Beyond the Beyond

the long version

Here is one of the most exciting collections of science fiction in years—six full-length novellas by Hugo Award-winner Poul Anderson. In Memory, you meet Torrek, a man whose name means "stranger." Five years ago he had been found lying in a field by the Clan, primitive tribesmen of a hauntingly beautiful planet. They had taken pity on him because something had completely erased his mind, and like a child he had been taught all their ways. In gratitude, Torrek risked death to rid the Clan of its deadliest foe—the great winged kraka. Yet it would have been better if the beast had slain him... for Torrek was doomed to learn the terrible secret of his origin, and to become the most dreadful enemy the Clan would ever know. In Starfog, only Laure believes the fantastic story of the Kirkasanters. They tell of a strange world located in an incredibly thick star cluster. Only a few light years out from Kirkasant, they had become hopelessly lost and had wandered into the dark universe outside the cluster. In an effort to help, Laure leads them back into the deadly, glowing fog of suns. He fails to find their planet, but what he does discover rocks the Galaxy to its very foundations. Simon Dalgetty, The Sensitive Man, is all that stands between mankind and a new Dark Age. Trained by a group of master psychologists trying to prevent world war, he pits his almost superhuman powers against sinister forces bent on conquest. In Day of Burning, three space merchants—Adzel, a 1000-kilo centauroid, the dog-sized Chee Lan, and the human David Falkayn—enlist the aid of an interplanetary Mafia to save a strange civilization from a supernova. Brake takes place aboard the spaceship Thunderbolt. A fanatical saboteur has drained its fuel supply, making deceleration impossible. Captain Banning seems to have only two choices: crash into Jupiter or race by it and just keep going—forever. In The Moonrakers, Earth threatens the survival of the breakaway Mars colony. Forced to make an alliance with space pirates, the colonists pull off the biggest hoax since the Boston Tea Party.