New Releases by Brian Wilson

A glittering twelve story collection from Britain''s best loved Sci-Fi writer.

Systems: Concepts, Methodologies and Applications Second Edition Brian Wilson Department of Systems and Information Management Lancaster University, UK The result of many years experience, this book, now extensively revised and updated, emphasizes the application of systems concepts and methodologies that have been developed at Lancaster University. In particular the book is about problem solving and the relationship between theory and practice. Complementary to Systems Thinking, Systems Practice by Peter Checkland (Wiley, 1981), which has become a classic in the field, this book shows how systems ideas can be used to cope with real-life problems. Reviews of the first edition an excellent book which provides a synthesis of the action-research undertaken by the well-known Department of Systems, University of Lancaster Wilson s lucid style of writing and the historical perspective of the Lancaster learning experience provide a strong contextural case for the concept of a human activity system to investigate badly-defined [Checkland s soft ] systems. Chris Beaumont, Journal of the Operational Research Society, January 1985 This volume, expertly compiled by Brian Wilson, is the latest and probably the clearest statement in book form of the philosophy of that department [Department of Systems, University of Lancaster] a volume which deserves to be read E. R. Carson, Kybernetes, 12, 1985 Systems: Concepts, Methodologies and Applications is Wilson s account of his professional life at Lancaster since then (1966). His careful reflection on the work of so many years deserves attention. Trevor Williams, Futures, December 1985

Joe Bodenland has figured out how to manipulate time—a discovery that leads him to Utah and an impossible sixty-five-million-year-old human gravesite. It is here that he learns of the existence of a monstrous race of intelligent predators as old as the dinosaur, and of the remarkable “train” the undead creatures use to travel back and forth from a Paleolithic past to a monstrous far future in which Homo sapiens are enslaved cattle. With the fate of all humanity at stake, Joe commandeers the ghostly transportation and rides it back to Victorian England, where he enlists the aid of a powerful ally, the author Bram Stoker, in the battle to secure Earth. But to prevent the coming apocalyptic nightmare, they must first confront and destroy the most cunning and deadly being the world has ever known: Lord Dracula, the immortal vampire.

Spanning half a century and three continents, Forgotten Life is the story of two brothers, Joseph and Clement Winter; of Clement's troubled marriage to his famous wife, Sheila; of Joseph's astonishing adventures in Burma and Sumatra during World War II; and of a soldier and scholar tied together by kinship and death.

From Hugo and Nebula Award winner Brian W. Aldiss comes the third book of the internationally bestselling Helliconia trilogy. A fitting culmination, not only for the trilogy . . ., but for Aldiss'' career to date . . . highly recommended.--Fantasy Review.

A tale of alternate worlds and their effect on the everyday life of a man faced with a personal crisis

A planet orbiting binary suns, Helliconia has a Great Year spanning three millennia of Earth time: cultures are born in spring, flourish in summer, then die with the onset of the generations-long winter. Helliconia is emerging from its centuries-long winter. The tribes of the equatorial continent emerge from their hiding places and are again able to dispute possession of the planet with the ferocious phagors. In Oldorando, love, trade and coinage are being redisovered, This is the first volume of the Helliconia Trilogy -- a monumental saga that goes beyond anything yet created by this master among today''s imaginative writers.

Science fiction-noveller.

Joe Bodenland, a 21st century American, passes through a timeslip and finds himself with Byron and Shelley in the famous villa on the shore of Lake Geneva. More fantastically, he finds himself face to face with a real Frankenstein, a doppelganger inhabiting a complex world where fact and fiction may as easily have congress as Bodenland himself manages to make love to Mary Shelley.