The Iceworld Connection

Spaceways #11

by Andrew J. Offutt, John Cleve (Pseudonym)

The Tri-System Police use a special undercover agent to infiltrate a group of pirates hijacking spaceships and smuggling drugs

Genres: Science Fiction

224 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

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 second Berkley volume (which is labeled "High Adventure," whereas all of the Playboy editions said "High Adventure for Adults") was the third collaborative novel in the series; this one was written with Jack C. Haldeman II (Joe W.'s brother, and a fine sf writer in his own right) and Vol Haldeman. This eleventh one introduces an interesting trans character, Carnadyne, a scientist who works with Transgalactic Organization agent Rantanagar Ehm. They infiltrate a pirate gang, encounter trans-dimensional aliens, and investigate ship thievery via teleportation. There is certainly 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. 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.