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I visited one of our local Half Price Books locations today and they had a spinrack of old sci fi (mostly) novels for $1. Another location had a similar rack, but their's were $3 (which is where I picked up the entire Asimov Lucky Starr series)...
...anyway, I found some books today from the Laser Books imprint, which it turns out was an imprint of Harlequin back in the 70s. I picked up 5 of them. One was by Jerry Pournelle, and I'm not familiar with the authors of the others - Christopher Lampton (Cross of Empire), The Meddlers (J.F. Bone), and Robert Hoskins (Master of the Stars).
There were apparently some 58 titles in the series. All stand alone. And, all the books featured covers by Kelly Freas, which is worth the price of the books to me!
Anyone familiar with these? Is there fodder for Planet Stories in these stories? I don't know how many have been reprinted. According to Wiki, some manuscripts were butchered by Laser Books
The series was edited by Roger Elwood. I need to look it up, but there was an author of Christian fiction in the late 80s/early 90s by that name who seemed to come out with a book every other month or so...
Curious to hear others thoughts on this series of novels? Any stand outs?
Elwood was famous for repackaging stories into themed anthologies. He produced a handful of good books and a boatload of crap. The Laser books were a very mixed bag. You had a couple very good books, followed by some good books. And now, this is where the crap comes into play. A lot of really bad books. And from what I have heard, a lot of the authors never got paid.
As to the butchering part, Elwood was very heavy handed with the red pencil. Many authors have complained about having their stories heavily edited and even completely changed.
IMHO, the Freas covers were the only reason to pick up these books in the first place.