Robert Moore Williams (1907–1977)

Sometimes you really CAN tell a book from its cover. Illustration: A huge, malignant mushroom cloud over a burning city, with the title superimposed on it. Inside, in the seventh sentence, an H-bomb explodes in Los Angeles. Though it's true that the cover doesn't mention anything about the zombies who show up in chapter four.

This was the most disappointing pair of Ace Double novels that I have yet read. The main point of interest is that they both shared a common theme of sci-fi "supermen," albeit in different circumstances.

The first one I read was Eric Frank Russell's Three to Conquer. In it, a precision instruments maker in the near future who happens to be telepathic stumbles across an alien plot to take over humanity. The idea of an alien virus being able to take over terrestrial life forms is pretty show more sinister, as it is virtually undetectable by humans, but in the end it serves mainly to give Russell's protagonist the ability to serve as the hero by telling cops and FBI agents how to do their job. It's suspenseful, but the ending is disappointingly anticlimactic.

By contrast, Robert Moore Williams's Doomsday Eve is anything but gripping. His story begins with soldiers fighting in a futuristic third World War encountering frequent interventions by "new people" who demonstrate remarkable superpowers. An intelligence officer assigned to investigate them finds out about their mission to save humanity and the impending effort by the "Asiatics" to destroy the continent. Williams telegraphs his ending practically from the book's early pages, leaving much of the book feeling like a wheel-spinning exercise as a result. show less

Strange things are happening in and around the town of Golden Fleece, Colorado. An authentic 1800s gold mining town has been re-created for tourists. While a group of tourists are being welcomed to the town, a naked man comes out of one of the nearby mine entrances, running and screaming. He is killed by a tiny missile fired by a two-headed creature that also comes out of a mine entrance, setting him on fire from the inside. In the ensuing panic, the helicopter full of tourists is shot down show more by another such missile, killing everyone.

John Valthor, a man with unique abilities, and head of a very secret company, is brought in to investigate by Smith, a federal security agent. While they visit the town by the "front door," Valthor instructs two of his subordinates, Keth Evan and Mishi Greer, to find a "back door" into the town.

The subordinates are arrested by the local Sheriff, and taken deep underground, where thet are caged with other humans behind an electrified chain-link fence. Every so often, one of the two-headed creatures takes one or two of the humans away for unknown brainwashing. It involves being dipped in a vat of green liquid. When they come out, they are totally at peace with the new order of things, any physical ailments they might have had are gone (including already being dead), and they exude this green oil, kind of like green sweat.

Vathor finds Erasmus Brockner, the person responsible for the two-headed creatures. He created a race of three-foot high robots, with the intention that they do mankind's dirty and dangerous work, letting man retire to a life of total leisure. His mind was taken over by beings from another galaxy called Narks. Brockner intentionally made the two-heads as "wrong" as possible, having one head face forward and the other face backward, with one arm in front and the other in back, and the two heads always arguing with each other. Can Vathor wipe out this alien beachhead, or is Brockner too much one of "them?"

This isn't a bad little sci-fi novel. It belongs in that large gray area of Pretty Good or Worth Reading. show less

It holds up pretty well. Laumer’s parody of the US diplomatic service still rings true. A bit of misogyny but nothing too hard to ignore. Still enjoyed this one decades after I first read it