Books in Winston Science Fiction series

On the day that the theft of the solar system’s light begins, Burl Denning is with an archaeological expedition in the Andes, only a few miles from the source of the “disturbance." Within hours the United States Air Force has ordered the expedition to investigate the strange phenomenon that is causing a dimness and a drop in temperature throughout the world. This is the start of a fantastic adventure that eventually takes Burl, a high-school senior, on the first circumnavigation of the solar system. On planet after planet, he and the crew of the Magellan, a gleaming, powerful, and virtually untested spaceship, discover the weird trappings of a brilliantly-designed Sun-tap station. Each planetfall brings unexpected hazards, as the ship draws closer and closer to solving the mystery of the theft. This new edition includes an article, “The Winston Science Fiction Series and the Development of Children’s Science Fiction” by Francis Molson, originally published in EXTRAPOLATION; Spring 1984, Vol. 25 Issue 1. Dr. Molson, a noted scholar in the field of children's science fiction and fantasy, discusses the history of the Winston series and its impact.

Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction of 2016 Barnes and Noble Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2016 “Intergalactic space travel meets outrageous, biting satire in Super Extra Grande…. Its author [Yoss] is one of the most celebrated—and controversial—Cuban writers of science fiction…. Reminiscent of Douglas Adams—but even more so, the satire of Rabelais and Swift.” —The Washington PostWith the playfulness and ingenuity of Douglas Adams, the Cuban science-fiction master Yoss delivers a space opera of intergalactic proportions with Super Extra Grande, the winner of the twentieth annual UPC Science Fiction Award in 2011. In a distant future in which Latin Americans have pioneered faster-than-light space travel, Dr. Jan Amos Sangan Dongo has a job with large and unusual responsibilities: he’s a veterinarian who specializes in treating enormous alien animals. Mountain-sized amoebas, multisex species with bizarre reproductive processes, razor-nailed, carnivorous humanoid hunters: Dr. Sangan has seen it all. When a colonial conflict threatens the fragile peace between the galaxy’s seven intelligent species, he must embark on a daring mission through the insides of a gigantic creature and find two swallowed ambassadors—who also happen to be his competing love interests. Funny, witty, raunchy, and irrepressibly vivacious, Super Extra Grande is a rare specimen in the richly parodic tradition of Cuban science fiction, and could only have been written by a Cuban heavy-metal rock star with a biology degree: the inimitable Yoss.

Ron Barron never expected to see Clonar again. Clonar, the boy who alone had survived the crash of an interstellar saucer-ship near Ron's home, had been rescued by his people and returned to Rorla, a planet in the Great Galaxy of Andromeda, almost a million light-years from Earth. When he left, he assured Ron that communication between Rorla and Earth would be impossible. Yet only a year later, Ron listened with growing excitement to Clonar's voice coming over the interstellar communication system, inviting Ron and his family to journey to Rorla to attend a conference of the Galactic Federation. None of the Barrons could have known that Clonar's invitation was violently opposed by the Rorlans, nor that on Rorla was an unknown enemy who resented their coming - a man who saw Earth's destruction as a necessity. And it was a bitter coincidence that that man should be in charge of the colony of delegates. As representatives of a planet whose civilization was considered dangerous and too inferior for membership in the Federation, the Barrons found themselves at the mercy of suspicious and hostile strangers bent on proving Earth's civilization unsalvageable. Not until Ron's father becomes an innocent party to an assassination plot, do they fully realize to what extent the Rorlans will carry their deception. Climaxed by a shocking courtroom scene in which Ron stands trial for Earth, this sequel to Raymond Jones's SON OF THE STARS is an intricately plotted tale of what could happen if Earth were to come face to face with long-established civilizations of Outer Space.

One of the most fascinating areas in the solar system—the Asteroid Belt—gives this tale of mystery, intrigue and excitement a unique background. In this “orbit of danger," where rugged space frontiersmen risked their necks in a sea of swirling rock, teen-age Peter Clay and his father were faced with the possibility of having their small claim to Asteroid mining rights wiped out. In the shaky system of justice that had grown up between Mars and Jupiter to protect the individual miner, the Ama (Asteroid Miners’ Association) played an important part. It policed the Belt, spotted claim jumpers and was expected to aid any individual unlucky enough to get lost or disabled. When events led the Clays to suspect the Ama of invalidating claims for criminal purposes, they could only look to themselves and the sketchy Martian-sponsored government for help. From the moment the Clays heard a miner signaling for help from a tiny asteroid until they, with a group of honest men and women, band together to protect their claim from the Ama’s marauding ships, action and suspense color every page of this unusual story. How Peter Clay unraveled a maze of false clues; his narrow brush with desperate men who had a mining empire within their grasp; the details of life on the Asteroid frontier create, in MYSTERY OF THE THIRD MINE, a vivid world of drama and danger unique in the annals of science fiction.

No one believed Professor Elrick of the London Radar Research Laboratory when he announced that Earth was in imminent danger of attack. Ever since his discovery of the dark star, Nero, the Professor and his young assistant, Jim Shannon, had studied the planet and its satellites through the radaroscope with a growing sense of impending doom. There seemed to be positive proof that the third planet, Poppea, had a civilization which was technologically far more advanced than Earth's! The grim truth of the Professor's warning came upon an unprepared world with a frightful concussion that seemed to rock the planet in its orbit. The space fleet from Poppea had hit Earth's atmosphere! When the English government realized the dire circumstances, the Home Guard was called out, the ack-ack guns manned and plans drawn up for London's evacuation. But the measures that saved the heroic island during World War II proved ineffective against the grotesque Poppeans. Gray-skinned, horny-limbed, they landed in impregnable space ships, releasing bacteria-laden white powder. His advance knowledge saved Jim Shannon and his associates from the sleep-inducing drug that blanketed Britain, and they lived to see the climax of man's battle with a superior civilization. How they met the Poppean leader, flew with him to the Arctic and watched with relief the slow withdrawal of the deadly Poppean grip make reading THE WORLD AT BAY a supremely exciting experience.