GIANT OF WORLD'S END

Belmont paperback, February 1968. Illustration: Jeff Jones.

"An unlikely band of heroes - a woman who loved in vain, a magician who loved only wisdom, and a warrior to whom love was a genetic impossibility - fought the doom that filled the skies of their strange world. 

And it came to pass that Zolobion the magician and Ganelon Silvermane set forth from the land of the great stone face and took the first steps of their gigantic journey across the world, a journey so long and fearful and so filled with wonders that no man since time began until that hour had undertaken a like adventure. 

But their mission was a logical impossibility. Hence what purpose is undertaking it? Only that the moon was falling."

THE NIGHT OF PUUDLY

NEL/Four Square paperback, Feb 1968. Cover artist uncredited.

"The Puudly was a dangerous thing, not only because it was strong and quick, but because it was intelligent. 

It reasoned and it planned and schemed. It could talk, though not as a human talks...Probably better than a human ever could. For it could not only talk words, but it could talk emotions.

It lured its victims to it by the thoughts it put in their minds; it held them entranced with dreams and visions until it slit their throats. 

It would not hunt for hunger, not the sheer madness of the kill, but because of the compelling conviction that no Puudly would be safe until Earth was wiped clean of life."

Contents:

The Night Of The Puudly

Crying Jag

Instalment Plan

Condition Of Employment

Project Mastodon.

SPACE TUG

Belmont SF paperback, Nov 1968. Illustration by Jack Gaughan.

"There had been two attempts to blast it with atomic bombs, but it was aloft now, floating grandly around the earth. - this was the space platform. The crew badly needed food, air, water and means of self-defense. It was up to Joe Kennmore to make the first flight to carry a cargo into outer space; but the opponents of the platform hadn't given up..."

FROOMB!

Hodder paperback, 1966. Cover artist uncredited.

"When explorer John Brunt, a tough, womanising adventurer agrees to make the last exploration left to man, he cannot calculate the spiritual and physical terrors that await him. This is a story of the future and of now. Brunt finds there is no escape from either. He finds he cannot shake off the seeds of destruction he takes with him to the years beyond now. But does destruction come? There must be escape somewhere, somehow. But where? How?"

THE AMAZING MR. LUTTERWORTH

Digit paperback, 1958. Artwork by Ed Emshwiller ("Emsh"),
re-used artwork from Frank Belknap Long's Space Station 1.

"A man on the run - a man with no memory - a man with a secret. Time running out. Only a few days left for him to remember what he has to do to save the world. Who is Mr. Lutterworth? He doesn't know. What is his secret? He cannot remember. Yet a major oil company is ready to pay him a million, or kill him, for it. Foreign agents would stop at nothing for its possession..."

Big thanks to Horzel who identified the cover artist!

DOOMSTAR

Belmont SF paperback, Jan 1966. Cover artist uncredited.

"The sun shone brightly on this fateful morning, bringing to its planets warmth and life-giving rays. The brightness increased sharply as the morning grew older. The glare was blinding; the radiation not life-giving, but deadly. By mid-afternoon the brilliant, intense sun shone on barren space. It had blasted each of its four planets out of existence. 

Someone had found a way to poison a star. 

And someone had to be found who could prevent the takeover - or destruction - of the entire universe. Who? Johnny Kettrick, as improbably a hero as there never was. Johnny Kettrick was banned from the cluster world for his not-too-honest dealings was sent back there with his three equally unholy partners to search out the doomstar...To find the Doomstar before it burned out another world."

SUNDOG

Corgi SF paperback, 1966. Cover artist uncredited.

"The solar system was imprisoned. Locked in a vast, invisible screen. Set there by something - or someone - but no one knew why...And man, banned from the stars, turned inward to himself, to a world of carefully controlled thoughts and ideas, a world where it was forbidden to dream..."

NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR

Macfadden paperback, 1968. Cover artist uncredited.

"Only one man could save the world, and he was dead - again. Once he had been assassinated by a political rival. The second time he had a heart attack while negotiating a surrender to the enemy. Now he was back, younger and more vigorous than before, giving new hope to the terrans in their battle for survival. Had he really died once - or more than once - leaving a robant in his place? Or had he learned to manipulate time so he could use all of his several possible futures?"

THE LEGION OF SPACE

Pyramid paperback, second edition, Oct 1969. Cover: Paul Lehr.

"They were the most fabulous trio of swashbucklers ever to ship out to deep space - the giant Hal Samdu, the inscrutable Jay Kalam, and that marvel of greed, trickery and deceit, the incomparably dishonest Giles Habibula! Together they thundered across the stars searching for the ultimate prize - the most important female in the galaxy. Together they hurled themselves into the wildest adventure of their strange lives. And together they faced incredible evil and howling destruction - with a known traitor as their only guide!"

FOUR FOR TOMORROW

Ace paperback, 1967. Cover by Jack Gaughan.

"One of the outstanding science fiction writers of the decade. A Roger Zelazny story can be counted on for a unique blend of hard scientific extrapolation and rich poetic vision - for fast-paced action and singing imagery." 

-Fantasy & Science Fiction

"One of the most solid talents to show up in the field in years." 

-Galaxy Science Fiction

"An explosion of style and personality unique in sf. Zelazny is a law unto himself, driving over and through the conventional forms of fiction, writing freely and vitally from himself. He is writing for his own sake of his own visions and allowing the rest of us to look over his shoulder. It's a rare privilege." 

-Speculative Bulletin

Contains four stories; The Furies, The Graveyard Heart, The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth and A Rose For Ecclesiastes

SLEEPING PLANET

Panther SF paperback, 1968. Cover artist uncredited.

"You may not be sleepy now.

But give yourself time.

Give the entire population of the Solar System time. 

About nine hours worth. 

It is the twenty-fifth century and the Terran Federation, a small but technically advanced stellar union, is engaged in a long and indecisive war against the Llralan 'Empire of Four Thousand Suns'. The Llralans have discovered a toxic dust which, by means of robotic ships, they spread over Earth, Mars and Venus; and the three billion inhabitants of these planets collapse into unconsciousness. 

But there are ten exceptions...Will they be able to save the galaxy?"

VOR

Avon paperback, fifth printing, April 1970. Cover by Don Crowley.

"FIRST CONTACT! 

The glowing ovoid plummeted earthward, the sky screaming like a metallic banshee as the air boiled away from its sides. 

A supersonic boom broke over the forest. The curious thing glided down; earth fountained away from it like water, and the forest burst into flame! 

Then a thin black line etched a circle on the side of the metal egg; the circle thickened into a door, or airlock; the air was rent by a searing, screaming hiss and suddenly - the strange being soon to be known to all mankind as 

VOR 

emerged...."

STRANGE RELATIONS

Panther SF paperback, 1973. Artist uncredited.

"Philip José Farmer is one of the handful of authors who made science fiction grow up. Unlike so many other sf writers, he has never been afraid to explore to the furthest limits of the bizarre, terrifying and grotesque the implications of man's contact with completely alien life-forms in outer space. In this outstanding collection of brilliantly disturbing stories man meets alien in a weird variety of ways. The results of these encounters will shock, startle and astound you. They will also open your mind to a new awareness of the rance of experience available to man in an infinite universe..."

Contents:

Mother
Daughter
Father
Son
My Sister's Brother

Today was definitely a day for oddball book covers - I bought this at the same time (and place) that I got Philip Bedford Robinson's Masque Of A Savage Mandarin.

MASQUE OF A SAVAGE MANDARIN

Panther Science Fiction paperback, 1974. Artist uncredited,
possibly Bob Haberfield.

"Nicholas Coad, the Savage Mandarin: detached, scientific, 'converted' into a state of 'sublime, cosmic indifference'. He is working on a unique project - the 'conversion' and liberation of the soul or higher self from chains of physical bondage. His 'patient' is his good-natured neighbour, Rogers, up-and-coming ad-man. Rogers does not realise that his piercing headaches are caused by the fearsome, hypnotic in coad's flat. But as coad brings him further along the path to liberation, he has no choice. After all, his brain now resembles a chunk of Gruyére cheese..."

Well, you don't see a book cover like that every day (!) the artwork looks familiar but I can't place a name. Haven't read this one yet (like so many others - my 'reading list' is seven feet tall) but judging from the synopsis on the back cover, it's the literary equivalent of taking a few 'shrooms. Thanks to Mark for suggesting the cover artist might be Bob Haberfield, it looks psychedelic enough to be his work to me!

OTHER WORLDS SCIENCE STORIES JUNE 1956

Cover painting by Virgil Finlay