A bored, Mourinho da Costa burnt-out athlete/socialite's quest for meaning in a decaying society full of unproductive hedonists. Roller Coaster World by Kenneth Bulmer 3.33 of 5 stars 3.33 · rating details · 9 ratings · 1 review Parsloe's Planet was in its death throes. A world of mobile cities, the populace had moved frantically from radiation site to radiation site - for without this life-giving radiation the inevitable result would be insanity and death. Now the radiation was failing. Soon it would be no more. The planet was going to die. But into the chaos and agony of the dying planet comes Mourinho da Costa: an outcast, a renegade - and the only man who can save the stricken world. City Under the Sea by Kenneth Bulmer 3.33 of 5 stars 3.33 · rating details · 6 ratings · 0 reviews Jeremy Dodge knew the Earth would face starvation if it were not for the new science of "aquaculture". With the world's population numbering many billions, only the extra food being cultivated on the bottom of the sea could feed everyone. But, like the rest of the surface-dwellers, Jeremy did not know what a vicious monopoly underwater cultivation had become. That is, until the dreadful moment when he himself was kidnapped and dragged beneath the depths. And there he was to learn that just making his own escape would not be enough - he would have to save mankind from the tyranny of a new race of water-breathing human monsters!Gigantic were The Demons who terrorized the underground kingdom of Archon. Yet, who were they? Whence came their fantastic power? Why did they wage ruthless and relentless war against Archon? These were questions to which there was no answer until Stead arrived in Archon, apparently from nowhere. Only after he had been a Forager for some months, and had experienced the spine-chilling dangers of The Outside did Stead arrive at a solution. Even then he had a difficult task convincing the Controllers, who, for generations, had insulated themselves against the harsh truth. Only those who had actually seen The Outside - the Foragers, HUNTERS CONTROLERS FOOD QUARRY'S Soldiers and Workers - could properly understand EMPIRE OF ARCHON 'Helpless as the phantom forces of the Savanti and the Star Lords clash, Dray Prescot is swept once more from Earth to fulfil another gruesome task beneath the twin suns of Kregan. Will he be sent to Zair, where the red-sun deity reigns or to Grodno, land of the green-sun god where the evil overlords of Magdag rule a nation of slaves? As Prescot waits in limbo for the outcome of the battle, his one hope is that the task will take him nearer to his Princess, the lovely Delia, from whom the Star Lords snatched him so long ago...' From the back cover 1973. 192 pages 40p UK cover price The second book of the 'Dray Prescot Series' (there are thirty-seven in all!), Suns of Scorpio is a quick and bloody affair with tons of swordplay, seafaring, and a few naked ladies thrown in for good measure. Cinemax should option this book series for an ongoing late night affair. Suns of Scorpio is well written, but heavily referential to its predecessor Transit to Scorpio, so a bit of editing or maybe even a glossary would help to make it more cohesive. All in all, though, I enjoyed this bad boy. Protagonist Dray Prescot is your prototypical pulp sci-fi hero—whisked away from Earth by the capricious 'Star Lords' to the world of Kregan (Two suns! Beast people!) and given no direction, Dray quickly finds himself enslaved by the Magdag, an evil northern island empire that worships the green sun of Grondo. The Magdag are endlessly building shrines to their brutal deity, which is where our main man finds himself at work. Eventually, Dray's mercurial temperament finds him at odds with some fristles (half cat people) who ambush him and leave him for dead where the slave galleys are kept. Mistaken for a Galley slave, Dray is press ganged onto the crew of the 'Grace of Grondo' and nearly worked to death. He creates a bond with his fellow oar mates, and they watch out for each other, as many around them are worked or beaten to death on the Galley. One of Dray's oar mates is flogged to death right next to him, which enrages our hero to the point where he frees himself and begins killing crew of the galley. Just as things seem to be taking a turn for the worse, a ship from Sanurkazz, bitter enemies of Magdag, overtakes the vessel and joins the fight—eventually freeing the slaves and enslaving the captives. Dray joins the Sanurkazz Navy, and even begins worshipping their benevolent god Zair (of the red sun) while amassing power and fortune. Oh yeah, he also bangs his buddy Zorg's hot widow. So, this is the basic formula for this book—Dray is captured, faces insurmountable odds, chops off a bunch of limbs, is rescued by the enemies of his enemies, then flourishes in their culture for a time. Mr. Prescot also has sex with, or at least has the opportunity to have sex with, whatever beautiful royal women happen to be around. This all sounds very shallow and ridiculous, but the pacing of Suns of Scorpio has a very serial feel, which lends itself well to an action sci-fi novel. My main gripe is that Akers basically assumes that you have read the previous entry in the series, which I haven’t. Character names from the previously novel are dropped piecemeal with almost no explanation or relevance throughout the book. Hell, we don’t find out until three quarters into this novel that in Transit to Scorpio Dray had bathed in a sacred pool, rendering him immortal. But, these are small gripes for a fun novel that, less than two hundred pages, is full of gore and boobs

On the gold-symbol world of Beresford's Planet, Richard Kirby lived in total luxury. As a member of "The Set" his life was a never-ending round of planetary party-hopping. The only restriction imposed on him - that he never put down on any world marked with a red or black symbol - was something that he had always accepted without question. That is, until his brother Alec was murdered in cold blood! Alec had been an undercover agent to those forbidden planets, and in order to avenge him, Kirby had to find out for himself what was really happening there. But with the start of his investigation, Kirby found out quickly that the authorities meant business when they said "Hands off!" The secret they were protecting was of vital importance, and it now became a matter of life and death, not only to Kirby, but to all the inhabitants of THE CHANGELING WORLDS

The Keys To Irunium (Keys to the Dimensions, #2) / The Wandering Tellurian

and No Country for Old Men by Alan Schwartz

 Mission to another dimension. 

By Bulmer
Would his super-weapons help backward planets? By Schwartz 

Bruno Di Giandomenico rated it 2 of 5 stars  (men who can travel between dimensions in parallel universes, well it not so uncommon, but it could have been played better) but the whole concept and book is rather confused, what with all the character which we come to know only briefly and the change of scenario, from one Earth to Irunium, where there are jungkemind, and wild tres, and sort of roman civilisation, all too compressed in about a hundred pages. It is a quick romp from an old aircraft (it was new at the time of writing, but now Tristar are 50 years old now) to Rome and some shady character who are always in a hurry but do not explain anything, to another world of giant forest and medieval people and imported cars. Bah, not so good, not even for a juvenilia, today.