…a wonderful haul from Half Price Books.
More Lafftery (I will read Past Master soon, I promise)!
Two more Zelazny novels!
And a Zebrowski collection…
I love hearing your thoughts/comments.
1. Past Master, R. L. Lafferty (1968)
(Diane and Leo Dillon’s cover for the 1968 edition)
From the inside flap: “The golden planet of Astrobe, made in the image of Utopia now faced a crisis which could destroy it forever. Yet no one could understand it: in a world where wealth and comfort were free to everyone, why did so many desert the golden cities for the slums of Cathead and Bario? Why did they turn away from the Astrobe dream and seek lives in bone-crushing work, squalor and disease? The rulers of Astrobe didn’t know, so they sought in mankind’s past for a leader who could give them answers… and they brought to life the one man out of history who would most want to destroy Astrobe.”
2. Today We Choose Faces, Roger Zelazny (1973)
(Dean Ellis’ cover for 1973 edition)
From the back cover of a later edition: “TODAY WE CHOOSE FACES. Pull pin seven and loose the demon within. Why did the voice keep jabbering inside his head? Lange, the current “nexus” of the family, the telepathic keeper of the House, the mind which controlled the destiny of mankind, was not about to pull the pin to find out. And yet the voice haunted him. You don’t know how to deal with our attacker and I do. Lange, you must pull pin seven! But still Lange would not listen. He knew he could defeat the mysterious enemy who sought to kill of the Family and wreck the house. Or so he though until—Nexus!—he woke with the death explosion still in his mind…”
3. Bridge of Ashes, Roger Zelazny (1976)
(Gene Szafran)
From the back cover: “He was the greatest telepath the world had ever known. He was Archimedes, Leonardo da Vinci, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and a Children of Earth terrorists all rolled into one… He was Dennis Guise, idiot child, whose mind had been suffocated and nearly obliterated by a universe of other people’s thoughts. And he was Earth’s last hope against an enemy that had created the human race but would destroy it all again if Dennis Archimedes Leonardo Jean Jacques Humanity Guise could not meet them on their own terms and win…”
4. The Monadic Universe, George Zebrowski (1977)
(Paul Alexander’s cover for the 1977 edition)
No summation of the contents on back cover or inside flap of the 12 story collection.