Worlds collide in an epic adventure across time and space. Droste's eyes met mine as he said quietly, "As near as we can tell, from the time of your last genuine memory until now is about five hundred years." "Prince Casmir is fighting firedrakes in order to rescue Princess Delora when he loses consciousness and wakes up in a hospital bed. Things get really interesting when he finds out the real reason for his abilities. Demons, dragons, damsels in distress and other fantasy items in a science fiction novel would be a little hard to pull off unless you are that unusual writer. This is only one pair of shoes that Richard Purtill can wear and wear well." -Baryon-online.com This omnibus volume collects Richard Purtill's full-length SF novel, The Parallel Man, along with three previously unpublished SF stories set in the same universe of the Universal Commonwealth. Part two includes six fantasy stories originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, along with the previously unpublished fourth story in the Rus Quartet, based on Russian faerie tales.