The Loafers of Refuge

The Loafers of Refuge by Joseph L. Green
Ballantine Books, 1965
Price I paid: 90¢

Refuge

That was what the humans called the rich, attractive planet—a refuge from starving, over-populated Earth. And the Colonists could provide millions of tons of desperately needed produce for the hungry billions left on their home planet.

If only the native inhabitants of Refuge weren’t so natural-born lazy: harmless, it’s true, but actually nothing more than a bunch of loafers. If the loafers could be made to turn to, Refuge could really be the Earth’s breadbasket.

But the Loafers steadily refused to “turn to”—there was nothing the humans could do about it. And the years went by. And everything remained friendly and quiet. Until one day, a young human, born and raised on Refuge, decided he’d rather join the Loafers!

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Men Who Die Twice

Image courtesy of isfdb.org — Image courtesy isfdb.org

Men Who Die Twice by Peter Heath
Lancer Books, 1968
Price I paid: none

A thimbleful of mutated spores that could wipe out life on this planet…

A mysterious voice on the telephone…

The voice of a man who didn’t exist…

A submarine that vanished—with sixteen 20-megaton thermonuclear missiles…

The president of the United States in protective custody…

And the one man who could save the world being hunted by half of its police forces!

Once again, Peter Heath, author of The Mind Brothers and Assassins from Tomorrow, has produced a hair-raising, thrill-a-page blend of science fiction and suspense that will astonish you. This is a novel of futuristic weapons that may exist right now; of convincingly portrayed villains who could be plotting your destruction; of fantastic events that might be happening right around the corner. It will make you shudder—but you won’t be able to stop reading once you’ve begun!

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The Mind Traders

The Mind Traders by J. Hunter Holly
Manor Books, 1967
Price I paid: 90¢

A PLACE OF CRAWLING SPIDERS AND POISONOUS SNAKES—WHERE NIGHTMARES CAME TRUE

That was The Black, where men were punished for challenging minds more powerful than their own. The detective from Earth feared The Black more than any torture his own planet could conceive. But he had to uncover the sinister plot that threatened Earth and all its people.

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Pavane

Pavane by Keith Roberts
Ace Science Fiction, 1968
Price I paid: 90¢

In the year 1588, Queen Elizabeth of England was assassinated.

As a result, when the Spanish Armada attacked, England went down to defeat. The entire history of Europe and the New World was changed: now, in the Twentieth Century, the Church of Rome reigns supreme over an orderly world of pastoral beauty, but Man’s technology is still at the level of the steam locomotive, the typewriter and primitive radio.

Yet Science cannot be held back forever; its advocates become more daring and open with each year. A vast revolution is building….

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B.E.A.S.T.

B.E.A.S.T. by Charles Eric Maine
Ballantine Books, 1966
Price I paid: none

Biological
Evolutionary
Animal
Simulation
Test

Dr. Charles Howard Gilley was a brilliant man. And he was in charge of a very remarkable, very expensive computer.

So expensive, and so remarkable, that the authorities were much concerned with his proper use of its time.

They of course couldn’t know that to Dr. Gilley the computer had ceased to be an “it.”

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The Dueling Machine

The Dueling Machine by Ben Bova
Signet, 1973
(Originally published 1969. Short story originally published 1963.)
Price I paid: none

The dueling machine, the perfect pacifier for all man’s tensions. You could enter a world of your own creation, destroy your enemy or be destroyed by him, and emerge from your mental fantasy world completely unharmed.

Dr. Leoh, creator of this ultimate placebo, could not believe that someone had now found a way to use his machine as a tool for destruction. But apparently someone had. And now this someone, Dictator Kanus of Kerak, was using the dueling machine to conquer the Acquataine Cluster.

Leoh realized it was up to him to stop Kanus before the man began a war of conquest against the Terran Commonwealth and Star Watch. But how, equipped only with an eccentric and bumbling Star Watch Lieutenant and the dueling machine itself, was he to accomplish this? And even if Leoh could discover how the dueling machine was being turned into a death machine, could he stop Kanus and his cohorts before civilization ended in an intergalactic war?

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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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