Jack L. Chalker Books In Order

Midnight at the Well of Souls

Nathan Brazil, a cargo ship for hire owner, detours from his route to answer a distress call. A hidden stargate hurls him and his passengers to the Well World, the master control planet for the cosmos created by the now gone godlike race who designed the universe. Now someone wants to find the Well of Souls to seize control of all the cosmos and it’s up to Nathan to stop them.

Exiles at the Well of Souls

Antor Trellig, head of a ruthless interstellar syndicate, had seized a super computer with godlike powers, which could make him omnipotent. The Council offered master criminal Mavra Chang any reward if she stopped Trellig and horrible, lingering death if she failed. But neither Trellig nor Mavra had taken the Well World into consideration. Built by the ancient Markovians, the Well World controlled the design of the cosmos. When the opponents were drawn across space to the mysterious planet, they found themselves in new alien bodies, and in the middle of a battle where strange races fought desperately, with the control of all the Universe as the prize.

Quest for the Well of Souls

Mavra Chang had been a master criminal, notorious throughout the galaxy, but for years she has been trapped in a no longer human body on the Well World the Master Control planet for the universe. A supercomputer can restore her form, if only she can obtain a spaceship to reach it.

The Return of Nathan Brazil

The Dreel was a hive mind, composed of trillions of virus sized units, which infected intelligent beings like a disease and took over their minds. It was on its way to conquering the entire galaxy until those whose minds were still free fought back, using a weapon so powerful that it wrought havoc with the Well World, the ancient planet sized supercomputer that a vanished super race called the Markovians built to maintain the form of the entire universe. If the Well World’s control of time and space could not be restored, the universe could vanish like a blown out candle flame. Only a Markovian could go to the Well World and repair the damage, but only one Markovian was still known to survive. He had last been seen in human form, going by the name of Nathan Brazil. No one knew where he was now, what name he was using, or even if he still appeared human. Finding him, somewhere in the immensity of the galaxy, seemed an impossible task. So the task fell to someone who had done the impossible over and over: Mavra Chang, one of the few beings ever to escape from the Well World, and owner of Obie, who just might be the second most powerful computer in the universe. With those two on his trail, Nathan Brazil could run but could he hide?

Twilight at the Well of Souls

The rift in the fabric of space was fast approaching the Well World, and time was running out. If the Well World were destroyed, the entire universe would disappear like a blown out candle. But the squabbling forces on the planet weren’t going to let the impending doomsday stop them from having a serious war. Troops all over the planet were gathering for the final battle. Nathan Brazil and Mavra Chang somehow had to reach the Well of Souls in time to save the universe and before any of the hostile natives managed to kill them. At best, a difficult mission. At worst, impossible especially since there was a price on Brazil’s head and many would be claimants! So Nathan Brazil decided that the simplest way to reach the Well of Souls was to be killed. And his enemies would find that he was far more dangerous dead than he had ever been alive…

The Sea is Full of Stars

This exciting, action packed novel marks Jack Chalker’s triumphant return to his celebrated multivolume saga: The Well World. The Sea is Full of Stars explores an unknown interstellar civilization, stars an all new cast of characters, and reveals fresh secrets. But of course, The Well remains…
After three passengers Ming, Ari, and Angel embark on an elite starship journey into the Realm, they unwittingly become ensnared in one man’s bloodthirsty vendetta that will alter their very beings. That man is Jeremiah Wong Kincaid. He vows to destroy Josich Conqueror Hadun, the evil genius who has wreaked unspeakable havoc throughout the universe. It is an obsession that will take him to lands of demons and strange races and into a deadly new cyberworld where humans are mere pawns of the godlike computers they have created. But it is only after Kincaid and his unwitting fellow travelers enter Well World and discover the water hexes that he confronts the mad tyrant and learns their universe is threatened by something far, far worse…

Ghost of the Well of Souls

Jack Chalker’s Well World epic occupies an honored place among the classics of science fiction. Now this boldly imagined, intricately plotted new novel takes us deeper into the Well World than ever before…

On the mysterious Well World, the evil tyrant Josich and his dark agents search desperately for the eight scattered pieces of the fabled Straight Gate. Whoever possesses the Gate will wield enormous power, travelling between universes at the speed of light and wreaking havoc across galaxies.

Opposing Josich is a small band of travelers new to the Well World. There is Core, once a machine, now flesh and blood; Ming and Ari, two minds sharing a single body; Jaysu, an angel; and Genghis O’Leary, a lizard being. Unbeknownst to them, they have an unlikely ally: a vengeful entity who is able to clone any person or object with a single touch and mete out death just as swift…

From the Paperback edition.

Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

They took the body of Park Lacoch and stripped away his mind. Then they stuck him aboard a spaceship and exiled him to Charon, from which no return was possible. And just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, Park found himself transformed into a changeling a half beast, half man, with the beast rapidly gaining ascendancy…

The River of Dancing Gods

Joe and Marge, minutes away from death, are rescued and brought from Earth to the magical world of Husaquahr by the wizard Throckmorton P. Ruddygore to battle the forces of Hell itself!

Demons of the Dancing Gods

In Husaquahr, behind the cloak of seeming peace, evil was stirring again as the Dark Baron plotted with a Demon Prince to bring about Armageddon. Master Sorcerer Throckmorton P. Ruddygore could only trust one man with the mission of spying upon the evil villians: Joe. The only problem was, Joe had just been bitten by a weredog…

Vengeance of the Dancing Gods

The Dark Baron, defeated at last, had been stripped of all his magical power and exiled to Earth. But there he enlisted a computer to create even more effective spells. Helped by the forces of Hell, the Dark Baron is once again threatening Husaquahr and only Joe and Marge can stop him!

Songs of the Dancing Gods

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!

Horrors of the Dancing Gods

MORTAL DILEMMAAn ancient evil was seeping forth from the Sea of Dreams: the Old Ones were rising from the depths to challenge both Heaven and Hell. Their assault boded ill for Earth, and worse for the magical land of Husaquahr, where magic was played by the Book. Under the Rules, only the Great McGuffin could stop that looming menace. But the McGuffin was lost, somewhere in Hell…
. Master wizard Throckmorton P. Ruddygore once again summoned a handful of heroes to stave off disaster. But Joe, the truck driver barbarian turned wood nymph, was busy with his or her? own problems, so Ruddygore had to assign Marge, the changeling nymph, to shepherd an untried youngster on his first quest. Her new prot g was none other than Irving, Joe’s human son: estranged, bitter and irresistibly attractive! Marge wanted to turn down the mission, but too much depended on it! Once in the dark realm, though, her good intentions began to erode. Could any nymph just say ‘no’ to a son of Joe?

Lords of the Middle Dark

Long ago, the machines had rebelled, wiping out most of humanity and exiling the survivors in widely scattered reservations. Master System ruled unchallenged, the key to breaking its power five microchips disguised as gold rings, carefully hidden away. But then an Amerindian called Hawks stumbled across information about the five rings, and suddenly Master System developed an interest in seeing Hawks dead…

Pirates of the Thunder

Fearing that his escape from the deadly prison planet Melchior had been engineered by his arch enemy, Lazlo Chen, Hawks and his fellow prisoners seek refuge in the midst of pirate territory.

Masks of the Martyrs

The renegade pirates of the giant spaceship THUNDER have collected all five of the rings necessary to eliminate the threat of Master System forever. But no one not even Hawks knows how the rings are used. And with Master Systems space fleet dogging their every step, they better find out fast!

Riders of the Winds

The Changewinds blow from the Seat of Probability across the worlds that they themselves created, at once random and consistent, obeying the rules of their own strange spectral meteorology. Most of the universes the Winds have made exist separately from one another in time and space, but close to the Seat of Probability they are more densely packed, and one may walk from one to the other and not realise it until it is too late…
For countless centuries the Ahkbreed sorcerers have dreamed of the ultimate power control and direction of the Changewinds themselves, a power that would truly make them gods over all universes everywhere. And for centuries those who pay tribute to the Ahkbreed have dreamed of a deliverer. Now two brave young women from Earth have found themselves caught up in the fury of the Changewinds. They themselves will be transformed. But, in the process, they will change everything.

The Labyrinth of Dreams

Unavailable for five years, this series tells of a small multi universe corporation whose inhabitants discovered long ago the pathways to alternate universes and the resulting profits from such knowledge. ‘Chalker shows that an old idea can indeed learn new tricks.’ The Milwaukee Journal.

The Maze in the Mirror

Third in the G.O.D. series, this novel features the characters of Sam and Brandy Horowitz. Horowitz, private eye, works for G.O.D., Inc. the company that rules the Labyrinth between infinite alternate Earths. Only now he has got two clients vengeful rebels out to wreck the Labyrinth.

The Demons at Rainbow Bridge

Three empires existed in uneasy proximity in the known galaxy. They all have one thing in common demons. In a region of space called Rainbow Bridge, an Exchange scouting expedition has found a mysterious structure with its mechanisms still functioning after unknown aeons. Within are bodies of two gigantic, horned creatures, perfectly preserved or are they alive?.

The Ninety Trillion Fausts

An expedition to a planet finds two gigantic humanoid creatures with horns and hooves demons, preserved but still alive. Now the three warring Empires must work together to save the trillions of souls in the galaxy, but they find they have some unusual allies. If demons exist, why not angels?

The Run to Chaos Keep

Many different beings in the galaxy shared one legend: demons. When an expedition to an unexplored planet discovered two gigantic horned creatures in suspended animation, they realized, just before dying horribly, the truth behind the legend. Rescuers answering a bizarre distress call found what seemed to be an entrance into another dimension, and had no choice but to pursue the demons into an insanely twisted space. And the desperate pursuers would find that the legends of demons being a danger to one’s soul was as much a reality as the demons themselves.

Echoes of the Well of Souls

Nathan Brazil had been the guardian of the Well of Souls, where the Well World’s master control lay. But now the universe faced a threat more grave than mere destruction: An unnamed and utterly alien entity had somehow been released from its ancient prison and was bent on the corruption of the Well World itself. If successful, it would cause chaos beyond mortal understanding…
. From the Paperback edition.

Shadow of the Well of Souls

Immortal, unchanging, the eternal survivor, Nathan Brazil had tired of his long duty as the guardian of the Well World and had enlisted Mavra Chang, space pilot and adventurer, as his companion and equal, sharing with her the godlike power to control the universe’s destiny. Now the Well World is changing, and Brazil and Chang have drifted apart…
but they must work together one more time to stop a new threat to the Well World the greatest threat of all…
. From the Paperback edition.

Gods of the Well of Souls

In its hour of need, the Well World’s guardians had been neutralized. Nathan Brazil was shipwrecked on a desert island with a seemingly harmless girl who had caused his mind to be invaded, his will sapped, and his mission forgotten. Mavra Chang had been abducted by a vicious gang of inter hex drug smugglers and held prisoner by a revenge mad creature who had surgically and genetically altered her into a bizarre farm and made her a slave to powerful narcotics. But the Well of Souls, sophisticated beyond human understanding, was still a machine; it needed its guardians. And so it set plans in motion to jolt its champions back into the game. But avert if Brazil or Chang could overcome the formidable obstacles in their path, they could not know that all the players, even the great Well computer, were being manipulated by the Kraang, an entity more ancient than the universe itself. For the Kraang had a game plan that would use the guardians to give it powers far beyond those avert of the Well of Souls making it a living god…
.

The Cybernetic Walrus

EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW IS WRONG…
That was the strange message left on Cory Maddox’s e mail just at the moment when years of work on a revolutionary subspace computer system was about to pay off. Nothing would be the same for Cory again. Suddenly his life was thrown into chaos when the company that controlled his patent was sold out from under him, and instead of imminent wealth, Cory was facing immediate poverty. Then along came Alan Stark, who wanted to recruit Cory for a special research project on virtual reality. Stark was reviving the secret NSA work of the legendary Matthew Brand, who had disappeared under mysterious circumstances years before. Cory had always idolized Brand, so he was initially thrilled to be involved. But he quickly discovered that there was nothing virtual about the realities he was working on. Instead, he found that Stark was on the verge of controlling the very fabric of reality itself. Cory was unsure of Stark’s ultimate goal, until he began to recall pieces of another life and found himself in the middle of a battle between two groups of people who could use ‘rabbit holes’ in space and time to jump between different realities, personalities, and lives. Whoever had control of the power to shape reality would have the power to become a god or a devil. But before Cory could combat Stark and his minions, he first had to remember which side he was on…

The March Hare Network

GO ASK ALICETime after time, life after life, Cory Maddox was being incarnated into worlds he found both familiar and strangely different. And it was only in his latest incarnation that, for the first time, Cory brought along knowledge, skills, and memories of his previous existence memories of cold betrayal, memories that told him that nothing he saw, nothing he felt, could be trusted. Nor could he trust his companions; others who, like himself, kept moving from life to life, intent on gathering enough power to escape the endless cycle. But it was only with the help of those companions that Cory could develop the technological means to peer beyond the veil of reality to the system that controlled all existence, where perhaps he could glimpse the shadowy figures whom he was sure were manipulating reality…
if what he was experiencing actually was reality. Time was running out. His memories gave him an advantage over the others, but he would have to act quickly and surely if he were to discover the truth before truth itself could no longer be trusted…

The Hot-Wired Dodo

TRUMP CARDReality wasn’t what it used to be. Life after life, as man, woman, and child, Cory Maddox was trapped in an endless cycle of ever changing realities, on the run from his ruthless companions and from the shadowy figures that seemed to exist outside the increasingly unstable matrix. As each new world proved increasingly bizarre, Cory wanted nothing more than to find the way home. Fragments of knowledge a mysterious UFO crash, alien technology, glimpses of a computer that was controlling his fate all pointed toward Matthew Brand, the virtual reality genius. But Brand had vanished long ago, into, or perhaps beyond, the borders of reality. To break the cycle of cyber reincarnation, Cory had to find Brand before the actions of his enemies destroyed reality altogether…

Balshazzar’s Serpent

‘On a Galactic Mission from God’Here begins an exciting new epic adventure by Jack L. Chalker, a favorite of science fiction fans for years!When the wormholes mysteriously failed and the Great Silence fell across a third of humanity’s interstellar civilization, it was up to the Church to tie together what remained. As had happened long before, during the Middle Ages, faith kept hope alive in a new Dark Age for mankind. Ishmael Hand, one of the Church’s ‘Prophets’ or cyborg scouts, comes across a system with a gas giant and three habitable moons, matching the description of the fabled star system of the Three Kings, an El Dorado long sought by prospectors across the galaxy. Like most Prophets, Hand is not completely sane; he disappears after his final message which does not include the location of the system. Centuries later, Doctor Karl Woodward, preacher and leader of the starship ‘The Mountain,’ brings the Word to a lost colony of farmers on an uncharted world, and discovers that saving their souls is the least of his problems. A stranded crew of space pirates has terrorized the peaceful villagers for decades. Now their captain holds Woodward’s crew hostage as well. And he wants ‘The Mountain…
‘

Melchior’s Fire

ON THE RUN FROM THE INTERSTELLAR MOB!For centuries, interstellar prospectors had searched for the fabled worlds of the Three Kings, the lost El Dorado of the galaxy. But none had succeeded. Only the mad cyborg Prophet, Ishmael Hand, had ever seen the mysterious system, and he had refused to reveal its location before vanishing forever into history. Then, with the help of his flock, a starfaring evangelist Doctor Karl Woodward, preacher and leader of the starship ‘The Mountain’ found it, only to disappear in turn. Now a new group of explorers must follow the trail that Woodward blazed. A spacegoing salvage team, desperately in debt after a violent alien menace ruins a lucrative assignment and decimates the group, is hired to follow the clues Woodward left behind. But the team’s shady creditors won’t want to wait…
and they won’t much care how they get their investments back. Fearing pursuit by their former backers, the group heads off for the ultimate salvage operation. By hook or by crook, they will find the Three Kings if the galactic underworld’s repo men don’t get them first!

Kaspar’s Box

For centuries, interstellar prospectors had searched for the fabled worlds of the Three Kings, the lost El Dorado of the galaxy. But if any found it, they were never heard from again. The made cyborg Prophet, Ishmael Hand, discovered the mysterious system, with artefacts indicating a superhuman technology, and he had refused to reveal its location before vanishing. Now a chance encounter between what’s left of the once mighty human military and an inexplicable alien force has brought an armed expedition to the third planet of the Three Kings, Kaspar. They will join forces with the survivors of the two earlier expeditions, who has been marooned both by alien power and by human treachery, as they at last encounter the alien minds behind the mysterious triple planetary system and they will face a decision that may determine the fate of the entire human race!

A Jungle of Stars

Paul Carlton Savage died on July 20, 1969, in Vietnam but that was only the start of his troubles! Approached by a mysterious entity called The Hunter, Savage was offered immortality in exchange for his services in The Hunter’s continuing war against The Bromgrev. Suddenly, Savage found himself pitted against an enemy he had never seen, an enemy who could be anyone, anywhere, at any time…
an enemy determined to destroy him and all who got in his way. And in this raging intergalactic war between Good and Evil, Savage discovered that he couldn’t be sure whose side he was on…
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Downtiming the Night Side

NSA agent Ron Moosic is assigned to a nuclear power plant a cover for a secret project sending observers back in time. When terrorists take it over and send two of their own back to change the past, Moosic is sent in pursuit. But they are all pawns in a time game to conquer the Earth.

Priam’s Lens

WORLDS OF NO RETURNHumans had finally gone to the stars, as the dreamers had always hoped; celestial stretches of the galaxy became the playgrounds of a new spacefaring race. But now these worlds were being taken over by Titans, creatures with unimaginable, godlike powers, supremely indifferent to humanity’s survival. There was one chance to stop them. Helena, one of the Titan dominated planets, concealed an untapped, hundred year old weapon Priam’s Lens. Getting to Helena would not be difficult, but activating the lens was another matter. No one had ever returned from a Titan encounter. They simply disappeared status unknown. Now a small ragtag crew made up of scientists, warriors, a priest, and a stowaway naval officer Gene Harker were ready to pit themselves against the greatest power in the universe. With the help of a mad space pirate, they descended upon the deadly planet. They will succeed or die trying…

The Moreau Factor

THE EVOLUTION OF TERRORA 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…

I Have This Nifty Idea

I Have This Nifty Idea…
Now what do I do with it? This book contains outlines for science fiction and fantasy novels which real authors new and old used to sell their books to major publishing companies…
actual examples drawn from authors files, not idealized versions prepared just for a textbook. Whether you re a beginning writer looking to break into novels, an experienced professional seeking new tools and techniques to sell books, or a fan curious about the remarkable thought processes of some of the great genre writers of our time, you will find something here which enlightens, educates, and entertains you. I Have This Nifty Idea is the perfect addition to every library of books on writing. Includes work by Robert Silverberg, David Brin, Joe Haldeman, Mike Resnick, Robert J. Sawyer, Barry N. Malzberg, Kevin J. Anderson, Charles Sheffield, Katharine Kerr, Jack Dann, Jack L. Chalker, and many more.