Swan Songs by Brian Stableford Subject: Science Fiction Publisher: Big Engine (UK) Edition Our Price inc. p&p Status trade paperback, 647pp, ISBN 1903468043, 2002 N/A out of print

Stableford's space pilot Grainger is a laconic anti-hero who could easily be played by Bogart, circa Casablanca -- dry one-liners and all. Aboard one of the most charismatic vessels ever imagined -- the marvelous Hooded Swan -- Grainger and co. plunge into a series of bleak, melancholic and at times decidedly surreal galactic venues. Less space opera, more space blues. Alastair Reynolds

A quirkily entertaining blend of space opera and hardboiled private eye story. David Pringle, Ultimate Guide to SF

Early Stableford means above all the Grainger books. Roz Kaveney, Interzone

Brian Stableford's Hooded Swan series was first published in the 1970s and it redefined the genre of space opera.

After years of surviving in his wrecked ship on an unnamed, desolate world, Grainger is charged for the cost of his rescue and finds himself unable to pay. Salvation comes when he is indentured as pilot of the revolutionary starship Hooded Swan and thrust into a series of gripping adventures in the service of New Alexandria. With only his wits and the not entirely reliable help of an alien mind parasite to call upon, in each novel Grainger and the Hooded Swan are pitted against a new puzzle or menace. And all the time he is paying off his fine, bit by bit, until he can call himself a free man again.

Here, for the first time, all six Hooded Swan novels are published in one omnibus edition:

• Halcyon Drift
• Rhapsody in Black
• Promised Land
• The Paradise Game
• The Fenris Device
• Swan Songs