Category: scifi 1970-1990

Messenger of Zhuvastou

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Messenger of Zhuvastou
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In a future where the people of Earth have managed to somewhat unite under hegemonic governments, the universe has at last been explored and discovered.

Earth-born playboy Moris Keniston arrives in customs, wanting to go surface-side of the mysterious and hostile planet Sovold. Galactic rules dictate that he may not disturb the burgeoning culture, and therefore undergoes a physical transformation to match the one of the peoples on the planet.

With shaved head and skin dyed beige, he dons the green tunic of a Messenger of Zhuvastou, known as Zhogs – a knight to the people of this world – giving him almost free reign to pursue his mission.

He is hunting the beautiful Elaine Dixon, who has fled to this primitive planet for reasons unknown.

Though Keniston is the son of a Galactic Senator, an athlete of interplanetary reknown, and survivor of a historic starship disaster, he finds himself wholly unprepared for life on Sovold.

Only his athlete’s reflexes and history of fencing save him at first. However, in his quest to pursue Elaine, he meets companions that help him grow into the man he is meant to be – and finds his true purpose along the way.

Messenger of Zhuvastou is a roaring adventure in new cultures and brotherly bonding that is sure to satisfy any sci-fi enthusiast.

Praise for Andrew J Offutt:

“Great entertainment of epic scope” – Poul Anderson

“One of the major players from the sword and sorcery boom from the 70s” – Adventures Fantastic

“Offers a new dimension in heroic fantasy.” – Jerry Pournelle

Cemetery World and Destiny Doll

Cemetery World and Destiny Doll
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Brave explorers encounter a dangerous new world and a terrifying future Earth in these two classic novels by the pioneering SFWA Grand Master.

Cemetery World

After a disastrous planet-wide war, Earth is nothing more than an elite graveyard—but Fletcher Carson is venturing back in search of a vital bounty. Fletcher, a former artist, is joined by a sentient machine, an ancient, powerful robot, and a treasure-seeking beauty. They soon discover that Earth harbors more than the carefully groomed tombstones. In the wild land beyond the cemetery there are dangerous machines, mutant creatures, and even humans who never left their home planet.

Destiny Doll

When a team of explorers is beckoned to a strange planet, it closes around them like a Venus flytrap. Assailed by strange perils and even stranger temptations, the small group struggles to survive as, surrounded by creatures of myth and mystery, they are stalked by a deadly nemesis. Even more peculiar is the little wooden painted doll that offers them salvation . . . or damnation.

The Man Who Used the Universe

The Man Who Used the Universe
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A notorious criminal pursues peace—and power—with alien enemies in this sci-fi novel from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Damned Trilogy.

No one knows the true motives of Kees vaan Loo-Macklin. He’s a mastermind criminal who gave up his place at the head of the dark underworld to become a legitimate member of Evenwaith’s cities. But soon he was reaching out to powerful enemies—-the slimy aliens called the Nuel. Loo-Macklin negotiates an illusory peace agreement and gains precious alien secrets in the process. Is he after peace, power or pure evil? With enemy starships beginning to amass, we won’t have to wait long to find out.

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (original star wars sequel never filmed)

Splinter of the Mind's Eye (original star wars sequel never filmed)
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Alan Dean Foster is the uncredited ghostwriter for Lucas novelization of Star Wars
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was the second novel to be used as a basis for a low-budget sequel to Star Wars in case the film was not successful
but by the time it was published, Star Wars had broken box office records. The film adaptation of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was abandoned in favor of Lucas’s vision of a big-budget sequel (The Empire Strikes Back)

 

Luke Skywalker expected trouble when he volunteered to follow Princess Leia on her mission to the planet Circarpous. But he discovered that hidden on the planet was the Kaiburr crystal, a mysterious gem that would give the one who possessed it such powers over the Force that he would be all but invincible. In the wrong hands, the crystal could be deadly. So Luke had to find this treasure and find it fast….

Features a bonus section following the novel that includes a primer on the Star Wars expanded universe, and over half a dozen excerpts from some of the most popular Star Wars books of the last thirty years!

For Love of Mother Not (Adventures of Pip & Flinx Book 1)

For Love of Mother Not (Adventures of Pip & Flinx Book 1)
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From bestselling author Alan Dean Foster, an exciting early Pip and Flinx novel that shows the origins of a certain boy with special powers—and the mini-dragon that becomes his devoted sidekick. . . .

Flinx was just a freckle-faced, redheaded kid with green eyes and a strangely compelling stare when Mather Mastiff first saw him an the auctioneer’s block. One hundred credits and he was hers.

For years the old woman was his only family. She loved him, fed him, taught him everything she knew—even let him keep the deadly flying dragon he called Pip. But when Mother Mastiff mysteriously disappears, Flinx tails her kidnappers on a dangerous journey. Across the forests and swamps of the winged world called Moth, their only weapons are Pip’s venom . . . and Flinx’s unusual talent.

The Forever Hero: Dawn for a Distant Earth, The Silent Warrior, In Endless Twilight complete trilogy

The Forever Hero: Dawn for a Distant Earth, The Silent Warrior, In Endless Twilight complete trilogy
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L. E. Modesitt, Jr’s first major work was a trilogy of SF adventure novels published as paperback originals in the 1980s: Dawn for a Distant Earth, The Silent Warrior, and In Endless Twilight. Together they form The Forever Hero.

Thousands of years in the future, Earth is a desolate ruin. The first human ship to return in millennia discovers an abandoned wasteland inhabited only by a few degenerate or mutated human outcasts. But among them is a boy of immense native intelligence and determination who is captured, taken in, and educated, and disappears–to grow up to become the force behind a plan to make Earth flower again. He is, if not immortal, at least very long-lived, and he plans to build an independent power base out in the galaxy and force the galactic empire to devote centuries and immense resources to the restoration of the ecology of Earth.

The Van Rijn Method (The Technic Civilization Saga) -Van Rijn and Dominic Flandry serie

The Van Rijn Method (The Technic Civilization Saga) -Dominic Flandry serie
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The Buck Starts Here!

Think there’s an unbridgeable gulf between human and alien thought Not so! There’s a common tongue, all right — and Nicholas Van Rijn speaks it fluently: TRADE. For behind the buffoonish blarney and bawdy bonhomie of the Falstaffian Van Rijn is a man who gets things done. A born wheeler-dealer who usually leaves both sides better off in the bargain. (While pocketing a hefty cut of the profits himself, of course!)

With The Man Who Counts and a passel of other tales included, this is the first of three volumes set to contain the complete cycle of “Polesotechnic League” books and stories by transcendently-gifted science fiction master (how does seven Hugos and three Nebula Awards strike you ) Poul Anderson – and starring Nicholas Van Rijn, his most famous character of all!

Time Patrol Audible by Poul Anderson

Time Patrol Audible by Poul Anderson
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Forget minor hazards like nuclear bombs. The discovery of time travel means that everything we know, anyone we know, might not only vanish, but never even have existed.

Against that possibility stand the men and women of the Time Patrol, dedicated to preserving the history they know and protecting the future from fanatics, terrorists, and would-be dictators who would remold the shape of reality to suit their own purposes.

But Manse Everard, the Patrol’s finest temporal trouble-shooter, bears a heavy burden. The fabric of history is stained with human blood and suffering which he cannot, must not do anything to alleviate, lest his tampering bring disastrous alterations in future time.

Everard must leave the horrors of the past in place, lest his tampering – or that of the Patrol’s opponents, the Exaltationists – erase all hope of a better future, and instead bring about a future filled with greater horrors than any recorded by past history at its darkest and most foul.

Way of the Pilgrim

Way of the Pilgrim
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Imagine an Earth totally dominated by an alien race. Imagine that humans and their technology are completely powerless against these invaders. Imagine a world in which people are nothing more than cattle to their new masters Now imagine that one man discovers a key that might free mankind, but he must learn how to care and how to love before he can believe in that key

Cluster

Cluster
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As Cluster opens, the alien envoy Pnotl of Sphere Knyfh seeks help from Sphere Sol in a shared galactic-level crisis: Galaxy Andromeda has discovered the secret of energy transfer and intends to use it to steal the basic energy of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Knyfh offers the secret of aura transfer on the understanding that Sphere Sol will spread the technology to help create a galactic coalition to find and defeat agents of Andromeda. Sol’s highest-Kirlian individual is Flint, a green-skinned native of Outworld, who has a Kirlian aura of 200, an eidetic memory (useful for memorizing the complex equations of Kirlian transfer that he will need to communicate to other spheres). He has extraordinary intelligence and is highly adaptable. His mission is complicated, however, by the fact that he is pursued everywhere by a very high Kirlian female Andromedan agent, and somehow the Andromedans are able to detect and trace Kirlian transfers.

Flint embarks upon several missions to bring transfer technology to neighboring spheres, inhabiting various alien forms. His efforts are successful despite attacks and sabotage by the Andromedan agent. Through the conflict, however, the mutual attraction of their two vastly superior auras begins to undermine their individual loyalty to their own spheres. Flint and a group of other entities recover the information that will allow them to detect and trace transfers, and a member of the group is revealed as the Andromedan agent. One result is the catastrophic destruction of the local habitat.

Flint and his nemesis are transferred into alien Mintakan bodies to survive. Choosing to leave things with parity between their two galaxies, Flint and the Andromedan mate and remain together until their auras fade (which happens rapidly, since their physical bodies have been destroyed).