Streetlethal

Streetlethal by Steven Barnes
Ace Books, 1983
Price I paid: 90¢

Los Angeles is a teeming metropolis with a rotten core: Deep Maze, where the Thai-VI ghouls—the disease-spreading Spiders—roam. Here the all-powerful Ortegas rule over their empire of drugs, prostitution, and black-market human organs “donated” by their helpless victims.

All Aubry Knight, the former weightless boxing champion, wants is to be left alone. But you’re either with the Ortegas or against them, so they made his life a hell. First they tried to control his mind, then they tried to reduce him to “spare parts.”

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Saga of Lost Earths

Saga of Lost Earths by Emil Petaja
DAW Books, 1979 (Original copyright 1966)
Price I paid: 75¢

“The Force is from outside our time and space, from outside anything we can humanly comprehend. I conceive of a great machine somewhere—alien beyond human thought—sending out tendrils like electric impulses…In the days of the Kalevalan heroes, actually before our present cycle of civilization began, the Force was thrust in on Earth….”

Such is the theme of the first novel of Emil Petaja’s classic science fiction series based on the brilliant epic of Finnish lore, the Kalevala. A mighty saga of heroes and witches, of beings from the stars and beyond the stars, of powers that came to Earth and shaped humanity.

A student of the Kalevala, Petaja has created from its mind-stunning material a cycle of four novels—science fiction fantasy adventure of the highest order—retelling in the eyes of modern scientific conjecture the great worlds-shaking events that may be concealed by the folklore of an ancient and mysterious people.

SAGA OF LOST EARTHS, with which is included a complete second novel, THE STAR MILL, brings two of these unique sf classics back to today’s modern sf readers.

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The Quy Effect

The Quy Effect by Arthur Sellings
Berkley Medallion, 1968
Price I paid: 90¢

The Quy Effect

It was so powerful that in one instant it obliterated an entire building. Only the concrete floor and stumps of walls, like the evacuated ruins of some ancient city, gave any indication that there had been a building there at all.

The Quy Effect

Its implications were so revolutionary as to render all past scientific concepts obsolete…which only served to alienate the entire scientific community against its inventor, Adolphe Quy….

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The Winds of Gath

The Winds of Gath by E.C. Tubb
Arrow Books, 1976 (First Published in 1968)
Price I paid: none

Earl Dumarest. Space-wanderer, gladiator-for-hire, seeker for Man’s forgotten home.

Dumarest’s search begins in the ghost-world of Gath, where he becomes unwilling champion of the Matriarch of Kund, and must undergo a fight-to-the-death at stormtime.

Victory could give Dumarest his first clue to the whereabouts of the planet he fled from as a child—an obscure world scarred by ancient wars which lies countless light years from the thickly populated centre of the galaxy; a world no-one else in the inhabited universe believes exists:

Earth, birthplace of Man.

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The Reefs of Earth

The Reefs of Earth by R.A. Lafferty
Berkley Medallion Books, 1968
Price I paid: 90¢

A PLAGUE OF DEMONS

—that’s what the people of Lost Haven called the six children (seven, if you counted Bad John) of the Dulanty Family. They looked like normal Earth children…except when they flicked their ears like animals, or made their eyes glow with a green fire…and if you looked at them sideways they did look strangely like nightmarish gargoyles.

The truth is: these children are Pucas, aliens from a strange planet. And they have taken it upon themselves to reduce the world to a population of six (seven, if you count Bad John). Wishing will make it so, for by making up an appropriate death rhyme, they can destroy their victims.

These frightening, far-out kids take a black delight in destroying their neighbors, and the Earth people are defenseless against them….

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Syzygy

Syzygy Syzygy by Michael G. Coney
Ballantine Books, 1973
Price I paid: 90¢

The Planet Arcadia has six moons, describing erratic orbits. But once every fifty-two years, the Moons of Arcadia come together in a constellation that creates havoc on the surface—raging tides, storms…and worse.

For the inhabitants of Arcadia are themselves affected in some strange way by the unusual gravitic pulls. Or so it would seem. For few on this new, recently colonized world can remember exactly what happened fifty-two years before; those old enough to remember are curiously reticent.

And meanwhile the Moons grow closer…

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The Ayes of Texas

The Ayes of Texas by Daniel da Cruz
Del Rey/Ballantine Books, 1982
Price I paid: 90¢

It was 1994, but Gwillam Forte was an entrepreneur of the old school. Twenty-three disabled Veterans needed a reason to live, so he gave them a rusty hulk—the battleship U.S.S. Texas—and unlimited funds to make her beautiful and seaworthy in time for Independence Day, 2000.

But the world changed quickly and for the worse. By 1998, the Texas and her supermodern weapons were needed for duty far more important than guarding the National Monument in which she rode at anchor.

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The Glass of Dyskornis

The Glass of Dyskornis by Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron
Bantam Books, 1982
Price I paid: $1.25

For Ricardo Carillo, taking over the life of the swordsman Markasset on the desert world of Gandalara had its compensations: a strong, young body, a beautiful fiancee, and a mighty telepathic war-cat named Keeshah, who obeyed his every command. It also had its problems. Markasset had many enemies, and one was out for blood. So Ricardo and Keeshah left Raithskar to join the Sharith—the warrior brotherhood of sha’um cat-riders. But trouble followed, and he soon found himself in the company of a jealous lieutenant and a lovely but treacherous illusionist, on the track of a murderer who had stolen Gandalara’s most precious jewel.

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Copernick’s Rebellion

Copernick’s Rebellion by Leo A. Frankowski
Del Rey Books, 1987
Price I paid: 90¢

Heinrich Copernick and Martin Guibedo came to the States as penniless refugees after World War II. By 1999 they had made huge fortunes in the field of medical instrumentation. But Heiny and his Uncle Martin weren’t just filthy rich, they were also the world’s best gene engineers. And their latest inventions could free Humanity from want and oppressive governments forever. At least, that was the plan.

Imagine:
Free homes with all the furnishings and utilities!
Free food! Even free babysitters!
Heiny and Uncle Martin even thought they should give their inventions away. Free.

That’s when their troubles began.

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Crystal Phoenix

Crystal Phoenix by Michael Berlyn
Bantam Books, 1980
Price I paid: 90¢

In the brave new world of angels and procurers, rent-a-death prostitutes will let you sexually abuse them, and even hack them to pieces, for a fee. In anticipation of your own death, be sure to keep up payments on your life-crystal. After you die, you can again enjoy life to the hilt in a very attractive new body with your memories intact. Young body, old memories. Violent death is the ultimate repeatable pleasure.

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