Spaceways #17: The Carnadyne Horde — Paperback
Rare, Out-of-Print, Paperback 1^st Edition

212pp, 4⅛″ x 6⅞″, paperback (ISBN 0-425-06990-7), Autographed by Koman, Very Fine— $12.00

In the early 1980s, future three-time Prometheus Award-winner Victor Koman collaborated with Andrew J. Offutt on Offutt’s SPACEWAYS series for Playboy Books (which was sold to Berkley after Koman came onboard). Koman wrote two novels in the series, to which Offutt added his own scenes, edited, and published under the series pen-name “John Cleve,” with covers painted by famous artist Ken Barr. These paperbacks are long out of print, but are some of the earliest examples of Koman’s published writing. Copy is in very fine condition.

The SPACEWAYS series comprised adult-oriented, erotic science-fiction (think Fifty Shades of Star Wars), designed to bridge the gap in Offutt’s œvre between his renowned career in mainstream science-fiction and his clandestine career in pornography. (His son, author Chris Offutt, wrote a memoir titled My Father, the Pornographer in 2015.) Koman answered Offutt’s call in 1982 to help with guest-writing novels in the popular series (along with authors such as Geo. W. Proctor, Jack C. Haldeman II, G. C. Edmondson, Roland J. “Jeffrey Lord” Green, and Dwight V. Swain, among others), based on the, shall we say, writing ability Koman demonstrated in his own erotic science-fiction novel, Starship Women.

Adapted from the book-cover blurb: War Along the Spaceways?? TGO, the Galactic super-police group called The Gray Organization, can’t be bothered with minor traffic-cop offenses — “mere” piracy, slavery, thoughtlegging (illegally trying to uplift “backward” populations on protected planets). That is, until Marekallian Eks, Mindrunner, assembles a great fleet of spacegoing dreadnoughts: The Carnadyne Horde!

TGO notices. TGO acts. So does the beautiful and murderous Tura ak Saiping, as well as (reader favorites) Janja, the former pirate Hellfire, Quindy, and the bisexual Jarps Cinnabar and Sweetface. Mighty forces rush headlong toward hellish conflict, but the final confrontation must be between Marekallian Eks and Trafalgar Cuw!

Includes 16-page supplement at the back of the book, “Slang Along the Spaceways,” by John Cleve.