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This brilliant classic of speculative fiction imagines ...)
This brilliant classic of speculative fiction imagines the aftermath of an extraordinary global occurrence that forces Earth’s men and women to exist in parallel dimensions
Like every other family, the Gaunts are devastated by the unexplained phenomenon that occurs one Tuesday afternoon in February. In an instant, every female on Earth is mysteriously transported to a different plane, forced to live apart from the males, who have been left behind. Suddenly trapped in two parallel realities—with the bonds of love, trust, sex, and stability that formed the foundation of their relationship abruptly severed—Bill and Paula Gaunt must separately reexamine who they truly are and what they are capable of as existence itself becomes a struggle in one world that descends into violence and brutality, and another that is soon plagued by famine and despair.
Originally published more than half a century ago, Philip Wylie’s provocative science fiction classic remains a masterful work of intelligence and imagination. The Disappearance is a breathtaking, thought-provoking exploration of gender roles and expectations that reveals stark truths about who we are as men and women—and as the interconnected members of a fallible human race.
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A runaway planet hurtles toward Earth. As it draws near...)
A runaway planet hurtles toward Earth. As it draws near, massive tidal waves, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions wrack our planet, devastating continents, drowning cities, and wiping out millions. In central North America, a team of scientists race to build a spacecraft powerful enough to escape the doomed Earth. Their greatest threat, they soon discover, comes not from the skies but from other humans.
A crackling plot and sizzling, cataclysmic vision have made When Worlds Collide one of the most popular and influential end-of-the-world novels of all time.
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After Worlds Collide (1934) was a sequel to the 1933 sc...)
After Worlds Collide (1934) was a sequel to the 1933 science fiction novel, When Worlds Collide, both of which were co-written by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer. After Worlds Collide first appeared as a six-part monthly serial (November 1933–April 1934) in Blue Book magazine. Much shorter and less florid than the original novel, this one tells the story of the survivors' progress on their new world, Bronson Beta, after the destruction of the Earth, as two ships carrying American colonists, as well as two colonizing ships made up of German, Russian, and Japanese survivors, all explore a new and dangerous landscape.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
(With Burrough's Mars series, Wylie's Hugo Danner is gener...)
With Burrough's Mars series, Wylie's Hugo Danner is generally credited as the ancestor of both Clark Kent and Clark Savage, Jr. Danner, the product of a strength serum given to his mother during pregnancy, is able to lift 4,000 pounds, leap 40 feet in the air, and so forth. Unlike Superman and Doc Savage, however, Danner is never happy with his skills, hating the isolation and at times using his strength for monetary gain. Also, you can't imagine Doc Savage spending his summer after freshman year the way Danner did. Notice: This Book is published by Historical Books Limited (www.publicdomain.org.uk) as a Public Domain Book, if you have any inquiries, requests or need any help you can just send an email to publications@publicdomain.org.uk This book is found as a public domain and free book based on various online catalogs, if you think there are any problems regard copyright issues please contact us immediately via DMCA@publicdomain.org.uk
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A stark and terrifying vision of an apocalyptic, enviro...)
A stark and terrifying vision of an apocalyptic, environmentally ravaged near-future world from a twentieth-century master of thought-provoking science fiction
In a writing career that spanned six decades, Philip Wylie created an astonishing body of work that ranged from science fiction to suspense to philosophy to social criticism, while inspiring the creation of such iconic characters as Superman, Flash Gordon, Doc Savage, and Travis McGee. In Los Angeles: A.D. 2017, based on Wylie’s own teleplay written for the hit 1970s TV series The Name of the Game and directed by a young Steven Spielberg, the author imagines a dystopian future in which environmental disaster has driven the remnants of humankind belowground.
By the year 2017, a series of ecological catastrophes have eliminated most of the earth’s population while destroying the America we once knew. The few who have survived live in underground bunkers beneath the ruins of the nation’s major cities, controlled by ruthless corporate entities that have remolded the devastated society into USA, Inc. This is the nightmare into which crusading magazine publisher Glenn Howard awakens after forty years of sleep. As a powerful twentieth-century entrepreneur, Howard is expected to join the elite. But in this dark future age, population numbers are strictly controlled by computer; the aged, infirm, and unproductive are mercilessly eliminated; and all dissent is punished by death. For an idealist like Howard, accepting the new status quo is unthinkable. But the alternative—working with a secret rebel committed to overthrowing the cruel corporate masters—could prove the most dangerous route of all, a path that leads inexorably to one unthinkable outcome: erasure.
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This book may change your life. It may save it. It is o...)
This book may change your life. It may save it. It is one of the most important—and most shocking—books ever written.
Tomorrow! is a story of average, nice Americans living in the neighboring cities of Green Prairie and River City in Middle America. It is—until the sudden blitz—the story of the girl next door and her boyfriend; of the accountant who saw what was coming, and the rich old lady who didn’t; of engaging young kids, babies, “hoods,” a bank official who “borrowed” from a customer’s account.
Then, at the height of the Christmas shopping season, Condition Red is sounded, and this down-to-earth story of America’s Main Street becomes a shattering, vivid experience of the nightmare that human beings have cooked up for themselves.
Tomorrow! can be read as a novel of pure suspense—if you dare. It is a thriller in which the apocalyptic technology of today is superimposed on the future. But the novel is also designed to show Philip Wylie’s conclusions about America’s dangerous vulnerability to dread, hysteria, and panic, as well as his recommendations about what must be done.
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Perhaps the most vitriolic attack ever launched on the ...)
Perhaps the most vitriolic attack ever launched on the American way of living--from politicians to professors to businessmen to Mom to sexual mores to religion--"Generation of Vipers"?ranks with the works of De Tocqueville and Emerson in defining the American character and malaise.
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A graduate student stumbles across an insidious plot to...)
A graduate student stumbles across an insidious plot to unleash nuclear terror on America’s greatest cities in a blood-chillingly prescient tale from one of thriller fiction’s twentieth-century masters
Personable, good-looking, and a whiz at physics, graduate student Allan Diffenduffer “Duff” Bogan has a bright future ahead of him. But while staying at the home of an invalid widow in Florida, Duff makes a discovery that freezes his blood: a cache of uranium hidden in the locked closet of a fellow guest. The FBI is initially skeptical, but Duff knows all too well what his findings portend. Suddenly, not only is his future in jeopardy, the fate of millions of Americans hangs in the balance as well. If he cannot expose the horrific plot his nation’s enemies set in motion years before, entire cities will be reduced to piles of radioactive rubble in an unthinkable nuclear nightmare stretching from coast to coast. And time, it seems, is rapidly running out.
Philip Gordon Wylie was an American syndicated newspaper columnist, playwright, novelist, short-story writer and science fiction author.
Background
Philip G. Wylie was born on May 12, 1902, in Beverly, Massachussets, to the Reverend Edmund Melville Wylie, a Congregational minister, and Edna H. Edwards, who died when Philip was five years old. Rev. Wylie became a Presbyterian and moved his family to Montclair, New Jersey, in 1914.
Education
Philip graduated from high school there and attended Princeton University (1920 - 1923).
Career
After university, Wylie worked in Hollywood, was an editor at Farrar & Rinehart, served on the Dade County Florida Defense Council, and was a director of the Lerner Marine Laboratory. At one time he was also special adviser to the chairman of the Joint Committee for Atomic Energy. Among his score of published novels were a baker's dozen of science fiction, two of them written in collaboration with his friend Edwin Balmer. He and Balmer also collaborated on some mundane books in the 1930s.
Wylie's science fiction novels consisted of Gladiator (1930), The Murderer Invisible (1931), The Savage Gentleman (1932), When Worlds Collide (1933), After Worlds Collide (1934), Night Unto Night (1944), The Smuggled Atom Bomb (1948), The Disappearance (1951), Tomorrow (1954), The Answer (1956), Triumph (1963), Los Angeles: A. D. 2017 (1971), and The End of the Dream (1972).
Gladiator was a classic superman story, and is generally accepted as being one of the inspirations for Siegel & Shuster's comic book character: Superman. Universal Studios bought the film rights to The Murderer Invisible, after they had bought the rights to H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man. Universal's film, released in 1933, owed as much to Wylie's book as it did to the 1897 classic by Wells. The Savage Gentleman tells of a physical and mental giant who is referred to as a Tarzan. When Worlds Collide was made into an award-winning film in 1951 by George Pal. After Worlds Collide was originally published as a serial in Blue Book, as was When Worlds Collide. Balmer outlined the plot for a third novel in this series, but Wylie didn't like the science proposed and refused to write it. Apparently, Balmer supplied the plots for the books in the series and Wylie wrote them. Night Unto Night has two genre stories embedded in the book and was made into a movie in 1949. The Smuggled Atom Bomb was originally a serial in The Saturday Evening Post and tells of a Russian attempt to blow up New York. The Disappearance tells of a "cosmic blink" that splits humanity along gender lines into two divergent timelines. The book was optioned by Warner Brothers, but never produced. Tomorrow, about an attack on the United States, was made into a radio play broadcast October 17, 1956; and it was also made into a 1983 TV movie, "The Day After. " The Answer tells of the killing of an angel and was originally published in The Saturday Evening Post. Triumph tells of the destruction of the United States and Russia in a world war. Los Angeles: A. D. 2017 was a novelization of a TV play that appeared on "The Name of the Game" on NBC-TV. Wylie's final novel, The End of the Dream, was published posthumously in 1972 and foresees a dark future where America slides into ecological catastrophe.
Some of Wylie's more memorable (and often reprinted) short stories were "Blunder" (Wylie's statement of the necessity for open communication in science), "Jungle Journey" (an expedition discovers a message that aliens plan to return that very year to judge humanity), and "The Paradise Crater" (a post-World War II attempt by a band of die-hard Nazis to conquer the world).
Philip Gordon Wylie died on October 25, 1971, in Miami, Florida, from a heart attack.
Quotations:
"Ignorance is not bliss — it is oblivion. Determined ignorance is the hastiest kind of oblivion. "
"One good teacher in a lifetime may sometimes change a delinquent into a solid citizen. "
"If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve. "
"Absolute dominion of a powerful people by a minority always produces national aggression. "
Connections
On April 17, 1928, Philip Wylie married fashion model Johanna "Sally" Ondeck; they had one child, Karen. Accusing her of tormenting him with infidelity and continual demands for money, he divorced Sally in 1937.
He married Frederica "Ricky" Ballard on April 7, 1938, they had no children.