Redburn: His First Voyage, is the fourth book by the American writer Herman Melville, first published in London in 1849. The book is semi-autobiographical and recounts the adventures of a refined youth among coarse and brutal sailors and the seedier areas of Liverpool. Melville wrote Redburn in less than ten weeks. While one scholar describes it as "arguably his funniest work," Unable to find employment at home, young Wellingborough Redburn signs on the Highlander, a merchantman out of New York City bound for Liverpool, England. Representing himself as the "son of a gentleman" and expecting to be treated as such, he discovers that he is just a green hand, a "boy," the lowest rank on the ship, assigned all the duties no other sailor wants, like cleaning out the "pig-pen," a longboat that serves as a shipboard sty. The first mate promptly nicknames him "Buttons" for the shiny ones on his impractical jacket. Redburn quickly grasps the workings of social relations aboard ship. As a common seaman he can have no contact with those "behind the mast" where the officers command the ship. Before the mast, where the common seaman work and live, a bully named Jackson, the best seaman aboard, rules through fear with an iron fist. Uneducated yet cunning, with broken nose and squinting eye, he is described as "a Cain afloat, branded on his yellow brow with some inscrutable curse and going about corrupting and searing every heart that beat near him." Redburn soon experiences all the trials of a greenhorn: seasickness, scrubbing decks, climbing masts in the dead of night to unfurl sails, cramped quarters, and bad food.When the ship lands in Liverpool he is given liberty ashore. He rents a room and walks the city every day. One day in a street called Launcelott's Hey he hears "a feeble wail" from a cellar beneath an old warehouse and looking into it sees "the figure of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each side. At first I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made no sign; they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening wail." He runs for help but is met with indifference by a ragpicker, a porter, his landlady, even by a policeman who tells him to mind his own business. He returns with some bread and cheese and drops them into the vault to the mother and children, but they are too weak to lift it to their mouths. The mother whispers "water" so he runs and fills his tarpaulin hat at an open hydrant. The girls drink and revive enough to nibble some cheese. He clasps the mother's arms and pulls them aside to see "a meager babe, the lower part of its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its face was dazzlingly white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes looked like balls of indigo. It must have been dead for some hours." Judging them beyond the point at which medicine could help, he returns to his room. A few days later he revisits the street and finds the vault empty: "In place of the woman and children, a heap of quick-lime was glistening...".. Herman Melville(August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick (1851). His work was almost forgotten during his last thirty years. His writing draws on his experience at sea as a common sailor, exploration of literature and philosophy, and engagement in the contradictions of American society in a period of rapid change. He developed a complex, baroque style: the vocabulary is rich and original, a strong sense of rhythm infuses the elaborate sentences, the imagery is often mystical or ironic, and the abundance of allusion extends to Scripture, myth, philosophy, literature, and the visual arts. Views: 391
EDITORIAL REVIEW:On a lonely moon in deepest space a scout for Perry Rhodan’s fleet encounters a strange, sentient orb. As a Springer attack force approaches the planet Goszul, the orbit reveals its awesome power... but what are its intentions?Meanwhile on Goszul, the Springers seem to have been vanquished by the Plague of Oblivion unleashed by Rhodan and his mutants. But the Springers have one devastating card left to play–hidden deep in the mountains, their mightiest battleship is nearing completion...This is the stirring story of– A WORLD GONE MAD! Views: 390
Passion, conflict and infidelity are vividly depicted in this gripping tale of two people and their marriage. Set against the glittering background of glamorous high life in South Africa, New York and Barbados, an idealistic young writer tastes the corrupting fruits of success, while his beautiful, ambitious wife begins to doubt her former values. A complete reversal of their opposing beliefs forms the bedrock of unremitting conflict. Can their passion survive the coming storm...? Views: 389
Monte Walsh has never met a horse he couldn’t ride, and Chet Rollins has never met one he couldn’t rope. For a decade they are unbeatable and inseparable, working as trail hands throughout the West until finally settling with Cal Brennan’s Slash Y. Their rough cowboy ethics see them through every imaginable challenge: blizzards, rustlers, outlaws, and card games gone wrong. Partial to pretty women, gambling, and practical jokes, Monte is often on the receiving end of trouble, while Chet is always there to break him out of jail or serve as a decoy until Monte can get out of town in a hurry.
As the West begins to change, however—the automobile replacing the horse, the herds breaking up—the two friends part ways. Chet marries and goes on to become a successful merchant, banker, and politician; but Monte, unable to imagine anything but the cowboy’s way of life, refuses to the end to leave the range. Views: 389
In Kingsley Amis’s virtuoso foray into virtual history it is 1976 but the modern world is a medieval relic, frozen in intellectual and spiritual time ever since Martin Luther was promoted to pope back in the sixteenth century. Stephen the Third, the king of England, has just died, and Mass (Mozart’s second requiem) is about to be sung to lay him to rest. In the choir is our hero, Hubert Anvil, an extremely ordinary ten-year-old boy with a faultless voice. In the audience is a select group of experts whose job is to determine whether that faultless voice should be preserved by performing a certain operation. Art, after all, is worth any sacrifice.
How Hubert realizes what lies in store for him and how he deals with the whirlpool of piety, menace, terror, and passion that he soon finds himself in are the subject of a classic piece of counterfactual fiction equal to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.
The Alteration won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science-fiction novel in 1976. Views: 388
In the depths of the Depression, a young girl goes to live in the country
Although the Depression has destroyed Detroit’s economy, Elsa cannot imagine living anywhere else. She loves her friends, her family, and the hustle and bustle of the great industrial city. But when a mysterious illness forces her to miss half of fifth grade, her parents take drastic action and send her to stay with her grandmama to heal. Not just for a week. Not just for a month. For the entire summer.
Elsa is frightened of her stern German grandmother and doesn’t think she could ever feel at home in the peaceful Michigan countryside. The nights are too quiet and the days are too boring, and she has nothing to amuse herself with except her journal. But as the Lake Huron summer wears on, Elsa learns to take joy in empty places and live for the beauty of nature. Views: 388
An NYRB Classics Original
Few writers had to confront as many of the last century’s mass tragedies as Vasily Grossman, who wrote with terrifying clarity about the Shoah, the Battle of Stalingrad, and the Terror Famine in the Ukraine. An Armenian Sketchbook, however, shows us a very different Grossman, notable for his tenderness, warmth, and sense of fun.
After the Soviet government confiscated—or, as Grossman always put it, “arrested”—Life and Fate, he took on the task of revising a literal Russian translation of a long Armenian novel. The novel was of little interest to him, but he needed money and was evidently glad of an excuse to travel to Armenia. An Armenian Sketchbook is his account of the two months he spent there.
This is by far the most personal and intimate of Grossman’s works, endowed with an air of absolute spontaneity, as though he is simply chatting to the reader about his impressions of Armenia—its mountains, its ancient churches, its people—while also examining his own thoughts and moods. A wonderfully human account of travel to a faraway place, An Armenian Sketchbook also has the vivid appeal of a self-portrait. Views: 388
Contents v • Preface (Frontiers 1; Tomorrow's Alternatives) • essay by Roger Elwood1 • Tomorrow's Alternatives? • essay by Frank Herbert26 • Those Wonderful Years • short story by Barry N. Malzberg35 • Univac: 2200 • short story by Clifford D. Simak53 • Mommy Loves Ya • short fiction by David H. Charney65 • Peritonitis • short story by Gene Wolfe72 • Ship-Sister, Star-Sister • novelette by Robert Silverberg104 • Harriet • short fiction by Stephen Goldin and C. F. Hensel113 • Mutation Planet • novelette by Barrington J. Bayley141 • Jacob's Bug • short fiction by Richard Posner158 • Getting Around • short fiction by Barry N. Malzberg [as by K. M. O'Donnell]165 • The Answer • short fiction by Terry Carr169 • In Outraged Stone • short fiction by R. A. Lafferty190 • The Morning Rush or Happy Birthday, Dear Leah • short fiction by Lee Saye Views: 388
SNAKE ATTACK! THE GREATEST Kidnap Caper of All Time! 10,000 Terrans kidnapped! Is Akon behind it? This is a challenge for Division 3 and once again the agents of the Secret Organization are called into action, action calling for the greatest diplomacy, a mantle of invisibility and a devil-may-care approach to danger. For, make no mistake about it, danger abides on every side on the planet Passa, scene of mysterious happenings. A strange plan is required when the intrepid Terrans meet–THE IDOL OF PASSA! Views: 388
An extraordinary collection of daring stories...THE THIRD LEVELby Jack FinneySardonic and wry, each of these tales is uniquely plotted by a master craftsman — a man whose style can best be described as haunting.As Finney's young narrator in one of the stories explains: "I've read some of the stuff about Time with a capital T, and I don't say I understand it too well. But I know Einstein or somebody compares Time to a winding river, and says we exist as though in a boat, drifting along between high banks. All we can see is the present, immediately around us. We can't see the future just beyond the next curve, or the past in the many bends in back of us. But it's all there just the same. There — countless bends back in infinite distance — lies the past, as real as the moment around us."It is on these various co-existing bends of time that Jack Finney picks out the tune of his tales — miraculously, enchantingly and meaningfully; in each tale the fourth dimension cements the possibilities that the reader's imagination readily provides.THE THIRD LEVEL includes such stories as the unforgettable OF MISSING PERSONS with its lush pictures of the world of Verne, the compassionate SOMETHING IN A CLOUD that recalls the poignant longing of one human being for another; and the phantasmagorically funny factor determining the events in one small town in BEHIND THE NEWS. Appearing for the first time in book form, these selections were first published in the pages of Collier's, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal and Cosmopolitan.JACK FINNEY is a prodigious writer of short stories, novels and novelettes, which appear in all the major magazines and are widely reprinted in European publications. He is the author of three novels — FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE and THE BODY SNATCHERS, which have both been made into motion pictures, and a new novel, THE HOUSE OF NUMBERS. He resides in Mill Valley, California with his wife and two children; this is his first published collection of short stories. Views: 387
Anthology of three original stories:
The Feast of St. Dionysus (1973) by Robert Silverberg; 'Kjwalll'kje'k'koothaïlll'kje'k [Nemo] (1973) by Roger Zelazny;
My Brother Leopold [Tales of a Darkening World] (1973) by Edgar Pangborn. Views: 387
SUMMARY: Torak has survived the summer and his heart-stopping adventure in the Seal Islands. He and Wolf are together again. But their reunion is all too short-lived.As mid winter approaches Torak learns the worst from the White Fox clan - Wolf has been snatched. In a desperate bid to rescue him, Torak and Renn must brave the frozen wilderness of the Far North. They tread a deadly dangerous path as they step into a world of deceit, treachery and lies and come face to face with the the most powerful and feared mages alive. Cruel Thiazzi, the Oak Tree Mage, Seshru the Viper Mage, beautiful and manipulative, and Nef the gruff Bat Mage - here too is Eostra, the mysterious Masked One - all of them bound by their desire for all creatures to bow before them.Under the dark wings of night Torak confronts vengeful ice bears, mistrust, broken promises and a terrifying evil.Another step is taken on his quest to destroy the Soul-Eaters, but with it comes the burden of an utterly chilling secret of his own... Views: 387
