The Long Loud Silence

The Long Loud Silence by WIlson Tucker
Dell Books, 1952
Price I paid: 50¢

Corporal Russell Gary—operator—angle man—black-marketeer, junior grade—liberator of anything loose—veteran of Salerno and Normandy—a man who knew how to live by his wits and a gun.
Celebrating ten years in khaki, Gary went on a monumental binge…
While he slept it off, the United States east of the Mississippi was laid waste by atomic bombs and plague germs. The few who survived were immune to the plague but carriers of the toxin. No one from the contaminated area crossed the Mississippi and lived more than a few seconds. The army guarded every bridge, every inch of shore line. If you happened to be east of the river when the bombs fell, you stayed there until you died. There was no other choice, no other future.
When Corporal Gary woke up he was on the wrong side of the river, the bombed and contaminated side…

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Zelde M’Tana

Zelde M’Tana by F.M. Busby
Dell Books, 1980
Price I paid: 90¢

Young, untried, but a lethally trained fighter, Zelde M’Tana found herself legally shanghaied by the oppressive UET―imprisoned on a starship bound for the brothels of a mining planet. There was no way Zelde was going to stand for that―and when the ship’s first officer, Parnell, led an anti-UET revolt, Zelde joined the mutineers and single-handedly turned defeat into victory.

First as Parnell’s lover, then as his assistant, Zelde was mistrusted by the crew―but when the UET struck once again and Parnell died, there was only one choice for Captain: Zelde M’Tana.

Pungent and vivid as its heroine, ZELDE M’TANA is a gripping epic of spacefaring, battle, and human conflict.

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Earth Has Been Found

Earth Has Been Found by D.F. Jones
Dell Books, 1979
Price I paid: 90¢

THE XENOS ARE HERE

At first, the bizarre series of “cosmic skyjackings” could be hushed up by a baffled and frightened military. But aircraft continued to disappear, plucked out of the sky without warning, only to reappear months later, thousands of miles off course.

AND THEY THIRST FOR BLOOD

All too soon the reason would become horribly apparent. Earth has been found by a horde of creatures from a world that not even the wildest imagination could invent, parasitic creatures that took to their human hosts with deadly speed and bloodthirsty precision.

They were named Xenos. The word meant “strangers.” It would come to mean something much more frightening and final now that…

EARTH

HAS

BEEN

FOUND

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Space War Blues

Space War Blues by Richard A. Lupoff
Dell Science Fiction, 1978
Price I paid: 90¢

Man’s questioning nature conquered space…then his eternal stupidity turned it into living hell….

On Yurakosi—where swashbuckling aborigines ride the colossal membrane-ships, buck-naked to the winds of space…

On N’Yu-Atlanchi—where tiny gelatinous angels are ripped from a crystal cavern paradise to be brutally used as pawns of war…

On N’Haiti—where ultramodern technology marries voodoo to sire a race of blond-haired, black-skilled killer zombies…and

On New Alabama—where a government spokesperson recently announced: No cruvvelin black animan nigra goin lay one filthy paw on some golden curly-headed surn baby while Pissfire Pallbox draws breath! Are you with me?

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