Futuretrack 5

Futuretrack 5 by Robert Westall
Kestrel Books, 1983
Price I paid: none

Henry Kitson makes his first mistake when he scores a hundred per cent in his exams. Not for him therefore the glamorous cushy career pattern of most of his contemporaries. Promoted to Tech, he is equipped with a white coat and a clipboard and becomes one of that small body who keep the country’s computerized living systems going.
His second mistake is going on the razzle. In London, where survival depends on skill and daring and the population is controlled by fear and sensationalism, Kitson becomes pinball champion and meets blond, leather-clad Keri, London’s bike-racing champion of Futuretrack 5.
Together they go north in an uneasy partnership. And what they learn as they go, they don’t like, for this is Britain of the twenty-first century and if you question the system too much you come to regret it. But who does know the answers? And what is Kitson’s destined role? As a fortune teller predicts, “You’ll regret what you’ll do for the rest of your born days. And you’ll have plenty of time to regret it.”
In this major new novel, Robert Westall has brilliantly created a future world which is all too plausible.

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The Cosmic Eye

The Cosmic Eye by Mack Reynolds
Belmont, 1969
Price I paid: 50¢

Morris should have functioned perfectly in the rigid totalitarian society of the future where every thought, every word, every action was controlled by the superstate. A state where everyone was watched night and day by the Great Eye of the internal security forces. It was a strange, in many ways inhuman world, but the rewards were great for those who belonged to the right caste. Morris belonged to the master class which ruled the entire world by brain power or brutality, depending on which was needed. Morris was born right at the top—he had everything the Technate Society could provide—and yet he didn’t belong. Nonconformity could mean liquidation, but he was prepared to take the risk.

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Magellan

Magellan by Colin Anderson
Berkley Science Fiction, 1970
Price I paid: 75¢

Magellan is the last city-state on earth—a society where perfection is being rapidly approached. It is the Eve of Eternity—the day when the great computer complex Chronophage will assume dominion over the earth and grant every man his wish.

Euripides Che Fourthojuly 1070121, who has been avoiding the tranquilizing drugs all are required to take, will be in for a very bad time indeed….

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Beyond the Sealed World

Beyond the Sealed World by Rena Vale
Paperback Library, 1965
Price I paid: none

“DALY 1444 IS AN ATAVIST. CAST HIM OUT OF THE SEALED WORLD INTO THE WASTELAND TO DIE.”

Thus ordered the masters of Science, the ruling body of the Glasteel Civilization. And so Daly 1444, convicted of primitive longings to be a man instead of a number, was forced to become an Opener—a fearful voyager into the dangerous world of natural sun and light outside his antiseptic culture.

To his great surprise, Daly found not one but several worlds—each at a different level of achievement, each incomplete without the other, each desperate to rule supreme. At first he struggled only for his own life amidst conditions for which his test-tube life had ill-equipped him. But soon he realized that not only his future was at stake, but the future of all the worlds of Earth—and he was the one man who could save the Universe!

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The Long Mynd

The Long Mynd by Edward P. Hughes
Baen Books, 1985
Price I paid: 25¢

Not long ago, back in the 1980s, the world had not yet heard of charming. But then came a strange and godlike mutation that affected one child in a million. That child would grow to be a Charmer—one who could, by an act of will, change the form of any substance: coal into diamonds, play money into real money, iron ore into armor plate, water and uranium ore into hydrogen bombs—and the charmed item would appear wherever the Charmer wanted. The White House, the Kremlin, anywhere. It was the end of the world, of course…

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Eight Against Utopia

Eight Against Utopia by Douglas R. Mason
Paperback Library, 1967
Price I paid: none

For 7,000 years the domed city of Carthage has protected its citizens from the ice-covered world outside. But now Gaul Kalmar, a brilliant engineer, discovers that the entire planet is habitable. Tormented by the dehumanized tyranny of life in Carthage, he enlists the aid of seven other rebels in a desperate attempt to escape.

Not only are the group’s actions observed by the ever-present Monitors of Carthage, but even their innermost thoughts are recorded by the Secret Police. Yet they are ready to take any risk to win their freedom, even when Kalmar must announce: “The city has an anti-hostility screen. Nothing with a human heart can cross it!”

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Resurrection Days

Resurrection Days by Wilson Tucker
Timescape Books, 1981
Price I paid: $1.25

Journeyman carpenter, Owen Hall—killed in 1943 during an unfortunate accident at a railroad crossing—finds himself resurrected thousands of years later in a world dominated by women. The men are all automatons, without free will or conscience.

In just 24 hours, Owen wreaks havok on this disciplined female civilization, turning it topsy-turvy by refusing to obey orders. But as his madcap adventures threaten to destroy their ordered world, the women realize that Owen’s independence must be corrected…

Suddenly Owen must use all this cunning and guile against a horde of determined female warriors if he is to stay alive…with a mind of his own!

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The Sentinel Stars

The Sentinel Stars by Louis Charbonneau
Bantam Books, 1963
Price I paid: none

RIGID!
LOCKED!
ENSLAVED!

that was our Earth in 2200. East and West had merged at last so there were no more wars, no more political differences.

Citizens everywhere could concentrate on working off their TAX DEBTS! If you were capable and industrious you might be able to make freeman status for the last few years of your life.

No one questioned. No one spoke out. No one rebelled until one bright morning Citizen TRH-247 decided not to go to work—and worse than that, became desirous of a girl below his own classification!

Thus he made himself an outcast with the whole world against him and mere survival dependent on his wits, his daring, and his strength.

THE SENTINEL STARS—a novel of our world run as the Bureau of Internal Revenue would run it!

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The Martian Viking

The Martian Viking by Tim Sullivan
Avon Books, 1991
Price I paid: $1.25

Earth’s new order has declared non-productivity a crime—dooming Johnsmith Biberkopf to life imprisonment in a Martian penal colony. Sentenced to a life of never-ending toil and despair, he seeks escape in the hallucinogenic power of “onees”—a government-banned substance that will lead Biberkopf through the portals of a strange and timeless dimension where ancient Viking ships sail the cosmos…and illusions become uniquely, terrifyingly real.

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