High Couch of Silistra by Janet E. Morris
Bantam Books, 1981 (originally published 1977)
Price I paid: $1.25
Her sensuality was at the core of her world.
Her quest was in galaxies beyond the civilized stars.
Somewhere deep in the heavens of a terribly distant tomorrow was the one man whose will conquered her own.
The Enforcer #3: Kill City by Andrew Sugar
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!
Cinnabar by Edward Bryant
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!
Element 79 by Fred Hoyle
Signet Books, 1968
Price I paid: none
Earthlings are dominated by the Devil, manipulated by Martians, headed for extinction at the hands of nonhumans…a horror-scope of the future, masterminded by one of the foremost astronomers of our time.
Escape Across the Cosmos by Gardner Fox
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.
Star Well by Alexei Panshin
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).
Night Slaves by Jerry Sohl
Fawcett Publications, 1965
Price I paid: none
She was a creature from another planet, but to Clay Howard she embodied everything he’d ever dreamed of. Naillil was the most beautiful, the most voluptuous, the most woman Clay had ever known.
Naillil was a creature from another planet—but every delicious inch of her oozed sex.
And Clay was the only person aware of her presence.
An ideal setup—except…
Naillil had a brother, and to serve his own treacherous ends he plunged the citizens of the town into mass hypnosis. But what he could not know was that Clay Howard was invulnerable—because every cell and fiber of Clay Howard’s brain was sewn together with an impenetrable steel mesh.
Naillil discovered Clay’s secret—and that meant one thing: if Clay could not be hypnotized, then he must be murdered…
The Fourth “R” by George O. Smith
Ballantine Books, 1959
Price I paid: none
Jimmy Holden was an experiment…
He was normally bright, normal-sized, and enormously curious—just like most small boys. The only thing different in Jimmy’s life was a machine—a machine which could teach him better, faster, more completely and more thoroughly than any human method yet devised.
It was really nothing more than a glorified memorizing contraption, but it filled the mind permanently with whole books of fact and figure—readin’, ‘ritin’, and ‘rithmetic—plus all the diverse information that an insatiably curious young mind could seek, including how to build the machine that taught him.
So Jimmy quickly became a very valuable experiment indeed. Certain people figured that, properly handled, young James could be a goldmine, and they weren’t above murdering in order to get control of him. But even a five-year-old mind will defend itself when attacked.
And nobody had figured on what the machine did not teach—the fourth “R”—REASON…
Denver is Missing by D.F. Jones
Berkley Medallion Books, 1971
Price I paid: 90¢
A scientist reports to a stunned world: “The whole earth may be shrivelling up like a punctured balloon.” The flight from cities at high altitudes—whose nitrogen gas accidentally released from the earth’s core is gathering to cause mass death—to the coastlines creates political chaos and violent anarchy. But worse is in store for mankind—for the coastline holds only temporary haven.
The great oceans of the world are about to deliver destruction on a scale never before envisioned even in nightmares of nuclear holocaust. Two men and two women in a flimsy yacht in the Pacific may hold the key to the earth’s survival…
Solo Kill by S. Kye Boult
Berkley Medallion Books, 1977
Price I paid: 75¢
High above the heavy air, the March People and the winged Drak met where the two suns crossed: locked in a battle as old as the ritual of life itself. For Amarson and his fierce lady Ameera, to live was to kill Drak; to die was nothing. That was the Law—until the long-winged Flier came, riding the crest of the thermocline….
In this masterful science fantasy adventure, S. Kye Boult has created a world that is both grippingly intense and luminously strange.
(mostly) short reviews of (mostly) short fiction
Classic detective fiction and impossible crimes
Be not ashamed, my brothers, to stand before the proud and the powerful. Tagore
The many tongues of translated speculative fiction
Adventures in Fiction
Kevin O'Leary Reviews Every Issue of Uncanny X-Men from the 1960s to the Present
Movies, thoughts, thoughts about movies.
Defending the planet from bad science fiction
Reviews of Vintage Science Fiction (1945-1985)
Joseph Nebus's work in progress.
Schlock Value 
