Category: Reviews

The Empire of Time

The Empire of Time by Crawford KilianThe Empire of Time
Del Rey/Ballantine Books. 1978
Price I paid: 90¢

Jerry Pierce was the Intertemporal Agency’s most experienced operative, a seasoned time-traveler on the old subway train that whisked him back and forth through the ages. He’d already altered history by directing the Turkish conquest of Constantinople four centuries ahead of schedule and garrotting an obscure Mongol chief before the man became a problem. But his biggest difficulty lay ahead of him

Seventy-four years ahead, to be exact.

Somehow, someway—nuclear war, alien attack, no one really knew—Earth was going to be destroyed and left a lifeless cinder. It was every Intertemporal agent’s goal to find out how and to prevent disaster. But suddenly the problem had become Pierce’s special assignment. And just as suddenly, the man for all ages had been mentally blocked from knowing what was going on. What he didn’t know was that he was now programmed to kill—and was being pushed to the end of the world….

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Tentacles of Dawn

Tentacles of Dawn by Robert WilsonTentacles of Dawn
Major Books, 1978
Price I paid: none

The stranger awakes and the world is dark.

Intelligent humans live near the protection of their caverns. They carry torches dipped in oil and live in fear of the beasts and horrors that creep in the dark world beyond. At times they glimpse gigantic dramas being played by powers beyond their understanding—means of light streaking across the black sky and strange, rumbling mountains slowly moving through the dark.

The stranger gropes his way down through the living nightmare until the Prophetess appears to him in the bowels of the earth. Together, they begin a drama destined to change the surface of this future world.

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A Fond Farewell to Dying

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Image shamelessly grabbed from isfdb.org

A Fond Farewell to Dying by Syd Logsdon
Pocket Books, 1981
Price I paid: none

MAN HAS UNLEASHED THE ULTIMATE WEAPON

Millions have died in the holocaust. The Polar ice caps have melted. Salt water covers the crater where the Vatican once stood. And now, dazed survivors gather on mountaintop islands and cry to the heavens of the end.

Out of this nightmare chaos, biologist David Singer flees to India, to the last civilization left on Earth, and to the arms of the exotic almond-eyed beauty, Shashi. And there he pursues his one burning obsession: to transfer his mind into a cloned replica of himself…to leave his own body in order to find immortality.

But Shashi’s ancient Hindu wisdom has warned her. She knows that David’s secret experiments are doomed, that his spirit will be set loose to wander forever in a hopeless search for his body. Unless she can stop him, she will lose the man she loves to an oblivion far more terrifying than death itself…

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The Sea is Boiling Hot

The Sea is Boiling Hot by George BamberThe Sea is Boiling Hot
Ace Books, 1971
Price I paid: none

In the world of Heron Attee’s time, scientific wastes had so fouled the atmosphere that men were forced to erect giant bubbles over their cities so that the air inside could be continually purified and made breathable. Outside the city domes, humans would strangle and die from breathing the air.

Even the oceans of Earth were so befouled by thermal pollution from atomic plants that life within the great waters had long since died off.

And the people of the domed cities lived a fantastic, hedonistic life dedicated to sex, violent games, and programmed hallucinations. Desperation hovered over mankind: exctinction was coming ever closer.

But one man, the brilliant scientist Heron Attee, discovered a means of reversing the process of Earthdeath…if it wasn’t too late….

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The Enforcer #3: Kill City

The Enforcer #3: Kill City by Andrew SugarThe Enforcer 3
Lancer Books, 1973
Price I paid: 50¢

TEN-FOUR AND KILL!

Alex Jason! You’ve just been elected to infiltrate the Patrol. They’re a vigilante group, and they claim to be on the side of law and order…

But it’s their kind of law and their kind of order that triggers the action. And innocent, concerned men are being tricked into signing their lives away to the Patrol. It’s a vigilante group—sure. Vigilantes who’d kill a cop as quick as kill a mugger. And they’ll kill you, Jason, if they find out who you are. Cell by cell they’ll destroy you just like they’re destroying the fabric of this country.

So get them first. Infiltrate and attack—a job for the Enforcer!

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Cinnabar

Cinnabar by Edward BryantCinnabar
Bantam Books, 1977
Price I paid: 50¢

To experience the magic of Cinnabar…
use this book as your map.

Here are some of your traveling companions:
Tourmaline Hayes, Network sex star.
Obregon, the star scientist of the anti-city
Leah Sand, melancholy media artist.
Jade Blue, the computer-womb-born catmother.
Cougar Lou Landis, once a pudgy kid, now the last hero.
Sidhe, the great white shark that sprang from oceans 350 million years deep!

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Escape Across the Cosmos

Escape Across the Cosmos by Gardner FoxEscape Across the Cosmos
Paperback Library, 1964
Price I paid: 90¢

Falsely accused of depriving the Empire of its dream of a Promised Land by murdering its Leader, Kael Carrick was exiled to the dread planet Dakkan, a galactic graveyard from which no man returned.

But Kael had to return. He alone could dare attempt it. For before his death, the Leader had rebuilt Kael’s war-ravaged body into a cybernetically perfect specimen—a silicon superman potentially capable of destroying the devouring terror of the Slarrn world that now hungered for the Empire.

Kael’s powers were extraordinary—so much so that he hesitated to test them. But test them he must. For on his courage and strength alone depended the fate of the Empire, and its last chance to learn whether Paradise or Evil awaited them somewhere in the cosmic vastness.

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Star Well

Star Well by Alexei PanshinStar Well
Ace Books, 1968
Price I paid: 75¢

A small, airless planetoid set deep in the heart of the Flammarion Rift. Due to its location it is a minor hub of commerce within the Nashuite Empire, and though it is equipped with elegant dining rooms and casinos, luxury suites and expensive shops, Wu and Fabricant’s GUIDEBOOK claims that Star Well is a dull place to visit, and that travellers should avoid layovers if they can. But Wu and Fabricant had not been shown the secret basements, nor told the nature of the things stored there—if they had been they might still have advised against layovers, but not because Star Well was dull.

When our hero Anthony Villiers and his Troggish friend Torve arrive on the scene, it soon becomes evident that the truth must out; that Star Well has reached the end of an era…(thurb).

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