In California, the victims are blind. In Maine, severely retarded. Small towns across America are being systematically "wiped out" by terrorists and their campaign of germ warfare waged against the U.S. The President's only option seems to be an equally deadly counterattack.

EPUB v5 (my tweaks from Mobi)Dancers In The Afterglow is a short but powerful book. Like a lot of Sci-Fi it looks at trends and extrapolates a plausible future wrapped in an interesting story. I believe Chalker was looking at three primary trends in this book. Collectivism, the personal disconnectedness of modern Western Civilization and man/machine integration. Today 25 years after its publication Chalker saw clearly into the future. Collectivism is manifested in today's political correctness which seeks to blur the line between the superior and the inferior, making everyone equal. In the West the young are purposely interfacing with machines more than with each other leading to a personal disconnect from human to human contact and integration into the "cyber world". Deep down Dancers In The Afterglow is about the demise of human soul more than anything. Mankind had made it's way into the stars and eventually came across an alien race - inevitably war ensued. The Machists stuck in a stalemate with humanity struck out at Ondine a resort world of some 16 million souls. In a race against time the Machists brutally transformed the human population into soulless, identity-less collective. The Combine of Human worlds struck back with their secret weapon, Daniel. Daniel was once a skilled fighter pilot, but a tragic accident left him clinging to life as a disembodied brain and spine. He was integrated into the greatest machine ever conceived and was set against the Machists. He was a soul without a body and the victims of the Machists were soulless bodies.

Epub v5THE EVOLUTION OF TERROR A hard-living reporter long past his Pulitzer Prize-winning prime, Chuck Vallone is about to meet a renowned geneticist who needs to clear his conscience. But when Vallone arrives at their rendezvous, he finds the D.C. hotel swarming with government agents. The scientist's room is now a grisly slaughterhouse splattered with blood--but no sign of a body. Vallone knows he has the story of the century, especially when he receives a mysterious package filled with a computer disk and strange samples of DNA. Now he's determined to uncover the truth. But it's no brave new world Vallone will be exploring; rather, a deadly depraved one ruled by preeminent scientists. And this powerful cadre intends to make Vallone both eyewitness and executor of their final ferocious plan...

EPUB (reformatted)Seven stories . . . and more from a science-fiction master! Jack L. Chalker is an acknowledged master of the science-fiction series but from time to time, he has also turned his talents to the short fiction form. Here, for the first time in one volume, are the complete short stories, including two never before published, by one of science-fiction's most popular authors. DANCE BAND ON THE TITANIC: Mike Dalton was an ordinary deck hand on a most extraordinary ferryboat. He was determined to save the young woman who, night after night, committed suicide from the ferry's deck . . . but how could he save a ghost? NO HIDING PLACE: No one really believed that the old Hankin House was haunted, but for a lone human and the alien Sirian from the futue it was -- and always will be -- their final battleground! ADRIFT AMONG THE GHOSTS: The alien convict had been sentenced to roam space to collect television signals from a far-off planet called Earth . . . but some programs are too horrrible for even a hardened criminal to watch! First time in print! . . . And more!

A novel by Jack L Chalker, George Alec Effinger and Mike ResnickPublisher's WeeklyIn designing their book as a round robin, Chalker ( The Return of Nathan Brazil ), Resnick ( Second Contact ) and Effinger ( When Gravity Fails ) seem to have been more interested in presenting the next author with a challenge (''Write your way out of this!'') than they were in continuity, plot or character. Millard Fillmore Pierce (most names are pseudo-significant, such as the battleship Mahatma Gandhi, captain Nathan Bolivia) appears in five different guises, each a member of a different species from a different parallel universe; all of them speak English and most of them intend to take over the human Pierce's galaxy. That none succeeds is largely due to red tape: so many forms must be filled out in order even to fire a shot that battleships carry hundreds of bureaucrats to support each soldier. What could have been light entertainment is defeated by the authors' arch, feckless comments to one another--with discussions on writing the book included as part of the book. Only a blindly dedicated fan will be pleased with this collaboration.

The evil Dark Baron has escaped and joined forces in the far North with the Master of the Dead to theaten all of Husaquahr with enslavement. Only Joe can stop them—but Joe is no longer quite himself. In fact, he’s not sure who he is!

The survival of the human race, spread throughout the universe in the future, depends on an unlikely team led by naval officer Gene Harker, who must retrieve the only defense against the godlike Titans.

In California, the victims are blind. In Maine, severely retarded. Small towns across America are being systematically “wiped out” by terrorists and their campaign of germ warfare waged against the U.S. The President’s only option seems to be an equally deadly counterattack.

An ex-detective gets mixed up in a plot to use a revolutionary supercomputer system to provide power for a magic ritual. Of course, such a thing is going to require a virgin, and in this case, the girl is a quadraplegic. However, a computer system of this power can do a lot of things—change people being one of them.

They took the body of Park Lacoch, put in it the mind of a top confederacy operator and then stuck him aboard a spaceship bound for Charon—one of the worlds of the Warden Diamond, a hell-world from which there was no return.

For centuries, interstellar prospectors had searched for the fabled worlds of the Three Kings, the lost El Dorado of the galaxy. The mad cyborg Prophet, Ishmael Hand, discovered the mysterious system—and the alien minds behind it—and he will face a decision that may determine the fate of the entire human race.