Space Cops: Mindblast

Space Cops: Mindblast by Diane Duane and Peter Morwood
Avon Books, 1991
Price I paid: $1.95

HYPER-2: A dangerous new drug manufactured in zero gravity—an irresistible essence that enriches every thought, enhances every sensation.

Officer Lon Salonikis discovered the dark secret behind the Hyperprocess—a conspiracy of mind-altering proportions buried in the deviant quarter Freedom II. And now Salonikis has been terminated.

Only Solar Patrol Rangers Even Glyndower and Joss O’Bannion are fearless enough to venture downlevel—courting certain death to unmask their former partner’s assassin…and to learn the terrible price of the ultimate ecstasy.

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The Joan-of-Arc Replay

The Joan-of-Arc Replay by Pierre Barbet
Translated by Stanley Hochman
DAW Books, 1978
Price I paid: $1.25

It was the contention of one galactic historian that similar planets must have similar histories. It was the contention of another that this did not imply identical histories. The challenge could only be settled by actual testing in the infinity of the cosmos.

The computer came up with the story of Joan of Arc on the Planet Earth. Programmed anew, it produced a similar world, the Planet Noldaz of Sigma 32, with a human race rising from medievalism among whom a maid would appear to lead her country’s knights on a war of liberation.

The question: was she inevitably doomed to die at the stake, as Joan had before her? Did identical situations always mean identical conclusions?

Pierre Barbet, master of alternative histories and parallel worlds, spins a marvelous science fiction novel out of one of the great enigmas of history.

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The Virgin and the Dinosaur

The Virgin and the Dinosaur by R. García y Robertson
Avon Books, 1996
Price I paid: $1.50

In a far-future Megapolis free of disease, pollution, and money, Jake Bento is master of the wormhole—until an unforeseen catastrophe nearly strands the professional time traveler and his beautiful young paleontologist companion Peg in a world of huge extinct beasts. Luckily, Jake’s deft manipulation of wormhole technology can bring them home—after several stopovers in more manageable eras—with enough 3V recordings to make them both legends in their own, and other, times.

There are those, however, who resent such newfound celebrity—specifically Jake’s dangerous erstwhile employers at FASTER-THAN-LIGHT. And now Peg and Jake must watch their backs, from Pleistocene to the present. For there are no treacheries their enemies won’t stoop to—and no time left in which to hide.

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Bone Wars

Bone Wars by Brett Davis
Baen Books, 1998
Price I paid: $2.95

Montana, 1876. Othniel Charles Marsh, one of the two top paleontologists in the world, is in the state’s Judith River fossil beds, doing what he does best: digging up the bones of dinosaurs. Montana is a big state, but Marsh can’t rest easy. Edward Drinker Cope, his biggest rival, and the other top paleontologist in the world, is also in the area, and there simply aren’t enough bones for both of them, leading them to play dirty tricks. And time itself is against them: the fierce snows of winter are on the way and, rumor has it, so is Sitting Bull, fresh from his triumph at Little Big Horn.

Another complication: two foreign scientists are also competing for the bones. One says he’s from Sweden, the other says he’s from Iceland. One of them enlists Cope to help him, while the other befriends Marsh.

Marsh and Cope don’t want the fossils to leave the country, so they decide to bury the hatchet and work together to outwit the visitors. This turns out to be harder than they thought. The foreign scientists possess amazing technology, but that’s because they are much more foreign than they claimed. They don’t just want to take the bones out of the country—they’re fighting over who will get to take them clean off the planet…

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Time Blender

Time Blender by Michael Dorn, Hilary Hemingway, and Jeffry P. Lindsay
HarperPrism, 1997
Price I paid: $2.95

A RIPPLE IN SPACE-TIME

Archeologist [sic] Tony Miller was a skeptic. He had heard the stories about the remote volcanic island where ships and planes disappeared. But as a scientist, Miller needed proof, not rumors.

So he flew over the island, and saw for himself the million-year horror that waited inside the crater.

Just before his seaplane’s engine stopped…

TIME BLENDER

Millions of fans know Michael Dorn as Star Trek’s unforgettable “Worf.” Now let Dorn take you on a journey of discovery in this gripping tale of an archeologist [sic] who uncovers the most awesome secret in the universe!

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The Penetrator #1: The Target is H

The Penetrator #1: The Target is H by Lionel Derrick
Pinnacle Books, 1973
Price I paid: 50¢

MARK HARDIN…

The Penetrator. He’d learned how in Vietnam. Infiltrate the enemy’s position, determine the plan of action and then strike swiftly, taking out as many key men as possible, wreaking destruction, leaving chaos in your wake.

Now he was in Los Angeles, engaged in a new, far more sinister war. But he was fully prepared and totally committed, and bound by no rules but his own.

He is tall and slim, reflecting his unique Indian-Welsh background. His driver’s licence indicates his age is twenty-eight. If he seems a bit grim, it is for good reason.

He was orphaned at four, when his parents and three brothers and sisters were killed in an automobile crash. Since then he’s been mistreated, brutalized by life, injured in games (football), and wounded in combat. But he’s survived. Mark Hardin is tough, a survivor. And an expert. Marksmanship, karate, aikido, and even the crossbow, are part of his arsenal.

He is a new breed of warrior—without uniform, without rank—dedicated to the American way of life, and pledged to fight anyone who seeks to destroy it. On either side of the law. That’s why he’s in Los Angeles. Just the beginning of a long and lonely series of brushfire wars.

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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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