Average Classic SF book by well known author Lester Del Rey. Worth a read but not his best work. ( )

This is a short novel first published in a shorter form in 1954 as "No More Stars" in 'Beyond Fantasy Fiction' under the pseudonym of Charles Satterfield. My book dates to the expanded novel version from 1974. The story is very strange with an absurd premise but enjoyable nevertheless. Describing the plot would scare most people off. The book is labeled "science fiction" but it is really a fantasy, or at most a science fantasy book which is not the same as science fiction. The only things missing from the first page was eye of newt and "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." A curious person might wonder what the author was smoking as he wrote this.

I can't recommend this oldie except for folks that like slightly zany old-style magic, runes, spells, astrology, mandrake root men zombies and other really strange stuff. Generally magic anything is a turn-off for me, but this is so strange it kept me reading and mildly entertained. I wondered a few times if this was intended as a spoof/parody of something. ( )

A book from the golden age of science fiction. The golden age of sf famously being when you are twelve. That is about when I first read it.
This slim volume was probably first published as a novella in a pulp zine. A computer expert find himself reincarnated in a world where magic works and The sky is falling. It is so old that it is assumed that all Computers are analog and mechanical. Just as well, the skills of a modern computer expert would be useless. It seemed cramped on rereading it now. Del Rey was I am sure capable of better than this. ( )