Race Across the Stars

Spaceways #18

by Andrew J. Offutt, Robin Kincaid, John Cleve (Pseudonym)

Every ten years the ten best ship captains compete in a deadly test of endurance and skills spanning half the Galactic Hub - The Great Race. Bloodthirsty pirate Manjanungo, with the help of Hummer the ruthless sickofobber, will do anything to win. But lusty Kalahari, if she can control her Hellfire spirit (among other things), stands an excellent chance of capturing the prize. This much is certain. With ten mighty captains at each other's throats, the question is not who will be the victor, but who will survive!

Genres: Science Fiction

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1984

About the author

Andrew Jefferson Offutt was an American science fiction and fantasy author. He wrote as Andrew J. Offutt, A.J. Offutt, and Andy Offut. His normal byline, andrew j. offutt, had his name in all lower-case letters. His son is the author Chris Offutt.

Offutt began publishing in 1954 with the story And Gone Tomorrow in If. Despite this early sale, he didn't consider his professional life to have begun until he sold the story Blacksword to Galaxy in 1959. His first novel was Evil Is Live Spelled Backwards in 1970.

Offutt published numerous novels and short stories, including many in the Thieves World series edited by Robert Lynn Asprin and Lynn Abbey, which featured his best known character, the thief Hanse, also known as Shadowspawn (and, later, Chance). His Iron Lords series likewise was popular. He also wrote two series of books based on characters by Robert E. Howard, one on Howard's best known character, Conan, and one on a lesser known character, Cormac mac Art.

As an editor Offutt produced a series of five anthologies entitled Swords Against Darkness, which included the first professional sale by Charles de Lint.

Offutt also wrote a large number of pornographic works under twelve different pseudonyms, not all of them identified. Those known include John Cleve, J.X. Williams, and Jeff Douglas. His main works in this area are the science fiction Spaceways series, most of whose volumes were written in collaboration, and the historical Crusader series.

Reviews

[Craig]

The Spaceways series spanned nineteen volumes that were published 1982 - '85, and were the creation of andrew j. offutt, who wrote a lot of works of erotic content under his John Cleve pseudonym. He wrote nine of the books on his own (1-6, 8-9, 19) and ten of them were collaborative, but all nineteen had terrific covers by Ken Barr. The first nine were published by Playboy Books and the rest appeared under the Berkley imprint. This one was written in collaboration with Robin Kincaid, who had previously worked on volume fourteen, Assignment: Hellhole. This is quite the better of the two. There was definitely a lot of adult content, erotic rather than pornographic, though it must be remembered that standards in the early 1980s were much more oriented towards male dominance. The goal was to tell a space opera style adventure story while paying off and playing off of the sexy covers of the magazines of the '30s and '40s. This penultimate story is kind of a fun reunion of many of the old and established characters, including Kalahari Cuw (formerly Hellfire), Dorjan, and several others. It's a caper story of freeing slaves undercover of a starship race, not an original concept but always a fun one. The series has a rich interstellar setting filled with nefarious characters, wild schemes, and adventures of all kinds. As always, there's nothing here in the way of literary worth, but it was just intended for fun.

[Otis Campbell]

Andrew J. Offutt brought his typing buddy Robin Kincaid back out to the woodshed. They resurrected that worn-out "John Cleve" alias one more time, tryin' to disguise themselves. They tried to frame this one like an action-packed space derby, but let me tell ya, it’s slicker than owl grease and twice as foolish. The book starts out with a bunch of our old space-faring pals—like Whitey, Lizina, and Dorjan—breakin' into a giant galactic slave farm to free the workers. But right when they get 'em out, they realize they have no way to smuggle 'em off the planet. So their big, genius idea is to enter "The Great Race"—a massive, deadly space marathon that happens every few years. It makes about as much sense as enterin' a stolen tractor into the county fair demolition derby just to escape the sheriff. The bad guys are straight out of a cartoon. The main villain in the race is a bloodthirsty pirate captain named Manjanungo, who runs around with a sidekick called Hummer the "sickofobber". The way these fellas act, they couldn't steal a hot stove without burnin' their fingers. They spend all their time plottin' goofy sabotage that makes 'em look less like terrifying cosmic threats and more like a bunch of bumbling varmints who got lost on the way to the outhouse. This race is supposed to span half the doggone Galactic Hub, with ten mighty captains at each other's throats. You’d think the book would be a fast-paced thriller. But every single time the spaceships dial up the turbo, the authors slam on the brakes so the characters can roll around in the hay. Kalahari (that former pirate gal named "Hellfire") is too busy wrestlin' with her own "lusty spirit" to focus on the steering wheel. By book eighteen, Kincaid and Offutt are just copyin' their own homework. The adult scenes feel like they were cranked out with a cookie cutter, the dialogue is stiffer than a frozen pair of overalls on a clothesline, and the whole chaotic mess only exists to stretch out the pages until they can hit the required paperback count.