Triangle of Power. John Russell Fearn

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ several American newspapers in the Maine and New York areas. The Amazon novels enjoyed extraordinary popularity (especially with Canadian housewives), and ran for the next sixteen years following the appearance of the first novel in the March 3, 1945 issue, ending with Fearn’s sudden death in September 1960, aged only fifty-two. His final two Amazon novels appeared posthumously.

      During Fearn’s lifetime, only the first six novels were published in British hardcover editions from the World’s Work in England, after appearing in the Star Weekly. This was because the publishers discontinued their entire fiction line in 1954. However, the Amazon novels continued to appear in the Star Weekly, eventually notching up twenty-four titles.

      Fearn had resold paperback rights to the Canadian publisher Harlequin Books, but after publishing only the first three titles, they stopped publishing SF and other genre fiction to concentrate on their famous Romances line.

      Meanwhile, as early as 1949, Fearn had realized that the Amazon series had the potential to run indefinitely. This presented him with a problem, however. The ‘origin story’ of the Golden Amazon was conceived and actually set during the Second World War. Subsequent novels were written during the war and the immediate postwar period, and projected their stories only a few decades into the future.

      He very astutely realized that to keep ahead of reality, he needed to move the Amazon further into the future—first into the outer solar system, and thence to the stars. So with the seventh novel, he introduced a new main character, Abna of Atlantis—someone as equally intelligent, and even stronger than herself. These dynamics provided him with an interstellar canvas, thus ensuring that the series would remain ahead of reality.

      Fearn’s strategy was a great success, and the Amazon novels retained their popularity, ending only with his tragically early death in 1960. By then he had written a further twenty Amazon novels, and made preliminary notes for his next (which would later be written by Fearn’s biographer, Philip Harbottle).

      Long after Fearn’s death, his entire Amazon series would eventually see print from the pioneering US small press Gryphon Books in limited paperback editions, and later by the Canadian Battered Silicon Dispatch Box small press in their hardcover Omnibus series.

      This new Borgo Press paperback series will be the first trade edition of all twenty-one of these later novels by Fearn, beginning with the seventh novel in the original series. First published in 1949 as Conquest of the Amazon, I have edited it slightly as World Beneath Ice (The Golden Amazon Saga, Book One) so that it can be read and enjoyed by new readers who may be totally unfamiliar with what had gone before. Subsequent novels have also been slightly edited for modern readers.

      The publishers hope that this new series may create many more “fans of the Amazon.” Meanwhile, any reader interested in seeking out the earlier six Golden Amazon novels will find that they are readily available on the internet, and in numerous earlier paperback and hardcover editions.

      * * * *

      To date, readers can enjoy the following new Borgo Press editions:

      Book One: World Beneath Ice

      In destroying the threat of an alien invasion, the Golden Amazon had inadvertently caused a decline in the sun’s heat, encasing Earth in an ice sheet that threatens to eliminate humanity. The Amazon encounters Abna, a descendant of Atlantis, stronger and even more scientifically advanced than she, and the ruler of an Atlantean colony still surviving in a protected environment on Jupiter. She refuses his offer of marriage, but agrees to form an alliance in order to restore the sun and save the Earth. One thing that Abna has not told the Amazon is that all the females of his race have been wiped out by a bacilli infection....

      Book Two: Lord of Atlantis

      A gigantic ridge of land rises from the Atlantic floor, causing massive tidal waves on either side of the ocean. Even stranger, both England and America are then assailed by an invasion of prehistoric monsters! A gigantic domed city rests on the newly risen plateau, whilst out in space an alien spacecraft orbits the Earth. Such are the mysteries and challenges facing the Golden Amazon, self-appointed governess of Earth, as she struggles to unravel the maze of mystery that was the deadly legacy of Atlantis!

      CHAPTER ONE

      HONEYMOON IN SPACE

      Westminster Abbey in the late twenty-first century—not the time-­honoured edifice of grey stone and exquisite carvings beloved of history, but a bigger and even more lavish recreation. Around it people in tens of thousands, packing the streets and paths and parks, all straining for a glimpse of the pair who were to be married this day, the most extraordinary man and woman who had ever stepped into Earth history and directed its destiny by scientific power—Violet Ray Brant, The Golden Amazon, and Abna of Jupiter, descendant of Atlantis.

      The breathtaking loveliness of’ the woman was something which held those nearest to her in thrall. She looked her eternal twenty-five, graceful in her oyster-satin gown. The bridal veil somewhat masked the shimmering gold of her hair, but it left the beauty of her features untouched. The mouth was full and red, the chin rounded but strong, the eyes a deep violet—unfathomable. Here was the woman who had a scientist’s gift of super­human strength and scientific intel­ligence, a woman whose brain had more than once saved the Earth from disaster and even rekindled a dying sun.

      Yet still there was one cleverer—and stronger: the nearly seven-foot giant at her side. The grey suit he was wearing seemed inappropriate. He needed the toga-like uniform of his race. He was as handsome as the woman was beautiful.

      The wedding was over. It was a signal for a stirring among the people. Among them, toward the rear of the mighty church, a slender man with heliotrope-coloured eyes sat musing. He was half smiling, a smile of scorn as if he considered this cere­mony the height of absurdity.

      Neither the Amazon nor Abna noticed him as they went on their way to a limousine that took them to the main London airport, where in a special enclosure lay the giant gleaming space machine Ultra, owned by the Amazon.

      Honeymoon among the stars. That was the plan. Out in the wastes of space, once they had cleared the space-traffic lines operated between Earth, the Moon, and Mars by the Dodd Space Line, they could find the peace and solitude that only the limitless void could give.

      The Ultra took off in a blaze of exhaust tubes; then the fiery trail ceased as the atomic power plant took over. The man with heliotrope eyes was in the crowd, watching the speck vanish in the sky. He smiled, again with scorn. Sefner Quorne, ex-adviser of Abna and master scientist, had plans of his own to put in oper­ation while the Amazon and Abna were away.

      Unaware of the intrigue in the mind of their sworn enemy—whom they had not seen since he had made an unsuccessful attempt to destroy all females in the Earth race many months before—Abna and the Amazon looked out on to the slowly shrinking globe from which they had come. They had changed now into attire more appropriate for their voyaging—the Amazon into a tight black suit with a golden belt at the waist; Abna into the toga-like costume of his race.

      Mightily muscled, head and shoulders taller than the girl be had wed, he stood with his hand on her shoulder looking out of the main port.

      “King and queen of Earth, Vi,” he murmured. “Just as I said we would be.”

      The Amazon did not answer. Her eyes glanced over the switchboard at the automatic controls, then back at the massive atomic power plant. Even at this moment her mind was on the scientific issues upon which life or death depended. Any flaw in the mechanism or driving power of the Ultra could bring destruction.

      “Nothing СКАЧАТЬ