Showing posts with label Ace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ace. Show all posts

Friday, April 13, 2018

Computer War and Code Duello by Mack Reynolds (Ace Double, 1973)

Ooh, look, it's an Ace Double!


THE ODDS WERE RIGHT FOR VICTORY
The problem with computer warfare is that the computer is always logical while the human enemy is not—or doesn't have to be.
And that's what the Betastani enemy were doing—nothing that the Alphaland computers said they would.  Those treacherous foemen were avoiding logic and using such unheard-of devices as surprise and sabotage, treason and trickery.  They even had Alphaland's Department of Information believing Betastani propaganda without even realising it.
Of course he still thought he was being loyal to Alphaland, because he thought one and one must logically add up to two.  And that kind of thinking could make him the biggest traitor of all.



Section G, the top secret security unit of United planets, had a special problem on their hands with the situation on Firenze.  And for that special problem , they gathered together the most unusual squad in Section G's unusual history.  It included:
A research scientist who could bend steel bars like rubber band—
A middle-aged lady with total total recall— 
An interplanetary cowboy whose bullwhip was deadlier than a ray gun— 
A brazen young lady acrobat who looked like an eight year-old kid— 
A mild young man who never lost a bet in his life— 
And the best pickpocket that ever lived. 
But Firenze with its CODE DUELLO  was to prove a match for the lot of them!

A late entry in the Ace Doubles series by an author with a sense of fun and a knowledge of history.  (Sometimes too much knowledge of history, as he stops to explain the historical parallels with what his characters are doing.)  However, for the most part these short novels are romps, blending the spy genre with space opera.  If you're looking for some light reading and a little bit of relief from the real world, you could do far worse than a book by Mack Reynolds.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

The Green Brain by Frank Herbert (Ace, 1966)

An unexpected treasure from the Green Shed:


In an overpopulated world seeking living room in the jungles, the International Ecological Organization was systematically exterminating the voracious insects which made these areas uninhabitable.  Using deadly foamal bombs and newly developed vibration weapons, men like Joao Martinho and his co-workers fought to clear the green hell of Mato Grosso.

But somehow those areas which had been completely cleared were becoming reinfested, despite the impenetrable vibration barriers.  And tales came out of the jungles... of insects mutated to incredible sizes... of creatures who seemed to be men, but whose eyes gleamed with the chitinous sheen of insects...

Here is a vividly different science-fiction novel by the author of DUNE.
Every once in a while I pick up a book and I find myself thinking, "What was the author on when he wrote this?"

Need I add that this is one of those books?

It was probably at least partly inspired by Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring, a study of the ecological effects of pesticides which first appeared in 1962.  (In fact the eco-rebels mentioned in The Green Brain are called Carsonites—clearly a tribute to The Silent Spring!)  A story about pesticides and overpopulation?  That was both relevant and timely in the mid-sixties.  It fits neatly into the tradition of science fiction both as speculative fiction and as dreadful warning: If you keep doing this, this will happen....

On the other hand... things get weird in this book.  In some ways it reminds me of those "nature takes its revenge" movies that became popular in the 1970s, but "nature" in The Green Brain includes sentient hive minds capable of creating imitation human beings to act as their agents in a plot to take over the world.   There is simply no rational way to get from "here" (overuse of pesticides) to "there" (sentient insects)--and to be fair, Frank Herbert doesn't even try.

At least the heroes of seventies "B" movies only had to deal with plagues of tarantulas or incursions of giant rabbits!

Lastly I've got mention that I'm disappointed with the cover of this paperback.  It's messy, a bit generic, and doesn't convey anything in particular about the characters, the plot or the setting of the story.  The covers of science fiction books went through a bit of a rough patch in the late sixties after the glorious pulpiness of the fifties.  Fortunately for lovers of the genre, things picked up in the seventies!

Friday, June 23, 2017

The Escape Orbit by James White (Ace, 1965)

One of my Lifeline Bookfair treasures!


STRANDED ON A PLANET OF MONSTERS

When the survivors of his starship were taken prisoner by the insect-creatures against whom Earth had fought a bitter war for nearly a century, Sector Marshal Warren expected to be impounded in a prison camp like those the Earthmen maintained.  But the "Bugs" had a simpler method of dealing with prisoners--they dumped them on an uninhabited planet, without weapons or tools, and left them to fend for themselves against the planet's environment and strange monsters.  A "Bug" spaceship orbited above, guarding them.
Escape was impossible, the "Bugs" told them--but it was absolutely necessary, for reasons Warren couldn't tell even his own men.
The creature on the cover is a "battler", which is.. well, let's go with the author's description:
If it looked like anything at all, Warren thought, it was an elephant—a large, low-slung elephant with six legs and two trunks which were much more than twenty feet long.  Below the point where the trunk joined the massive head a wide, loose mouth gaped open to display three concentric rows of shark-like teeth, and above the trunks its two tiny eyes were almost hidden by protective ridges of bone and muscle.  Between the eyes a flat, triangular horn, razor-edged fore and aft, came to a sharp point, and anything which had been caught by the trunks and was either too large or not quite dead was impaled on the horn while the trunks tore it to pieces of a more manageable size.  Because it had no natural enemies and was too big and awkward to profit from camouflage, its hide was a blotchy horror of black and green and livid yellow.
—Page 64.

Now how is a self-respecting artist supposed to depict that?

Sunday, December 4, 2016

The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Ace, 1972)

Lifeline was having a pre-Christmas mini-bookfair, and I found this one one of the tables:


THE
MONSTER
MEN

Number Thirteen was what they called him--the latest and best of Dr. Von Horn's attempts to make life from lifeless chemicals.  He found himself an almost-human on Von Horn's hideaway jungle island off the coast of Borneo.  He saw the monsters that preceded him and grew used to those hideous mockeries of humanity.

Not until Number Thirteen met the American girl who was Von Horn's unwilling prisoner did he realize how different he was from the others.

Because, monster or not, he turned against his master and threw in his lot with the girl and his friends--in a desperate attempt to escape the island of terror.
 Or, in soap opera parlance: Can a Frankenstein's monster find love with a mad scientist's beautiful daughter?  This was first published in 1913, and alas, it shows.

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Alien From Arcturus by Gordon R. Dickson / The Atom Curtain by Nick Boddie Williams (Ace, 1956)

More from my collection of Ace Doubles!


Johnny Parent was driven by a furious anger--anger against the cocky Aliens from outer space and anger against the Company which had hired him to build the space drive which would lift the Quarantine against Earth.

It was a tough problem--made tougher by the Company's double-dealing.  And Johnny didn't relish the thought of cracking it with a whip on his back and a knife at his throat.

Then he stumbled upon an eccentric young playboy, his pretty but ambitious secretary and a weird little Alien with collosal strength.  Together they plotted the piratical flight into space which would earn Earth its place in the Universe.

But they had to hurry--because the Company's strong men were right behind them--and the solar time clock was running out!


For two hundred and seventy years America had been totally cut off from the rest of the world by an impenetrable wall of raging atomic fury.  To the frightened countries of the Old World, what had once been the greatest of all powers was now the most fearful of all mysteries.

No man ached to know what lay behind that frightful barrier more than Emmett O'Hara, restless air-sentinel of the International Patrol--whose American ancestors had been stranded in Britain the day the Atom Curtain was raised.

Then on December 20, in the year 2230, while on routine patrol, O'Hara did the impossible.  He broke through the barrier--and lived!  But the full story of O'Hara's discoveries and adventures in Atomic America is so utterly breath-taking that readers are sure to rate it a classic of modern science fiction.

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Vulcan's Hammer by Philip K. Dick / The Skynappers by John Brunner (Ace 1960)

The thing about the Lifeline Bookfairs is you never know what you're going to find.  So my heart skipped a beat and I think I gave a little "squee!" of happiness when I visited the bookfair one time and found rows of Ace Doubles spread out on the science fiction table:


CHOOSE - THE DEADLY TRUTH OR THE VITAL LIE!

Vulcan 3 was the supreme head of Unity, the perfect world government that had evolved out of chaos and war.  Vulcan 3 was rational, objective and unbiased ... as only a machine could be!

Theoretically there should have been nothing but peace under such a rule--and for a century or so there was.  Until the crackpots, the superstitious, the religious fanatics found themselves a new leader to follow.

Then the discontent began to explode again.  But this time there was a third side involved, a machine that could not accept any emotional viewpoints.  The people of the world began to realize that they had created a vicious paradox: they had to make peace between themselves or be stamped out by the ever-growing claws of VULCAN's HAMMER.
(Need I point out that you don't strike things with the claws of a hammer?)

 

PAWN OF THE STAR PLOTTERS

When Ivan Wright stepped out of his mountain cabin, rifle in hand, to investigate the sound of a strange helicopter, he stepped right into the middle of a galactic crisis.

For the crew of that odd aircraft were not men such as he'd ever seen before--and when he tried to oppose them, he found himself hurled uncontrollably into oblivion.

He awoke to find himself considered a kidnapped barbarian from a backward planet in a galaxy of advanced civilizations--yet one who somehow held in his own hands the ey to all their futures!
Everyone has heard of Philip K. Dick.  All his books are still in print (even the ones that haven't been made into movies).  So I'm going to write about John Brunner instead...

 In the late 60s and early 70s John Brunner started writing highly regarded, socially and environmentally aware science fiction (Stand on Zanzibar won a Hugo Award, and  The Sheep Look Up and The Jagged Orbit were both nominated for Nebulas).  However I must confess to a decided... affection for the space operas he wrote earlier.  (Many of them were published as Ace Doubles.)   Brunner didn't suddenly start writing well in the late sixties--he honed his skills producing potboilers from the early fifties onward.  So yay! for well-written escapism.  These books are excellent entertainment if you can get your hands on them.

Friday, December 11, 2015

Way-Farer by Dennis Schmidt (Ace, 1981)

I honestly can't remember where I found this one--my best guess is either at one of the Salvos Stores or at the Green Shed.


According to every reading it was a paradise planet--a warm and fecund world far more desirable than the teeming, polluted warrens of the planet-city Earth had become.  Yet when the last of the one-way transports had landed its cargo of Pilgrims, the men of Earth were to learn of a danger that no machine could detect, and against which no machine could defend them--the Mushin, mental entities that stimulate and amplify the dark streak of violence that lies near the core of every human being.

Seven generations would pass before a descendant of the scattered remnant of the original colonists would be ready to face the power of the Mushin.  But first he would have to learn to wield the weapon that is no weapon--and that only when there is no Will, there is a Way...

His name is Jerome.  This is his story.  He is the

WAY-FARER.
 I'm afraid I wasn't very taken with this book.  It wasn't bad--just not very good, either.

No, what fascinated me was the weirdness that is this cover.   Let's ignore for the moment the fact that the central figure appears to be floating somewhere in orbit, and take a closer look at it.  And... it becomes apparent that somebody has done a cut and paste job, because that head does not belong on that body.  Not only is it too small and perched on a neck too long and slender for a frame that size, but it also has an oddly feminine jawline to go with that cute page-boy haircut.

I can come to only one conclusion.  Clearly the cover illustration was originally intended for another book entirely--one about a mad scientist performing experimental head transplants!