Picked this up mainly 'cause it's such a cool-looking old pulp paperback (1955). The contents are just about exactly what you'd expect from the packaging - it's definitely a 'boys'' adventure story in space... from back in the day when rockets were tall, pointy, and powered by jet fuel, and new planets were open to capitalist exploitation by bold and manly explorers.... tongue.gif
Our Hero graduates from the Space Academy and is assigned to the Solar Queen, a Free Trader ship. The crew buys trading rights to a sight-unseen planet at public auction.
Will the planet be a worthless wasteland - or the site of valuable artifacts from long-dead civilisations?
Our Hero graduates from the Space Academy and is assigned to the Solar Queen, a Free Trader ship. The crew buys trading rights to a sight-unseen planet at public auction.
Will the planet be a worthless wasteland - or the site of valuable artifacts from long-dead civilisations?
A story from a time when men were men, spaceships were shiny and silver, and a novel only cost forty cents. Originally written in 1955, Sargasso of Space is a science fiction classic. It is among the first to create a future in which concepts such as trade and profit shape the events, not just exploration. There are some amusing anachronisms, such as interstellar spaceships keeping cargo logs on paper, but on the whole Ms. Norton did a remarkable job of envisioning the future at a point in time when man had not yet walked on the moon. and microprocessors did not yet exist. This novel is well worth the read, both as a rollicking good adventure story and as a novel that showcases a step in the development of the science fiction genera.
