Lords of the Psychon
First edition cover, New York, 1963
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| Author | Daniel F. Galouye |
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| Original title | Lords of the Psychon |
| Cover artist | uncredited |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | A Bantam Book, J2555 |
| Genre | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
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Publication date
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1963 |
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Published in English
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April, 1963 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 153 pp |
| OCLC | 7345770 |
| 813/.5/4 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.G18 Lo, PS3557.A42 Lo |
| Preceded by | Dark Universe (1961) |
| Followed by | Simulacron 3 (1964) |
Lords of the Psychon is a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by Daniel F. Galouye published in April 1963 by Bantam Books. The Library of Congress Catalog Card Number is 63009177. Daniel Galouye wrote this story in 1963. It was his second novel, following the successful Dark Universe, and reflects his interest in worlds where one's perception of reality is the key factor affecting that reality and the most important element of it.
The novel is set 15 years after the devastation of earth. A band of holdout soldiers remain steadfast to their military/defensive duty, and are based in a deserted junior college in the shadow of a strange, towering, alien City of Force. Wherever the aliens have established themselves, they have raised up great walled cities comprising huge buildings shaped like cylinders, pyramids, cubes, rhombohedrons, semi-transparent prisms, and balls. Electric equipment all over the earth has been shut down by the aliens, and all of human civilization has been driven back to a coal and steam-based technology. The Cities of Force are the home of the “Spheres”. They are large floating aliens that generally ignore humans except when they decide to “select” someone. Then they hover and float through the air, crackling with static electricity and hunting the selected person apparently for sport. Spheres can travel right through walls and hillsides in their pursuit of the selected people. When they finally run down the prey, they throw lightning bolts to kill the human. The Spheres also get active around the time of Horror Day, an annual event when a grid of energy forms over the earth and somehow inflicts incredible physical and mental torture on the earthlings, which takes months for the populace to recover from.
The novels starts on September 24, 1993 (at the time of writing, thirty years in the future) and Captain Geoffery Maddox, U.S. Army is leading a detail from the headquarters of the Third Army against a target. The detail consists of a retired U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer, a Marine Corporal, a Marine Private, an Army Private, and a civilian scout. They are the members of the only known military force left on Earth, and they try to smuggle the last known atomic bomb into one of the mysterious alien structures that now dot the surface of the Earth. They desperately hope that setting off a fifty kiloton nuclear explosion can disrupt the operation of the structure and thereby lessen the effects of what is known as "Horror Day," or "H-Day".
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