There’s a very nice flying saucer on the cover. The Prologue has a great idea and it’s interesting and intriguing, and then it all goes downhill. Except the prologue, which I assume was added for the novel version.

I don’t see a good reason to read this book. And I am just annoyed by Giles Habibula, the talkative muskateer. The prose certainly didn’t improve with time.

I was able to recognize the Burroughsian theme of beautiful girl+kidnapping=fighting and falling in love. The Reaction: I read this once before and I didn’t like it anymore this time. Honestly, they don’t make any sense to me. Sort of little worm hole generators, I guess? And no nasty fuel to explode and muck everything up.

The author used geodynes in more than one book. They, somehow (they hum, I guess), manage to bend space time about the ship, getting it there faster. Geodynes: The spaceship the quartet travels in uses “geodynes” to traverse the light years in a speedy manner.And it certainly appears to be running away, if you check out the. The star itself is thought to be one of the oldest in the galaxy, which is kind of a big deal. Although it was once thought to have a planet or two larger than Jupiter, scientists are now only able to confirm that certain planets do not exist around the star. Except, it’s real! In the book, the star is a dying red dwarf star which no longer gives off enough heat to sustain the lone planet that orbits it. I mean, Barnard’s Runaway Star? You’ve got to be kidding me. Barnard’s Runaway Star: When I was reading this, I totally thought it was made up.Although, I suspect, a lot of people die in the Solar System before they manage to save it. The rescue is hard, many horrible dangers are faced, but John and his team win in the end. He and “a fabulous trio of swashbucklers” (according to the back of the book) set off to rescue the girl from a hideous race of evil black jellyfish who want to take over the Solar System and from his relatives who want to rule the Solar System. Turns out his family wants to overturn the current government, but John is having none of it. The Story: Young John Ulnar, just out of the Starfleet Legion Academy, is assigned (through family connections) to protect a (beautiful, blonde, young) woman who holds the secret to an ultimate weapon, AKKA. The Setting: Mostly on a distant planet, orbiting Barnard’s Runaway Star.

The edition was published by Pyramid Books in 1969. Originally published as a serial in 1934, the novel is a revised version first published in 1947. The Book: The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson.