The story starts with Prince Charles entertaining some bored children at Balmoral. He tells them about an old man who, in search of peace and quiet (and a hot bath), has made his way to a remote cave at Lochnagar. He comes across a cave and, dragging a bathtub inside, claims the place as his own. The old man makes a lot of noise and mentions that his neighbours used to complain about the banging and noise coming from his home late at night. He chats to an animal he names Maudie, the original occupant of the cave, while setting up the apparatus for running his long awaited bath. Finally, all is ready and the Old Man appears in his tartan dressing gown, ready to step in to the bath. But, as he jumps in, he realises that the water is freezing and his squeals echo round the loch. He tells Maudie that he will have to wait for a bath until he has found a way of heating the water, and pulls the plug on his full bath. Unknown to the Old Man, his cave is near the underground home of the Gorn, a clan of Scottish pixies, who are responsible for pushing up the spring flowers in Scotland. The Gorn King is an inventor, and has created a curious device (which looks and sounds like a set of bagpipes) which reduces full grown flowers back to seeds. The seed will turn back in to a flower when it gets wet and the Gorn Queen and Princess declare that the King has changed the way everyone will work from now on. However, as they are discussing this, a flood pours down unexpectedly from above. When the Old Man emptied his bath, the water followed his complicated arrangements of pipes and in to the Gorn''s underground workshops, ruining the flowers and flooding out the workers. The Princess and her younger brother end up being washed away from their parents and come out of a tree stump alone and wet. They look up to find a ''giant'', tending to a huge pot over a roaring fire and the young Prince fears that they will be made in to soup. In fact the ''giant'' is the Old Man, who has found a way to heat his bath by lighting a huge fire underneath it. As he waits, still in his tartan dressing gown, he is suddenly hit by the Gorn King''s device, which has been picked up by the young Princess. He immediately shrinks to the size of a pixie and is taken away by the Prince and Princess, to see what his bathwater has done to their home. At first, he thinks he is having a strange dream, and so he appears callously unconcerned at the devastation, stating only that "I''ve never dreamed in colour before". This delusion lasts until he falls down a hole, hitting his head. As he exclaims at the pain in his head, it dawns on the Old Man that since you can''t feel pain in a dream, what he''s seen must be real and the damage is his fault. The Prince and Princess take the Old Man back outside but, to their shock, the whole world seems to be on fire. The fire underneath the Old Man''s bath has spread and is threatening the countryside. The Old Man offers to help, but he needs to be bigger before he can do anything. The Princess is reluctant to help the Old Man, but she relents and tells him that he needs to ''get watered''. With the help of Maudie, the Old Man is catapulted in to his bath and returns to normal size. He pulls the plug again, flooding the area and putting out the fire, while protecting the pixies'' underground home from further damage. The Old Man has learned that his actions affect others and that he must think of the consequences. The story ends with the Gorn sharing a huge bath with the Old Man, complete with water wheels and boats. When he is finished, the Old Man drains his bath using more of his special plumbing skills to reuse the water to reactivate the magic seeds and causing flowers to pop up all around. The story closes on the Old Man of Lochnagar and returns to Balmoral and Prince Charles. The children tell him that it was a good story, but that''s all, just a story. Charles replies that you never really know, and lifts a set of bagpipes from his desk and begins to play. After a few notes, the Prince is affected in the same way as the Old Man, shrinking to a tiny size and suggesting that his story was inspired by true events. The children he has been entertaining then race off through the house to find the bathtub, to restore the Prince to his rightful size.

The Old Man of Lochnagar

Rhapsody travels with Ashe to deliver a dragon''s claw, long ago hidden among the treasures of Ylorc, for fear of the dragon''s wreaking vengeance upon those who would keep her claw from her. On the journey, Ashe and Rhapsody develop a degree of comfort with one another, punctuated by arguments. Upon their arrival, Rhapsody finds the dragon surprisingly friendly, and she stays for several days before departing. Meanwhile, in the halls of Ylorc, Grunthor and Achmed discover a hidden tunnel, leading to the Loritorium: the unfinished masterpiece of Ylorc''s builder, centuries past. To their surprise, Gruthor and Achmed are confronted by a Dhracian as they investigate: one of the last of a near-legendary race, to which Achmed owes half his heritage. The Dhracian, who calls herself the Grandmother, instructs Achmed and Grunthor to return with Rhapsody. Rhapsody, after leaving the dragon''s cave, travels to Tyrian, the forest home to the Lirin, so that she can meet and train with the former bearer of her elemental blade, Daystar Clarion. While in training, she sees a horrific vision of the world engulfed in blood after the death of the Patriarch, leader of one of the two major human religions. Rhapsody journeys to Sepulvarta, home of the Patriarch, and successfully defends the Patriarch against an attack by a F''Dor demon and his minion, the Rakshas. She then travels back to Ylorc, where Grunthor and Achmed lead her to the Grandmother. The Grandmother tells them of the Dhracian colony that had lived in the mountains of Ylorc for centuries, destroyed by the same saboteur who murdered the inhabitants of the Loritorium. She also shows them the treasure the Dhracian colony was founded to protect: the sleeping Child of Earth, whose second rib can be used as a key to open the Vault of the Underworld imprisoning most of the F''Dor. The Child of Earth''s sleep is restless, rocked with prophetic nightmares, but Rhapsody is unable to help. After finally figuring out Ashe''s secret, Rhapsody summons Ashe to her underground home in Ylorc with a carefully crafted song. Once he arrives, Rhapsody explains her realizations: Ashe is Gwydion, long believed dead after he failed in an attack on the F''Dor and had part of his soul torn out in the process. Gwydion was secretly resurrected by the power of the star which once adorned Daystar Clarion''s hilt, however, awakening his dragon side in the process, and had wandered the land in secrecy for the decades following the attack. The lost piece of his soul was used to create the Rakshas, which wreaked havoc with Ashe''s appearance. Ashe and Rhapsody become lovers, causing Jo (Rhapsody''s adopted sister) no end of jealousy. The Rakshas uses this to trick Jo - pretending to be Ashe, he has sex with her, bringing her partially under the control of the F''Dor in the process. In an attempt to reclaim the stolen piece of Ashe''s soul, Rhapsody sets out with Grunthor and Achmed to destroy the Rakshas. The demonically-influenced Jo nearly kills Achmed at the end of the battle, forcing Rhapsody to kill her to save Achmed, and subsequently battle to save her soul from the clutching vine of the F''Dor. Some days later, Ashe and Rhapsody meet again for a night of revelations. Ashe locks the memory of the night in a pearl, expecting the only thing said to be of his father, Llauron, concocted to use Rhapsody in a bid for power. In the course of the discussion, Ashe and Rhapsody learn to their surprise that they are (respectively) Sam and Emily, who loved one another one and a half millennia ago (It''s complicated.) They get married, but Rhapsody agrees that she will have to forget it all so that Llauron''s selfish plot can succeed. Then a tree root that the Rakshas corrupted attacks the Child of Earth, attempting to seize it (and thereby gain the key to the Underworld), but Grunthor, forewarned by a dream, manages to get Rhapsody and Achmed into position soon enough to avert the threat. Then they realize that the Rakshas conceived children with demon-tainted blood, who Rhapsody resolves to rescue.

Prophecy: Child of Earth

Thanks to a computer error, Tom Carmody, an unlucky civil servant, wins the main prize of the Galactic Lottery. Being a human from the Earth, he doesn''t even reach the level of the 32nd class creature, therefore he doesn''t possess galactic status and shouldn''t even be eligible. However, he obtains the Prize before the mistake is found out and is allowed to keep it. That''s when his adventure begins, since, not being a space-traveling creature, he has no homing instinct that can guide him back to Earth, and so the galactic lottery organizers cannot transport him home. At the same time, his removal from his home environment has caused, by the ''universal law of predation'', a predatory entity to spring in to existence that perpetually pursues and aims to destroy him. So Carmody is forced to be on the run, and with the help of his Prize meets several well-meaning (but usually not very competent) aliens that attempt to find where, when and which Earth he belongs on. He ends up transporting from Earth to Earth: different phases and realities of his planet, which of course, is not in the time or condition he expects it to be.

Dimension of Miracles

In 1933 Reza Shah signed a deal selling Iranian oil extraction rights to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later called British Petroleum (BP). Though Iran was officially neutral at the start of World War II, its monarch was friendly towards the Axis. Following the 1941 Allied Invasion of Iran, Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favour of his son Mohammad Reza Shah, who upheld the oil agreement with APOC, which by then had been renamed the "Anglo-Iranian Oil Company". When the first democratically elected parliament and prime minister in Iran took power in 1950 they planned to seize the oil assets in Iran that had been developed by the British, violating the still running oil contract with British Petroleum. The British Government followed to court in Belgium''s International Court and lost the case against Iran''s new government. Great Britain reacted by blockading the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, halting Iran''s trade and economy. The US was concerned that Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh was seeking help from local superpower, the Soviet Union, in the case against Great Britain. The Dwight D. Eisenhower administration agreed with the Churchill government to restore the pro-western Shah to power. In the summer of 1953, the CIA and Britain''s MI6 arranged a coup in Tehran. The Iranian prime minister was successfully overthrown. Mossadegh spent the rest of his life on his country estate under house arrest, and Iran remained a staunch Cold War ally of the West. After more than 20 years of the Shah''s rule, there was a bloody revolution in 1979 after which Iran became the Islamic Republic it is today. Regarding US policy as it developed towards Iran in the early 1950s, the book portrays it as having been variously driven by the fear of annoying the British, or attempting to be an honest broker, or as being motivated by efforts to stop the spread of Communism. The fact (stated at the end of the book) that US companies were granted the majority of the oil concessions from the Shah''s government after the coup, does not feature significantly in the earlier part of the narrative. However, that this was the chief reason for the coup is the tacit conclusion of the book. The British critic David Pryce-Jones takes strong issue with this conclusion in his essay "A Very Elegant Coup" (link below). In his view, the attempted Communist takeover of Iran was the chief issue, and the portrayal of the CIA by Kinzer as ''arrogant, thuggish and immoral'' was originally a notion put forward by leftists who sympathized with the attempt.

All the Shah''s Men

The enchanted castle of the title is a country estate in the West Country seen through the eyes of three children, Gerald, James and Kathleen, who discover it while exploring during the school holidays. The lake, groves and marble statues, with white towers and turrets in the distance, make a fairy-tale setting, and then in the middle of the maze in the rose garden they find a sleeping fairy-tale princess. The "princess" tells them that the castle is full of magic, and they almost believe her. She shows them the treasures of the castle, including a ring she says is a ring of invisibility, but when it actually turns her invisible she panics and admits that she is the housekeeper''s niece, Mabel, and was just play-acting. The children soon discover that the ring has other magical powers. The Enchanted Castle was written for both children and adults. It combines descriptions of the imaginative play of children, reminiscent of The Story of the Treasure Seekers, with a magic more muted than in her major fantasies such as The Story of the Amulet.

The Enchanted Castle

The EU is a response to and function of Europe’s unique historical experience. The past decade has shown that there is policy space for greater EU engagement in European security, although the EU has not been able to play all roles with the same degree of accomplishment. There are particular concerns over its security and defence dimension where attempts at pooling resources and forming a political consensus have failed to generate the results expected. These trends, combined with shifts in global power patterns, have been accompanied by a shift in EU strategic thinking whereby great-power ambitions have been scaled down and replaced by a tendency towards hedging vis-à-vis the leading powers. On an operational level the track record shows that the EU’s effectiveness is hampered by a ‘consensus– expectations gap’, owing primarily to the lack of an effective decision-making mechanism. The sum of these developments is that the EU will not be a great power, and is taking the place of one of the small powers in the emerging multipolar international order.(summarized on page 11).

The European Union as a Small Power: After the Post-Cold War

The novel concerns the account of one Jane Martello, a middle aged woman undergoing divorce proceedings with her husband, and subsequently separating herself from a large and strong family she has known since her childhood. The intricate traditions of her family and the one she had married into begin to break down when the body of her sister-in-law, Natalie, is found buried in the garden, after over two decades. This startlingly close distance to the house leads to the revelation of the murderer being very close to the family after all. The revelation acts to bring down the family structure that for so long was unbalanced, but stable - such as Jane''s father-in-law, Alan, an openly crude and sexist novelist having once frequently had relations outside his marriage (to the knowledge of the whole family) and other underlying tensions between family members. Jane undergoes psychiatric counselling, as she revels in the mysterious circumstances of one of her best childhood friend''s death, and already present forerunnings to what appear to be a mid-life crisis. She undergoes a memory exercise (that the book is named for) to unlock memories lost from the trauma of her friend''s death. What she unlocks proves seemingly to be the key to the death of Natalie, but the validity of the memories become questionable with the serious allegations they lead to.

The Memory Game

Stoppard''s farce consists of two hours of slapstick shenanigans, mistaken identities, misdirected orders, malapropisms, double entendres, and romantic complications. Herr Zangler, the twisted-tongued proprietor of an upscale grocery store in a small Austrian village, plans to marry Mme. Knorr, the proprietor of a women''s clothing shop in Vienna. In preparation for new life in the big city, he orders a new wardrobe and hires the fast-talking Melchior as a personal assistant. He arranges to send his niece Marie to his sister-in-law in Vienna, Miss Blumenblatt, to protect her from the penniless Sonders who is courting her. As he departs for Vienna, Zangler entrusts the operation of his business to his garrulous head clerk, Weinberl, and his naive apprentice, Christopher, who decide to go "on the razzle" to Vienna. Almost immediately, Weinberl and Christopher catch sight of Zangler and disguise themselves as mannequins in the window of Mme. Knorr''s House of Fashion. Circumstances propel the two into a fancy restaurant in the company of Mme. Knorr and her customer, Frau Fischer (who has been roped into pretending she is Weinberl''s new wife), the same restaurant to which Zangler intends to take Mme. Knorr. Several sprinting waiters, a sexually obsessed coachman and a carefully positioned Chinese screen come into play, and things finally seem to be settling down when the eloping Sonders and Marie enter the scene and the chaos starts anew. The various characters flee to Miss Blumenblatt''s, who mistakes Weinberl and the disguised Christopher as Sonders and Marie. Eventually, all is sorted out, Christopher and Weinberl make it back to the store in time to prevent Zangler from ever knowing they were gone, and everything solves itself: Sonders comes into an inheritance and is allowed to marry Marie, Weinberl and Frau Fischer discover they have been romantic pen pals all along, Christopher is promoted, Zangler and Mme. Knorr finalize their engagement, and life returns to normal after one night "on the razzle."

On the Razzle

Before the play begins, the Viceroy of Portugal has rebelled against Spanish rule. A battle has taken place in which the Portuguese were defeated and their leader, the Viceroy''s son Balthazar, captured; but the Spanish officer Andrea has been killed by none other than the captured Balthazar. His ghost and the spirit of Revenge (present onstage throughout the entirety of the play) serve as chorus and, at the beginning of each act, Andrea bemoans the series of injustices that take place before being reassured by Revenge that those deserving will get their comeuppance. There is a subplot concerning the enmity of two Portuguese noblemen, one of whom attempts to convince the Viceroy that his rival has murdered the missing Balthazar. The King''s nephew Lorenzo and Andrea''s best friend Horatio dispute over who captured Balthazar, and though it is made clear early on that it is in fact Horatio that defeated him while Lorenzo essentially cheats his way into taking partial credit, the King leaves Balthazar in Lorenzo''s charge and splits the spoils of the victory between the two. Horatio comforts Lorenzo''s sister, Bel-imperia, who was in love with Andrea against her family''s wishes; despite her former feelings for Andrea, Bel-imperia soon falls for Horatio. Her courtship with Horatio is motivated partially by her desire for revenge. Bel-imperia intends to torment an amorous Balthazar, the killer of her former lover. As Balthazar is in love with Bel-imperia, the royal family concludes that their marriage would be an excellent way to repair the peace with Portugal. Horatio''s father, the Marshall Hieronimo, stages an entertainment for the Portuguese ambassador; Lorenzo, suspecting that Bel-Imperia has found a new lover, bribes her servant Pedringano and discovers that Horatio is the man. He persuades Balthazar to help him murder Horatio during an assignation with Bel-Imperia; Hieronimo and his wife Isabella find the body of their son hanged and stabbed, and Isabella is driven mad. Revisions made to the original play supplement the scene with Hieronimo briefly losing his wits as well. Lorenzo locks Bel-Imperia away, but she succeeds in sending Hieronimo a letter, written in her own blood, informing him that Lorenzo and Balthazar were Horatio''s murderers. His questions and attempts to see Bel-Imperia convince Lorenzo that he knows something; afraid that Balthazar''s servant Serberine has betrayed the plot, Lorenzo convinces Pedringano to murder him, then arranges for Pedringano''s arrest in the hopes of silencing him too. Hieronimo, appointed judge, sentences Pedringano to death; Pedringano expects Lorenzo to procure his pardon, and Lorenzo, having written a fake letter of pardon, lets him believe this right up until the hangman drops Pedringano to his death. Lorenzo manages to prevent Hieronimo from seeking justice by convincing the King that Horatio is alive and well. Furthermore, Lorenzo does not allow Hieronimo to see the King, claiming that he is too busy. This, combined with his wife''s suicide, which happens just prior to Hieronimo''s appeal to the King, pushes Hieronimo past his limit. He rants incoherently and digs at the ground with his dagger. Lorenzo goes on to tell his uncle, the King, that Hieronimo''s odd behaviour is due to his inability to deal with his son Horatio''s new found wealth (Balthazar''s ransom from the Portuguese Viceroy), and he has gone mad with jealousy. Regaining his senses, Hieronimo, along with Bel-Imperia, feigns reconciliation with the murderers. The two plan to put on a play together, Soliman and Perseda. Under cover of the play they stab Lorenzo and Balthazar to death in front of the King, Viceroy, and Duke of Castile (Lorenzo and Bel-Imperia''s father); Bel-Imperia kills herself, and Hieronimo tells his audience of his motive behind the murders, but refuses to reveal Bel-Imperia''s complicity in the plot. He then bites out his own tongue to prevent himself from talking under torture, after which he kills the Duke and then himself. Andrea and Revenge are satisfied, delivering suitable eternal punishments to the guilty parties.

The Spanish Tragedy

Through a love affair in Hong Kong with Irina, the wife of a Moscow Centre intelligence officer, British agent Ricki Tarr discovers that there may be a high-ranking Soviet mole, codenamed "Gerald," within the Circus. After going undercover to avoid Soviet agents, Tarr alerts his immediate superior, Peter Guillam, who in turn notifies Undersecretary Oliver Lacon, the Civil Service officer responsible for the Intelligence Services. Lacon enlists George Smiley, the retired former Deputy Head of the Service, to investigate. Smiley and Guillam must investigate without the knowledge of the Circus, which is headed by Sir Percy Alleline and his deputies Bill Haydon, Roy Bland, and Toby Esterhase, as any of these could be the mole. Smiley suspects that Gerald was responsible for the failure of Operation Testify, a mission in Communist Czechoslovakia, the ostensible purpose of which was to meet with a defecting Czech Army general. Operation Testify ended with Circus agent Jim Prideaux shot in the back and tortured, and caused the disgrace and dismissal of Control, head of Circus, who subsequently dies. Prideaux, who survived and was repatriated and dismissed from the Circus, reveals to Smiley that Control suspected the mole''s existence, and the true aim of Operation Testify was to discover the mole''s identity. Prideaux reveals that the Moscow Centre personnel who interrogated him already knew this, and it became clear to Smiley that the operation was a trap set by Moscow Centre to discredit Control and remove the threat to their mole Gerald. Percy Alleline, who was Control''s rival, has risen to head the Circus as a result of seemingly top-grade Soviet intelligence from a source code-named "Merlin." The Merlin material is handled by a secret committee, consisting of Alleline, Haydon, Bland, and Esterhase, in an operation called Witchcraft. Smiley''s investigation leads him to believe that the Merlin source is false, and is being used by Moscow Centre to influence the leadership of the Circus. Cleverly, Moscow Centre has induced the Circus leadership to believe that Merlin maintains his cover in Moscow by feeding the Russians low-grade British intelligence, "chicken feed", from a false Circus mole. As a result, the leaders of the Circus suppress any rumours of a mole, protecting the actual mole. Smiley contrives a trap for the mole, using a communication from Tarr, and Gerald is revealed to be Bill Haydon, a respected colleague and former friend who once had an affair with Smiley''s now estranged wife, Ann. Haydon is arrested, and acknowledges he was recruited by Karla, the Moscow Centre spymaster. Percy Alleline is removed, and Smiley is appointed temporary head of Circus to deal with the fallout. Haydon is to be exchanged to the Soviet Union for several of the agents he betrayed, but is mysteriously killed while in custody, shortly before he was due to leave England. Though his killer is not explicitly revealed, it is strongly implied to be Prideaux, his old partner, whom he betrayed in Operation Testify.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

In this three-part book, Ayla is 20 (in part 1), about 23 (in part 2) and 26 (in part 3) and is training to become a spiritual leader for the Zelandonii. Most of the first and second parts of the book involve Ayla''s acolyte training to become Zelandoni. The third part of the book contains most of the action of the story and plot line. In the first part, Ayla is in a Summer Meeting, and she begins to learn what an acolyte does. Ayla and the First decide to start Ayla''s Donier Tour, which is a tour of the sacred caves in the wider region. Jondalar, Jonayla, and their animals as well as many others decide to travel. The second part is mainly about the caves that they visit. In many of the Sacred caves the Ancients, the people before the Zelandonii, left drawings. During this time, Ayla meets many other Zelandoni, and one of them gives her a pouch of dried herbs smelling faintly of mint. Ayla also discovers that the Clan visit some of the sacred caves as well. In the third part of the book, Ayla is marking the passage of the sun and moon''s phases as part of her training as an acolyte. One night she is distracted and decides to share Pleasures with Jondalar, starting a baby. However, most of her Cave leaves for the Summer Meeting, but Ayla stays behind until Midsummer so she can finish her observation of the celestial bodies. During this time she takes care of Marthona, her mother-in-law, as well as the others in her Cave. One night Ayla makes some mint tea, actually the dried herb mixture given to her in the second part of the book, and is Called. If an acolyte is Called, then she will be tested by the Zelandonia, and initiated into the Zelandonia if the Calling is true. Ayla puts down her drink and runs along a river into a cave, where she spends the next three days hallucinating. Wolf wakes her from her visions, and she finds herself in the dark cave. She allows Wolf to lead her out of the cave, but not before finding a bag hidden there by Madroman, an unskilled acolyte who faked his Calling, and who has had a deep-seated hatred of Jondalar since adolescence. Outside are people from her Cave who were worried about her absence, and it is discovered that Ayla miscarried. She spends the next few days recovering from her experience and helps deliver a friend''s baby. After delivering the baby, Ayla travels to the Summer Meeting. Upon her arrival, she finds Jondalar sharing Pleasures with Marona (Marona being Jondalar''s bitter ex-girlfriend whom he abandoned to go travelling in the second book, and who actively and spitefully caused Ayla much difficultly when she first arrived at Jondalar''s home). This leaves a rift between Ayla and Jondalar. She turns Madroman''s bag over to the Zelandonia, and he is rejected from their ranks for his attempted deception. Ayla is accepted into the Zelandonia and attempts to use a dangerous hallucinogenic root as part of her initiation - one that was greatly feared by her first mentor, Mamut. The rift with Jondalar is only healed when he manages to call her back from the death-like coma induced by the root. The spiritual knowledge Ayla''s Calling brings to the community is that men are active in the conception of a baby during ''Pleasures'', which leads to the start of recognized fatherhood and that men have purpose on earth equal to that of women, and subsequently leads to the need for monogamous relationships to reduce jealousy/possessiveness over sexual partners and for fathers to take responsibility for children, thus shaping this prehistoric culture further to match our current one.

The Land of Painted Caves

A group of scientific researchers, isolated in Antarctica by the nearly-ended winter, discover an alien spaceship buried in the ice, where it crashed twenty million years before. They try to thaw the inside of the spacecraft with a thermite charge, but end up accidentally destroying it when the ship''s magnesium hull is ignited by the charge. However, they do recover the alien pilot from the ancient ice, which the researchers believe was searching for heat when it was frozen. Thawing revives the alien, a being which can assume the shape, memories, and personality of any living thing it devours, while maintaining its original body mass for further reproduction. Unknown to them, the alien immediately kills and then imitates the crew''s physicist, a man named Connant; with some 90 pounds of its matter left over it tries to become a sled dog. The crew discovers the dog-Thing and kills it in the process of transformation. Pathologist Blair, who had lobbied for thawing the Thing, goes insane with paranoia and guilt, vowing to kill everyone at the base in order to save mankind; he is isolated within a locked cabin at their outpost. Connant is also isolated as a precaution and a "rule-of-four" is initiated in which all personnel must remain under the close scrutiny of three others. The crew realizes they must isolate themselves and therefore disable their airplanes and vehicles, while pretending things are normal over their radio transmissions to prevent any rescue attempt from civilization. The researchers try to figure out who may have been replaced by the alien (simply referred to as the Thing), in order to destroy the imitations before they can escape and take over the world. The task is almost impossibly difficult when they realize that the Thing is also telepathic, able to read minds and project thoughts. A sled dog is conditioned by human blood injections to provide a human-immunity serum test, as in rabbits. The initial test of Connant is inconclusive as they realize that the test animal received both human and alien blood, meaning that either Doctor Copper or expedition Commander Garry is actually an alien. Assistant commander McReady takes over and deduces that all the other animals at the station, save the test dog, have already become imitations; all are killed by electrocution and their corpses burned. Everyone suspects each other by now but must stay together for safety, deciding who will take turns sleeping and speculating when the patient monsters will finally have the upper hand. Tensions mount and some men begin to go mad thinking they are already the last human or wondering if they would even know if they weren''t human any longer. Ultimately, one of the crew members is murdered and accidentally revealed to be a Thing. McReady realizes that even small pieces of the creature will behave as independent, selfish organisms. He then uses this weakness to test which men have been "converted" by taking blood samples from everyone and dipping a heated wire in the vial of blood. Each man''s blood is tested, one at a time, and the donor is immediately killed if his blood recoils from the wire; fourteen in all, including Connant and Garry, are revealed as aliens. They go to test the isolated Blair and on the way see the first albatross of the Antarctic Spring flying overhead; they shoot the bird to prevent a Thing from taking it over and flying to civilization. When they reach Blair''s cabin they discover he is a Thing. They realize that it has been left to its own devices for a week, coming and going as it pleased, able to transform itself by squeezing under doors. With the creatures inside the base destroyed, McReady and two others enter the cabin to kill the Thing that was once Blair. McReady systematically forces it out into the snow and methodically destroys it with a blowtorch. Afterwards the trio discover that the Thing was dangerously close to finishing construction of an atomic-powered anti-gravity device that would have allowed it to escape to the outside world. "No, by the grace of God, who evidently does hear very well, even down here, and the margin of half an hour, we keep our world, and the planets of the system too. Anti-gravity, you know, and atomic power. Because They came from another sun, a star beyond the stars. They came from a world with a bluer sun."

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The Old Man of Lochnagar

No Author Listed

Prophecy: Child of Earth

By Elizabeth Haydon

Dimension of Miracles

By Robert Sheckley

All the Shah's Men

By Stephen Kinzer

The Enchanted Castle

By E. Nesbit

The European Union as a Small Power: After the Post-Cold War

No Author Listed

The Memory Game

By Nicci Gerrard

On the Razzle

By Tom Stoppard

The Spanish Tragedy

By Thomas Kyd

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

By John le Carré

The Land of Painted Caves

By Jean M. Auel

Who Goes There?

By John W. Campbell