The Sun Smasher (Ace Double)

The Sun Smasher (aka: Starman Come Home)
New York : Ace Books, 1959. –
110, 146 p. ; 17 cm. – (Ace Double Novel Books ; D-351) pbk.
Cover: Emsh NUC: 70-105061; 80-367147
Bound With: Starhaven (146 p.) / by Ivar Jorgenson (=Robert Silverberg)
“The ultimate weapon of an uncrowned king” — Cover
A CROWN FOR THE STAR-CROSSED
“It can’t be true! It must be some kind of hoax!” These were the words that went spinning through Neil Banning’s mind when the Greenville authorities told him that the house he had grown up in, the aunt and uncle who had raised him, had never existed.
So Banning found himself in jail, charged with disturbing the peace—and maybe insanity. But when a stranger from outer space came to his cell at midnight and hailed him as the Valkar of Katuun, then Banning decided that maybe the authorities were right, maybe he was crazy. Because the only alternative was to believe the impossible explanation of the Outworlder — that he really was the exiled ruler of a remote star-world, and the personality of Neil Banning was an elaborate fraud.
It didn’t really matter, though, who was right. Banning was on his way to Katuun whether he liked it or not. And as Banning — or the Valkar — he would have to save that star-world from the terror of THE SUN SMASHER . . . or perish with the loyal subjects he might never even have known!
Book Reviews:

  • Astounding Stories. 64(3):153. November 1959. (P. Miller)

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The Star of Life (Crest)

The Star of Life
Greenwich : Fawcett, 1959.10. –
187 p. ; 18 cm. – (Crest Book ; S-329) (Fawcett World Library) NUC: 70-72300
Cover: Powers
“The strange and terrifying adventure of the first man in orbit around the moon” – Cover
How Long Had He Been Lost In Space?
Slowly, Kirk Hammond pushed his way back to consciousness. He remembered then that there had been trouble – that his ship Explorer 19, earth’s first manned satellite, had failed to orbit properly – that he had gone astray in space.
Hammond looked up at the sky to get his bearings. He was a man who knew the constellations thoroughly, but it seemed to him there was a something wrong with the stars. Something terribly, insanely wrong.
Frantically he checked again. No, the vast star clock did not lie.
The Truth hit him then like an icy belt of terror. Either he was mad, or dead – or he had been asleep in space for nearly a thousand centuries!
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Book review

The Star of Life (Book Club Edition)

The Star of Life (Book Club Edition)
New York : Distributed by Dodd-Mead, 1959.4. –
192 p. ; 22 cm. – (A Torquil Book) LCCN: 59-6638
Note: No price
Note: “BOOK CLUB/EDITION” at the lower right corner of the front flap of the original, first printing dust jacket is unclipped. — Currey
Note: Has printing code “4” on page 192 — Currey
Note: A second printing has printing code “A14” on page 192 — Currey
Kirk Hammond was a man alone.
He had been chosen to ride in the first manned satellite to go out around the Moon and back to Earth. But when the satellite failed to orbit properly, it went on past the Moon into the vastness of outer space, and a whole world watched helplessly as he was borne toward an unthinkably lonely death.
Yet destiny decreed that Kirk Hammond should suffer, not death but a pseudo-death. And he awoke from it to find that a hundred centuries had passed and that the space age which had begun in the 20th Century had now grown into a vast galactic civilization that had carried the sons of Earth to countless stars and worlds. But, unexpectedly, the conquest of space had changed Man himself, and the human race had become not one but several species.
Hammond was plunged into the climactic struggle between the new races. And in his quest with a desperate band for the mysterious Star of Life that was the key to the struggle, in his relations with the strange and beautiful Thayn Marden who was not a human woman, in his odyssey through the mighty suns and earthly worlds of the galaxy, a man of the 20th Century found himself facing the dangers of the great space age which he himself helped pioneer.
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The Star of Life (Torquil)

The Star of Life
New York : Distributed by Dodd-Mead, 1959.2. –
192 p. ; 22 cm. – (A Torquil Book) LCCN: 59-6638
Note: First edition, trade issue, the earliest, with price 2.95 at upper right corner of front dust jacket flap — Currey
Note: Has printing code “4” on page 192. – Currey
Book reviews:

  • Analog. 64(4):152. December 1959. (P. Miller)

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The Star Kings : a Novel of the Future (UK edition) SK#1

The Star Kings : a Novel of the Future
Publisher: London : Museum Press, 1951.8. –
Pagination: 219 p. ; 19 cm.
Series: Science Fiction at its best
NBN: b511078
Cover:
The Star Kings is a romance of that great age of space-travel in whose dawn we now stand. As military experimenters send rockets father up from Earth each month, and soberly plan bases on the moon and planets, the shape of a great space-traveling civilization of the future becomes more clearly defined. This story is an adventure into that future civilization – the adventure of a present-day man flung by the sorcery of science across time and space, and into a perilous whirl of intrigue and conflict between the great star-kingdoms of two thousand centuries from now.
Every science-fiction fan, old and new, will acclaim The Star Kings as a classic in its field.
half page:
The Star Kings … from now.
This is escapist literature in the finest sense, the most thrilling type of delicious adventure since McCutcheon invented Graustark. Every science-fiction fan, old and new, will acclaim The Star Kings as a classic in its field.
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Beyond the Moon (Signet) SK#1

Beyond the Moon (aka The Star Kings)
New York : New American Library, 1950.9. –
167 p. ; 18 cm. – (Signet Books ; 812)
“More astounding than the flying saucers — Amazing adventures on other worlds!” — Cover
Life- and death on other worlds
One of the most amazing adventure-stories ever written, Beyond the Moon is an action-packed account of live, war and exploration on other worlds, as experienced by a man-of-today in the future!
Young, restless, dissatisfied with his monotonous post-war insurance job, John Gordon discovered a way of traveling through time! And when he arrived in the strange world of tomorrow, Gordon found himself in the middle of a titanic interplanetary war – the one man in the universe with the key to final victory!
His adventures on other planets, his strange of love affair withe the beautiful Lianna, his single-handed battle against the invading legions of the “dark worlds” – all add up to an exciting, new kind of fiction!
Book Reviews:

  • Future Science Fiction. 2(1):98. May 1958. (R. Lowndes)

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The Star Kings (Two complete Science-Adventure Books) SK#1

The Star Kings
“He was a man of Eras, summoned through the veil of Time to save the Star-Kingdoms from the pallid-skinned Aliens. He was John Gordon, New York insurance clerk and Galactic Prince, the most dangerous man in the Universe … for locked in his mind was the secret of the Great Destroyer!”
Editor: Jerome Bixby
Cover: Allen Anderson
Publisher: Wings Publishing, 1954.4
Pagination: 148 p. ; cm.
Series: Two Complete Science-Adventure Books ; No. 2 (Vol. 1, No. 2, Spring 1951)
Note: $0.25
Note: Bound with: Seeker of the Sphinx (aka The Road to the Sea)
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Tharkol, Lord of the Unknown : a Novel (UK edition)

Tharkol, Lord of the Unknown : a Novel
London : World Distributor/Sidney Pemberton, 1950
160 p. ; 19 cm. pbk £1/6
Original: The Prisoner of Mars
“A mighty Martian race bridges starless space to steal the Oceans of the Earth” — Cover
“A terrific story of a mighty Martian race that bridge starless space to steal the oceans of the earth.”–back cover of The Monsters of Juntonheim

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