Showing results by author "Philip Wylie" in All Categories

A runaway planet hurtles toward Earth. As it draws near, massive tidal waves, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions wrack our planet, devastating continents, drowning cities, and wiping out millions. In central North America, a team of scientists race to build a spacecraft powerful enough to escape the doomed Earth. Their greatest threat, they soon discover, comes not from the skies but from other humans.

A circus performer turned superspy is caught up in a Cold War web of conspiracy and death when the body of a murdered CIA agent is discovered in a Hawaiian marine park. By any definition, Ringling Wallenda Grove is an extraordinary man. The son of expatriate Russian former circus owners, he mastered the arts of acrobatics, animal training, and magic at a young age; distinguished himself as an officer in World War II; and went on to amass a fortune of several million dollars before going into semiretirement. But there is another side to this man that few know about.

After Worlds Collide picks up the story of its predecessor When Worlds Collide. This sequel tells the story of the survivors' progress on the new world Bronson Beta after the destruction of planet Earth by a rogue planet.

In Gladiator, Philip Wylie introduces one of the earliest and most influential superhuman heroes in modern fiction. Born from a radical scientific experiment, Hugo Danner possesses extraordinary strength, speed, and invulnerability—powers far beyond those of ordinary men. But in a world unprepared for someone like him, Hugo’s greatest struggle is not against villains, but against isolation, fear, and the burden of being different.

By the year 2017, a series of ecological catastrophes have eliminated most of the earth’s population while destroying the America we once knew. The few who have survived live in underground bunkers beneath the ruins of the nation’s major cities, controlled by ruthless corporate entities that have remolded the devastated society into USA, Inc. This is the nightmare into which crusading magazine publisher Glenn Howard awakens after 40 years of sleep.

Hugo didn’t ask for this gift that his father, brilliant biologist Abednego Danner, bestowed upon him; a “gift” that promises a life of greatness. From being a baby that can launch himself from a second-story window unscathed, a boy that can leap canyons and hurl boulders, a football star that can beat an opposing team single-handed, a man capable of crushing an entire enemy platoon with his bare hands; surely such a person could steer the entire world to their whims. But, does the world hold any post for a man of such strength?

On a lazy, quiet afternoon, in the blink of an eye, our world shatters into two parallel universes as men vanish from women and women from men. After families and loved ones separate from one another, life continues in very different ways for men and women, boys and girls. An explosion of violence sweeps one world that still operates technologically; social stability and peace in the other are offset by famine and a widespread breakdown in machinery and science.

In the world’s upper hemisphere, only one small group has survived World War III: 14 people, sheltered deep within a limestone mountain in Connecticut and with enough supplies and equipment to maintain their subsistence for upwards of two years. The group includes a forward-thinking millionaire and his family, a levelheaded Jewish scientist, a playboy, an aging African American servant and his daughter, a gigolo and the glamorous woman who has been his mistress, a beautiful Chinese girl, a young meter reader, two children, and a Japanese engineer.

Personable, good looking, and a whiz at physics, graduate student Allan Diffenduffer "Duff" Bogan has a bright future ahead of him. But while staying at the home of an invalid widow in Florida, Duff makes a discovery that freezes his blood: a cache of uranium hidden in the locked closet of a fellow guest. The FBI is initially skeptical, but Duff knows all too well what his findings portend.

Betrayed by his wife, Stephen Stone spirits his son, Henry, away to a remote tropical island and trains him to be an ideal physical specimen and a perfect gentleman. After years of isolation, Henry Stone is now a young man, standing a full six feet two inches tall and weighing 190 pounds. His hair is bronze, his eyes turquoise, his skin mahogany - a magnificent man. When Henry finally returns to civilization, he finds that his father’s business has grown into a news empire. Though he is the owner of this huge conglomerate, a great conversationalist, well versed in etiquette, and extraordinarily nice, he has never seen a woman.

Brilliant scientist discovers a chemical formula to render matter invisible and utilizes his secret in an attempt to rule the world in this early SF classic.

This book may change your life. It may save it. It is one of the most important - and most shocking - books ever written. Tomorrow! is a story of average, nice Americans living in the neighboring cities of Green Prairie and River City in Middle America.

In The End of the Dream, venerated science-fiction author Philip Wylie trains his sights on the ultimate catastrophe - the destruction of the world through human beings’ unheeding and willful poisoning of the atmosphere, the land, the seas and rivers, and finally of the human race itself. The End of the Dream describes a horrific future when toxic chemicals, mutated creatures, and noxious gases all contribute to the eventual death of the human race and of the Earth itself....

It's the 1950s. After a nuclear blast in the mid-Pacific, a Thoreau-reading American Air Force General makes an unexpected and troubling discovery: In a flowery field on a tiny island in the middle of a vast ocean, is an angel — its beautiful face frozen in a death mask and its huge wings wrapped around an inert body. As the general ponders this mystery, the Soviets discover their own angel after a similar nuclear test in Siberia. Are these twin phenomena a ploy in the ongoing hostilities between two international powers? Or has divine intervention pointed the way toward a new political era?

In Gladiator, Philip Wylie crafts a gripping tale of a man who, through the brilliance of his biologist father, gains the extraordinary strength and invulnerability of a superman. Yet, as he grapples with his remarkable abilities, he finds himself alienated from a society that responds to his power with fear and hostility. This profound struggle ultimately drives him to seek solace away from civilization, exploring the true cost of being different. (Summary by the reader)