Mankind was being assailed by a disease that made the Bubonic Plague seem insignificant. People were dying by the thousands, especially in America and in England. They would choke, strangle to death, and then, horribly, burst apart as if blown up by gas! And the horror had been unwittingly caused by one man, Doctor Blair, who had, ironically, tried to invent something that would benefit mankind by eliminating all disease! Instead, the results of his experiment led to the world facing total disaster from...the Dynasty of the Small! In addition to the title novella, this collection includes the stories Ice Maiden, The Vicious Circle, Chaos, and Sweet Mystery of Life. Great reading from the classic era of the science-fiction magazines.

The Dictator of Earth and his retinue have been banished into deep space on a 1,000-year voyage of no return to Alpha Centauri. The spacecraft has been completely automated to prevent tampering with the controls, and in any case, all of the original inhabitants of the craft will be long-dead by the time they reach their new home. Only their descendants will survive to propagate this brave new world. Or will they? A grand space adventure!

When rising young artist Clive Hexley, R.A., vanishes, his friends suspect foul play. Chief-Inspector Calthorp of Scotland Yard is called upon to look into the disappearance, and his investigations lead him to question Hexley's ex-fiancée, Elsa Farraday. Farraday writes horror-tinged mysteries under a pseudonym, and lives by herself in an old house in the English countryside. She eventually confesses that she murdered the artist and threw his body into a swamp. But the girl's odd, even peculiar mannerisms puzzle Calthorp, and he hesitates to make an arrest when no trace of Hexley's body can be found—or even any proof of his death. Ultimately, he calls in Dr. Adam Castle, the redoubtable psychiatrist and investigator, to help solve the case. Is Elsa a cold-blooded murderer mining her own crimes for her lurid novels? Or is she just an unfortunate "lost soul" who was in the wrong place at the wrong time? An absolutely first-rate psychological thriller!

Harry Perrivale's expedition into the African jungle is destined to be singularly ill-fated. Accompanied by native bearers, his wife Rita, and trader Caleb Moon, he hopes to find the legendary lost city of Akada. Moon has a treasure map that had once belonged to an earlier explorer who'd met his death twenty years before. But Moon has plans to kill Perrivale, abduct Rita, and keep the gold and ivory of Akada for himself. Then the party encounters a giant white man, Anjani, who speaks only the native dialect of the tribe with whom he has lived all his life. Who is this strange man, and how did he come to be there—and what is his connection with Akada? A thrilling jungle adventure in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, now reprinted for the first time in six decades!

SF Author Stanley G. Weinbaum died from cancer at 33, in December 1935. Short though his career was, his scientific imagination, smooth characterization, and humor completely revolutionized the field, and profoundly influenced his contemporaries. Among his many imitators was English writer John Russell Fearn. Although Fearn's own distinctive work was very popular, he wanted to increase his number of acceptances by writing under pseudonyms--Thornton Ayre and Polton Cross--with a change of style imitating Weinbaum! These exciting and highly entertaining pastiches, first published in such magazines as Astounding Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories, are here collected for the very first time in book form, with fascinating historical background notes. The first of two must-have volumes for collectors, the second being VALLEY OF PRETENDERS. Great adventure reading from the classic period of the SF pulps!

Richard Shaw thinks he's been blessed when he and his new bride Beryl survive a car smash. Both make rapid recoveries from their injuries, both have apparently fully recovered. But Beryl is strangely changed. As the doctor tells Richard: "As far as we can tell medically, she is normal again, except for one thing—the way she looks at you. I don't think I have ever seen such a strange light in the eyes of a woman before!" Despite Beryl's odd, even sinister, new mental outlook, Richard buys an isolated house in the country—at his wife's insistence—and tries to pursue a normal married life. And then the murders begin....

For cinema projectionist Sid Elbridge, it seems that things can't get much worse. First, circumstantial evidence has made him the prime suspect in the police investigation of a robbery at the cinema where he works. Secondly, his fiancée Vera has been horribly killed in the same theatre, victim of a falling light fixture. Then he discovers strange, intricate patterns traced in the dust on the wooden frame of a still-case. There's something very wrong about this "accident," he now realizes, and begins investigating what actually happened.Slowly he realizes that a ruthless murderer is lurking in the shadows, and only Sid can uncover the Pattern of Murder!Another great mystery story by a British master of intricate plot twists.

This volume collects four classic SF tales from the pulp era!The Rule of the Brains...After many years spent in wars and struggle, mankind had achieved a perfect civilization. But this Utopia was going directly against the adaptive strain Nature had developed.In earlier times, the human body had been keyed to respond to every emergency. Now it was trying to find a new form of excitation in order to maintain its equilibrium, was seeking to tear down that perfect structure...So mankind's rulers built the Arbiter, an artificial intelligence created from the brains of twelve men and women, who had sacrificed their lives for the greater good.The pooled intelligence of the Arbiter's twelve artificial brains would work in unison to provide a common answer, to be the impartial judge of humanity's future actions. Such was the theory...but the Rule of the Brains threatened to destroy humanity itself!