Part of Series
There was a youth protest movement on the planet Jasper. Which should not have been anything new—there were always youth protest movements—and a planet like Jasper with its mixed colonies was entitled to them too. The difference was that these boys and girls had been made into human bombs—they blew up on contact. That was good enough reason to call in Ben Jolson of the galaxy-famous Chameleon Corps. Jolson could disguise himself as just about anything—doctor, lawyer, Indian Chief, or even icebox. But Jasper strained him to the limit. Not only did it house a mad combination of mad cultures, but someone else was doing the chameleon trick too—and besides, how do you go around looking like an exploding bomb? It's a new Ron Goulart novel and another whacky, wonder tour of the eccentric side of futurity.
Author
Pseudonyms: Howard Lee; Frank S Shawn; Kenneth Robeson; Con Steffanson; Josephine Kains; Joseph Silva; William Shatner. Ron Goulart is a cultural historian and novelist. Besides writing extensively about pulp fiction—including the seminal Cheap Thrills: An Informal History of Pulp Magazines (1972)—Goulart has written for the pulps since 1952, when the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction published his first story, a sci-fi parody of letters to the editor. Since then he has written dozens of novels and countless short stories, spanning genres and using a variety of pennames, including Kenneth Robeson, Joseph Silva, and Con Steffanson. In the 1990s, he became the ghostwriter for William Shatner’s popular TekWar novels. Goulart’s After Things Fell Apart (1970) is the only science-fiction novel to ever win an Edgar Award. In the 1970s Goulart wrote novels starring series characters like Flash Gordon and the Phantom, and in 1980 he published Hail Hibbler, a comic sci-fi novel that began the Odd Jobs, Inc. series. Goulart has also written several comic mystery series, including six books starring Groucho Marx. Having written for comic books, Goulart produced several histories of the art form, including the Comic Book Encyclopedia (2004).
