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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Orbit One

Orbit One by Mel Jay
Modern Promotions, 1966(?)
Price I paid: none

SOMEWHERE
IN THE DEPTHS
OF SPACE,

a strange intelligence was directing the destruction of the little band of humans on Kolar.

So far the colonists had been beset by fires and floods, hurricanes and tidal waves. Glen Bridger, their leader, knew these catastrophes were occurring too often to be the world of Mother Nature. But the new planet had been explored and was completely uninhabited.

Kolar must be concealing some alien life force. But where?

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Dinosaur World

Dinosaur World by Stephen Leigh
ibooks, 1992
Price I paid: $2.50

TIME SAFARI, INC.
SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST.
YOU NAME THE ANIMAL.
WE TAKE YOU THERE. YOU SHOOT IT.

The sign said it all, but the hunters soon became the hunted. The safari took them to the age of dinosaurs, but the hunt went terribly wrong, sending ripples of change throughout the timestream…

Aaron Cofield and Jennifer Mason are discussing their future when they make an incredible discovery: a newly laid dinosaur egg, ready to hatch! Before long, the two are caught in an astonishing trip across the millennia to Earth’s dim past, chased by a psychotic member of a Time Safari.

Racing against time, they face Mesozoic monsters, mysterious time travelers, and a strange new race of intelligent dinosaurs—humanity’s allies in their effort to rescue the future!

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