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

Friday, April 29, 2016

The Astronauts Must Not Land / The Space-Time Juggler by John Brunner (Ace, 1963)

More from my collection of Ace Doubles:


It was a time of glory and it was a time of fear.  After two years, Starventure, the first spaceship to reach the stars beyond our solar system, was returning to Earth and all the world rejoiced.  But it was to be a shallow triumph, for on the day Starventure landed, a huge monster appeared in the sky above southern Chile, and the terror that gripped mankind was the worst in the annals of recorded history.

Scientists were convinced that only the crew of the spaceship could unravel the mystery of the apparition.  But, when the ship's latches were opened it was discovered that the astronauts had been transformed into six-limbed creatures with twisted and warped bodies--and they knew no more about their fate than the terror stricken people of Earth.
You'd think a story about returning astronauts (in a craft named "Starventure" no less!) would be full of Space Age optimism, but no.  Strangely, this is not the first book of this era I've read where aliens have done terrible and inexplicable things to human astronauts.   It seems that sixties was as much about "things man was never meant to know" as "boldly going where no man has gone before!"


Andalvar of the planet Argus, king of an interstellar empire, was dead and fear ruled in his absence.  The dread of a power struggle between the treacherous Andra, the "Black Witch", and the beautiful Princess Sharla showered panic upon the people and threatened to crumble the starry realm to dust.

But their powers were restricted to the present, and before either could sit on the throne, they would have to come to grips with the man from the future who held the destiny of the universe in his hand.

His name: Kelab the Conjurer--THE SPACE-TIME JUGGLER.
It's nice to see that the blurb-writer has used the correct "interstellar empire" rather than "galactic empire", or even worse, "intergalactic empire"!

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.