What a haul! Three are from numerous previous expeditions to choice used book havens…. And I caved in and bought Malzberg’s The Destruction of the Temple (1974) on abebooks because his seldom reprinted works are hard to find.
Sheckley’s Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962) is near the top of my reading list. Supposedly one of his best.
And, who can resist Michael Bishop’s magnum opus, No Enemy But Time (1982)?!?
And James White is always solid…
Thoughts? Anything particularly worth reading?
1. The Destruction of the Temple, Barry N. Malzberg (1974)
(Uncredited cover for the 1974 edition)
From the inside flap: “The Charred Ruins of New York… The Eerie Specter of the Past… The Director has come to the charred ruins of New York to re-enact a mad dream from the past—the assassination of President Kennedy. As actors, he has the primitive race who inhabit the city. With them and his glamarous, dark-haired lover, he rehearses everything—the motorcade, the shots, the panic. But at the last moment it all goes wrong. When the flower-filled limousine rounds the bend, the passenger is not Kennedy—but the Director himself. Shots ring out in a wild explosion of roses…”
2. Journey Beyond Tomorrow, Robert Sheckley (1962) (MY REVIEW)
(Paul Lehr’s cover for the 1962 edition)
From the back cover: “TOMORROW… AND THE DAY AFTER. Citizens worship the Almighty Machine. Passion is a beatnik, love the new frontier. Both God and Satan have been driven underground. The insane are treated by making their delusion real. Jail is a place to break into. Government is lost in the mapless Octagon. AND SCIENCE HAS GIVEN BIRTH TO SUPERSTITION. WHERE? IN AMERICA. WHEN? LESS THAT FORTY YEARS FROM TODAY.”
3. All Judgement Fled, James White (1967)
(Wayne Douglas Barlowe’s cover for the 1979 edition)
From the inside flap of an earlier edition: “Sixty million miles from Earth, embroiled in all the perils of First Contact with alien life forms, astronauts haven’t much time for politicians and public relations officers. Back on Earth, through, First Contact is being relayed to a breathlessly waiting public, and much of what the astronauts must do and say is coming through live—to the total dismay of the military brass and political bigwigs, whose passion for secrecy about absolutely anything that looks like a crisis is matched only by skilled ability to disseminate that “information” which paints their role in a rosy hue. Definitely they do not want their heroic astronauts to react to a hostile environment and hostile aliens in a hostile fashion. Or at least not publicly. The trouble is, the aliens don’t know about this…”
4. No Enemy But Time, Michael Bishop (1982)
(Vincent Di Fate’s cover for the 1983 edition)
From the back cover: “Rootless and alone, John’s spirit lives in a dreamworld of prehistoric landscapes and feral protohumans. His extraordinary visions destine him for the top-secret government project, White Sphinx, a time-travel experiment that hurls him millions of years into the bright Pleistocene Africa of his dreams. Now mammoth beasts—and prehistoric man—face him in brutal reality. And when his one link to the 20th century breaks down, he confronts these fierce protohumans and shares their battles of life, death and love.”