Falling Toward Forever

Falling Toward Forever by Gordon EklundFalling Toward Forever
Laser Books, 1975
Price I paid: none

As a mercenary soldier of fortune, Calvin Waller has grown used to danger. Danger is the air he breathes. But when he finds himself thrown from the midst of an African battle into a primitive farm community of the future, he is naturally disoriented. Trained as he is, he quickly gets his bearings and begins a new and different battle…only to the “thrown” again. He is being manipulated. Falling Toward Forever is the story of his search for The Manipulator, and for himself. A strange and wonderful search…for The Manipulator holds all the strings.

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The Emancipatrix

“The Emancipatrix” by Homer Eon FlintThe Devolutionist and the Emancipatrix front
Ace Books, 1965
Originally published in Argosy All-Story Weekly, September 3, 1921
Price I paid: none

Which was the strangest world of the galaxy? Was it the world of THE DEVOLUTIONIST, where two planets traveled through space locked to a common axis?

Or was it the world of THE EMANCIPATRIX, shaped like a sharp-edged doughnut?

The mind-space team of The Lord of Death again crosses the void to explore these worlds—and the result is a pair of interstellar classic adventures worthy of the author of THE BLIND SPOT.

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The Devolutionist

“The Devolutionist” by Homer Eon FlintThe Devolutionist and the Emancipatrix front
Ace Books, 1965
Originally published in Argosy All-Story Weekly, July 23, 1921
Price I paid: none

Which was the strangest world of the galaxy? Was it the world of THE DEVOLUTIONIST, where two planets traveled through space locked to a common axis?

Or was it the world of THE EMANCIPATRIX, shaped like a sharp-edged doughnut?

The mind-space team of The Lord of Death again crosses the void to explore these worlds—and the result is a pair of interstellar classic adventures worthy of the author of THE BLIND SPOT.

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Camelot in Orbit

Yet another cover nabbed shamelessly from isfdb.org
Yet another cover nabbed shamelessly from isfdb.org

Camelot in Orbit by Arthur H. Landis
DAW Books, 1978
Price I paid: 90¢

Fomalhaut II was an inexplicable enigma in the annals of the Galactic Watchers. A world of knights and ladies, of dungeons and dragons, it was truly medieval and therefore out of bounds for science-armed Terrans. Yet science seemed thwarted there for magic really worked and witchcraft baffled the secret watchers.

Camelot was their name for it, and Kyrie Fern was their Adjustor on its surface—a knight in truly shining armor, a champion of chivalry, and the only one who actually stood between the Arthurian natives and the alien being that menaced both their world and the advanced planets that swung unseen through their sky.

Once again Arthur H. Landis has worked the magic of combining the wonders of swords-and-sorcery with the science adventure of high space.

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The Implosion Effect

The Implosion Effect by Gary PaulsenThe Implosion Effect front
Major Books, 1976
Price I paid: none

THE INTERNATIONAL COMBINE

They swore to Jason that there was nothing genuinely illegal about building a secret satellite tracking station…just smart businessmen getting the jump on the stock market.

And for half a million dollars, Jason Theiss was ready to believe them. That was before the murders began, and before some over-anxious governments decided to muscle in.

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FreeMaster

FreeMaster by Kris JensenFreeMaster front
DAW Books, 1990
Price I paid: none

THE TERRAN UNION

had sent Sarah Anders to Ardel to establish a trade agreement. For the very sands of this world were laden with materials vital to offworlders but of little value to the low-tech Ardellans. Unfortunately, the Union was not alone in seeing the worth of the planet. Other, far more ruthless humans were about to stake their claim with the aid of forbidden technology, treacherous double-dealing, and threats of destruction to the clans of Ardel.

Alone, Sarah could not stand against this mercenary invasion. Yet the Ardellans had defenses of their own, powers which only a human such as Sarah could even begin to understand. For she, too, had mind talents locked within her, and the FreeMasters of Ardel just might provide the key to her long-dormant abilities. But the Ardellans were also fighting to preserve the slowly diminishing population of their clans and Houses. And Terran interference—even that of a human who was on their side—just might push them past the point of no return….

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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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