Includes the novelette "Perpetual Motion".Meet Victor Hasselborg, easily the most miserable Private Investigator in the entire galaxy. More comfortable with the dull routine of investigating insurance frauds than interstellar adventure, Hasselborg is bound by duty to chase a runaway heiress across known space to the primitive world called Krishna. Clad in kilt and sword, his hair dyed green, riding a buggy driven by a six-legged monster of a beast, Hasselborg's quest takes him through the volatile world of feudal Krishna politics and into the presence of... The Queen of Zamba.A rollicking tale of galactic adventure - space opera at its very best, by one of the writers who invented the field.

When Rome fell, the light of reason flickered out across the Empire. The Dark Ages had begun. Could a man from the 20th century prevent the fall of Rome? When lightning struck, Martin Padway was hurled backward into the sixth century. Like him, her fate was to bring Rome into being. Together, they must strive to bring the light, lest darkness fall.

When Alexander the Great decided to give an elephant to his old teacher Aristotle a problem of logistics arose. Alexander was in India and Aristotle was in Athens. Thousands of miles of blazing deserts, towering mountains, turbulent rivers, and savage, scarcely conquered peoples lay between; and Aias, the elephant, had to have his two hundred pounds of hay and vegetables every day.Around this situation L. Sprague de Camp has written this engaging, imaginative, and extraordinary comedy—which might not have come into being if King Poros had not lost his best war elephant to Alexander in a fiercely fought battle ... and if someone other than the good soldier Leon of Atrax had been chosen to lead the expedition to deliver this elephant to Aristotle in Athens.As it was, a motley swarm set out under Leon's command: soldiers, mahouts, women, children, slaves, and servants; the philosopher Pyrron the Skeptic; and, after a while, a lovely Persian girl named Nirouphar. From Leon's point of view, the only possible thing wrong with Nirouphar was that she had no time for him and spent her days listening to Pyrron.But as the journey stretched on through weeks and months—and through ambush, mutiny, and elephantine balking—there was time for almost all things to happen, even for Leon to take hope ... and for the author to blend wit, adventure, philosophy, and romance into this totally entertaining book.

RHODES, 305 B.C.—CITY UNDER SIEGE From the sea in thousands of ships they came, the brutal legions of Antigonos, a giant lusting for the power of Alexander the Great. For endless weeks and months they battered at the tiny island city, smashing it with monstrous weapons, crushing it with the terrible weight of their numbers. Among the handful of grim defenders was one man who fought for a dream, a vision of a great statue that would stand above the highest towers as a monument to his city's grandeur. He was Chares, soldier, adventurer, a man tormented by passion, a wanderer in strange, deadly lands—an artist who lived to see his incredible dream become one of the seven wonders of the world.

Product DescriptionOrdered to spend a year's servitude on the human plane, Zdim the demon, a mild-mannered scholar of logic and philosophy, becomes the city of Ir's last chance when a barbarian armada threatens to attack. Reprint.

Amazon.com Review A reasonably scholarly but nonetheless accessible history of the great engineering feats of the human race up to the Renaissance, including a great chapter on Oriental architecture, a topic often neglected by such surveys. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The Great Fetish is a science fiction novel by L. Sprague de Camp. It was first published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in two parts, as "Heretic in a Balloon" and "The Witches of Manhattan", in the issues for winter, 1977, and January/February, 1978, respectively. It was subsequently published in book form in hardcover by Doubleday in 1978 and in paperback by Pocket Books in 1980.  

6 STORIES from the brightest star in American Science Fiction

They invented a brand-new game in Lunar Center—ping-pong, played with electromagnets for bats and for the ball a complex  sphere of living electricity

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