The Black Rose by Thomas B. Costain (Tandem, 1971)

Walter of Gurnie, bastard son of the Earl of Lessford, fled from England to escape the enmity of his family and the bitterness of his love for the Lady Engaine.  Wealth and fame and a chance to claim the woman he loved were to be found only in the fabulous realms of the East, if he could win through the savage hordes of Kublai Khan's Mongol warriors, who ruled all of Asia from Persia to the ocean of Cathay.

Joining a caravan under the protection of Bayan of the Hundred Eyes, Walter found Maryam, a beauty as rare as the priceless Black Rose of the spice traders, destined for the Great Khan's harem, and a stronger reason than any other to lead him to the Celestial City of the Manji Emperor.

How Walter followed Maryam to fabled Kinsai, lost her and found her again, makes a superb and stirring romance, filled with the vivid colour and adventure of medieval England and the age-old empires of the East.

 And that just about sums up the entire book... so there's no need to read it.

(I do, however, love the 1970s hairstyles the models are sporting on the cover.  It seems that Vidal Sassoon was hairdresser of choice for the Mongol Hordes!)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (Scholastic, 1971)

 

The desperate men cling to the giant hulk in the water.  Suddenly its iron body begins to move - to sink!  They'll all be drowned!  But a panel slides open and the terrified men are drawn inside - inside Captain Nemo's incredible underwater ship.

Have you seen the exciting film based on this book?  (Walt Disney Productions)

Another version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea--this time abridged for young readers, and with the adventure aspects of the story played up.

(The "exciting film"  mentioned on the back cover of this book is the same film James Mason starred in in 1954.  It leads me to wonder how the children of 1971 were expected to watch it, long after the film's initial release but years before the advent of home videos.  Did Disney re-release at some stage?  Was it shown regularly on television?  I guess I'll never know for sure.)

The Leaves of Time by Neal Barrett Jr (Lancer, 1971)

 

the gorgon 

came from some time line far across the multiple worlds.  It moved among men, looking always as though it was one of them ... but it was not a man.  For the Gorgon was the destroyer of the universe, and with it came death, and destruction.  The alien could not tolerate other forms of life, and would not permit them to exist.  The first a world knew of the beast in its midst was when its citizens began dying... horribly ... and then it was already too late.  For there was no defense for a beast that could assume the shape and identity of any other creature ... until a man whose world had been destroyed was thrown across the time lines, to an Earth whose only defense was the gentle philosophy of a man long dead ...

a lancer science fiction original never before published

This cover is taking a trip.  An acid trip.  And "The Gorgon" appears to have eaten random capital letters on the back cover.

Cover aside, I  usually enjoy stories about time travel and parallel worlds, and this one is a good example of its kind.   There is a hero, a monster, and an interesting world sideways to this one.  What more could a reader want?

Barnabas, Quentin and the Magic Potion by Marilyn Ross (Paperback Library, 1971)

I got this at the "going out of business" sale of one of my favourite bookshops:

 

Barnabas predicts trouble for Collinwood when Nicholas Freeze, in whose antique shop Carolyn Stoddard works, discovers a centuries-old potion that promises eternal youth.  Soon after, Mr. Freeze's daughter Hazel tricked into taking the serum, dies.  Carolyn is grief-stricken over her friend's death.  Barnabas insists she stay on at the shop to watch Nicholas Freeze and his associates, one of whom Carolyn suspects is Quentin Collins, back at Collinwood in a disguise.

Then Carolyn sees Hazel's ghost.

She interprets this as a warning that Mr. Freeze has marked her for his next victim.  Barnabas still refuses to let her quit.

Has Barnabas made a fatal mistake by deliberately endangering Carolyn's life?  Or will his plan avenge Hazel's murder and put her spirit to rest?

Even the most dedicated fans of Dark Shadows have trouble deciding exactly what is and isn't canon.  That's not so surprising: the writers of the show made it up as they went along, and if they thought of something exciting that contradicted a previously established fact then the previously established fact got tossed out the window.  After all, they were writing for an ephemeral daily soap and who'd notice the contradictions (or even care if they did?)

So it's also not surprising that when somebody decided to commission a series of tie-in novels, they didn't take particular care to see that they conformed to the show.  What they did instead was give a brief description of Dark Shadows to a writer of Gothic romances who had never actually watched the series.  The results are ... interesting, let us say.  The names of most of the characters are the same as in the TV show (though some major characters have gone missing in action) but somehow their personalities are subtly wrong.  Their backstories differ from the backstories of the characters in the TV series and their physical descriptions certainly don't match!

After reading a few of them, I've come to the conclusion that the Dark Shadows novels exist in a parallel universe to the Dark Shadows TV series.  And yes, parallel universes are one of the things that are definitely canon in the Dark Shadows universe (along with time travel!)

(The cover photograph on this book is a still of Jonathan Frid in his role of Barnabas Collins.   Apart from that it doesn't really have anything to do with the story inside the book.)

The Time Masters by Wilson Tucker (Lancer, 1971)

Wilson Tucker is another one of my "forgotten favourites" --a science fiction author whose work I relish, but is barely remembered today.

THE YEAR THE FUTURE BEGAN

Was it 1940--when the United States made the fateful decision to proceed with the construction of an atomic bomb?  Was it 1957--when Sputnik finally cracked the door that led into space?  Or will it be that day in the very near future when the first starship probe seeks the nearest stars, in hope of finding intelligent life other than man?  The question is of the utmost importance to one man and one woman, castaway on this alien planet, Earth, by an unimaginable disaster--10,000 years ago!

  "An unimaginable disaster".  Oh please.  That's almost the same as telling us that the author couldn't think of a reason to strand his characters on Earth, so he fudged it.

In any case, it doesn't really matter, because the emphasis in this book is on what our 10,000 year old castaways are doing in the here and now--"now" being the near future the author has imagined.   The original publication date was 1953, so in some ways it's a very 1950s future filled with secrets and Cold War paranoia.

Of course, the 1953 copyright date makes complete nonsense of the reference to Sputnik on the back cover, because for obvious reasons Sputnik doesn't appear in the book!

The front cover on the other hand... it's a beautiful example of late sixties/early seventies design.  It depicts our ancient castaways falling to Earth in transparent spacesuits--or maybe they're indulging in a bit of nude free-falling disco instead.  Either way, I love it!