Mythmaster

Mythmaster by Leo P. Kelley
Dell, 1973
Price I paid: 90¢

Stealing lives and peddling them from one end of the galaxy to another for unspeakable uses, the Mythmaster thought he was a free man. The Patrol that had cashiered him couldn’t catch him now. He was making his own life, alone.

Then a supposedly dead man decided he wanted a piece of the action―and the Mythmaster’s body―and the chase was on. Between the Patrol and the sinister Oxon Kaedler he knew his freedom was a mirage. Now he was fighting for his very life!

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Chrome

Cover art from the 1979 Jove Books paperback edition from isfdb.org

Chrome by George Nader
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978
Price I paid: none

In the future, there will be only one taboo: to love a robot. But in the desert hideaway where Chrome and the warrior King Vortex meet, a bond between man and machine is unknowingly taking shape. . . a bond that will ignite intergalactic violence and bring Earth once more to the brink of total destruction.

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Sorcerer’s World

Sorcerer’s World by Damien Broderick
Signet Science Fiction, 1970
Price I paid: $1.25

Klim Xaraf, son of a nomadic chief, awoke from his monumental fall to find himself the prisoner of time―trapped a thousand million years in the future.

Around him was a dying world, its incredible power sucked by necromancers through a hole to the past…it’s cities preserved in stasis, awaiting his liberation, or their final doom.

Yet Klim could neither meet his world’s challenge, nor conquer the wizards of his own, until The Powers primed him for the battle. For with their knowledge, they would erase his memory and plunge him into a nightmare training ground…where all the wonders of tomorrow were the forgotten souvenirs of an ancient yesterday.

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The Lion Game

The Lion Game by James H. Schmitz
DAW Books, 1973
Price I paid: 90¢

TELZEY AMBERDON…

was just a college girl―but she was one of the most valuable assets that the human-colonized worlds had. Because, besides her sharp mind and warm personality, she possessed a most unusual mutant accumulation of talents.

So when she found herself being hounded by a psi-powered killer, she was not too worried. But when that incident turned out to be merely the opening gambit in a game of mental chess with a planet of beast-masters who were challenging humanity for the grand-mastery of the universal board, Telzey was put to her full capacity.

Because she was never sure whether she was just someone else’s mind-pawn or really the queen on the human side of…

THE LION GAME

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Sacred Locomotive Flies

Sacred Locomotive Flies by Richard Lupoff
Beagle Books, 1971
Price I paid: none

CAN FREDDIE FONG FINE SAVE THE WORLD? IF SO, SHOULD HE?

These are the questions that may or may not be the core of this extremely odd novel of the world of 1985. What the Israeli hyponuclear submarine Traif, Mavis Montreal the groupie, the giant cavern under the earth, Upchuck the Barbarian, and the Sacred Locomotive have to do with it all is hard to figure out. But entertaining―so who needs to figure?

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The Floating Zombie

The Floating Zombie by D.F. Jones
Berkley Medallion, 1975
Price I paid: $1.25

Before AT1 had ground down the slipway unchristened―rightly, said seamen, for it would be a ship with no soul―it had been dubbed “Zombie.” That sinister name would stick, and prove its accuracy. AT1 was a robot-ship, a ship with no crew, only a tiny security force of 3 men and a woman. “Invulnerable,” said its inventors, and “foolproof.”

But it was neither―not if one of the 4 security guards was an insane, ruthless killer. And if the greatest and most powerful self-contained nuclear reactor in the world fell into the hands of such a person, the whole world was in peril!

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Get Off My World

Get Off My World by Eando Binder
Wildside Press, 2014
Originally published by Curtis Books, 1971
Price I paid: $4.99

The men and women of an underground world hold the key to Earth’s survival. The beastly Martians have decided to wage an “old-fashioned” ground war with only one objective in mind―to wipe humanity from the planet. But then Evan Paige receives an unbelievable radio message from the renowned scientist Dr. Aronson―a message from the center of the Earth, telling of a super-scientific race of Albinos who hold the key to save all mankind!

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The Penetrator #24: Cryogenic Nightmare

The Penetrator #24: Cryogenic Nightmare by Lionel Derrick
Pinnacle Books, 1978
Price I paid: $1.50

Preacher Mann is too much for the FBI and the CIA. He has dual citizenship and friends in diplomatic circles and he’s too powerful for the regular legal channels. He’s come a long way: from a pimp in Harlem he’s worked his way to the top―of the rackets. He’s into international dope, espionage―and now, in his orgy palace off the Florida coast he’s onto a new wrinkle!

The most beautiful women in the country are systematically vanishing. And Preacher Mann is holding them on ice―literally. He’s freezing them until needed―to be shipped to the highest bidder.

Only one man can defrost the situation―the Penetrator. He must succeed where others have failed. One man on a mission that’s too cool to handle!

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The Panorama Egg

The Panorama Egg by A.E. Silas
DAW Books, 1978
Price I paid: 90¢

His name was Archer and he thought he was an ordinary man. The collectors of panorama eggs knew better. For Archer was such a collector, and there was a very special find awaiting him: the panorama egg that contained a world.

He was guided in the use of that incredible masterwork by the enigmatic grey woman, Mera Melaklos. That was her name in this everyday world. But her real name could have been something else beyond this space-time continuum.

For indeed Archer and the grey woman crossed into a world that was not Earth, found they had special roles to play in a land where alternate science reigned and a mission of heroism was the price of existence.

THE PANORAMA EGG is a novel of strange enchantment and mystery, and of a man who wanted and found an end to a humdrum 20th century existence.

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The Midnight Dancers

The Midnight Dancers by Gerard F. Conway
Ace Science Fiction, 1971
Price I paid: 90¢

THE MIDNIGHT DANCERS is a novel of the far future, when mankind has spread through the galaxies, tamed worlds and prospered…until a mysterious plague swept through the worlds of men, a plague that left the race insane and helpless.

Only on a distant rim world where men still fight the elements is there any sanity left. To this world comes the Walker, a supernormal being on a quest to find salvation for humanity. Perhaps here, he thinks, there is a clue to the answer.

But the Walker too is insane, and he plunges even this world into confusion. And one man stalks him across the planet, across the emptiness between the stars, to a final battle against the gods of the cosmos…and a chilling vision of ultimate reality.

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