To Renew the Ages by Robert Coulson

Laser Books no. 26

In 1975 Harlequin Books, known mostly for romance novels, started publishing a series of science fiction books under the moniker Laser Books. It lasted until 1977 and had 58 entries in the series featuring such well known authors such as, Piers Anthony, Raymond Fisher Jones (This Island Earth!), Gordon Eklund, Aaron Wolfe aka: Dean Koontz and many others. All the covers were painted by Kelly Freas and edited by Laser line creator, Roger Elwood.

Anytime someone mentions a Laser Book it will inevitably get slagged for being awful or at least awfully edited. Apparently, the series was notorious for taking the author’s original work and chopping it up to pieces to make it fit into the 50-60 thousand word maximum. They also edited out sex scenes, bad words and slang. Many of the books were later reprinted in their original unedited version by other publishers.

I’ve picked up many Lasers while out book hunting, drawn in by the wonderful cover art of Kelly Freas. I love the 70s borders and large images of the main characters face. It just screams, READ ME.

I picked To Renew the Ages by Robert Coulson to read first because the cover looked sci-fi/horror and the summation on the back promises post-apocalyptical adventure. I went in with very low expectations and was pleasantly surprised.

Nuclear bombs have destroyed the world as we know it. Small settlements of survivors exist all but unknown to each other along with tribes of barbarians scattered throughout an area known as the Deadlands which is basically the Southwest. The hero of the novel is a scout from a settlement in Wyoming named Bill. Half of his face is horribly disfigured from a previous encounter with a bear. Because of his disfigurement he finds himself dumped by his fiancée and rejected by his society which in turn makes him a cool moody loner.

There have been rumors that a telepathic invisible killer has been stalking the Deadlands so he heads out to investigate. While taking a rest with a band of barbarians they are attacked by a hovercraft. Bill shoots it down. Inside is of course a beautiful woman soldier. He knows what the barbarians will do to her, so he convinces her to slip out in the night with him and adventure ensues as they make the trek through the Deadlands to take her back to her home settlement, Losalam (Los Alamos, New Mexico).

She considers herself a prisoner so there is animosity and distrust. He just likes the company, and many times tells her she’s welcome to leave. She comes from a matriarchal city where women rule, and dudes are second class citizens, and she is constantly rattling off women superiority rhetoric. I don’t know what the author was going for here, but it came off as passive aggressive anti-feminism. Like if there was a society where women were in charge it would be fascist. I thought maybe it would tie in and have a point by the end, but it never went anywhere. Societal comments aside, it did give it a b-movie exploitive feel that I really enjoyed. So, morally? Meh. Fun? yeh.

As they travel through the badlands they encounter animal predators, human predators, nuclear fallout telepathic mutation predators, barren wasteland survival and maybe, just maybe they find friendship and love.

The plot was simple, the telepathic stalker was eye rolling corny, and the characters were obvious with a depth equal to the shallow end of the pool. It comes up to your waist but it’s still fun to swim around in. The story constantly moves as they are being tracked, which gives the traveling a needed tension. I loved the random encounters and issues they had to solve. The drama between the two was like a rom com where two people who don’t like each other are forced to work together and fall in love. Actually, that’s a pretty apt description of this book. A post-apocalyptic rom-com adventure.

Maybe because I went in with super low expectations and wasn’t expecting much but I really enjoyed this one. I didn’t find it lacking anything like it had been heavily edited.

So, on the Laser scoreboard we start off with a win. 1 and 0. Good thing because I have like thirty of these suckers.

Laser Books 1976