Post by Calenture on Nov 28, 2008 15:58:23 GMT
The Changeling, Macfadden, 1967
The Beast, claims first Macfadden edition 1964 (?); this copy 1968
Moonbeast, Panther, 1969
A book of many titles from one of SF's true primitives. Hardly new writing (parts of this were published in Astounding in 1942), this one's posted just for fun. You'll need a sense of humour to read it, anyway!
Based upon the stories The Great Engine, The Changeling (aka The Wonderful Man) and The Beast. This cannibalised novel opens with The Great Engine - published many times as a short story. Pendrake finds the smooth metal doughnut-shaped alien engine on the hillside and takes it home for scrap. But there are others looking for the engine. The Lambton corporation is sending young couples to form a colony on Venus. As the plot segues into The Changeling, Pendrake’s arm has begun to regrow from the radiation of the engine - in fact he has begun to change into a superman, or 'toti-potent,' He is kidnapped by a group of armed women and taken to meet the President of the United States. These women, the President's personal corp, are 'equalised' women - they have taken the Makes You the Equal of a Man drug - which would doubtless have feminists today coughing as if they had fish bones stuck in their thr oats. Men find these 'equalised' women 'queer' and unattractive, while other women are uncomfortable around them.
The President enrols them as a super-efficient personal army. While the Lambton project is establishing the Venus colony, other colonies are being established on the Moon. Nazis and Germans are confronting Americans. The most entertaining part of the story has a simple premise. On a high mountain trail in America is another hidden alien machine. The machine is a door, a matter-transmitter, which transports anything which passes through it to the Moon. And whatever passes through is rendered immortal. So creatures from remote prehistory co-exist side-by-side with others of the present. A Neanderthal man, a sabre-tooth tiger, cowboys; and there are blue-skinned flat-nosed men whose identities are vague to say the least.
The disembodied minds of the original Moon-people exist in glowing machines in subterranean caves. The community is run by Big Oaf the Neanderthal man. Frequent forays are made to the German camp to kidnap groups of women. The community exists miles beneath the surface of the Moon, found by Pendrake when he crawls down tunnels in search of warmth in the lunar night. Pendrake travels back to earth, where he somehow is involved in riots between men and women, stirred up by the election campaign of the first female candidate for the presidency of the United States. Escaping jail in a mass break-out, Pendrake at last beg ins to achieve his ultimate superman status.
The short stories or novellas that make up this novel have some value; some are atmospheric and stylish, others just dated 'primitive' pieces; but scrambled up into this one bewildering story, most of their original charm is lost in the resulting mess. For The Great Engine, see the Away and Beyond collection.