Customer Reviews

Transit to Scorpio (Dray Prescot S.)

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I have read a huge number of SF/fantasy books, and this is my FAVORITE SERIES OF ALL TIME. I'm afraid I don't have enough room here to tell you all you need to know about the series. I will put more info in reviews for other books in the series. The books are almost all very fun, and currently there are 37 of them. I don't know if there will ever be more, but obviously I desperately hope so. The author is Kenneth Bulmer, under the pseudonym "Alan Burt Akers." Most bookstores (including Amazon) mistakenly put "Dray Prescot" as the author of some of the books. The MAIN CHARACTER in the books is Dray Prescot. The books are organized into "cycles" that sort of stand alone in the series. The first is the Delian Cycle, with the first 5 books (Transit to Scorpio, The Suns of Scorpio, Warrior of Scorpio, Swordships of Scorpio, Prince of Scorpio). The next is the Havilfar Cycle (Manhounds of Antares, Arena of Antares, Fliers of Antares, Bladesman of Antares, Avenger of Antares). The series is autobiographical of Dray Prescot, an unhappy English sailorman swept away by awesome forces to another planet, where he is much happier doing heroic stuff. It all has an Edgar Rice Burroughs quality, with huge numbers of strange races, cultures, plants and animals, picturesquely described. Dray makes friends, enemies, meets girls, works his way up in the world (just not OUR world), and has adventures! I think the ultimate target audience for the series is Americans who like British humor of the Monty Python variety. Normally, dialog is a liability for Kenneth Bulmer, but here he keeps it together. And the dialog becomes the best part! Everyone makes jokes, teases each other, and converses using lovely British phrasing. And it's hilarious! I laugh all the way through these books! The first 4 books of the series are only OK. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND starting with #1, then skipping to #5, then read #6-#10 or so, then go back for #2-#4 once you are hooked on the series. The series is hard to find - contact me if you need to. But being so long, it provides months of great enjoyment. Please don't be put off by this first book, just consider it an intro. The tone of the rest of the series is much lighter. And part of the fun is watching Dray Prescot change his opinions about things over time (but in some ways he never changes). And Dray does try to see the funny side of things, and describe his adventures in that vein. This series truly deserves to be one of the greatest fantasy series ever.

This series along with the Lensman series started me on Scifi and Fantasy back in the 70's. They are truely escapist and should be viewed that way. I still have both series boxed up at home in my mothers garage. I think when I retire from the military I will pull them out and read them once again. Recommended for those that like something different and I suppose old school would be a good term.

An English seaman of the 17th century, Dray Prescot, is sent to the savage alien world of Kregen, where he has amazing adventures and falls in love with a princess. This is fun escapist literature in the lost worlds genre. The prose is rather overheated and, at times, tortuously verbose, but that's part of the fun. Author Keith Bulmer, writing under the pseudonym of Alan Burt Akers, injects a healthy amount of humor into his narrative as well. Recommended for a light, quick read.

John Carter Lite, of Rann?


Or, you get the idea. Dray Prescott is your 19th century manly man who gets snatched by the Star Lords (hence the Adam Strange, bit) and ends up on another planet.

Cue astoundingly beautiful woman, the need to show the local warriors he can handle his rapier rather well thank you. Add in some capture, some slave girls, and a lustful Princess who will give the gorgeous Delia a run for her money and you have a somewhat entertaining sword and planet romp that is pretty much exactly as you would expect it.

For more reviews (well OK ,including mine), look at the other Amazon entry, the one that mistakenly has the author as Dray Prescot, with the red cover. Dray Prescot is the narrator and central character, not the author.

My full review is at http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AJBFQP2JXBX6Q?ie=UTF8&display=public&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview&page=8

Note added 8/14/2009 - Ouch - that URL that I took from the top of the page, doesn't out you to the right place - sorry. Maybe I'll copy its text in here..yes...

Like "TEX", I read a ton of those back in the 70's, and enjoyed the sheer escapism: I just re-read #10, "Avenger of Antares." The action always moves right along - never a dull moment.

I don't think Bulmer has had enough credit for sheer inventiveness. The far world of Kregen is most richly populated, with not just a piky little three or four species, but so many I haven't bothered to count. They are in two broad classifications: apim (human-like) and diffs (definitely not so). You have your lion-men, your fish-men, your many-armed, the fellows with the prehensile tail with a weapon-holding hand on the end, the flying "men" (these tales have a deliberately old-fashioned outlook where feminist issues are concerned. Not that the women are helpless or weak - far from it). Prescott, the hero, is basically doing good ol' knight-errantry in a vast world that comes with multiple civilizations, races, and religions - oh, and it has two suns, red and green, just for good measure.

The other neat thing about these tales is the word-coinage. Only Gene Wolfe is as good at this. Look at the terms of contempt that can be slung at low-lifes: rast, kramph, kleesh. The names of military ranks - deldar, ob-deldar, jiktar, hikdar, are loosely based on the Indian Army's old jemadar and subadar/subedar, that's why they sound so right (at least if you've read Kipling or John Masters.) And similarly with the names for social ranks, riding animals, coins, foodstuffs, weapons: you could usually guess what category of thing the name refers to, just by the nature of the word.

To do such a good job of naming indicates a fine sensitivity to the overtones of language, and adds pleasure to the sense of not-too-serious (I'm almost saying guilty) indulgence that makes these books such a relaxing read. I'd like to give 5 stars, but feel that's too much for such lightweight material!

This book is the start of the Dray Prescot adventure series by Ken Bulmer writing as Alan Burt Akers, which is presently at 37 books in English and more in German. The hero is a sailor of Horatio Nelson's wooden navy transported by Higher Powers to the wonderful world of Kregen under the double sun Antares. This book gives the reader the essentials to the hero, planet and Higher Powers. It is a action packed adventure to adventure quest, where the hero must survive to attain his desires. It is a must read for anyone desiring adventure, sword play, monsters, aliens or in need of material for role playing games. This book is reprinted in ([ASIN:1843195534 The Saga of Dray Prescot:The Delian Cycle]) along with the next four in the series, Suns of Scorpio, Warrior of Scorpio, Swordships of Scorpio and Prince of Scorpio. It also is available in various computer formats. Hi Jikai!

When I was a teen, one of the best book series I ever discovered was Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series. I've since reread A Princess of Mars to my youngest son, and taken him along for the tour of the deserts that till the dead world of Mars as Burroughs saw it. Burroughs actually set out to envision Mars as current day science (1912) saw it. Of course, a lot of it is wrong, but the books are a lot of fun. My son enjoyed the first one, and we're both looking forward to the movie next year.

During my high school years, I also found another "interplanetary romance" series, as they were called, that I enjoyed as much as Burroughs. The Dray Prescot series was written by Kenneth Bulmer, a science fiction author I had also read in the old Ace Doubles, under the pen name Alan Burt Akers. I thought the books were fabulous, and Prescot's world of Kregen was much more diversified and explored than Burroughs ever did with Mars. Although, to be fair, Burroughs did take John Carter to the Martian moons and fight giants from Jupiter.

I love the character of Dray Prescot. He's a fighting man that served aboard Lord Nelson's Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Bulmer also wrote another series that I loved under the name Adam Hardy about an English seaman called George Ambercrombie Fox, and I think this was a tip of the hat to that. But the history also made a strong character in Dray.

The first book, Transit to Scorpio, is pretty much a step by step guide as to how to write interplanetary romances. Hero has adventures, seems on the point of death, and gets mysteriously transported to another world. Some of the mystery gets taken out of the journey, though, and Dray is revealed to be a potential champion of the Savanti, a race that no one on the rest of Kregen knows much about.

Dray being Dray, he champions a young woman: Delia, Delia of Delphond, Delia of the Blue Mountains. He acts in her best interests and breaks a taboo with the Savanti, then ends up getting sent back to Earth. I loved these little episodic breaks that happen in the series as Dray reappears on our world. We get to see some of the history roll by, and we see what Dray thinks of things.

Since Dray has been gifted with a thousand years of life, he doesn't age. So when he returns to Kregen, he's still a young man. Bizarrely, his return to that world is only minutes later even though he's spent years on Earth. It's just another mystery for him to figure out, and for the reader to ponder over.

Thereafter, a series of adventures take him from Delia again and again, and it feels like a soap opera, but one that guys can enjoy because there's lots of fighting.

I remember loving the book, the sheer imagination that propelled it, but being an older and wiser reader these days, I also recognized that the storytelling is old school in some ways. The author tells a lot of the story instead of showing it, but the pace is relentless and the stakes are always high. I finished the book in a couple sittings and really look forward to re-reading and reading the others.