INVADERS AT GROUND ZERO: Tales of Tomorrow #1

Tales of Tomorrow #1

by David Houston (Pseudonym)

Trinitite, the glass-like substance formed at the first atomic blast site, the setting for Invaders at Ground Zero.

208 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tales of Tomorrow was a live action (!?) television anthology series of science fiction that was extant 1951 - '53. This is the first of four books that Leisure published 1981 - '82 that were based on (or perhaps inspired by) episodes from that series. I'm not sure if this is an original novel or the adaptation of a script; there's no acknowledgment listed, but there are several very grainy black-and-white photographs from a show incorporated in the text. David Houston was the pseudonym of Houston Force Lumpkin III, who was the editor of Starlog magazine in its early days. The book is about the discovery of an alien spacecraft in 1945, at an observation post for an atomic bomb test. The germ-sized aliens infect and possess members of the scientific and military crew (all of whom seem more concerned with sex and alcohol than with winning a war or advancing scientific knowledge) until they die and then move on to another victim. Then the bomb detonates and it doesn't matter anymore. It's all terribly futile, especially since we never learn if the aliens are there by chance or anything at all about them. It's not a very well written story, and the characters are never really developed beyond the idea that Ward likes to drink and Margot is pretty. Leisure didn't help things with their typesetting, because frequently there's no space or cue between scene changes and the reader is left lost as to who's talking to who and where they are at any given time. The cover, by Attila Heija, doesn't depict anyone from the book (or from 1945!), perhaps because they just re-used the cover from a 1978 Eando Binder novel, Menace of the Saucers.