| EMPIRE OF TWO WORLDS |
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Ace 441-20565-075, 1972, cover by John Schoenherr. Urania 1972 (Italy) as "Dai bassifondi di Klittmann City". Allison & Busby 0-85031-321-X, 1979, cover by John Harris, Young Artists |
Klein was bitter, and made plans to steal a tank for himself - and
anything else he could lay hands on.
It was when he allied himself with an arrogant, vicious tyrant that
that he had second thoughts about the universe-strangling career he
had launched himself upon.
But gang-leader Becmath was a man with a vision: to build an empire
for himself without breaking the stasis. His lieutenant Klein
recognised Becmath's genius and stayed faithful to him even when
they were forced to travel Killibol's arid surface in a desperate
search for the lost gateway to Earth. He stayed faithful through
murder, treachery and countless adventures. Only when Becmath's
scemes reached incredible fulfilment was he able to realise that
he had been serving an egomaniac and a monster...
"Something of a disappointment when compared to his precise shorter work of the time, it is still an engrossing story.." - Rhys Hughes
"It marks the start of a distinct fondness for writing about criminals and other low-life, perhaps mainly to act as thicko foils for the author's startling ideas." - Andy Robertson, Interzone
Outcast Klein was one of the "tankless" ones of the enclosed and self-
sustained city of Klittmann. The inhabitants of that city survived by
nutrient tanks, which came along from Earth when the settlers first
landed on the dim, arid world of Killibol.
In the huge termite-hills of cities that dotted the dead world of
Killibol it seemed that nothing could ever change. Each city was
enclosed and self-sustaining, in a stasis fixed by the one reality
of power: the protein tanks in which organic nutrients could be
reprocessed to provide food.
| Barrington Bayley: "..it was probably after seeing Joe Macbeth that I started to write EMPIRE OF TWO WORLDS, whose gangleader, Becmath, is an obvious anagram. A few days ago I was at last able to see one of the films I'd never caught up on: Little Caesar. I was tickled to see Becmath in the flesh (or should I say in the celluloid) almost exactly as I had imagined him." |