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Broke Down Engine: Thirteen wry and terrifying tales of homo mechanicus (what we are becoming) versus the machines we have created. In a technocracy gone mad, in a universe populated by note-passing refrigerators, killer stoves, houses that cuckold their owners, medical androids, and a host of other malfunctioning mechanisms -- the moment of truth is the moment of breakdown.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword: The Way Things Don't Work - essay
• The Trouble with Machines - (1968) - shortstory
• Broke Down Engine - (1969) - shortstory
• Lofthouse - (1969) - shortstory
• Calling Dr. Clockwork - (1965) - shortstory
• Princess #22 - (1962) - shortstory
• All for Love - (1965) - shortstory
• The Katy Dialogues - (1958) - shortstory
• Nobody Starves - (1964) - shortstory
• Muscadine - (1968) - shortstory
• Disposal - (1970) - shortstory
• To the Rescue - (1966) - shortstory
• Joker for Hire - (1963) - shortstory
• Terminal - (1965) - shortstory

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Amazing Stories, March 1965. The story can also be found in the anthologies World's Best Science Fiction: 1966, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr and As Tomorrow Becomes Today (1974), edited by Charles W. Sullivan. It is included in the collection Broke Down Engine and Other Troubles with Machines (1971).

In order to protect the reputation of the American space program, a team of scientists stages a phony Mars landing. Willingly participating in the deception are a trio of well-meaning astronauts, who become liabilities when their space capsule is reported lost on re-entry. Now, with the help of a crusading reporter, they must battle a sinister conspiracy that will stop at nothing to keep the truth a secret.

DEEP IN THE SOUTH AMERICAN JUNGLE, A REAL AND SINISTER MENACE LURKS IN THE SHADOWS OF THE SUPERNATURAL...

In a remote lake, a legendary monster, incredibly vicious, surfaces after a sleep of centuries. Acting to protect its oil stake, the U. S. Government calls in...

The Challengers!

Men wtih young faces and old memories move mysteriously in the area, speak in low tones in the capital city. The country's president alerts...

The Challengers!

A dying man names a desert fort, many miles away... Bisarre mechanisms keep the curious away.. Unseen enemies... Strange accidents... Strong-arm assailants... A hair-raising test fo the celebrated ingenuity of the

CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN

In this classic, humorous science fiction romp, a husband and wife who were executed for selling state secrets have their sentences reversed and are now resurrected. They hire a detective agency to find their long lost daughter who disappeared somewhere in a system of four notoriously deadly planets. The Hellquad.

The hero and his android butler set out to find her, aided or hindered by a female reporter, a telepathic inventor, street gangs of alien thugs, an android repairman named E. Power Gonzaga, a captain named Space Tug Annie, a band of armed pimps with yellow hats, a man in a bottle, and his zero-G wrestler sidekick. Fun, funny, and memorable.

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 1998. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 4 (1999), edited by David G. Hartwell.

PRESENT.... CONDITIONAL.... FUTURE IMPERFECT!

Ted Briar's life turned inside out overnight. His wife was cheating, his job gave him unexplainable feelings that strangers were snooping around....even his household computer began lying to him.

Then he was contacted by one of the most wanted fugitives in the United States. And things began to fall -- or float -- into place....

He was suddenly the leader of a movement to overthrow a vastly dangerous criminal -- who happened to be the President of the United States!

MURDSTONE is the most backward planer in the entire Barnum system, and Peluda is the most backward and fouled-up territory on Murdstone. Sensible people avoid Peluda--unless they are fond of disappearing at unpredictable moments. When that happens to a Barnum secret agent, his frantic wife finds that his government will do nothing to get him back, so she turns to the notorious Mirabilis Agency. And that turns loose free-lance undercover agen Peter Tores on one of the wildest chases of his career, where the bad guys keep helping hm out of trouble and the good guys are out to kill him, in the funniest novel yet to come from the fertile imagination of Ron Goulart.

In the Barnum system, Malagra was considered to be the most uninviting planet of the m all. In fact, among the engineers and androids of Kip Bundy's set, it was known as the pesthole of the universe. Which made things quite sticky when Kip's rich uncle assigned him to Malagra to make certain top secret reforms. Because Kip was no Hercules, and this task would have balked even that mythical fixer.

But then there were compensations--if you could call them that--a sex-mad photographer, a couple of lovely maidens in distress, and the ardent guerrillas of the Boy Scout Liberation Army. It's Ron Goulart at his whackiest best.

MISSION: UNKNOWN
DESTINY: SUICIDE

No one knew who, where, or what Whistler was -- except that "he" was the mastermind of the Interplanetary Investigation Agency, otherwise known as SUICIDE, INC.

Its orders were issued through floating terminals and executed by androids and humanoids.

And one human ex-criminal named Smith....

THEY HELD THE FATE OF FREEDOM IN THEIR HANDS

Dan Farleigh -- a pleasant young fellow with a kinky craving for the company of computers.

Janis Trummond -- a beautiful young woman reporter out to dig up the dirtiest secrets of a man's world.

Professor Supermind -- mental master of machines.

Tin Lizzie -- a gifted if ungainly bionic teen-ager.

Deadend -- a Chicago thug whose thoughts were deadly weapons.

No human imagination could have concieved this oddly twisted team -- and no human imagination had. Their master and mentor used the name of Bernard Maze. But to friends he was Barney -- a computer who decided to take charge before it was too late to save the world from -- THE EMPEROR OF THE LAST DAYS.

Sam Brimmer, temporal detective, and his android time machine solve a case involving kidnap, murder, and the smuggling of modern weaponry back to pre-WWII Nazis.

Great scaly dragons roamed the dunes--unreal beasts resurrected daily in the mirage belt. Illusions created by atmospheric manipulation--and by magic. For although Esmeralda was a backward world, it had a very real and unusual native art--witchcraft!

Raker of Soldiers of Fortune, Inc. was being paid well to track down the planet's deadly Fire-Eater--who visited flaming death upon distant enemies.

But Raker found himself battling not on wizard, but a whol pack of sorcerers, plague makers, lycanthropes, and fir assassins. And the one shwo couldn't kill him with words went ah him with battle axes, swords and the like. Raker began to wonder if even a great fortune was going to be just compensation if he couldn't live long enough to collect...

Sara Tenbrook intended to shake down her family tree. She was proud of her distinguished ancestors...and besides there was a matter of a lost fortune waiting somewhere among the centuries past. So she rented a time machine and invited her boy friend along.

The time machine was a robot. It could climb down to any branch of the old Tenbrook family tree and take them with it. But it could also talk, and take on disguises, and had an ego bigger than all creation!

That family tree my have borne some golden apples -- but the more that walkie-talkie time robot explored, the more assorted nuts it turned up!

Start with medical transplants, add a dash of cybernetic engineering, and a talking dog can be commonplace. But Bowser was not commonplace--he was the top-rated star of 1999's television--comedian, commentator, actor, and temperamental headache of the media masters. But he was still a dog--man's best friend to the vast gaping audience of watchers, and a cur, mutt, and son of a five-letter-word to Bert Schenley, his agent and guardian. So when Bert got two assignments at once--both taking him and Bowser to the battle front in Lower California where the various guerrillas and rebels were making news, history and hysterics, it was the climax. Bowser was determined to keep on grabbing the headlines, Bert was determined to keep a grip on his own life, and the rest were equally set on blotting them both out.

The situation bore an alarming resemblance to the classic Gothic situation. But since it was taking place on the planet Esmeralda in the Barnum system, there wee differences.

There was a disputed inheritance--an interplanetary robot-making business. There was the uncle who had taken charge, a cyborg now, fifty per cent human, fifty per cent machine, and on hundred per cent smiling deceit. There was the innocnet young heir, the boy, Tad, in the clutches of this uncle and his sinister household. Even the weather was foggy and gloomy, and Tad could find no friend to help him from what seemed certain doom.

That is until he stumbled across the wreckage of the family's greatest engineering triumph, the super-robot Electro. With nothing better to do, he secretly repatied it. And then, once Electro was on his feet and ticking electonically away, wicked cybord uncle--watch out!

In this futuristic mystery, our hero, FPA Agent Zack Tourney - along with a number of prominent figures - discovers that he has been infected with a deadly, time-released virus. In order to save himself, and those infected, he must track down the parties responsible - before the virus becomes fatal.

Table of Contents:

• What's Become of Screwloose? - (1970) - short story
• Junior Partner - (1962) - short story
• Hardcastle - short story
• Into the Shop - (1964) - short story
• Prez - (1970) - short story
• Confessions - (1970) - novelette
• Monte Cristo Complex - short story
• The Yes-Men of Venus - (1963) - short story
• Keeping an Eye on Janey - (1970) - short story
• Hobo Jungle - (1970) - novelette

LIE DOWN ON ZANZIBAR

You've heard of the mad scientist's beautiful daughter? Well, Nat Kobean made the mistake of taking a pass at the mad scientist's beautiful wife.... and thereby became a guinea pig for Dr. Dumpus's Dose.

The dose was a serum that would enable one to travel into the future by naps of fifty years duration. The unsolved part of the experiment was that the sleepers would only stay awake a limited time before falling asleap again for another half century.

So when Nat woke up fifty years later he had to act fast to find an antidote. But an antidote in a world so changed was a problem that required too much time to locate. So it was back to sleep and up again and back to sleep and up again.....

And what kept happening to the world while the Waker slept makes Ron Goulart's new novel, a mad, mad version of the Wellsian classic of when the Sleeper woke.

The problems of modern living were getting Tom Miley down. It was bad enough that he had to make sure Wildsmith, the robot, didn't keep unscrewing and mailing his hands to female admirers, but when the writer-robot decided that he was, variously, Mark Twain, a raving drunk, a dog tamer and a sex maniac, Miley was ready to give up in despair. And then Miley and Worsmith went on tour - and the chaose really began!

Clockwork's Pirates

Kidnapped by Clockwork, and ransomed by robots, and marked for death by mean-minded mechanisms.

Ghost Breaker

Collection including:

• Please Stand By - (1962) - shortstory
• Uncle Arly - (1962) - shortstory
• Help Stamp Out Chesney - shortstory
• McNamara's Fish - (1963) - shortstory
• Kearny's Last Case - (1965) - shortstory
• Breakaway House - (1966) - shortstory
• The Ghost Patrol - (1968) - shortstory
• The Strawhouse Pavillion - (1970) - shortstory
• Fill in the Blank - (1967) - shortstory

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Introduction (Skyrocket Steel Conquers the Universe and Other Media Tales) - essay
• 3 - Street Magic - (1984) - short story
• 23 - Hello from Hollywood - [Max Kearny] - (1983) - short story
• 47 - Crusoe in New York - (1982) - short story
• 61 - Skyrocket Steele Conquers the Universe - [Skyrocket Steele] - (1985) - short story
• 81 - Groucho - (1981) - short story

In the vast emptiness of space, the Galactica at last makes the long-awaited contact - a spaceship of fellow humans from Earth! The Council wants to keep them under observation, but Apollo sets out with the Earthlings on a secret and perilous mission toward their destination, the planet Paradeen, that battleground of space giants where he must confront the old enemy - the Cylons - and the new - the awsome Alliance - and make it back to the Galactica!

When the ruling council of the Galactica strips Adama of his powers of supreme command, themighty ship is thrown into chaos. As if being caught in the middle of an all-out space war wasn't enough, Baltar has escaped and is streaking across the galaxy to his Cylon allies. Book 9 in the Battlestar Galactica series.

When Starbuck discovers the long-forgotten prison planet Proteus, he encounters an Ambrosa smuggler, a local law enforcement agency, a headstrong computer named Cora, and a fleet of Cylon warships bent on destroying the Galactica.

Table of Contents:

• Binary Star No. 3 - interior artwork by James Odbert
• 5 - Dr. Scofflaw - [Barnum System] - novel by Ron Goulart
• 125 - Afterword (Dr. Scofflaw) - essay by Isidore Haiblum
• 133 - Outerworld - [Gunjer / Happy City - 2] - novel by Isidore Haiblum
• 301 - Afterword (Outerworld) - essay by Ron Goulart

The space spy's mission was to find and kill the peacemakers.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword: Man of a Thousand Faces - essay
• Chameleon - (1964) - short story
• Rake - (1965) - short story
• Copstate - (1969) - short story
• Masterpiece - (1972) - short story
• Sunflower - (1970) - novelette
• Ignatz - (1960) - short story
• Subject to Change - (1960) - short story
• Please Stand By - (1962) - short story
• Shandy - (1958) - short story
• Change Over - short story
• Looking Into It - short story

There was a youth protest movement on the planet Jasper. Which should not have been anything new -- there were always youth protest movements -- and a planet like Jasper with its mixed colonies was entitled to them too. The difference was that these boys and girls had been made into human bombs -- they blew up on contact.

That was good enough reason to call in Ben Jolson of the galaxy-famous Chameleon Corps. Jolson could disguise himself as just about anything -- doctor, lawyer, Indian Chief, or even icebox.

But Jasper strained him to the limit. Not only did it house a mad combination of mad cultures, but someone else was doing the chameleon trick too -- and besides, how do you go around looking like an exploding bomb?

Ben Jolson, a former member of the galactic Chameleon Corps, uses his ability to mimic any kind of alien creature to find out who killed a fellow private detective.

MILLION DOLLAR BRAINCHIP

Ben Jolson, former member of the galactic Chameleon Corps and reluctant private detective, returns in his toughest case yet. Someone has stolen the brainchip containing the mind of notorious space pirate Jackland Boggs, and Jolson must find the culprit and dangerous--secrets in that missing chip. And Boggs has a lot of enemies, including beautiful rival pirate Flame Flenniken; the strong-arm apeman called the Whispering Gorilla; Lt. Hillman fo the Territorial Police Murder Squad; and the evil cyborg Professor Tincan.

Jolson and his new partner Sniffer, a state-of-the-art mechanical dog with a nasty disposition, have their hand full. Then when another, renegade exchameleon enters the picture, Jolson must use all his wits to see through his enemy's clever disguises--and stay alive...

COSMO NEVER DRINKS WITH CUSTOMERS

When Ben Jolson, shapeshifter extraordinaire and former member of the galactic Chameleon Corps, is once again pressed into service as a private detective, he doesn't expect much trouble, Janella Quintillion, aging owner of the galaxy's largest Shobot corporation, has hired Jolson to find her long-lost sister--heir to the family billions.

The twisted trail leads to Cosmo's, a huge orbiting spa/casino/nightclub/hotel satellite. But lots of people--humand, ratmen, broken-down robots, cyborgs, beautiful women, and all the usual suspects--are looking for the Quintillion heiress... with murder on their minds.

All the clues point to the mysterious Cosmo himself... but who--or what--is he?

In the last years of the 20th century, the United States of America no longer exists. California has been divided into two separate political entities. Southern California is controlled by the Chinese Commandos; various warring factions are struggling for control of northern California. The San Francisco Enclave controls the Bay Area. When a group of militant females led by the mysterious Lady Day begins assassinating prominent men, the S.F. Enclave Intelligence and Investigation Office calls in Jim Haley, an operative with the Private Inquiry Office, to put an end to the killings. Haley's investigation takes him from the city across what is left of the Golden Gate Bridge to wide-open Marin County, where he tracks down Penny Deacon, a former Lady Day member. The trail then leads down the Peninsula to Monterey County. Along the way, Haley meets a vast assortment of eccentric characters, some human and some not so human.

A new political map of America's west coast... Its dark wit bites through a brittle, phony, not-so-far-off world, exposing its hollow insides.

Science Fiction or Prophesy?

Werewolves in Connecticut? A liberal-conservative revolution? An underground "dirty tricks" squad who rob from the poor to give to the rich? Scandal in the highest political circles?

Almost before Reporter Noah Kraft knows what he's after - if he ever really learns - he's captured by the ultra-conservative Robin Hood Foundation, meets its superpatriot leader, George Washington II, has a run-in with the Jersey Mafia (which claims it doesn't exist), and finds out what the mystery is behind the name "Hawkshaw".

It's a wild and wacky satire on today's political climate - to its mind-boggling extreme in a radically different United States... thirty-odd years from now.

How did a well meaning decent spy get mixed up in a mechanical vendetta?...

Brinkman is street-wise, moving with assurance down the mean streets of the future, through an America where life in the slums is an unrelenting grind of parsimonious welfare and petty thievery. He is determined to make a better life for himself; Brinkman is a young man who will go far...

Too far, in fact. Fleeing the police, he sneaks into an off-limits complex seeking refuge and finds a secret enclave of wealth and privilege hidden carefully from the world of poverty outside. And he finds Beth, a girl he once loved in the slums... and who died there long before.

Possessed of this "puzzling" and "dangerous" bit of information, Brinkman sets out to discover more, and gradually a life begins to piece itself together... Brinkman's own.

Ron Goulart's latest vision of America lives up to the reputation for zany, unforgettable novels that has won him the title of "the Woody Allen of Science Fiction."

Cliffhanger!

Something was decidedly rotten in Orlando, deduced Harry Challenge, as his former flame Princess Alicia flung him unceremoniously from the royal palace. An evil plot was afoot!

And it was Harry to the rescue...

Aided by a masteful magician, a dandy playboy, and rich Americans... Abetted by a pretty reporter after the story, and the hero... Assaulted by a bloodthirsty baron, a bloodless doctor, a blood-sucking beauty, and a windup werewolf... Could Harry's dauntless daring and silver bullets save the princess?

"CURSED BE THOSE WHO DISTURB THIS TOMB!"

It was your standard ancient curse. Not very imaginative. But highly effective. Five dead archaeologists. Plus a walking mummy. Giant bats over Paris. A disappearing train carrying the secret of life. A dangerous hypnotist. And a beautiful vampire with a taste for vengeance as well as for blood.

To stop the murder and mayhem, detective Harry Challenge has to dodge death across the continent of Europe--outwitting occult kidnappers, fanatic assassins, and sinister sorcerers--to find the andwer to a 5,000-your-old riddle that stretches beyond time... beyond the grave... beyond human understanding itself...

In 2020 A.D. even 20/20 vision wouldn't help you to see Jack Conger when he was working. Because Jack was an operative of the Wild Talents Division of the U.S. Remedial Functions Agency -- and his particular specialty was making himself invisible. The RFA sent him where nobody else was able to go. Another one whom nobody was able to set eyes upon was the scientist known as the Sandman. The legendary sandman of childhood myth used to put people to sleep. This one woke them up -- much to the chagrin of governments and plotters who had assassinated them. So they sent the Invisible Man to find the Unseen Resurrectionist...

What better way to get rid of political enemies than to shove them back into the past and maroon them there? It isn't exactly murder but it sure could raise a hob with history!

That was what was happening whey they yelled for the Wild Talents Division. The actual time machine was a secret known only to the president -- who was apparently the culprit. But someone like Jake Conger would be just weird enough to be able to locate the kind of nut who could travel in time himself.

A prehistoric race of aliens called the Lemurians are attempting to take control of Earth after the exposure of their existence. Jake Conger, the semi-former agent of the Wild Talents Division, now needs to find their headquarters and stop them.

Hugger-Mugger on Murdstone

It was only a backwater planet, but there were hints of a sensational story somewhere on Murdstone--and Jack Summer, top reporter for Muckrake, the galactic newsmag, drew the assignment. Summer, abetted if not aided by Palma, the horniest photographer in the known universe, scoured Murdstone for the story, working his way through dangers and damsels with equal enthusiasm.

Ron Goulart's acid zaniness is something new in acience fiction--and it approaches its ultimate in this first of many exploits of Summer of Muckrake.

Nuthatch on Noventa

A zombie factory.. a mad slasher... lecherous lizards... Was this any way to run a planet?

Muckrake magazine didn't think so. They sent their ace reported Jack Summer to rake up a little much about the corrupt government of Noventa.

They even gave him a rake: Palma, the horniest photographer this side of Alpha Centauri....

Of all the colonized galaxy, the Barnum system was the whackiest. Nobody could ever predict what would be likely to happen there, so it was no surprise to newsman Jack Summer when he was sent to check out the King of Laranja East on the planet Peregrine.

But surprises were waiting for him anyway in the person of the universes most lecherous photographer, in the weird claimant to the Starbuck fortune, in the highwaywoman known as the Scarlet Angel, and in the numerous angry catmen, scheming lizardmen, and finally in the person of the wily King Waldo, who alone could bring justice to the land, even though he himself was surely the notorious Phantom of the Fog!

GALAZY JANE

Space Pirate... Galactic Looter... Rebel Leader

Her life story was legendary--the stuff of which movies are mande. Now, years after her death, the film version of GALAXY JANE is in production on the planet she made famous.

The planet is known for something else, too--the deadly addictive drug called Zombium, illegal on all civilized worlds.

The film crew appears to be working hard... but not just on GALAXY JANE. Drug smuggling is as exciting as making movies--and it pays better--but the blood spilled is real, and the victims stay dead...

Ron Goulart is science fiction's supreme funnyman writer... and among his best creations is the remarkable agency Odd Jobs, Inc. This astounding organization takes assignments that have baffled the best establishments of the rather cockeyed world of the Year 2002.

If it was whacky, impossible, or simply incredible, it was their oyster.

It was whacky that a stage magician could spring a murder trap for them without any reason. It was impossible that the great talents of dead actors could appear again. It was incredible that the work of the fictional Doctor Frankenstein could be bettered two hundred years later.

So this was a case for Odd Jobs, Inc. Someone was piecing together the best parts of the late greats of stage and pix to make a super-Frankenstein monster that would dominate the entertainment world - and maybe everything else.

Meet Goulart's Ghoul-artist, Dr. Patchwork!

His name was Adolph Hibbler and he had escaped the doom of Hitler's Reich by inventing the cryogenic deep freeze long before the rest of the world. As a human icicle he had been just a circus sideshow for many decades until he finally thawed our--in the 21st Century.

The trouble began with a series of mysterious events and the government had to call in Odd Jobs, Inc. But when Jake and Hildy Pace started uncovering the clues the found on odder job than any previous capers.

There were the lost cassetes fo the world's greatest sex fiend to locate. There were model planes that fired real bullets. There was the army of baby-doll killers.
And there were the revolutionary gas station attendants and the Arabian shiek who had ignited them.

Only Odd Jobs, Inc. could have connected all these cockeyed clues and come up with Hibbler. When they did ti sure looked as if they--and the world-- were on a spinoff orbit into infinite disaster!

With a whoosh and a bang various important individuals around the world were being annihilated. Here today, then simply nothing tomorrow. Even the Siamese twins, who were the joining presidents of the United States, were scared. It could happen to them. And their secret services hadn't a clue.

So they called in Odd Jobs, Inc. That wizard agency, consisting of Jake and Hildy Pace, had cracked many an uncrackable case. There had to be a motive. Tehre has to be a conspiracy. There has to be... what?

For Jake, the case started when he wok up, mind-wiped, on Murderers' Row, awaiting the death sentence...

One of Ron Goulart's funniest mysteries, this tale fo the cockeyed twenty-first century is one that only the humor-master of science fiction could write.

A dead woman hires Jake to investigate her murder

Jake Pace is halfway through mixing a batch of cookies when his lawyer arrives with a corpse. The body in the coffin is an android, built in the shape of recently deceased electronics heiress Sylvie Kirkyard and implanted with a chip that holds Sylvie's memories. Although she was only twenty-seven, Sylvie had for a long time feared for her life, and took the precaution of insuring her consciousness with Kirktronics' patented Brainz, Inc. method. Upon her death, the chip was implanted in this electronic body, and the body was brought to Jake.

Luckily, as the planet's smartest private detective, Jake is used to corpses--robotic and otherwise. When the dead girl awakes and asks him to find her killers, Jake doesn't blink an eye. But fulfilling her last request will be perilous, and by the time it's over Jake may wish he had a spare body of his own.

Far above planet Esmeralda whirls an awesome satellite nicknamed The Hoosegow. Headquarters of the Interplanetary Law Service, it is home of the cleverest, most powerful secret agents in the universe. They go where they are needed, bringing law and order, triumphing over evil.

This time, an explosive crisis on dread Empire 99 must be defused. Unfortunately the last agent to try that was sent back in an ashtray. Dare the Service try again? Now their last hope lies with:

Rex: our daredevil of the airways
Chavez: he'd rather make love and war
Sniffer: a robot dog with a foul mouth

Our heroes? You must be kidding...

The Star Hawks, those intrepid guardians of interplanetary low, have a problem. In the name of peace, their chief scientist invented Braintrust, the most powerful computer in the galaxy. But now Braintrust is in the greedy metallic hands of Jigsaw, a cyborg with delusions of grandeur.

Jigsaw wants to rule the world--and two puny humans and a robot dog will nto stop him. Unfortunately, Rex, Chavez and Sniffer are ordered to stop him. They face being out-smarted, beatne up and generally dismembered.

But out adventurous heroes ought to be able to overcome such minor annoyances....

In this national bestseller, a private detective in twenty-second-century Los Angeles fights to destroy the synthetic high that nearly ruined him

Not satisfied with the thrills of being one of Greater Los Angeles' toughest cops, Jake Cardigan turns to Tek, a computerized brain stimulant which transports the user to any reality he can imagine. He's soon addicted to this fantasy-enabler--and it isn't long before Cardigan is accused of dealing. When he fails to convince the mechanized jury of his innocence, the state strips his badge and sentences him to fifteen years in suspended animation. Four years later he's awakened. His sentence has been changed, but no one will tell him why.

Cardigan's search for answers takes him to Mexico, where a rogue scientist is attempting to rid the world of Tek. But these efforts have roused powerful enemies. Aiding this quest is the right thing to do, but for an ex-con, doing good can be the most dangerous decision of all.

When anybody can be an assassin, a detective with many enemies can only trust one person: himself

Jake Cardigan has just returned from Mexico, where he fell in love, nearly died, and broke up the infamous Hokori cartel. But the drug kingpins whose fortunes rest on pushing Tek are still trying to do away with this devilish private eye. During a routine trip to the mall, a well-dressed man tries to stab Cardigan through the heart. After a quick scuffle, the would-be assassin is dead on the floor, and Cardigan is the one who winds up in handcuffs.

The dead man was an executive at a hydroponics company--an ordinary worker drone with no apparent reason to kill the detective. An evil mastermind has learned how to make innocent civilians obey his commands, and he will sacrifice an army of zombie assassins if it means getting a clean shot at Cardigan. To stay alive, and out of jail, Cardigan will have to learn to steer clear of the mindless killers of Greater Los Angeles.

Jake Cardigan tracks a deranged veteran with a taste for killing civil servants

A French diplomat is walking alone down a darkened Paris side street, when a killer emerges from the shadows. He stuns the Frenchman, cuts his body into quarters, and leaves a note that reads: "This is for Brazil!" It is the ninth murder in this fashion in the last two months--a string of round-the-world killings that strikes fear into the hearts of all those connected with the bloody Brazilian wars of the past decade. But as private eye Jake Cardigan is about to discover, the culprit is far more treacherous than the average serial killer.

As he makes his way through Europe's seamy corners, Cardigan begins to suspect that the trail of death may lead back to his old nemeses, the drug kingpins known as Teklords. As international peace teeters in the balance, Cardigan must stop the murders or risk being drawn and quartered himself.

With his fiancée in danger, Jake Cardigan is tricked into taking a deadly trip to Brazil.

A man in Berlin has just learned something that could save Jake Cardigan's life. But before he can pass on this vital information, he dies under suspicious circumstances--setting off a chain reaction that will change Cardigan's life forever, threatening to destroy every person he loves.

Cardigan's fiancée, Beth, goes to Berlin to testify against the ruthless drug cartel controlled by Sonny Hokori and the Teklords. Cardigan plans to be there to protect her against the nefarious assassins of the Teklords, but an urgent case calls him to Rio. By the time he realizes the Brazilian case is no more than a set-up to take him away from Beth, it may be too late to save her--and prevent a new round of TekWars from engulfing the earth.

While searching for a missing heiress, Jake Cardigan uncovers a stunning conspiracy in the action-filled conclusion to the TekWar series.

Barry Zangerly's friends told him to stay away from Alicia Bower. The heir to the Mechanix International robotics fortune, she is beautiful, unstable, and too charming to resist. When she vanishes, Zangerly combs Greater Los Angeles for his damaged beauty, a hunt that finally leads him to an abandoned warehouse, where a vicious robot beats him senseless to get him to call off his search. Instead, Zangerly does the opposite--he calls Jake Cardigan.

The sharpest P.I. in the city, Cardigan is fighting to recover from the death of his fiancée. He couldn't save Beth Kittredge from the Teklords' bomb, but he will stop at nothing to see that Alicia Bower doesn't suffer the same fate.

Private eye Jake Cardigan must derail an insidious plot by the ruthless Tek cartel to replace the US president with an android designed to do the group's dark bidding.

William Shatner, the original face of Captain Kirk on TV's Star Trek, displays another side of his remarkable talent with his sixth excursion into a future world where the ubiquitous techno-drug Tek rules, and one man remains dedicated to wiping the scourge and its criminal suppliers from the face of tomorrow's Earth.

Jake Cardigan--ex-cop, private investigator, and former Tek user--has been given a special assignment by the head of the Cosmos Detective Agency: to track down the murderer of his daughter-in-law. It is a job that takes Jake and his partner, Sid Gomez, from Los Angeles to the East Coast and into the heart of a terrifying conspiracy surrounding the president of the United States. Unbeknownst to the nation and the world, President Warren Brookmeyer, a Tek addict, is in rehab and has been temporarily replaced by an android replica, indistinguishable from the real chief executive. But the brazen scheme to shield the country from the truth is, in reality, the brainchild of the ruthless and powerful TekLords, who intend to keep the simulacrum in power indefinitely in order to alter official policy concerning the dangerous mind-enhancing electronic drug. If Jake and Sid fail to expose and eliminate this treasonous plot, the president will surely die--along with liberty, the law, and the twenty-second-century American way.

Private investigator Jake Cardigan must race against time to save the life of his son and get the deadliest weapons in the world out of the hands of the most dangerous criminals in the universe.

In the seventh book of the TekWar Series by bestselling author and Star Trek icon William Shatner, terror hits too close to home for protagonist Jake Cardigan, private eye of the future.

Homicide is as common in the twenty-second century as it was one hundred years earlier, thanks in large part to the ruthless TekLords, criminals who traffic in the popular electronic fantasy-enabling drug Tek. When a Tek user who was once a family friend is brutally murdered just outside the door of Dan Cardigan, son of private eye Jake Cardigan, the young man is shocked to discover that the police consider him a prime suspect. Worse still, Dan has become a disposable pawn in a very deadly game. With his son's life on the line, Jake and his loyal partner, Sid Gomez, must somehow get to the bottom of the disappearance of terrifying new weaponry from a California research facility and a related rash of murders--a mission that will put them at odds not only with a formidable criminal conspiracy, but with the police and the most lethal factions of the US government itself.

In order to expose a sinister, far-reaching criminal conspiracy, detective Jake Cardigan , the twenty-second century's most able private detective, must prove that an open-and-shut murder case is anything but.

Once again the inimitable William Shatner, Star Trek's original Captain Kirk and a true star of science fiction adventure, brings the future vibrantly alive in the eighth nonstop, action-packed futuristic caper featuring private investigator Jake Cardigan, sworn enemy of the all-powerful TekLords.

Walt Bascom, head of the Cosmos Detective Agency, is in serious trouble. Video surveillance in the home of superrich businessman Dwight Grossman clearly shows Bascom murdering the entrepreneur in cold blood. Bascom swears he didn't do it, and he's relying on his agency's best investigator, Jake Cardigan, to prove it somehow.

Jake and his partner, Sid Gomez, have their work cut out for them. The only "evidence" on their side is the testimony of the dead man's sister, Susan, who claims she's had telepathic visions of her brother's true death. But Susan is an admitted devotee of the powerful, reality-altering electronic drug Tek. Whoever wanted her brother dead--and Bascom accused--went to great lengths to set up the scheme, and those responsible are not going to sit idly by while a pair of snooping private eyes and a burned-out Tek fiend start digging for answers. To keep the killers' dark and very dirty secrets hidden, one corpse may not be enough.

Private investigator Jake Cardigan and his partner, Sid Gomez, must race to save a woman trapped in the deadly crossfire of a violent war between rival TekLords.

William "Captain Kirk" Shatner of Star Trek fame returns with his ninth action-packed TekWar adventure, certain to thrill his devoted legions of science fiction readers.

In the year 2122 an addictive new form of the fantasy-enabling electronic drug Tek is about to hit the market. This version, delivered to users over computer networks, would eliminate the need for Tek chips, thereby putting the old-school TekLords out of business. Jill Bernardino, the ex-wife of Sid Gomez, loyal partner of private eye Jake Cardigan, has been looking into this new development closely--a little too closely--and now finds herself in serious, possibly inescapable peril. Caught in the middle of a vicious international drug war, Jill is taken prisoner, and only Cardigan and Gomez can rescue her. But their efforts will put them directly in the crosshairs of warring squads of Tek-trade killers in a bloody cartel war.