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Andromeda Gun
G-7, emissary of an alien race of energy-beings, is sent to earth to explore for energy sources his race needs.
But when 6.7 takes over the body of Johnny McCloud something happens — instead of exercising total control, G-7 is changed, involved in McCloud's personality and emotions. And Johnny McCloud, the amoral gunfighter, is changed too. ANDROMEDA GUN is the story of a strange symbiosis of man and alien, and of crucial events upon which the future history of Earth depends. Johnny McCloud/G-7, the symbiote, can change Earth's history!
But when 6.7 takes over the body of Johnny McCloud something happens — instead of exercising total control, G-7 is changed, involved in McCloud's personality and emotions. And Johnny McCloud, the amoral gunfighter, is changed too. ANDROMEDA GUN is the story of a strange symbiosis of man and alien, and of crucial events upon which the future history of Earth depends. Johnny McCloud/G-7, the symbiote, can change Earth's history!
185 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
3 people are currently reading
35 people want to read
About the author
John Boyd
14 books25 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
John Boyd was the primary pen-name of Boyd Bradfield Upchurch, an American science fiction author.
John Boyd was the primary pen-name of Boyd Bradfield Upchurch, an American science fiction author.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 14, 2024
Published in 1974, Andromeda Gun is a light and fun Weird Western before there was such a sub-genre. Johnny McCloud is a notorious gunfighter in the Old American West who is taken over by alien energy-being G-7. The takeover becomes a symbiosis with a lot of misunderstanding and hilarity and religious satire along the way. There are some ethnic and sexist attitudes that are no longer appropriate, but 1874...1974... you've got to make allowances. It's one of Boyd's funniest. And the first Berkley editions have a cool orange Paul Lehr aliens & cowboys cover.
September 18, 2016
Reading is difficult for me because my eyes have become quite weak, so when I pick up a novel, it's a genuine leap of faith. Andromeda Gun was, on the whole, worthy of my meager store of faith, a classic '60s Western with well-handled SF underpinnings. An outlaw's brain is hijacked by a roaming alien missionary who acts as a neurologically supercharged "good angel". Cupidity is diverted into civic duty, lust is transformed into familial urges, etc. For some reason, fried chicken seemed a major authorial preoccupation. Maybe he typed this out while living over a chicken joint, forced to vacate his usual digs whilst waiting for royalty checks which probably never came.
Worth reading, especially if you have a soft spot for genuine pulp action leavened with SF weirdness. BTW, I read the French edition which had a pretty trippy cover, better than the US cover shown above.
Worth reading, especially if you have a soft spot for genuine pulp action leavened with SF weirdness. BTW, I read the French edition which had a pretty trippy cover, better than the US cover shown above.
July 5, 2024
This book is about 9-tenths Western and 1-tenths Sci-Fi. The Western aspect is quite engaging and fun if you like Westerns, but if you were hoping for more sci-fi antics, you might be disappointed.
One of the things which was a little disappointing for me about Andromeda Gun was that G-7 and its people are described in a mini info-dump in the first 2 pages (the alien uses “it” pronouns, which is why I’m using them). They are essentially ethereal light beings. The goal of these people, since they have nothing else to do, I guess, is to possess other beings and coerce them into being “good.” But what 'good' means is not discussed - if they have no culture or even sense of communal living, where does “good” come from? What is inherently good? How do they determine this? They don’t - we’re meant to assume good as it pertains to our society in the 1970s, I suppose. This isn’t necessarily a critique, more of an observation.
In terms of the story, Johnny is a criminal who has designs on robbing a bank. But as G-7 begins to live within him, it begins to gently encourage him to mend his ways. G-7 also gets horny for the mother of a woman it encourages Johnny to court (I loved her too), which was honestly hilarious to me. G-7 also really likes human asses.
This book is quite funny. It’s not meant to be taken seriously at all - in fact, at times, it feels almost farcical - and while the plot was rather predictable, it’s light and fun.
I enjoyed it, though I do think it needed a lot more action on G-7's part because a lot of the time, I forgot G-7 even existed. There are also some nice turns of phrase here are there, but nothing to write about regarding the prose.
Overall, if you liked the movie Cowboys and Aliens, Westerns, and possession stories, this isn’t a bad little one, though it’s pretty forgettable.
One of the things which was a little disappointing for me about Andromeda Gun was that G-7 and its people are described in a mini info-dump in the first 2 pages (the alien uses “it” pronouns, which is why I’m using them). They are essentially ethereal light beings. The goal of these people, since they have nothing else to do, I guess, is to possess other beings and coerce them into being “good.” But what 'good' means is not discussed - if they have no culture or even sense of communal living, where does “good” come from? What is inherently good? How do they determine this? They don’t - we’re meant to assume good as it pertains to our society in the 1970s, I suppose. This isn’t necessarily a critique, more of an observation.
In terms of the story, Johnny is a criminal who has designs on robbing a bank. But as G-7 begins to live within him, it begins to gently encourage him to mend his ways. G-7 also gets horny for the mother of a woman it encourages Johnny to court (I loved her too), which was honestly hilarious to me. G-7 also really likes human asses.
This book is quite funny. It’s not meant to be taken seriously at all - in fact, at times, it feels almost farcical - and while the plot was rather predictable, it’s light and fun.
I enjoyed it, though I do think it needed a lot more action on G-7's part because a lot of the time, I forgot G-7 even existed. There are also some nice turns of phrase here are there, but nothing to write about regarding the prose.
Overall, if you liked the movie Cowboys and Aliens, Westerns, and possession stories, this isn’t a bad little one, though it’s pretty forgettable.
April 20, 2011
Fun, short, light sci-fi. With Mormon, stake presidents, polygamists, gun fighters, aliens, angels.
February 17, 2023
I read two John Boyd novels when I was a teenager in the early 70s, The Rakehells of Heaven and The Last Starship from Earth, both sound enough ventures to have left an impression of an author who was amusing, fluent, and witty enough to drop classical allusions. In repurchasing a copy of his first novel (Last Starship), I picked up a copy of his 1974 novel, Andromeda Gun, which summary plot roused my interest.
Andromeda Gun is fun reading, but woefully short and undeveloped. So much more could have been done with the premise, but its breezy 173 pages proved my jejune impressions were not remiss. Boyd begins with a brief description of a race of beings in some far-star system that has evolved into energy-conserving strands of sentient light. These light beings send out missionaries to the far reaches of the universe to spread the word about the benefits of a pacific and spiritual existence. One such missionary, G-7, arrives in 1880s Shoshone Flats in Wyoming and mentally bonds with the degraded and atrophied mind of gunslinger Johnny Loco.
From the start G-7 recognizes that he (and it’s definitely got a male sensibility, which is odd when you consider it’s a being made of light) is going to have a difficult time transforming Johnny Loco into the savior of mankind. The first step in Johnny’s elevation to sainthood is the resumption of his given name, Ian McCloud, and from there we begin to observe how in the daily course of things in the wild west, the gunslinger becomes a calculating manipulator, dealing with a hypocritical minister/mayor, a lazy sheriff, a destitute saloon keeper, a Mormon patriarch, and two desirable women. While G-7 tries to steer Ian to goodness, it can only be done so by small degrees, and underlying Ian’s psyche is an overwhelming animus toward Colonel Blickett, a former leader in Quantrille’s Raiders who took Johnny Loco into his company, and who has since the war’s end become a fearsome desperado.
Boyd is able to make some clever allusions to angels as beings of light, hinting that a former emissary, G-3, had millennia before landed on earth and shaped Christian religious thought, especially about the nature of heaven and angels. Boyd is also good at hinting at and depicting the appetites/desires that prevent humankind from being able to achieve the energy-conserving bliss of the light beings. In fact, the novel’s conclusion wryly depicts G-7 becoming besotted with the physical delights of sex, in effect giving up his mission in order to participate in more of Ian’s sexual relations with his new wife and a bevy of willing squaws on the new reservation.
Good fun, spiced with some interesting speculative thoughts about religion and human nature.
Andromeda Gun is fun reading, but woefully short and undeveloped. So much more could have been done with the premise, but its breezy 173 pages proved my jejune impressions were not remiss. Boyd begins with a brief description of a race of beings in some far-star system that has evolved into energy-conserving strands of sentient light. These light beings send out missionaries to the far reaches of the universe to spread the word about the benefits of a pacific and spiritual existence. One such missionary, G-7, arrives in 1880s Shoshone Flats in Wyoming and mentally bonds with the degraded and atrophied mind of gunslinger Johnny Loco.
From the start G-7 recognizes that he (and it’s definitely got a male sensibility, which is odd when you consider it’s a being made of light) is going to have a difficult time transforming Johnny Loco into the savior of mankind. The first step in Johnny’s elevation to sainthood is the resumption of his given name, Ian McCloud, and from there we begin to observe how in the daily course of things in the wild west, the gunslinger becomes a calculating manipulator, dealing with a hypocritical minister/mayor, a lazy sheriff, a destitute saloon keeper, a Mormon patriarch, and two desirable women. While G-7 tries to steer Ian to goodness, it can only be done so by small degrees, and underlying Ian’s psyche is an overwhelming animus toward Colonel Blickett, a former leader in Quantrille’s Raiders who took Johnny Loco into his company, and who has since the war’s end become a fearsome desperado.
Boyd is able to make some clever allusions to angels as beings of light, hinting that a former emissary, G-3, had millennia before landed on earth and shaped Christian religious thought, especially about the nature of heaven and angels. Boyd is also good at hinting at and depicting the appetites/desires that prevent humankind from being able to achieve the energy-conserving bliss of the light beings. In fact, the novel’s conclusion wryly depicts G-7 becoming besotted with the physical delights of sex, in effect giving up his mission in order to participate in more of Ian’s sexual relations with his new wife and a bevy of willing squaws on the new reservation.
Good fun, spiced with some interesting speculative thoughts about religion and human nature.
January 24, 2024
Eine alte Rasse von Energiewesen sieht sich berufen, in die Galaxien auszuströmen, um anderen Intelligenzwesen bei ihrer geistig-moralischen Entwicklung zu helfen.
Einer landet auf der Erde, im Wilden Westen und dringt in den Kopf eines Revolverhelden und Räubers ein.
Er versucht seinen Wirt sanft auf den Pfad der Besserung zu bringen, doch das gelingt nur teilweise. Zum Schluss ist er selber korrumpiert.
Ein halbwegs witziger Roman mit satirischen Momenten.
Einer landet auf der Erde, im Wilden Westen und dringt in den Kopf eines Revolverhelden und Räubers ein.
Er versucht seinen Wirt sanft auf den Pfad der Besserung zu bringen, doch das gelingt nur teilweise. Zum Schluss ist er selber korrumpiert.
Ein halbwegs witziger Roman mit satirischen Momenten.
July 20, 2024
Leichte Kost, lustig und nett zu lesen, genau das richtige, wenn man sich entspannen möchte. Hier darf man keine hochgeistige Kost erwarten. Aber es fließt so schön, dass man gar nicht mehr aufhören möchte, zu lesen.
March 11, 2011
Cover author John Boyd. Grade B.
September 5, 2012
Cowboys and aliens! A weird, yet weirdly entertaining, little novel.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews