Rating: 4

Rogue Star by Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson

Have you ever read a science-fiction book that was so bizarre, so way-out, that you said to yourself “How did the author ever think of this? What was he smoking? Did she possibly eat a Fluffernutter and headcheese sandwich, go to bed, and dream the whole thing up?” It’s happened to me any number of times, with such novels as Henry Kuttner & C. L. Moore’s The Well of the Worlds (1952),

The Reefs of Space by Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson

The experience of collaborating on a trilogy must have been a pleasant one for future sci-fi Grand Masters Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson, as just five years later, the pair would embark together on another series of books. THE UNDERSEA TRILOGY – Undersea Quest (1954), Undersea Fleet (1956) and Undersea City (1958) – had been targeted at a younger audience,

Undersea City by Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson

What red-blooded youth – or adult, for that matter – could possibly read Books 1 & 2 of Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson’s UNDERSEA TRILOGY and not want to immediately proceed on to Book #3? Not I, that’s for sure! In Book #1, Undersea Quest (1954), our narrator, 18-year-old Jim Eden, a cadet at the U.S. Sub-Sea Academy, had gotten into major-league trouble with a gaggle of crooks and goons in the suboceanic domed city of Thetis,

Undersea Fleet by Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson

At the tail end of Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson’s Undersea Quest (1954), our narrator, 18-year-old Jim Eden, has been reinstated into the U.S.S.A. (U.S. Sub-Sea Academy), after having been forced to resign under mysteriously trumped-up charges. The authors’ fans would have to wait a few years to find out what, if anything, might happen next, but ultimately they were rewarded with a follow-up volume that was, if anything,

Undersea Quest by Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson

In 1947, Robert A. Heinlein, after almost a decade of producing high-quality science fictional short stories and novellas for adults, came out with his first novel, Rocket Ship Galileo. The book was geared to younger readers, and would prove to be just the beginning of a landmark series of 12 “Heinlein juveniles,” all published by the U.S. firm Scribner’s. Heinlein – who, in 1974, would be proclaimed the first Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America – would come out with at least one such book for younger readers every year until 1958.