, as he slyly takes the reader inside the British publishing industry, where greed and hack writers (he calls them ?tame writers?) are prominent. One can easily see how writers of the day could be ruined by publishers as ruthless and unscrupulous as Mr. Meeson. Luckily Haggard could call upon his years of legal training in search of the appropriate remedy for his heroine's tragic plight!

Weird Tales has always been the most popular and sought-after of all pulp magazines. Its mix of exotic fantasy, horror, science fiction, suspense, and the just plain indescribable has enthralled generations of readers throughout the world.Collected here are 13 of the best short stories published in Weird Tales' first year of publication, 1923 -- classics by many who would later play an integral part in the Unique Magazine, such as H.P. Lovecraft, Frank Owen, and Farnsworth Wright.

Eleven of George Allan England's stories from the pulp magazines.

The June, 1932 issue of the classic pulp magazine SPICE ADVENTURE-STORIES features "Death in the Desert" by Lew Merrill, "Eel Trap," by Justin Case (Hugh B. Cave), and many others.

The masked woman called herself Madame Madcap, and she gathered a gang of cutthroats determined to loot high society of all its riches... starting with the notorious womanizer Hamilton Brone. She worked her criminal magic... and grew rich as millionaires swooned at her feet. Members of her gang worshipped her. She could do no wrong. And yet a curious pattern began to emerge, and a strange vengeance took shape - not just against the men of high society, but against the men of her own brave band of criminals!