Category Archives: Books

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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

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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)

SoLBCED
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Stark and the Star Kings (SK#1, SK#2, and SK#3)

Stark and the Star Kings
Royal Oak : Haffner Press, [2003]. – p. ; cm. –
Contents: The Star Kings (SK#1)
Queen of the Martian Catacombs
Enchantress of Venus
Black Amazon of Mars
Return to the Stars (SK#2)
Stark and the Star Kings (SK#3)

THE STAR KINGS
200,000 years from now the universe is divided into stellar kingdoms. John Gordon is torn from his 20th Century humdrum into otherworldly intrigue as he exchanges bodies with Prince Zarth Arn, heir to the Kingdom of Fomalhaut. Shorr Kan, Lord of the Dark Worlds, schemes to kill Zarth Arn and overthrow the alliance of the Star Kings. Gordon reluctantly assumes the role of Zarth Arn to prevent Shorr Kan from throwing the entire universe into interstellar anarchy!

ERIC JOHN STARK
Forged in the hellish heat of Mercury and tempered on the desert sands of Mars, Eric John Stark battles the forces of evil and tyranny, selling his sword-arm to defend the cause of justice among worlds of sin and decay.

STARK AND THE STAR KINGS
In their only formal collaboration, Hamilton’s Star Kings and Brackett’s Eric John Stark meet to confront a peril of unending doom. Can Stark persuade the Star Kings to put aside their political games long enough to defeat this threat to the whole universe? For the first time, admirers of both authors can enjoy this long-coming story.

 

Book review:

  • Locus, Nov. 2005, by Nick Gevers
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Chronicles of the Star Kings (SK#1 and SK#2)

Chronicles of the Star Kings
Cover illustration by Eddie Jones
Publisher: London : Arrow Books/Venture SF, 1986.4
Pagination: 297 p. ; 18 cm.
Series: Venture Science Fiction Series ; 10
Note: Paperback
ISBN: 0-09-9478609
Contents:
The Star Kings (SK#1)
Return to the Stars (SK#2)
The Star Kings
Flung across space and time by the sorcery of super-science, John Gordon exchanges bodies with a prince of the Mid-Galactic Empire two thousand centuries in the future.
Suddenly John is thrust into cosmic batile between the democratic Empire World and the tyranny of the Black Cloud regime. . . But can his twentieth-century mind cope with the technology of 200,000 years from now?
Return To The Stars
Once more John Gordon is propelled into a far-distant future — when the entire galaxy is inhabited. But the human race Is only one among thousands, and many are its sworn enemies.
So a man of the past is forced to ally himself with men of the future in a desperate struggle to save humankind from final annihilation…
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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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