This is a collection of short stories most of which are independent.

The Time Dweller and Escape from Evening are set in the same timeframe - a far future earth where life on earth is slowly dieing. In the first, we find a man who discovers the secret of living and moving through time. In the second, we meet a moon-dweller who comes to earth seeking the past only to find that he must learn to be content in the present.

The Deep Fix is the story of a man who is both the savior of mankind and its greatest scourge. Trapped in a research lab and completely reliant on drugs to keep him awake and allow him to sleep, he searches for a cure to the madness that he, alone, created and inflicted upon the entire world.

In The Golden Barge, we meet Tallow, a man on a quest for the legendary Golden Barge. He gets distracted for awhile by wine, a woman, song and life in luxury. But when his love succumbs to her own temptations, he returns to his quest for the barge. She begs to join him, and she does for a little while until Tallow insists that she go her own way.

Wolf is a little story about a man who hunts other humans - especially women who try to help him.

Consuming Passion is a story about a pyromaniac who finds that he has the power that any pyromaniac would kill to have. And it ends up killing him.

The Ruins was an odd little story about Muldoon - man who loses not only his way, but also his memory. It's hard to find your way home if you don't know where you are, who you are, where you're going or why you're not already there.

The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius appears here in its original form. In the Eternal Champion Omnibus #2, an updated version of the story appears with a Von Bek as the officer in charge of the case, This is the original version but other than changing names to more thoroughly tie in the Von Bek family to the saga of the eternal Champion. An odd little story with Hitler, Einstein, Bismark and Emma Braun.

The Mountain tells of the last men on earth and their travel to the mountain in search of what appears to be another human being. Unfortunately, one of them prefers to take in the view... ( )

The Time Dweller
Escape from Evening
The Deep Fix
The Golden Barge
Wolf
Consuming Passion
The Ruins
The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius
The Mountain

A book of nine short stories dating from 1963 to 1966. I own the novel "The Golden Barge", but I haven’t read the short story before, or any of the others in this book. My favourites were "The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius" and "The Deep Fix".

I like the cover picture, which shows a man from the far-future Earth of the first two stories, riding a seal-beast and being menaced by a giant leech! ( )

My edition with same ISBN, 1979 ( )