When he awoke it was pitch dark, dark as the pit, dark as the tomb, dark as the grave. A thick, black velvet darkness that seemed almost tangible in its intensity. The kind of darkness that got into the pores of your nose...
Orbit One
Writing as John E. Muller
Trinkle did not possess a legal mind. He was a mental grasshopper, an intellectual kangaroo, a mind wallaby.
Beyond the Void
Writing as John E. Muller
The grey voice of the grey Seaforth glided greyly on to their ears, like a tide of putrescent grey molasses.
The Room With the Broken Floor
Writing as Pel Torro
Pain and discomfort seemed to mean nothing to them. Vengeance was their anaesthetic. Revenge was their analgesic.
Nemesis
Writing as Bron Fane
Levine loved his bath. He wallowed in it with a sensual voluptuousness that would have won the approval of the most decadent of the later Roman emperors. He lubricated his soft pink skin with a tablet of soft pink soap, and smiled happily to himself as he contemplated his navel. There was a strange, psychiatric regression about Levine in his luxurious bathroom. With the doors securely locked he played with a small, red plastic boat. It sailed between soapsuds and came into harbour between his toes. He turned it deftly with his feet and flicked it back with a deft movement of his right ankle. The boat bobbed on the miniature waves of the purple bath.
Spectre of Darkness
Writing as John E. Muller
Val realised, that in referring to the shaft as being subterranean, he was subconsiously thinking in terrestrial terms. The shaft led from the ground, true, and they were moving equally into the ground but it was not a subterranean shaft. In all truth and honesty the word subterranean could only be employed, thought Val, for that which was under the Earth. A shaft which merely sank into Awan, 6th Planet of Polaris, was not subterranean, but subawanean.
Nemesis
Writing as Bron Fane
"I'm am idiot," he said. "I am the primaeval ancestor of all idiots. I am an arch-crud. I am the nig-nog of all the nig-nogs. I am the ultimate splurge!"
Dark Continuum
Writing as John E. Muller
Everywhere was dark, dark darkness. Blackness. Black. Black blackness.
A 1,000 Years On
Writing as John E. Muller
He felt as one tiny iron-filing would feel if it was in the grip of a huge electro-magnet, provided, of course, that one iron filing was capable of feeling anything!
But now, to use Brendan's analogy, the magnet had been switched off. He, the sentient iron filing, was free to move as he would, and he was no longer compelled to obey the metaphorical magnetic lines of force.
Forgotten Country
Writing as Peter O'Flinn
Grafton gave a passable impersonation of a tadpole which has tried very hard to be a frog and, having failed miserably, is now waiting for some predator of the duck pond to end its little life.
Power Sphere
Writing as Leo Brett
Armande was an old, wrinkled, French art expert. He was as wizened as the raisins that hang in deserted corners of the champagne vinyards.
Spectre of Darkness
Writing as John E. Muller
He stood trembling like a bladder of lard...
The Thing From Sheol
Writing as Bron Fane
"Yes." The monosyllable was terse, almost aggressive.
Barrier 346
Writing as Karl Ziegfreid
Their greatest achievement was a terrifying force of destruction. A force that we today would not be able to describe for we have no words to describe it. Its name is Atom-god.
The Last Valkyrie
Writing as Lionel Roberts
Now even the primitive villagers knew that psychological disturbances were simply a byproduct of the mind, and that Ticky George was not "different". Just inferior.
March of the Robots
Writing as Leo Brett
Val got the impression that Plumbus was almost offensively inoffensive. He was like a living drop of oil.
The Intruders
Writing as Bron Fane
There were a few acres of crops scattered in sheltered ground which had been able to escape the ravages of radiation, the fury of the fires, the holocaust of the hurricanes, but they had been pretty well obliterated by the flood water...
Orbit One
Writing as John E. Muller
There was silence for a few minutes. Silence, that is, except for the whining noise, which continued to grow.
The Intruders
Writing as Bron Fane
Chris Anderson stopped his train of mental thought with a sudden, silent screech of mental brakes. . .
Vengence of Siva
Writing as John E Muller
P.C. Robinson's parents played with his little pink toes and decided that he was the cutest little bundle of humanity that the stork had ever left. Half a century had passed since anyone had played with P.C. Robinson's little pink toes! They had grown to large, flat, beat-calloused toes. . . due to the ministrations of the Metropolitan constabulary.
Wolf Man's Vengence
Writing as Pel Torro
Dan was the kind of man to whom panic and fear were as alien and foreign as green spotted pseudopods.
Formula 29X
Writing as Pel Torro
It was like going for a ride on the back of an animated haggis.
Galaxy 666
Writing as Pel Torro
Every minute looked as though it was going to be their last. Every second looked as though it was to be their penultimate fraction of existence time.
Land of the Living Dead
Writing as Leo Brett
When Joe Maginty woke up he had the grandfather and grandmother, the primaeval ancestor and ancestress of every hangover from which every man has ever suffered in the course of human history, or is ever destined to suffer from as long as time and humanity shall walk together through the universe.
Dark Continuum
Writing as John E. Muller
Chuck Mahoney was running, running wildly and blindly around the ancient Temple, tripping, stumbling, falling, scrambling to his feet again and falling once more. He was bruised, battered, breathless and bloodstained.
The Last Valkyrie
Writing as Lionel Roberts
It was in an agony of mind that he forced himself to admit that Colrayn had been right. That the authority which employed Colrayn had been right. And that now there was a Day of Reckoning. A Day of Reckoning that had started several months ago.
Rodent Mutation
Writing as Bron Fane
A metal face cannot look surprised, but this one tried to. A metal face cannot really look hurt, but this one had a damn good shot at it.
Power Sphere
Writing as Leo Brett
The enemy disc ship had opened up its lambasting holocaust of coloured lights.
The In-World
Writing as Lionel Roberts
"I am not a psychiatrist. I am not a psychologist, I'm only a very amateur philosopher, but I do somtimes wonder whether the human mind, body and soul, can be likened to a car; a driver and a control panel...
March of the Robots
Writing as Leo Brett
If he considered that any particular thing was a menace to the health and well-being of the community, he would leave no stone unturned, no manhole cover unlifted, no drain un-disinfected until he had eliminated the obnoxiousness.
Rodent Mutation
Writing as Bron Fane
A strange, glazed expression came into his eyes and he staggered around the cabin looking for all the world like a zombie unwilling to take part in an experiment in advanced necromancy.
Dark Continuum
Writing as John E. Muller
They rounded the corner, and saw, in the flickering firelight, a sight which chilled the very blood in their veins. It seemed to coagulate the very corpuscles in their arteries.
Beyond Time
Writing as John E. Muller
He looked down inside his mind introspectively.
The Watching World
Writing as R. L. Fanthorpe
Two days passed uneventfully and Bohemianly.
Spectre of Darkness
Writing as John E. Muller
"I haven't got much brain," said Ticky George, "They tell me that in the village. But they're ever so kind to me, I like it in the village."
March of the Robots
Writing as Leo Brett
Eric Fenn glanced at the screen and thought of the Earth as a little, coloured, round pill, a pill from which somebody had sucked half the sugar coating and found the harsh-tasting chemical inside was not pallitable and had therefore spat it out. It had been a good strong expectoration, thought Eric Fenn.
The Last Astronaut
Writing as Pel Torro
Although Harry Salford was primarily a space man, he was by no means an ordinary space man. Salford was an agent. Just that. No fancy titles. Just an agent. He didn't work for a Bureau, or a Department, or an Office. He worked for what was known, euphemistically, as The Agency. But that one word was enough to bring hope to the hopeless, and fear to the ruthless.
Power Sphere
Writing as Leo Brett
...Brighter and more deadly still grew the yellow light, until it seemed that the whole universe had resolved into a wilderness of inhuman yellowness. . . The ochre tint was reminiscent of the foulest regions of Dante's Inferno. It was a temple of hell, in an island of hell, in world of hell, in a universe of hell.
The Last Valkyrie
Writing as Lionel Roberts
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 instruction on its ticket. She would not have fancied chewing her way through wool that might have been flavoured with powerful detergent!
Projection Infinity
Writing as Karl Zeigfreid
The city slept. Men slept. Women slept. Children slept. Dogs and Cats slept.
March of the Robots
Writing as Leo Brett
It was one of the imponderables, one of the unanswerables. And yet it was the kind of thing that men tried to answer, and that men wanted to ponder. It was the eternal 'if,' the everlasting question mark. It seemed to hang over his head, just as those EYES hung over his head.
Power Sphere
Writing as Leo Brett
He looked like a friendly oak tree, transformed into a man, by a benevolent fairy, in return for sheltering her from the rain.
Spectre of Darkness
Writing as John E. Muller
The invisible mental boat which had rafted him down the course of this strange, intellectual jouney, beached itself gently and Val found himself coming back to full conciousness.
Nemesis
Writing as Bron Fane
Then there was Paul Whiteland, as different from Jansen as chalk from cheese. Which of them you preferred depended on which type of character you preferred—chalk or cheese. They are both useful in their own way. You can't write on a blackboard with a lump of Cheddar. You can't satisfy your appetite with three sticks of coloured Writing apparatus.
Juggernaut
Writing as Bron Fane
Love was an unpredictable emotion, they told themselves. It refused to stay stable long enough to be weighed, tested or analysed, and therefore it had no part in the scientific world which with they surrounded themselves, and to which their survival data was attuned.
The Death Note
Writing as R. Lionel Fanthorpe
Once he had decided on a course of action, nothing diverted him from it until the job was done. Stonewall Jackson had a grasshopper mind compared to Johnny Malone, and there was, he considered, more ways than one to kill a cat, even if it did appear to have nine lives...
The Other Driver
Writing as Pel Torro
Maginty was singing; at least he thought he was singing. His mouth was opening and shutting and a noise was coming out. The noise was not all pitched on the same level and to that extent, at least, it would probably be true, if not musically accurate to define the sound as singing.
Dark Continuum
Writing as John E. Muller
The button would kill men, one man, a hundred men, a thousand men, a million men, women and children; not just one million but a hundred million, a thousand million; a fool with a button, an irresponsible finger on a trigger.
Midnight Ghoul
Writing as Robin Tate
The alien ship landed and the things emerged... They were about six feet tall, and at a rough classification could have been described as mammalian bipeds. Their forelimbs terminated in digital extremities; they possessed primary optical organs; and the respiratory orifice was subdivided. The oral orifice was provided with an articulated mandible at its lower extremity, and to sum up—they bore a striking resemblance to homo sapiens
Hand of Doom
Writing as R. L. Fanthorpe
Dover Cross, he reckoned, looked capable, but he was no longer in the first flush of youth and that was putting it mildly. It was a euphemism.
The Planet Seekers
Writing as Erle Barton
Grafton felt as though the colossal brain inside his cranium was trying to jump out.
Power Sphere
Writing as Leo Brett
"Why have the archers stopped? Are they tired? I had forgotten flesh and blood tires easily. It is long since I was mere flesh and blood. I am Daedalus the flying god, I am Daedalus servent of the Phoenix! Part of the Phoenix!"
..."I am a man, and I am a bird!" he screamed to the few survivors who still ran desperately for cover. "I am Daedalus the man-bird - and I am a bird of ill-omen!"
The Last Valkyrie
Writing as Lionel Roberts
Bekstein had a square face and a square head. He completed the illusion by wearing square rimmed glasses. The skin was drawn rather tightly over the bones, and the close-cropped hair protruding at the top made Harry Salford think that he was looking at a biscuit tin wearing spectacles, from the top of which a few desultory grass seeds were attempting to germinate. He shook hands with Bekstein and for the sake of propriety, and out of common human decency, he refrained from laughing.
Power Sphere
Writing as Leo Brett
After all the natural perils that he had already overcome, the mountains circumnavigated, here was something new. Here was Terror with a capital "T"; Fear with a capital "F"; Horror with a capital "H".
Orbit One
Writing as John E. Muller
Thick, black tactile darkness. He coughed and spluttered as though trying to spit the darkness out. The darkness didn't seem to want to be spat out; it continued filling his nose and mouth and ears.
Orbit One
Writing as John E. Muller
He finished and put the guitar down with a slow, solemn seriousness, and then there was no denying the magnetism, the electrical attraction of his personality. His eyes were two great stars, the north and south poles of her celestial universe. She felt herself growing weak as he drew her towards him, and their lips met in a strange, soul-consuming ecstasy of passion . . . .
Lana woke feeling warm and comfortable, and strangely light heartedly amoral.
Spectre of Darkness
Writing as John E. Muller
So far he had been remarkably lucky. The law had reached out for him on many occasions, and unfortunately for the general public—missed.
The Golden Warrior
Writing as Lionel Roberts
Sir Henry Wilder was very much a victorian at heart. He was a victorian by preference; he was a victorian insofar as Victoria's reign was the era of time which, from his limited knowledge of history, appealed to him most.
Suspension
Writing as Bron Fane
His mind was as steady as his gun, and his wits were as powerful as the blast of his twelve bore.
March of the Robots
Writing as Leo Brett
"Ah," said Grafton. The monosyllable was vital with interrogation.
Power Sphere
Writing as Leo Brett
"How many hands have you got?" demanded Stearman. "If you've got the flag of truce in one hand, and you're holding out the other, what are you going to bury the hatchet with—your teeth?"
Nemesis
Writing as Bron Fane
Levine was the kind of art critic who wore a camel hair coat with a fur collar, thick, goldframed spectacles, and long, long hair. It didn't quite equal the hirsute splendour of Midnight Jones, but it was half way to qualifying him to lead a beat group.
Spectre of Darkness
Writing as John E. Muller
Everything in the old administrator's office had been so much a part of his character, had been as much a part of him as his own flesh and blood. It was like using a dead man's nose, ears, mouth, eyes and fingers to use Fletcher Starbuck's equipment...
Orbit One
Writing as John E. Muller
He removed his thick glasses, "I'm very nearly bat blind without these things, and nature has very kindly compensated me, by giving me hypersensitive hearing. I was able to detect—I won't say I was able to hear—this high-pitched signal which was obviously coming from the capsule."
March of the Robots
Writing as Leo Brett
"Approach!"
Just one word. A word impregnated with meaning. A vital word, a word of power, a word of command, a word of authority.
The Last Valkyrie
Writing as Lionel Roberts
La Noire poured him a cup which he sipped thoughtfully in contrast to the gulping avidity with which he had disposed of the tea. But then, he thought, as he compared the two movements in his mind, tea made by a copy boy was a warm, wet, sweet liquid to be gulped. It was an essential; it was a lubricant. It was as much a part of work in the Daily Globe as paper and desks and typewriters. On the other hand coffee made by La Noire was an experience, something to be savoured and enjoyed. Something to be experienced with more than one of the senses, the aroma alone was superb, the taste was perfection, the tactile sensation of the liquid on the tip of the tongue was something worth enjoying. La Noire made coffee as though for a conoisseur and Val believed in doing it full justice.
Suspension
Writing as Bron Fane
She felt more afraid than she had ever felt in her life before, as if she had seen the grim figure of the Black Reaper himself, complete with hour glass and scythe. If the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had ridden through that cellar she could not have intensified her fear, even for them.
If 666, the Great Beast, had appeared in its malevolent horror and diabolical fury, her fear could only have remained static. The muzzle of the gun at the back of her neck was like a finger pointing towards eternity.
Spectre of Darkness
Writing as John E. Muller
The temperature in the freezing chamber was very low indeed, far far below zero. It was the kind of temperature which could only be measured in degrees absolute and not many of them!
Suspension
Writing as Bron Fane
Septimus Harbottle had to be seen to be believed. He was far more like something out of a Dickensian comedy than a real live, walking, breathing, human being. That was probably because Septimus Harbottle didn't do much in the way of living, moving or breathing. He was a singularly sedentary individual. He had a giagantic head, a microscopic body, long tapering fingers, and gigantic eyes which bulged in the manner of a koala bear.
Rodent Mutation
Writing as Bron Fane
"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and the flower that we call coincidence has other names, the changeing of which does nothing to detract from its efficacy."
Spectre of Darkness
Writing as John E. Muller
Like the secret police of George Orwell's "1984," the beavers were literally everywhere. There seemed no limit to the distance which they could teleport, although they had actually to be on the spot, in visible sight of their victims, before they could use their telekinesis. It was frightening, terrifying. Humanity was fighting a war with gigantic, radio-active teleports and telekinetics. It was like fighting deadly ghosts, or strange elemental spirits.
Rodent Mutation
Writing as Bron Fane
Successful bachelors are a dying breed, and successful bachelor doctors are sought after so avidly by hungry, wily spinsterhood in general that there is a very serious danger of the species becoming completely and perhaps irrecoverably extinct.
Vengence of Siva
Writing as John E Muller
"Society has to ask itself what ought to be done with such creatures. Society produces a variety of answers."
"Aren't they killed at birth?" asked the girl.
Spectre of Darkness
Writing as John E. Muller
So economical of space was the modern super-groove recording technique that long-players really were long-players. There were enough records on board to have lasted for a thousand years without repetition. It was not likely that anyone would become unduly bored with his or her journey.
The Mind Makers
Writing as John E Muller
The space in which they found themselves at present was a large open-looking chamber with a very high ceiling. It gave an impression of tragic grandeur which would have reminded Vir of old Vienna, except for the fact that he had never been there.
Nemesis
Writing as Bron Fane
Kramer was as hard as the rocks that were his main interest. He had a jaw like granite, eyes like flints, hair like asbestos fibres, and a voice that sounded like water running through subterranean tunnels and passages.
The Intruders
Writing as Bron Fane
Hank held out a hand automatically, it was his big, bluff Texan way. A limp, clammy paw slitherered into his own; it was like squeezing a jelly. The limp thing slithered out again, leaving the big Texan feeling slightly nauseated.
The Room With the Broken Floor
Writing as Pel Torro
Sometimes Garrett could imagine the racial subconscious as an enormous grey cloud hanging above his head and when his head passed into the cloud, then the accumulated ideas of a hundred thousand centuries and a hundred thousand million people poured into his own. He felt as though he were a small electrical terminal being plugged into an enormous cosmic battery, more than a battery, a great cosmic generator.
Midnight Ghoul
Writing as Robin Tate
The darkness all around him was thick, black, stygian. It was a stifling, overwhelming, suffocating darkness. A horrifying terrifying darkness. A darkness of the nethermost pit of hell. Indescribable. It seemed an oppressive darkness, like the darkness of some foul underground dungeon, to which the blessed light of the sun never gained access. It was velvety, almost tactile. He was inhaling it; it was penetrating the pores of his skin; it seemed that the world had always been darkness, that the world alway would be darkness. It was a timeless darkness, a weird, horrifying, overwhelming eternal blackness. He felt as though this was the darkness of a tomb, and that he had been buried alive. . .
Fly, Witch, Fly
Writing as Leo Brett
It began to grow markedly colder. There was a strange, almost terrifying, other-worldliness about the cold. It was not a purely physical cold, not a mere negation of heat, not solely a drop in temperature, but it was a cold that seemed to blow from some weird psychic region, a cold that froze the very soul of man. A cold that came as though from out some other bourne of Time and Space, a transcendental coldness, a fearful coldness. It gripped not only their bodies, but their brains and their minds; their hearts, their very souls. They were like men turned to ice. They were men turned to stone.
Forbidden Island
Writing as Bron Fane
William Evans, on his right, was the Welsh delegate, he was short, dark and curly. His hair curled, his eyebrows curled, his moustache curled, if he'd grown a beard that would have curled. Wherever William Evans went he seemed to curl. When he sat down he curled into a chair; when he get into his car he curled behind the wheel.
World of the Gods
Writing as Pel Torro
