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Play little victims is a satire which would be amusing if it weren't so horrifying, or horrifying if it weren't so amusing. The theme is the recreation of human society by mice who by a cosmic accident have become rational and vocal. The mice have the literature of Man as their guidance and set about building the great society, scrupulously following the methods and morals of mankind. The result, which could well be the result for mankind, is devastating. Play little victims could well be as accurate a forecast of the future as was George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Some people are born to be murder victims. Fact, not fiction. Frank Miller, special effects man for countless horror films, knew that. Blinded in a bizarre accident but then given the transplanted eyes of a murderer, Miller finds he can spot potential victims. However, in their search for a maniacal killer, the police ignore Miller's help.

As the body count rises they are forced to work with him as Miller himself finally becomes a target for the slaughterer. Will he stop the carnage or become part of it?

It is common and legal to murder someone if you want. The only catch is that if you want to kill someone, you must later be a voluntary victim, and it is up to you survive the murder attempt and be able to eliminate the would-be murderer. A man who has already done six murders (and survived six attempts against his own life) gets a name of his seventh victim, and it is a woman!

It's the 21st Century and the ugliness of war no longer exists, except on a very personal level. Nowadays, people like Marcello Polletti, seller of Roman sunsets, and Caroline Meredith, lithe, beautiful, blonde and backed by corporate sponsors and the Roy Bell Dancers, hunt, chase and kill each other for sport and for the entertainment of the masses--until something oddly like personal human feelings pops up to confuse the players and up the stakes...as each of them seeks to kill their 10th victim and rise in the ranks of the hunters.

In conjunction with the production of an Italian film based on Sheckley's 1953 short story "The Seventh Victim," Sheckley expanded the story into this novel.

In 2092, the world's ecology is in ruins, drought and famine are widespread and survival is a never-ending challenge. Harold Erdman leaves his dying community with one goal, to make his way to Esmeralda, an island paradise run by the Huntworld Corporation which has turned public murder, among willing competitors, into a thriving and lucrative business. Can he survive the journey and then the many rounds of deadly competition on his way to the Big Payoff. His neighbors lives, as well as his own, hang in the balance.

Take a look at a dark, deadly future where the game is hunting and the results are killing--human to human--with status, money, power and sex as the prizes. The operation runs underground and Frank Blackwell is a new recruit who is destined to change the game and turn it into legitimate popular entertainment for the masses.

When the star Zarathustra went nova, the desperate survisors spread out in all directions. Those that found habitable worlds were few, and after hundreds of years the Zarathustra Refugee Planets were either forgotten or in quarantine. Colonising a new planet requires much more than just settling on a newly discovered island of Old Earth. New planets were different in thousands of ways - any of those differences could mean death and disaster to a human settlement. And sometimes, refugees from another planet had to be brutal. For the inhabitants of Carrig, new arrivals brought invincible death guns - and their ruthless, all-powerful tyranny...

Now published in one volume, these brilliant novels once again show John Brunner to be a true master of science fiction writing.

Table of Contents:

• Polymath (1974) aka Castaways' World (1963)
• The Avengers of Carrig (1969) aka Secret Agent of Terra (1962)
• The Repairmen of Cyclops (1965)