IN SPACE the Russians and Americans squander billions on pointless projects

ON EARTH there is anarchy. Civilisation is breaking down.

Gangs of killers roam the rubbish-strewn streets. Fuel and food shortages have made the population desperate. Through the countryside bands of mystics calling themselves the Planet People chant their crazed beliefs.

Professor Bernard Quatermass, once a space pioneer himself, is an old man now. Disgusted and appalled by the state of the world, he has one final mission - to find and save his young granddaughter. She may have joined the Planet People. He follows as thousands of them converge on the ancient stone circle of Ringstone Round.

It is there that he witnesses an event that defies all sanity. For Quatermass it is the beginning of a long horror - a terrifying paranormal power has begun to afflict the Earth.

First published by Arrow in paperback and Hutchinson in hardback 1979.
© Nigel Kneale 1979
Cover photograph of John Mills as Professor Quatermass by courtesy of Thames Television

Through the lowering clouds came the face of Zardoz, the god who gave Zed and the Exterminators the right to mate, the means to kill. What else in life was meaningful?

Then Zed entered the Godhead seeking its mysteries, entering the world of the Vortex where Death was banished for ever, stirring the long-forgotten sexual desires of the Eternals, dividing them, reversing Time itself to find the true secret of the Tabernacle...

Zed - an unlikely champion against eternal evil...

First published 1974 by Pan Books Ltd, 33 Tothill Street, London SW1
© John Boorman 1974