Rastignac the Devil By Philip Jose Farmer

"[...]Philip Jose Farmer [...].""

After the Apocalyptic War, the decimated remnants of the French huddled in the Loire Valley were gradually squeezed between two new and growing nations. The Colossus to the north was unfriendly and obviously intended to absorb the little New France. The Colossus to the south was friendly and offered to take the weak state into its confederation of republics as a full partner...

Drawn from the leading pulp magazines of the 1950s — Galaxy, Amazing Science Fiction Stories, and Fantastic Universe — these eight groundbreaking selections offer spellbinding science-fiction tales of encounters with Martians and other extraterrestrials. "Youth," by Isaac Asimov, recounts two friends' discovery of a pair of strange little animals the morning after mysterious thunder without a storm. Philip José Farmer's "Rastignac the Devil" tells of a fight against despotism 300 years in the future, and in "Year of the Big Thaw," by Marion Zimmer Bradley, a Connecticut farmer explains why he doesn't know the actual birthplace of his phenomenally gifted son. Other selections include "Warrior Race," by Robert Sheckley, which focuses on breaking an enemy's spirit; "Alien Offer," by Al Sevcik, concerning a risky chance to save Earth's children; Clifford D. Simak's "The World That Couldn’t Be," in which a farmer must hunt down the unusual creatures destroying his crops; "Earthmen Bearing Gifts," by Fredric Brown, telling of an attempted exchange by the red and blue planets; and Stanley G. Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey," a tale that changed the course of science fiction.

In the tradition of the old "Ace Doubles" two-in-one books (flip one over to read the second title) -- here is the third Wildside Double . . . "Rastignac the Devil," by Philip Jose Farmer and "Despoilers of the Golden Empire," by Randall Garrett. Two oldtime science fiction authors at their Golden Age best!

This book has a double purpose: to compare the literary projects, theories, and careers of Balzac and Henry James, and to develop a theory of realism that can account for their unabashed mimetic intentions and for their novels' sophisticated textuality. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Exploring the vast terrain covered in Continental European literature after the demise of «orthodox» pacts, Desire and the Devil highlights the conceptual dialectic of evil and its discontents, and cohesively traces a number of fundamental modern poetics of unorthodoxy (Goethe, Balzac, Flaubert, Bulgakov, Nerval). The book asks - and answers - the ultimate question as to «what it means to give oneself over to Satan» (Baudelaire) in today's post-systematic world. It also reveals the second-level epistemological shifts behind the entangled thematic peripeties of the pact with the devil since the Sturm-und-Drang's renewed interest in «evil».

Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by an Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break into the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L. Gold, who rapidly made Galaxy the leading science fiction (sf) magazine of its time, focusing on stories about social issues rather than technology. Gold published many notable stories during his tenure, including Ray Bradbury's "The Fireman", later expanded as Fahrenheit 451; Robert A. Heinlein's The Puppet Masters; and Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man. In 1952, the magazine was acquired by Robert Guinn, its printer. By the late 1950s, Frederik Pohl was helping Gold with most aspects of the magazine's production. When Gold's health worsened, Pohl took over as editor, starting officially at the end of 1961, though he had been doing the majority of the production work for some time. Under Pohl Galaxy had continued success, regularly publishing fiction by writers such as Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vance, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Silverberg. However, Pohl never won the annual Hugo Award for his stewardship of Galaxy, winning three Hugos instead for its sister magazine, If. In 1969 Guinn sold Galaxy to Universal Publishing and Distribution Corporation (UPD) and Pohl resigned, to be replaced by Ejler Jakobsson. Under Jakobsson the magazine declined in quality. It recovered under James Baen, who took over in mid-1974, but when he left at the end of 1977 the deterioration resumed, and there were financial problems—writers were not paid on time and the schedule became erratic. By the end of the 1970s the gaps between issues were lengthening, and the title was finally sold to Galileo publisher Vincent McCaffrey, who brought out only a single issue in 1980. A brief revival as a semi-professional magazine followed in 1994, edited by H. L. Gold's son, E. J. Gold; this lasted for eight bimonthly issues. At its peak, Galaxy greatly influenced the science fiction field. It was regarded as one of the leading sf magazines almost from the start, and its influence did not wane until Pohl's departure in 1969. Gold brought a "sophisticated intellectual subtlety" to magazine science fiction according to Pohl, who added that "after Galaxy it was impossible to go on being naive." SF historian David Kyle agrees, commenting that "of all the editors in and out of the post-war scene, the most influential beyond any doubt was H. L. Gold". Kyle suggests that the new direction Gold set "inevitably" led to the experimental New Wave, the defining science fiction literary movement of the 1960s.