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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
memories?,
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This review is from: Lords of the Psychon (Mass Market Paperback)
This was the first scifi book I ever read. I tried for years to find a copy with no success. Couldn't remember the correct title. Then there was Amazon. The story is filled with much visual imagery and the tale unfolds at a good pace. Many of the plot elements, moving between dimensions, are way ahead of their time. This book was released in the early sixties. Still the story holds up pretty well. Learned matter manipulation by human psychic control, unlimited energy (Psychon), pure creation. And of course, alien beings, Spheres, who now control the Earth and hunt Earthlings. Wow. It is still a good read. Conflicts between groups on how to deal with the Spheres and their unknown ultimate goal, put a human face on an intricate problem. With the approach of what is believed to be the final Horror Day. I won't ruin it by giving away too many details. The human spirit is challenged. Do we prevail?
Maybe... The end is replete with the values of the early sixties (it wasn't all sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll). The promise of a brighter future. Perhaps by todays standards alittle too optimistic. Anyway, I loved it. I will wait awhile and read it again. It's a short easy read, give it a shot, you won't be disappointed.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Where There's a Will, There's a Way?,
By
This review is from: Lords of the Psychon (Mass Market Paperback)
Daniel Galouye could write, and write well, as he proved with the too little appreciated Dark Universe, considered a classic by those who have heard of it, so I figured this was worth picking up when I found it used. But very little of that ability shows up in this book. Instead we get a very standard 50's style SF work, with a nicely Earth-threatening menace and a small group of people who will, somehow, figure out a way to defeat it.The menace is a mysterious group of Spheres along with their Fortress cities, apparently formed out of pure energy, that suddenly appeared all over the planet on September 25, 1977. These Spheres attack anything generating electricity, Select and hunt down certain humans for no explicable reason, and annually produce a veritable maelstrom of psychic effects in all of what's left of humanity, effects so strong that people are left dazed for weeks afterword. Our little group of humans is a small ragtag collection of individuals that is all that remains of U.S. military, which keeps trying standard military solutions, including exploding a nuclear bomb in the middle of one of the Sphere's cities, even though it is obvious that nothing in the standard arsenal has any real effect. But Maddox, the leader of this group, discovers that the material the cities are made of responds to the desires and wills of a human, forming itself into whatever shape is desired. But there is a downside - the stuff responds just as well to sub-conscious desires. So Maddox starts on trip to control his sub-conscious, to rid his mind of extraneous thoughts and impressions. And it is just here that the novel, a fairly well told adventure to this point, falls apart. Conscious control of the sub-conscious and the ability to selectively edit the mind's memories is something that has never been conclusively demonstrated, but Maddox achieves this in short order. As a side benefit, with all this 'extra' stuff deleted from his mind, he finds himself capable of great feats of mentation and is capable of controlling multiple simultaneous thought streams. I found this most unbelievable, even with the prodding of having your subconscious desires made immediately visible, and even less so when just about all the other members of his party manage to achieve the same state in relative short order. The Sphere's actions are nicely alien: in other words, they don't make too much sense. But again I found it most improbable that the Spheres, who have had many years in which to perfect their control of their malleable energy, and who greatly outnumber the humans, could not maintain their control of the stuff when Maddox's group tries to use it for their own ends. Galouye's characterization, up to the point of these new-found abilities, is quite good, and he manages to sneak in a believable romance amongst all the action. The dating of this book is not a problem, as none of the situation or solution depend on anything that is not nearly timeless. But it does, unfortunately, read like a stock pulp SF work, with little that is original, and with some highly unbelievable premises. --- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From Back Cover & About Author,
By Avid Reader "Jim" (Columbus, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Lords of the psychon (Paperback)
Book Description:
CITY OF FORCE Huge prisms, obelisks, cubes, cylinders, rhombohedrons, domes, pyramids shimmered with glowing colors, coruscating essence, blinding radiance... HERE WERE THE LORDS OF THE PSYCHON! And Horror Day was fast approaching, the dreadful day when Earth was held inescapably in a grid of luminescent, evil energy, the day when Earth might be torn into another universe! A little band of ragged men, the pitiful remnant of the Army and Navy of the United States was all that stood between this unimaginable fate ant the LORDS OF THE PSYCHON About the Author: Daniel Francis Galouye (February 11, 1920 - September 7, 1976) was an American science fiction writer. He wrote several stories for digest size magazines in the 1950s and 1960s. He mostly wrote for the lower quality magazines but did have a loyal following for a brief period. He also wrote several novels, notably Simulacron Three, basis of the movie The Thirteenth Floor and the 1973 German TV miniseries, Welt am Draht (directed by Rainer Fassbinder). Galouye was born in New Orleans, where he also died. According to his obituary in the New Orleans States-Item Galouye "was a Navy pilot during WW II from 1942 to 1946. He graduated from Pensacola Naval Air School, held the rank of lieutenant and was for a time during his service years in charge of a training school in Hawaii for Navy airmen. Immediately after release from the Navy, he began his career with The States-Item as a reporter, then as a copy editor and joined the editorial department in 1956. He later was named associate editor of that department, retiring in 1967." His retirement was due to failing health, which was in turn related to injuries sustained during his Navy service. His health continued to decline until his early death at age 56.
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