Monday 1 March 2010

THE DUELLING MACHINE

Puffin paperback, 1977. Cover illustration by Peter Goodfellow.

"The Duelling Machine was invented to keep peace in the outer galaxies. But in the hands of ambitious and violent men it is misused, and not even its inventor seems able to put things right. Will war envelop the universe? Or will Lieutenant Hector Hector of the Star Watch police succeed in wrestling control from the sinister and ruthless Odal?"

BUG JACK BARRON

Panther SF paperback, 1979 reprint. Cover illustration by
Peter Gudynas.

"ONE OF THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS EVER WRITTEN... 
The place: America. The time: not so very far in the future. Marijuana's legal and advertised on TV; politics are more screwed-up than ever; there's a black separatist state of Mississippi. Against this backdrop, Jack Barron, anarchic mass-media man and heroic womanizer, uncovers a conspiracy of evil cloaking a horrific secret. His choice is agonising. Should he throw in his lot with the conspiracy and gain the greatest prize anyone could hope for? Or should he use his power to blow the story open - and the world apart...? 
Vivid, brutal, erotic and chillingly plausible, Bug Jack Barron has been hailed as a masterpiece and condemned as 'depraved'. The reader must make up his own mind."