WAR GAMES

Pan paperback, 1981. Cover artwork by Ian Miller.

Rear cover & synopsis.

BRIAN STABLEFORD: THE CITY OF THE SUN

Hamlyn SF paperback, 1980. Illustration by Tim White.

"It was a circular city - like the City of the Sun, a perfect community dreamed up by the seventeenth-century philosopher Campanella. 

Many utopian groups had emigrated into space to found their ideal settlements. And it was on one such colony world - appropriately called Arcadia - that the recontact starship Daedalus made its fourth planetfall. There in all its splendour stood the fulfilment of Campanella's dream - the real seven-circled City of the Sun. 

But the city was too ordered, the inhabitants too perfect, the world too Arcadian ... and very soon the Daedalus's scientists realized that in this particular utopia the idealists had unleashed a force that could undermine all human culture on other planets."

FUTURE MAN: BRAVE NEW WORLD OR GENETIC NIGHTMARE?

Granada hardback, 1984. Cover painting by Peter Gudynas.

In the final phase man will become master of his own evolution as well as that of all other living things. 

Thanks to Jerry Boucher who made me aware of this book and the similarity of a certain Peter Gudynas painting similar to the cover of Frederik Pohl's Man Plus, which I posted a few weeks ago.

This book (with obligatory Asimov foreword) is sort of disappointingly not concerned with science fiction per se, rather the application of speculative fiction, theories as well as modern science and medicine in real life (circa 1984). Topics include evolution, the biological revolution, mastering the environment, diseases, ageing, engineering people, mind control and scenarios for the future of mankind. The majority of illustrations are photographs of a medical or scientific nature, but there's a few paintings by Gudynas, Peter Goodfellow, Terry Oakes and others have artwork credits in the acknowledgements section but I do not recognize which images are theirs.

Life underwater.

Man modified for life underwater.

Man modified to live in space by Peter Gudynas.

Man modified for war.

THE GATES OF EDEN

NEL paperback, 1990. Cover artist uncredited, possibly
Danny Flynn (thanks: Ed).

"Lee Caretta's problem wasn't so much the nightmares and the blackouts - he was used to them - but keeping them secret from his bosses. If they ever found out, they'd send him back to Earth. Which was the last place in the universe someone with his skills would like to be. 

It is an unfortunate fact that good job-opportunities for a xenobiologist are limited.  

But then the starship Ariadne, in transit for 350 years, found an Earthlike world which looked like it might be the answer to everyone's dreams. Until the explorers sent out to investigate it began to die. 

Something for Lee to work on - personal problems permitting - knowing that if he failed to come up with the reason why, all Hell would break loose on a galactic scale."

THE MIND RIDERS

Fontana SF paperback, 1977. Cover illustration by Tony Roberts.

"The boxers slugging it out in the ring were just holographs, patterns of light, but to millions of Network viewers they were genuine flesh and blood. They looked real, and with an E-link between the handler controlling the sim and the viewer's mind you could actually feel them emotionally - their excitement, power, anger...even their fear and crushing sense of defeat. 

After the fight, when the holos faded out and the handlers took off their headsets, the boxers ceased to exist. There were no scars to heal,  except mental ones - and Network wasn't interested in things like that. 

But for years one handler had been tortured by painful memories of a previous fight - so much so, that when he came back to the ring for the last time he was fighting not just to win, but to gain honour and self-respect in a world he had ceased to believe in."