People Minus X & The Savage Machine - Softcover

Armchair Fiction presents extra large editions of classic science fiction double novels with original illustrations. Our first novel is “People Minus X” written by 20th century science fiction master, Raymond Z. Gallun. But were they really human...? That was the question everyone was asking. It was an astonishing scientific achievement, one that mankind had passionately wanted for centuries—a process that restored life and wholeness to victims of disaster. This amazing new process was based partly on scientific records, partly on memories of those who knew the deceased. Unfortunately, this new discovery had a small, fatal flaw. The restored people were the exact physical duplicates of their former selves. However, they seemed to lack an indefinable human quality—perhaps it was a soul or divine spark. Yet, they were physically and intellectually superior not only to their original incarnations but to their human creators as well! As time went by, the artificial people gravitated toward one another—they married, reproduced. Even their children were recognizable in an uncanny way as being apart from “normal” people. As the number of new people grew, the rest of Earth’s population drew away from them, and soon sprang fear and hatred between these two camps of humanity, with an ugly showdown seemingly inevitable... The second novel is gripping fasten-your-seatbelt wild ride, Randall Garrett’s “The Savage Machine.” He was in the death grip of a monstrous computer. His name was Charlie Leith; he was a city councilman for New York City, sometime in the distant future. It was a pretty high-profile job with a lot of fringe benefits. But there wasn’t all that much for Charlie and his fellow councilmen to do anymore, not since Central Control had taken over most of the city’s inner workings: police, traffic, telephone calls, elevators, security systems, parks and recreation—you name it, CC had its finger in it. At the heart of Central Control was a gigantic computer called “The Brain,” and it basically ran the whole show. All Charlie had to do was show up for work, debate politics, and vote on an occasional bill. No doubt about it, Charlie Leith had a great career going for himself. Then one day somebody with a gun in his hand knocked on Charlie’s door. His name was Henry Kraus, a disgruntled, ex-employee of Central Control. Henry Kraus fed Charlie the most unbelievable story—a fantastic tale of a planned takeover of the entire city. It was laughable. But when Henry Kraus ended up dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft, Charlie knew that something was amiss. And soon Charlie Leith was running for his life. But where do you hide from a computer that has its creeping electronic fingers reaching for you everywhere you turn?