The Sign of the Thunderbird by Ron Montana Manor Books, 1977 Price I paid: $7
FINDING HELL IN A HOLOCAUST…
…Captain Eason and Private Fox are blown from present time and space and hurled into the past.
Trading plutonium bombs for bows and arrows, the two fight their own army to lead an Indian uprising. They know the violence of yesteryear has led to an annihilation of the future and learn blood spilt for peace is blood spilt in vain. But they battle against history for justice and survival, knowing they can never win!
The Weapons Shop by A.E. van Vogt from The Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction ed. Asimov, Waugh, Greenberg Carroll & Graf, 1989 Originally published in…okay so that’s kinda complicated and I’ll get to it below Price I paid: $3
During the 1940s, the great names emerged in an eruption of talent. They formed the mould for the next three decades of science fiction and their writing is as fresh today as it was then.
Time Wants a Skeleton by Ross Rocklynne from The Mammoth Book of Golden Age Science Fiction ed. Asimov, Waugh, Greenberg Carroll & Graf, 1989 Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, June 1941 Price I paid: $3
During the 1940s, the great names emerged in an eruption of talent. They formed the mould for the next three decades of science fiction and their writing is as fresh today as it was then.
Times Without Number by John Brunner Ace Books, 1962 Price I paid: $6.99 ÷ 2
Traveling backwards in time, Don Miguel had to undo the errors and interruptions of other time-interlopers; he had to preserve the present. Even the most insignificant nudging of the past could entirely alter his world! And he suspected that this had already happened: that a maniacal genius crazed with a desire for nationalist vindication had plotted to alter the victorious outcome of the Spanish Armada of 1588—thus changing recorded history and perhaps even imperiling the mighty Spanish Empire of 1988!
If Don Miguel did not successfully intercede, when he came back to the present he might find a different world…a different time…a time in which he probably didn’t even exist!
Destiny’s Orbit by David Grinnell Ace Books, 1961 Price I paid: $6.99 (although you could half that because it’s an Ace Double?)
Though Ajax Calkins was wealthy enough to buy anything on Earth his heart desired, the one thing he wanted most was strictly forbidden. That was a world of his own—a planet, however small, which would be his private kingdom in the sky. The Earth-Mars Space Administration stood in his path. They would tolerate no such Eighteenth Century derring-do in the commercial and workaday interplanetary channels of the Twenty-First Century. Empire-building was out.
But when an offer from a bearded stranger opened the way to just such an adventure, Ajax leapt at the chance. In his luxury spacecraft Destiny he shot out through the inner planets to the tiny world that waited a king—and, unwittingly to a monster outer-planet empire that waited a detonator for a cosmic war.
The Road to Mars: A Post-Modem Novel by Eric Idle Pantheon Books, 1999 Price I paid: Some Amazon funny-money
What makes humans bark? Is the funny bone funny? What is the algebra of comedy? Did the sitcom originate with the ape?
Carlton is an android (a 4.5 Bowie Artificial Intelligence Robot) who works for Alex and Lewis, two comedians from the twenty-second century who travel the outer vaudeville circuit of the solar system known ironically as the Road to Mars. His problem is that although as a computer he cannot understand irony, he is attempting to write a thesis about comedy, its place in evolution, and whether it can ever be cured. And he is also studying the comedians of the late twentieth century (including obscure and esoteric acts such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus) in his search for the comedy gene.
In the meantime, while auditioning for a gig on the Princess Di (a solar cruise ship), his two employers inadvertently offend the fabulous diva Brenda Woolley and become involved in a terrorist plot against Mars, the home of Showbiz.
Can Carlton prevent Alex and Lewis from losing their gigs, help them overcome the love thing, and finally understand the meaning of comedy in the universe? Will a robot ever really be able to do stand-up? As Einstein might have said, nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of laughter.
The Godmakers by Don Pendleton Pinnacle Books, 1974 Originally published in 1970 Price I paid: none
Patrick Honor was possessed by PPS, Psychic Power Sources, which led him, even though he could not understand them. Beyond understanding was feeling, beyond feeling was knowing. Patrick Honor knew only that he had to go on.
He had to explore the unknown, to escape his body, to travel to the root octave of the Ninth Parallax. And he had to find Octavia, the unearthly beauty who beckoned him from another world.
There was so much to learn. What was the real power source? Was it sex, or science, or…love? What was the meaning of the number nine? Why was the President of the United States going to die on June 15, 1975?
Eighty-one days, exactly, after Patrick Honor’s death!
Dare by Philip José Farmer Ballantine books, 1965 Price I paid: $1 or 2, can’t remember
Jack Cage lived on the planet Dare. He knew that he was human, and that he was the oldest son of a wealthy human farmer. But he hardly dared admit to himself, let alone to his family, the keen interest he felt in the ‘native’ inhabitants of Dare—those spectacularly beautiful humanoid creatures whose magnficent hair, growing clear down to the base of the spine, had given them their name of “horstel.”
It was death for any human to consort with any horstel after they became adult. For the humans of Dare still lived by the standards and mores of three hundred years before when they had been mysteriously whisked away from Earth and brought to this new planet.
Except that Jack Cage suspected this was no mystery to the horstels…
“Nightmare Number Three” by Stephen Vincent Benét from The Metal Smile, ed. Damon Knight Belmont Science Fiction, 1968 Originally published in The New Yorker, July 27, 1935 Price I paid: none
“DO NOT FOLD, BEND, OR MUTILATE”
marked the beginning of our cybernetic society. How will it end?
The varied answers to that question have proved to be fertile ground for some of the greatest science fiction imaginations. But perhaps we shouldn’t look too closely into the future of cybernetics. It may be that the survival capacity of the thinking machine is greater than that of its maker…
How Much for Just the Planet? by John M. Ford Pocket Books, 1987 Price I paid: Either one or two bucks, I don’t remember
Dilithium. In crystalline form, the most valuable mineral in the galaxy. It powers the Federation’s starships…and the Klingon Empire’s battlecruisers. Now on a small, out-0f-the-way planet named Direidi, the greatest fortune in dilithium crystals ever seen has been found.
Under the terms of the Organian Peace Treaty, the planet will go to the side best able to develop the planet and its resources. Each side will contest the prize with the prime of its fleet. For the Federation—Captain James T. Kirk and the starship Enterprise. For the Klingons—Captain Kaden vestai-Oparai and the Fire Blossom.
Only the Direidians are writing their own script for the contest—a script that propels the crew of the Enterprise into their strangest adventure yet!
