Author | John Brunner |
---|---|
Language | English |
Genre | Fantasy |
Publisher | Ace Books |
Publication date | 1971 (first edition) |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardcover, paperback) |
Pages | 175 (first edition) |
ISBN | 0-441-82211-8 |
The Traveller in Black is a 1971 collection of fantasy short stories, written by John Brunner and dealing with the Traveller of the title. The first edition had four stories ("Imprint of Chaos", "Break the Door of Hell", "The Wager Lost by Winning", and "The Dread Empire") and was issued in 1971 in the Ace Science Fiction Specials line. [1] A subsequent 1986 edition contained an additional story, "The Things That Are Gods", and was titled The Compleat Traveler in Black.
The series deals with an unnamed protagonist, who "has many names but only one nature" and who bears a staff of curdled light, traveling through a landscape in which Order and Chaos conflict. With this, and with the powers vested in him by "the One for whom all things are neither possible nor impossible", he can counter Chaos. However, he must do so in answer to the spoken wishes of the people around him, always with consequences they had not intended and often to their detriment. For example, the Traveller hears the wish of a skilled assassin that he could get the fame to which his expertise should entitle him. Are not all great artists admired and respected? Is he not the cunningest hand with dagger, garotte, and subtle poison? The Traveller replies, as usual, "As you wish, so be it." The following morning, the Traveller finds the assassin's body on a dunghill: his crimes have been discovered and properly attributed to him, and he has received the execution the law prescribes.
Among the Traveller's powers is the ability to bind and free elementals, which in these tales are varied and more than five in number. The Traveller's ultimate purpose is to reduce the power of Chaos, and thus the utility of magic, until everything should have a single nature. As he works, person after person, city after city, move from Chaos into the realm of Order, and thus from Eternity into Time.
Colin Greenland reviewed The Traveller in Black for Imagine magazine and stated that "the chronicle of the softly-spoken little pilgrim with the staff of curdled light, whose task it is to end the rule of Chaos and usher in the age of Order. Wry, thoughtful fantasy in the vein of Lord Dunsany and Jack Vance." [2]
Dave Langford reviewed The Compleat Traveller in Black for White Dwarf #90 and found it "very readable and re-readable". [3]
John Kilian Houston Brunner was a British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1969 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel and the BSFA Award the same year. The Jagged Orbit won the BSFA Award in 1970.
Dangerous Visions is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by American writer Harlan Ellison and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. It was published in 1967 and contained 33 stories, none of which had been previously published.
Warhammer Fantasy is a fictional fantasy universe created by Games Workshop and used in many of its games, including the table top wargame Warhammer, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) pen-and-paper role-playing game, and a number of video games: the MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the strategy games Total War: Warhammer, Total War: Warhammer II and Total War: Warhammer III and the two first-person shooter games in the Warhammer Vermintide series, Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2, among many others.
The Colour of Magic is a 1983 fantasy comedy novel by Terry Pratchett, and is the first book of the Discworld series. The first printing of the British edition consisted of only 506 copies. Pratchett has described it as "an attempt to do for the classical fantasy universe what Blazing Saddles did for Westerns."
Thieves' World is a shared world fantasy series created by Robert Lynn Asprin in 1978. The original series comprised twelve anthologies, including stories by science fiction and fantasy authors Poul Anderson, John Brunner, Andrew J. Offutt, C. J. Cherryh, Janet Morris, and Chris Morris.
The Anubis Gates is a 1983 time travel fantasy novel by American writer Tim Powers. It won the 1983 Philip K. Dick Award and 1984 Science Fiction Chronicle Award. The plot concerns an English professor, who participates in a time travel experiment and ends up trapped in the 19th century. The novel was influenced by Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor and, to a lesser degree, the works of Charles Dickens.
Tik-Tok is a 1983 science fiction novel by American writer John Sladek. It received a 1983 British Science Fiction Association Award.
The Unteleported Man is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published as a novella in 1964. It is about a future in which a one-way teleportation technology enables 40 million people to emigrate to a colony named Whale's Mouth on an Earth-like planet, which advertisements show as a lush green utopia. When the owner of a failing spaceship travel firm tries to take the 18-year flight to the colony to bring back any unhappy colonists, powerful forces try to stop him from finding out the truth.
Heechee Rendezvous is a science fiction novel by the American writer Frederik Pohl, published in 1984 by the Del Rey imprint of Ballantine Books. It is a sequel to Gateway (1977) and Beyond the Blue Event Horizon (1981) and is set about three decades after Gateway. It has been cataloged as the third book in a six-book series called Heechee or The Heechee Saga but Kirkus reviewed it as completing a trilogy and a German-language edition of the three books was published as the Gateway trilogy after all six were out.
Ace Science Fiction Specials are three series of science fiction and fantasy books published by Ace Books between 1968 and 1990. Terry Carr edited the first and third series, taking the "TV special" concept and adapting it to paperback marketing. The first series was one of the most influential in the history of science fiction publishing; four of the six novels nominated for 1970 Nebula Awards were from the series.
Gordon Eklund is an American science fiction author whose works include the "Lord Tedric" series and two of the earliest original novels based on the 1960s Star Trek TV series. He has written under the pen name Wendell Stewart, and in one instance under the name of the late E. E. "Doc" Smith.
The Purple Pterodactyls is a collection of fantasy short stories by American writer L. Sprague de Camp. The collection was first published in hardcover by Phantasia Press in January, 1980, and in paperback by Ace Books in April of the same year. It has also been translated into German. An e-book edition was published by Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint on September 29, 2011 as part of a general release of de Camp's works in electronic form. The pieces were originally published between 1975 and 1979 in the magazines The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fantastic, Escape!, and Fantasy Crossroads.
The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 6 is an anthology of fantasy stories, edited by American writer Lin Carter. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in November 1980. Despite the anthology's title, it gathers together pieces originally published during a four-year period, 1977 to 1980, with the preponderance of them from 1979.
The English Assassin: A Romance of Entropy is a 1972 novel by British fantasy and science fiction writer Michael Moorcock, first published in the UK by Allison & Busby and in the US by Harper & Row. Subtitled "A romance of entropy", it was the third part of his long-running Jerry Cornelius series.
The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius is a collection of short stories by British fantasy and science fiction writer Michael Moorcock. It is part of his long-running Jerry Cornelius series. The book was originally published by Allison & Busby in 1976 and collects stories originally published between 1969 and 1974. A later edition was published in 2003 by Four Walls Eight Windows, in which four stories from the original edition are replaced.
Ground Zero Man is a 1971 science fiction novel by British writer Bob Shaw. It was republished as The Peace Machine in 1985.
The Mighty Swordsmen is a 1970 anthology of fantasy short stories in the sword and sorcery subgenre, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson. It was first published in paperback by Lancer Books in December 1970, and was a follow-up to the earlier Lancer anthology The Mighty Barbarians. Robert M. Price edited a later-day homage to both anthologies called The Mighty Warriors (2018).
The Annals of the Heechee is a science fiction novel by the American writer Frederik Pohl, published in 1987 by Ballantine Books. It is about a dead space explorer's machine-stored version who is trying to discover why the Assassins, a mysterious type of pure energy beings, are threatening the stability of the universe. It is part of Pohl's Heechee Saga, which is about the Heechee, a fictional alien race created by Pohl. The Heechee developed advanced technologies, including interstellar space travel, but then disappeared.
The Book of the River is a novel by Ian Watson published in 1984.