Zanthar at the Edge of Never

Zanthar #2

by Robert Moore Williams

MAROONED IN TIME.

The monsters had millions of eyes and were utterly deadly. They were wreaking havoc all over Earth, and nothing could stop them. The one man who might be able to build a workable weapon of defense was Professor John Zanthar—and he was gone, lost millions of years in the past, with no way of returning to the present.

Then a strange being came to Zanthar's rescue—a tall man in a white robe who called himself the Librarian, and who kept the weird globe containing the 'Womb of Time'. But it was a double-edged rescue—for it brought Zanthar to another confrontation with the sinister Fu Cong. And while his battle might save the Earth, it almost certainly meant death for Zanthar himself!

285 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

The prolific author Robert Moore Williams published more than 150 novels and short stories under his given name as well as a variety of pseudonyms including John S. Browning, H.H. Harmon, Robert Moore, Russell Storm and E.K. Jarvis.

Williams was born in Farmington, Missouri and earned a journalism degree from the University of Missouri, Columbia. He had a full-time writing career from 1937 through 1972 and cut his teeth on such publications as Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, Astounding, Thrilling Wonder and Startling.

In 1955 Williams cranked out The Chaos Fighters, the first of 30 novels he would write over the next 15 years. These novels include the Jongor and ,Zanthar series. His most unusual book, however, is one that is labeled as fiction, but is actually an autobiography: Love is Forever - We Are for Tonight (Curtis 06101, 1970). In this short, 141-page work Williams presents a description of his childhood and then discusses his experimentation with hallucinogenic gasses, Dianetics and 1950s-era communes.

Williams married Margaret Jelley in 1938 and they had one child. The couple divorced in 1958. According to the Social Security Death Index, Williams died in May of 1977 in Dateland, Arizona.

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is the second of four that Williams wrote about Professor John Zanthar, who has a matter transmitter/time machine that allows him to travel to exotic locations for exploration and adventure. It was published as a paperback original in 1968 and is set in the near-future world of 1982. I rather liked the innocence and exuberant silliness of many of Williams' pulp stories from the 1940s and '50s, but this was one is a little too over the top. If I had read it fifty years ago I might be more forgiving, but... Zanthar travels millions of years into the past with alien telepath Nerissa and her two giant cat-lion beasts, where they meet up with a band of elf-like creatures and his matter transmitter is broken in an attack. Meanwhile, in 1982, it's up to his graduate assistants, Red and Lori, to mount a rescue because the nefarious Fu Cong is trying to take over the world some more again, and his evil many-eyed fluid monsters are causing destruction and havoc. They even eat Lori's pajamas. Fu Cong, who's called a "mongol," speaks with a terrible lisp and encourages the deployment of nuclear bombs. It's all just too silly and offensive and doesn't make enough sense and is too long. It's a strangely packaged book, too... the cover is all bright red, and says "Easy Eye" on the top third, with an explanation that it has large type on non-glare (higher pulp content?) paper. The title is much smaller and stylized, so it's hard read, and then there's a tiny little picture of Zanthar with lines around him over the author's name... except it's not Zanthar, it's a tiny bit of the Ed Emshwiller cover for Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun clipped out and pasted there randomly. The novel text is fine, but the cover's certainly not easy on the eye.