Summerbooks 6 and 7: SF novels!

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Android Avenger/The Altar of Asconel (Ace Double) 

I thought I would kick things off right and read an Ace Double from my recent haul.  I chose Android Avenger because I had a copy before, but it had mildew damage and had to be tossed.  I was bitter.  But I got another chance!

Android Avenger is not that great.  It's the stinker of the two.  In 2017, the world is carefully regulated to avoid neurosis -- defined as anything the authorities deem even slightly abnormal.  Neurotics get executed, so everyone is very careful indeed to look calm and content, and to avoid those scans as much as possible.  Our narrator, Norman, thinks he's just an ordinary guy, until the day he suddenly loses control of himself and starts running inhumanly fast and murdering people he's never seen before.  He discovers that he's a tool of the man who plans to take over society -- an easy task now that everything is controlled by central computers.  Can Norman and the few others he finds stop the plot?

Yeah, it was pretty bad.  Lots of improbable girls too.

The Altar of Asconel is better. Spartak, the youngest of his brothers, is a sort of intellectual monk and is finally prepared to write his great work when his middle brother shows up.  All of them had left their home planet of Asconel when their oldest brother took the Wardenship, so as to avoid any chance of being used in political plots against him. Here at the tail end of a crumbling galactic empire, Asconel is an island of peace and prosperity, and it's vulnerable; plus, news travels slowly.  Spartak is informed that Asconel has fallen nearly entirely to a religious cult no one has ever heard of before.  All are forced to worship and even sacrifice themselves to Belizuek; everything else has fallen apart.  Spartak and his motley band have to find out what Belizuek could be and how to save their planet -- and galaxy.

Not fantastic, but not bad.  I had fun.

Doctor to the Stars, by Murray Leinster

This one also came off the SF pulp pile.  It contains three novellas featuring Calhoun of the Interstellar Medical Service and Murgatroyd, his tormal animal assistant.  This could easily have been a proposal for a TV series, like a cross between Star Trek and any of a dozen shows starring the guy who comes to town and solves the problem (Knight Rider, Highway to Heaven, any Chuck Norris movie, etc.).  Calhoun travels the galaxy in his medical ship, answering cries for help or making scheduled visits.  His obnoxious animal assistant says chee! a lot and sometimes helps to save the day (his biology can produce any antibody, or something like that).  Here, they solve a war between the generations, a plague of madness, and a planet that is mysteriously deserted when they arrive.

Also a fun read, and gave me a chance to say "Space madness!!" for a couple of days. 

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