The Right Hand of Dextra, and, The Gods of Xuma by David J. Lake (DAW, 1977 and 1978)

TO THE PURPLE BORN

The key to life on Earth is the DNA helix, which determines all the characteristics of every living thing.  The helix, a series of molecules within the life cell, is a spiral—with a left-hand turn.

The planet called Dextra could have been a duplicate of Earth.  It teemed with life, both fauna and flora.  But on Dextra the helix of life had a right-hand thread.  And there could be no viable combination between the two life forms, the native and the invading Terran. 

So it became a battle on the part of the colonists to uproot the native Dextran ecology—purple plants and beasts with surprising intelligence—and replace it with Earth-born green.  But the planet fought back in its own way.  And the result is a science fiction novel that is unusual, exciting, and highly original. 

(I'm tempted to make a joke about Dextra's right hand, but all I'll say is that there's some very strategically placed vegetation on this cover.  Moving right along...) 

BARSOOM REVISITED?

If the universe is infinite, it follows that there may be somewhere real physical worlds that duplicate those of the imagination.  And when Tom Carson caught sight of the third planet of 83 Eridani he recognized at once its resemblance to that imaginary Mars called "Barsoom" of the ancient novelist Burroughs.

Of course there were differences, but even so this planet was ruddy, criss-crossed with canals, and its inhabitants were redskinned, fought with swords, and had many things superficially in common with the fantasy Mars of the John Carter adventures. 

But there were indeed vital variations that would eventually trip up the self-deceived science-fiction-reading travellers from 24th century Earth.  Therin hangs a tale that will delight and surprise everyone who enjoys the thrill of exploring a new world, especially one that seems peculiarly familiar.

(Why is our hero wearing ski boots on a desert planet?)

By the 1970s paperback covers had grown exceedingly dull—except for the genres of fantasy, science fiction and (oddly enough) gothic romance.  These DAW covers with their bright colours and exotic creatures are definitely eye-catching!

Return to the Stars by Edmond Hamilton (Lancer, 1969)

Found at a charity book fair.  Someone had evidently been keen on traditional space opera, because I managed to find a number of vintage paperbacks like this one.

KINGDOM OF THE STARS

John Gordon, twentieth century Earthman, is torn from his own time to a far distant future--a time when the entire galaxy is inhabited.  But men do not rule the future; our race is only one among thousands, and many of those thousands are sworn enemies of humanity!  Gordon, man of the past, is forced to form alliances with the men of the future in a desperate battle to save the human race from final annihilation...

The cover is all 1960s, but the stories inside date from 1947!

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.

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!

Skylark of Valeron and Skylark DuQuesne by E.E. "Doc" Smith (Pyramid, 1967)

The last two volumes in the "Skylark Series"!

STAR WANDERER

As the mighty spaceship Skylark roved the intergalactic world, scientist Richard Seaton and his companions uncovered a world of disembodied intelligences.  A world of four dimensions where time was insanely distorted and matter obeyed no terrestial laws... where three-dimensional intellects were barely sufficient to thwart invisible mentalities!

My Ally, The Enemy

Dick Seaton and Marc DuQuesne are the deadliest enemies in the Universe -- their feud has blazed among the stars and changed the history of a thousand planets.  but now a threat from outside the Galaxy drives them into a dangerous alliance as hordes of strange races drive to a collision with mankind!

Seaton and DuQuesne fight and slave side by side to fend off the invasion -- as Seaton keeps constant, perilous watch for DuQuesne's inevitable double-cross!

More adventures of Dick Seaton and his merry chums, as they blithely invent new and improved weapons of mass destruction and impulsively leap into interstellar wars.  I could suggest that this is a metaphor for something--but instead I'll just say that the Boys' Own Adventure style of this series and some of the views expressed by the author jarred upon my modern sensibilities.

Like the previous two books in the Skylark series I bought these at the Woden Seniors' Club book fair.  They were printed a few years earlier than The Skylark of Space and Skylark Three and it shows in the cover design.  It also shows in the cover price--which rose by a whole fifteen cents between 1967 and 1970!

The Skylark of Space and Skylark Three by E.E. "Doc" Smith (Pyramid, 1970)

I went to a charity book fair the other weekend.  Someone had evidently been keen on traditional space opera, because I managed to find a number of vintage paperbacks containing early science fiction reprints:

IT STARTED ON EARTH...

Scientist Richard Seaton had discovered the secret of complete release of ultimate energy--the key to exploration of the Universe.  The powerful, unscrupulous DuQuesne, backed by a great industrial combine, tried every means to gain the secret.

... it ended in space, when Seaton, DuQuesne, and three others--two of them women--were marooned, countless light-years from Earth, with only one chance in a million of ever returning!

OSNOME

The first of the mighty Skylark spacecraft took Dick Seaton and Mart Crane on a fantastic tour of the galaxy and to the strange planet of Osnome.  Skylark Two returned them to Earth.  Now in this next adventure, they voyage again to Osnome to meet the deadly threat of war.

On the way, in the deeps of space, Seaton and Crane meet an alien spaceship.  From it they discover a danger more deadly and immediate than any planetary battle.  In a desperate race to mobilize the scientific talent of a score of planets, Seaton makes himself into a "superman" of knowledge and drives toward his goal of building the greatest spaceship of all time--Skylark Three!

Look up in the sky!  It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... a cosmic beach ball!  Seventies cover art meets very old-fashioned space opera, of the sort where men wield "rays" and women need rescuing.   

The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov (Panther, 1958)

A gift from a friend who knows me far too well:

 

A CRIME THAT COULD INFLAME A GALAXY...

A Spaceman--a specialist in robotics--has been murdered.  Lije Baley, a plain-clothesman of his age, combs the huge cave of steel for a lone fanatic, for a murderer--for the solution to an almost perfect crime.

One of the two men on the cover is a robot—I'm not sure, but I think it is the one who is unconscious.  Don't quote me on that, though!

Isaac Asimov was one of the Big Three names of the "golden age" of science fiction (the others were Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein).  Asimov is most famous for inventing the Three (fictional) Laws of Robotics:
  

"A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law."

 In The Caves of Steel he combines a science fiction novel with a detective story, a combination of genres that for some reason seldom works.  And yet it works in this one.  I put it down to the fact Asimov creates an interesting futuristic setting for his story, then makes it integral to that story rather than using it as window-dressing.  His detectives move through an overcrowded urban world where people huddle under domes and hate and fear the outdoors—and robots.  It's an almost film noir-ish setup—except Asimov was far too prissy and logically-minded to indulge in the sort of sex and violence common in most hardboiled fiction!

Need I add that one of the detectives is a robot and the resolution of this mystery lies in the world outside the domes?

I have another copy of this—also a Panther Book—but alas, it was published in the 1970s, and the cover isn't nearly as interesting.

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?

Out of My Mind by John Brunner (NEL, 1968)

A very battered paperback found in the Green Shed:

 

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE... A wide canvas--and a wide group of stories.  All the way from the downright vicious to the most gently tender: stories rich with humour, ripe with passion.

Just two from man's short past--a blink in time.  A few more for the present we all live in.  And more from the long reach of the future.

Here is a brilliant collection of stories representing the amazing talent of John Brunner.  Read them and discover why the author is fast becoming one of the most popular science fiction writers of the sixties.

The New English Library's science fiction paperbacks had some fascinatingly odd cover art—including this one.  It really doesn't have much to do with the stories inside, all of which were either set in the present or the very near future on Earth.  It does give an impression of strangeness, however, which is perhaps the best come-on you can make to a potential buyer of science fiction!

The Red Planet by Charles Chilton (Pan, 1960)

 

Blast off! to new heights of adventure and excitement

with JET MORGAN and the crewmen of the spaceship DISCOVERY, made famous in Charles Chilton's thrill-packed BBC radio series. 

In this book, Jet leads the first fleet of rocketships to reach across space from the Moon to the 'Red Planet', Mars.  But right from the beginning the expedition was ill-omened.  Uncanny happenings were to test their courage to breaking point, both on the long space flight and on the hostile planet itself.

Nerve-racking sequel to JOURNEY INTO SPACE

"Jet Morgan"!  Now there's a name that really belongs in a mid-century space opera.  And what better adventure for a mid-century space hero than to battle nefarious aliens on Mars?

Jet made his debut on BBC radio in 1953.  The Red Planet is a novelization of his second serial (also on radio) broadcast in 1954.   Both serials were immensely popular in their day--pulling a bigger audience in their timeslots than television.   They're available to download at Old Time Radio Download for anyone who's interested.

The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Pan, 1953)

Found on the "Vintage" table at last weekend's Lifeline Bookfair:

THE LOST WORLD, one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous novels, is the story of four men's expedition to a remote plateau in South America, cut off from the surrounding country by unscaleable perpendicular cliffs.  Here, in an area the size of the English county of Sussex, strange creatures long extinct in the outside world have survived from prehistoric times, including the huge pterodactyl, half bat, half bird; the reptile-headed iguanodon, forty feet high; the terrifying carnivorous dinosaur; and the horrible ape-men.  The adventures of Professors Challenger and Summerlee, Lord John Roxton, and the journalist Malone are breathlessly exciting, and lead up to the climax of their return to London to confound their sceptical critics.
The idea for the tale was suggested to the author by the fossilized footprints of a prehistoric monster found near his home on the Sussex Downs; the then read Professor Ray Lankester's book on extinct animals.  He took the name of Professor Challenger from the wooden ship Sir Charles Wyville Thomson (the zoology professor whose lectures he'd attended at Edinburgh University) had dredged the seas for new forms of animal life; but he gave Challenger the black beard and booming voice of another former Edinburgh professor.  Conan Doyle enjoyed the character whom he thus created so much that he imitated him in real life, and, according to his biographer, Mr. John Dickson Carr, "made Challenger a completely uninhibited version of himself."  The Lost World, first serialized in the Strand Magazine, was an immediate success and was later filmed.

 Pan started publishing paperbacks in 1947, but this is the earliest example of their output I've found so far.    The back cover reads less like a blurb than a mini-essay!

Rocket Invasion by King Lang (Curtis Books, 1950)

I found this on a stall at the Sunday Markets in Port Adelaide:

 

... a digest-sized publication so down-market that it doesn't even bother with a back cover blurb.  Instead it gives us an advertisement for this:

 

Glama, the Oriental Charm of Luck and Love!

Turning from the advertisements to the story, Rocket Invasion follows the adventures of a former Space Corps officer with the odd name of Chan Houston, his inexplicably hot girlfriend Loraine Castle, and his somewhat smug android, Norbert.   (Maybe he's overcompensating for his name.  Who on Earth names an android "Norbert", anyway?)

Norbet is clearly the brains of the outfit, a sort of Jeeves with Gears.  It's just as well someone is on the ball, because Earth is about to be invaded by a force of blue, sword-wielding humanoids.  And though the story is halted several times to tell us androids cannot lie--Norbert spends a lot of his time telling plausible porkies to the aliens who have Houston and company prisoner.

King Land was a pseudonym for George Hay, John W. Jennison and E.C. Tubb. 

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.

The Mind Brothers by Peter Heath (Magnum Books, 1967)

 

Crossroads in Time

The future of life on Earth is at stake ... now.  A few days, hours, or minutes ago civilization took the wrong turn.  Can the fatal mistake be corrected?  Can the future be changed?

Jason Starr, genius, found himself the focal point of a complex Communist plot against America...and as a thoroughly discredited scientist, there seemed nothing he could do about it.

Not until he was joined by Adam Cyber, that is.  Adam Cyber: last man--or superman--to survive in that bleak future; and Jason Starr's Mind Brother.  Cyber returned through millenia to try to change Earth's course.  And when the Mind Brothers met, computers went crazy, all predictions were worthless--and a new kind of spy was born!

This book is the weird love child of the 1960s spy craze and science fiction.   A time traveller comes from the far future to prevent the world being taken over by AI... and tags along on an adventure involving secret weapons, beautiful double agents, underground cults in the back-streets of Delhi and Communist mad scientists working from hidden bases in Tibet.   In other words, this book has everything but the kitchen sink (and if a kitchen sink had been included you could bet on it being some kind of Bondian espionage device!)  And at the end of it all, I still couldn't figure out the action related to the dystopian future our time traveller was trying to prevent.

The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner (Orbit, 1977)

From the Green Shed:

'AND NOW A POLICE FLASH,' said the radio.  'RUMOURS THAT THE SUN IS OUT AT SANTA YUEZ ARE WITHOUT FOUNDATION.'

Pollution--social, moral, political and industrial--is the key to the United States of the not too distant future.  The seas are foul, the rivers choked, the land is poisoned by excessive use of insecticides, no one moves out of doors without a 'filter mask' and the sun is permanently obscured.

John Brunner chronicles a full year of this situation, following the lives of a diverse range of characters from all levels of society.  Many are resigned, a few are seeking new ways for mankind to survive, but the one man whom millions believe has the solution cannot be found.

The Sheep Look Up is more than sf speculation, it is terrifyingly realistic.  It is, indeed, 'a fascinating and brilliant profile of the utter technological hell we are working so hard to create' (Sunday Times).

 1970s science fiction had a tendency to be dystopian.  This example is one of Brunner's best-regarded books, having been nominated for a Nebula Award as "Best Novel" in 1972.

Neutron Star by Larry Niven (Sphere, 1972)

 

Larry Niven is one of the brightest new talents in s.f. and the title story of this collection won him the 1966 Hugo Award.  The seven other stories are thronged with superbly original characters and whole races of creatures such as grog, thrint and bandersnatchi, inhabiting worlds like LookItThat, Down, Jinx--indeed an entire galaxy of planets with their own histories, ecologies and epochs.

A collection of short stories written in Larry Niven's award-winning prime.  What a pity they're contained in a book with an ugly cover that conveys nothing.   Would it have been too much to ask for the cover artist to have depicted some of those "grog, thrint and bandersnatchi" instead of this naked muscleman floating in space? 

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.)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (Fontana, 1955)

 

A remarkable thing about 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA is that it forecast the submarine some thirty years before this class of warship was invented.  It is strange, too, that when Jules Verne wrote this book the world should be on the threshold of a new era of steam and electricity.  For now, as we enter the atomic age we find ourselves preoccupied with the same fascinating and frightening dilemma--the onslaught of science on Nature.

This exciting story, narrated with all the gripping realism of modern science fiction, opens with an eminent French scientist, his servant and a famous harpooner embarking on a U.S. warship in search of the unknown monster at large in the oceans.  In the disaster of their first encounter with it, the three men are washed overboard and are taken prisoners in what is revealed to them as a monster submarine, propelled by electricity generated from the sea itself.  They also meet the proud and mysterious Captain Nemo, whose grievance against mankind has caused him to seek solitude in the depths--a forceful character brilliantly portrayed by James Mason in the current film success.

Wow!   I have memories of reading this one many years ago as a child.  This edition is prefaced by a Very Serious Introduction to the work, touting its literary credentials, but I remember the book as an adventure story.  I wanted a submarine of my own after reading it!

(Interestingly, the back cover of this paperback mentions James Mason in the 1954 film adaption of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but there is no other hint that this might be a movie tie-in!)

Invanders of Space by Murray Leinster (Tandem, 1968)

Another book found rummaging around the dusty shelves of The Green Shed:

 

Things were quiet that night in the space port.  Then the 'Theban' arrived without warning, bringing with it a surly crew, led by a blustering captain, Larson...

The 'Theban' was old, propelled by a totally obsolescent interplanetary drive.  The only way Larson could get it off the ground was to kidnap the young engineer, Horn, who he hoped could at least manage to keep the ship in flight until it reached its final rendezvous.

Their destination was the spaceship 'Danae'--a ship loaded with millions in space credit notes.  If Horn wanted to save the 'Danae' from the onslaughts of the space invaders, he had his work cut out for him...

"Space Invaders".  I'd had hopes that this was based on the video game, but it was in fact about space pirates. It's a workmanlike story by an author who began his career back in the 1910s.

Unfortunately, the cover doesn't convey the idea of "space pirates" at all.   The astronauts in this picture could be doing anything out there: exploring, making necessary repairs to their ship, sightseeing.  I get the impression the artist came up with this generic painting after hearing the word "space" in his commission, and not bothering learn anything more!

The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle (John Murray, 1960)

If you take the trouble of searching the dusty shed part of The Green Shed you can find some amazing stuff:

 

On a high plateau in South America a group of explorer-scientists led by the famous Professor Challenger discovered a huge tropical marsh surviving from prehistoric times inhabited by giant reptiles and the grotesque half-ape forerunners of man.  In the face of fantastic dangers they capture one of the flying reptiles and bring it back to London, where it escapes and causes havoc.  The Lost World was the first of the full-length novels of this kind, and its breathtaking combination of science and fiction and real characters keeps it without a rival.

Everyone knows Arthur Conan Doyle as the creator of Sherlock Holmes.  Less well known are his ventures into writing science fiction and fantasy.  The Lost World (1912) is the first in a series of three novels featuring the bullish and eccentric Professor Challenger: the others being The Poison Belt (1913) an end-of-the-world story, and The Land of Mist (1926) a rather too-credulous look at the claims of spiritualism.

This first novel is literally a "lost world" story, with Professor Challenger and his band of intrepid explorers finding an isolated plateau  in South America inhabited by dinosaurs.  Evidently South America was to the average person of 1912 as outer space is today--a place where anything could happen, and strange things  could be found!