My selection this week is the first of four connected novels that I didn’t know existed until fairly recently(I’ve had them on the back burner for a couple of years now). How I missed them way back when I have no idea. These four novels are notable for
having been plotted by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle and are authorized sequels to the original novel, of which I posted here, and not the comic strip that came from it. There is no Buck here, but Anthony Rogers. They were published over a three year period from 1980 to 1983. And MORDRED was the first of them.
It was discovered near the end of the second American Revolution that the Han were hybrid beings, a mix of Chinese and alien biology. As a result, they were wiped out as countries around the world followed America’s lead in rising up to end several hundred years of Han rule.
It’s fifty years later and Marshall Anthony Rogers, leader of the American gangs, is an old man now. The grunt work is left to younger people. He’s also a widower as his beloved Wilma passed away years ago.
There are other problems for this new world. The icecaps are melting and threatening to flood the coasts. Something is emerging from under miles of ice in Antarctica.
Then suddenly, in South America, the country of Peru, a Han ship emerges, attacking with new powerful weapons. An underground city was missed and the Han have been biding their time developing new weapons and tactics. Prince Mordred is their leader and he hates Anthony Rogers, harboring a secret that drives him at the American leader.
At the same time, Rogers has found the mine he survived in for five hundred years in suspended animation and is exploring it with a few scientists. They find a hidden chamber and before they know, a force field springs up between Rogers and the others. Nothing they can do will penetrate it.
After a time, the field dissolves and Rogers emerges. He’s not the same man he was, though, but a man of twenty-five again! Rejuvenation! Was this what had kept him alive for five hundred years? And who had placed it here? For what reason?
A new enemy has come!. The Prl’lu have been in suspended animation for thousands of years under Antarctica ice. They don’t like the Han or Humans and their intent is to wipe out them all out.
I haven’t read the other three yet, will get to them in due time.
John Eric Holmes also penned two novels(and a third either half finished or in the planning stages depending on which source you read) in Burroughs’ Pellucidar series. The first I have and enjoyed, the second costs an arm and a leg for the paperback on the used sites(Amazon has only three copies). Apparently the Burroughs estate was not satisfied with the books because when the second was ready for publication in 1980, they blocked it. it finally saw extremely limited release in 1993 or so. I would like to read it, but not a hundred bucks worth, or two hundred I saw in one spot.
Todd Mason is doing the host duties again this week, so for more Forgotten Books, check out SWEET FREEDOM.
