Gladiator-at-law (Classic Science Fiction)

Armchair Fiction presents extra-large editions of classic science fiction double novels with original illustrations. The first novel, “Gladiator at Law,” is written by two of the best science fiction writers of all time, Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth. G-M-L Homes, manufacturers of bubble houses, the greatest advance in the history of architecture, had become the biggest and most powerful corporation in the history of commerce. Unfortunately, power, greed, and rampant criminal activity had taken over corporate principals. Charles Mundin, just a criminal lawyer, had unwittingly been pulled into the thick of things, when Norma Lavin—a very beautiful client of his—had been kidnapped by corporate operatives. With grim resolve Mundin, along with the help of a shrewd accomplice, Harry Ryan, laid the plans to get the girl back and expose the massive corruption of a giant corporation. But never had there been a more one-sided battle—a handful of nobodies, armed only with ingenuity and audacity, against the greatest concentration of financial and economic power in all history! The stakes, though, were larger than money or influence; they were the fulfillment of a dead man’s dream! The second novel is Paul W. Fairman’s great tale, “The Jack of Planets.” It was something that the bigwigs at the U. S. Space program couldn’t seem to figure out. Over the past twenty years two different interplanetary flights, Voyager-One and Voyager-Two, had blasted off for Mars. It was assumed they had landed there, successfully, each with a four-person crew. But after each ship had arced toward the planet’s surface…nothing. They had never been heard from again. No communications, no distress calls, not a peep. Both missions were eventually written off as failures. However, now the space program was poised for another try: This time the equipment was newer, more durable, and the crew more thoroughly trained. But all the training in the world would do no good against a Martian landscape fraught with peril and not one, but two races of creatures bound and determined to make sure Earth’s explorers never saw home again.