Book excerpt: A doorway to a strange, parallel world - that looks surprisingly (and rather disappointingly) like our own. A historian seeking evidence of ESP in Victorian London stumbles on a group who condemn him, as a man who knows too much, to a ghastly fate. And a man who discovers his mother is older than he thought. Much older. It's all here in these sixteen stories, ranging from the macabre to the downright zany. Written over a period of twenty years, these curious tales reflect one man's love of the sci-fi and horror worlds. From the moment he picked up a lurid copy of "Princess of Mars," the author was hooked. There's a spoof of the EC genre where zombies talk dirty and a tip of the hat to the Weekly World News. There are gruesome stories that dredge up ancient magic from darker times. And there are tales of glittering starships and heroes with laser guns dangling from the hip. This is the world where science and fantasy mingle, a world where. the spaceship lands by the haunted castle.