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Star Quest

by S.J. Byrne

278 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-1300; ISBN 1-4120-0931-6; US$24.00, C$27.50, EUR20.00, £14.00

Is Man alone in the universe? Beyond the translight barrier, one Star Quest discovers that Mother Nature wears a "chastity belt" against the cross-contamination of cultures. Man, the contaminant, must find an answer . . . . .

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpts or Table of Contents      catalogue info

About the Book The great star ship, Sirius III, becomes lost in what seems to be a parallel universe. It comes through the "Barrier Wall" of translight velocity, out there beyond the Einstein equations "at the end of their astral cord from Mother Earth." Why do no star ships ever return? Is Earth alone in the universe? Star men have become the myth heroes of the age, the desperate Star Quest (for other life) is a world cult. Their Earth lives and dreams have been sacrificed to the stars, only to find that Nature wears a cosmic "chastity belt" against the cross-contamination of cultures. Man the eternal contaminant must first be decontaminated. How? One star ship goes through the experience of finding the key to the Barrier. On a parallel Earth near the dawn of time, in a near mythological setting, the searchers experience an ancient Oracle and meet the demigod Star Wardens, who invoke a new human transition - which is the key to returning. Man is his own star . . . . . From genesis of the book: Long ago at a writer's banquet in Beverly Hills when the first pilot of Star Trek was being unveiled, Gene Roddenberry said kind words to me: "Stu, I'd stand in the rain for one of your stories." My subsequent duties in the aerospace world intervened against such a potential for me, but now, long years later when Gene is space-borne (his ashes were orbited) - hopefully not to "where no man has gone before" - I can say fondly in spirit, "Gene, here's that story!" Boozie finally rallied. He raised his arms to the stars. "Sweet Mother Nature!" he exclaimed. "Don't look now, but somebody has sprung your chastity belt. Our noble breed has arrived, and you, my Gracious Lady, have been had!". "So what's it boil down to?" asked Danny. "There may be humanoids out there somewhere, but what else? Satyrs? Centaurs? Unicorns?" Boozie smirked. "In effect, why not? You think it's way out? That's exactly where we are, buddy. We are as way out as you can get! Time, parallel universe, or maybe another dimension. Don't let your packaged education get in the way. Stop being a tree. Out here, lost in the stars, who knows what's in the forest?" The magic part was the absence of words. They looked at each other, lost in a far place where everything was suddenly "off the cuff." The "package" was gone along with the masks. He kissed her gently and she responded repeatedly. For the first time since he had known the formidable Dr. Frederica Sachs, her soft white arms were around him. The endless starry light years they had come, across the Barrier Wall... And it was all so simple. Or was it? If human civilization ever did break through the "chastity belt" and come here, there would be alarm clocks in Paradise. As Boozie had expressed it with his usual cynical smirk: "Beware the star gods, my children!" Which, before the day was over, seemed to be prophetic. Like a golden Pythia of the Delphic Oracle, she sat in mystic trance on the trihedron stand above the spirit pit. She had been bathed in energized waters from volcanic geysers, anointed with incense oils, and had eaten of the padama-tama or vision root. Her slender torso was wrapped in the holy white-red wreathes of the vadya-khitam or virgin veil, and her long blond tresses were adorned with the symbolic three-petaled blossoms of the sacred atraya vine. Her marble white breasts were flower-tipped symbols of innocence yet somehow unveiling the sphinxlike mystery of the female hierophant within the shadowed portals of revelation. Also there beside the long-haired seated figure of Ravano was Nolokov, standing tall and silent, staring in cabalistic concentration at the blond prophetess on her lofty tripod over the smouldering pit. Like a dark-eyed sorcerer, he appeared to be willing the nascent winds of the communal psyche into manifestation. Probably a part of the magic had been the negative rapture of isolation from sorrow, hurt, and ugliness. It was a finality he accepted as irreversible, like a soul-commitment to otherdimensional destiny. The soaring cloisters of the forest were his troll-like sanctuary, forming a cordon sanitaire between the predawn children and the far Babylon he had failed to cope with. The green, gold, and purple galleries, the branching grottos and verdured chambers of the multi-terraced jungles with their cathedral shafts of light from flower-framed windows in the lofty canopies above - these were the enchanted halls of a timelorn castled city, peopled by mythical beings long lost to racial memory, whether this was Lemuria or a parallel world in some forgotten universe. They walked in a word-searching silence, their hands clasped painfully together. It was a pain of gladness, as welcome as shining tears. The glow of wonder that touched their world with magic was due to more than love's realization. Both of them knew they'd never be the same after the temple experience. This was metamorphosis, as Holy Sam had described it. To positively know that no one was alone anymore, that womb-to-tomb futility was an illusion and that the cosmos was eternally and vibrantly alive with collective consciousness and purpose ‹ this was a soaring new perspective that made each twig or leaf a priceless wonder and electrified the meaning of even a breath of air. It was too much for human instinct. They held onto each other, blinded by a vision, fearing that they would awake from a far too fragile dream. "Out of the cave stepped Buli, the Moal girl with the golden brown hair and the pointed ears. One surprise was that she was no longer blind. Her big, shining green eyes were looking right at us out of that mythological nymph face." "Ah!" said the swami with a note of intensity. "The great transition on the Shadowy Arc! She*s an advance type, gaining physical sight at the cost of inner vision. Her name should have been Eve!" "Well, she ate the apple, all right. She was all rounded out in front, pregnant as hell." "Pregnant? But -" "Leave it to Jerry, Sam. With him, if it*s not supposed to happen, it does. The poor lonely bastard had dropped his cookies into a fairy crock, and God knows what the offspring would have been!"

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Sample Excerpts or Table of Contents

Intro by Mister Science Fiction. . . .

THERE WERE GIANTS IN THOSE DAYS
- And Stuart J. Byrne was One of Them

Ray Cummings . . Edmond Hamilton . . A. Merritt . . Edgar Rice Burroughs . . Stanley Weinbaum. . names to conjure with in the pioneering days of science fiction - then known as scienti-fiction - from the mid 20's to mid-30's.

And in the August 1935 issue of Amazing Stories, the first sci-fi magazine - before there was hi-fi - a story, "Music of the Spheres," was published by a young Stuart James Byrne, who was to blossom in the lustrums to come into a science-fiction author to be reckoned with. Not only under his own name but several pseudonyms, including the popular John Bloodstone - Land Beyond the Lens, Last Days of Thronas, Thundar - Man of Two Worlds - an amazing number of novellas and novels flowed from his enchanted typewriter and thrilled a generation in magazines and later in pocketbooks.

Additionally he translated from German a number of the Perry Rhodan series, the world's oldest and longest space opera serial, but before the movie, Star Man, there was an original Star Man novel, by S.J.Byrne, the first of a pulse-pounding series of space operas that drew over 4,000 fans when the Perry Rhodan translations came to an end in America.

Now in Byrne's 90th year, his legacy is to be his long-hidden masterpiece, Star Quest, being released appropriately in the new electronic medium via Trafford Publications of Canada. Arthur J. Burks, science-fiction pioneer, was known as a "fiction factory" in his day, and the same could be said of Stuart J. Byrne. I have been reading science fiction since October 1926. In this, my 86th Anniversary Year, I am thrilled to find one of the "graybeards" of the genre, Stu Byrne, being reintroduced to a modern world-wide audience. What a treat they have in store!

Forrest J. Ackerman
Mr. Science Fiction

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Catalogue Information

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