One of my delights as a kid was reading ACE Doubles. I couldn’t wait until new ACE Doubles showed up on spinner racks each month!
But ACE was not the only publisher to offer Doubles. In the late 1960s, Belmont Books published a series of “Belmont Doubles” but with only one cover, not two like ACE Doubles. Sadly, the quality of those Belmont Doubles was inferior to the ACE Doubles…but I bought them anyway.
John Brunner is one of my favorite SF writers. He started out writing mediocre SF novels but with STAND ON ZANZIBAR and THE JAGGED ORBIT in the mid-to-late Sixties, Brunner became a top notch SF writer.
Clearly, “Father of Lies” was a story Brunner salvaged from his desk drawer and Belmont dutifully published it in 1968 with Bruce Duncan’s “Mirror Image.” “Father of Lies” was initially published in the British SF magazine, Science Fantasy #52, 1962.
“Father of Lies” begins with a dragon and then an ogre. The story concerns a different plane of Reality. Today we would refer to this as The Multiverse. “Father of Lies” has more in common with Brunner’s stories from the 1950s than his more mature work of the late 1960s. GRADE: C
I’ve never head off Bruce Duncan and his “Mirror Image” is poorly written and shows why Belmont Books was considered at the “low end” of the paperback publishing spectrum. A dead stripper, an android sailor, and a New York detective investigating the dead bodies of the real stripper and the real sailor basically goes nowhere. GRADE: F
Wow—an F from George Kelley! MIRROR IMAGE must indeed be a terrible book if George gave it that low a grade.
Deb, I haven’t found any on the Internet about Bruce Duncan, but the massive flaws of “Mirror Image” may have ended his writing career!
I would have given FATHER OF LIES a B. But then, because he is John Brunner, I don’t think I would have given anything he wrote less than a B, even the first novel he wrote when he was a teenager (GALACTIC STORM by “Gil Hunt”). Yes, I have been, and remain, a big John Brunner fan.
I never read MIRROR IMAGE. Perhaps that is just as well.
Jerry, I’m a big John Brunner fan but “Father of Lies” is weak. “Mirror Image” on the other hand is just plain dreadful! Don’t waste your time!
“Mirror Image” sounds like a terrible Cornell Woolrich wannabe.
Jeff, you are spot on!
It must be difficult to ruin a story featuring strippers and Android sailors! I must find this one! I remember Belmont from the old days, a low end house but not the bottom of the barrel..
Belmont (?)accidentally published some decent work (my vague impression, vs. any clear example which comes to mind)…one has to think the writers of said work were very strapped or highly blackballed.
Todd, Belmont’s reputation was as mediocre as the majority of paperbacks they published.
Fred, Belmont wasn’t the bottom of the publishing barrel…but close. I’d be happy to send you this Belmont Classic–I have your address from OWLHOOT–if you’d like it.
How can I resist! Thanks George.
Fred, I’ll put the book in the mail tomorrow!
Belmont Books as indexed on ISFDB: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?81
the later, slightly better merger of two no-budget houses, Belmont Tower: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?2407
Todd, I have a couple BELMONT TOWER paperbacks, too.
Belmont, and later Belmont Tower, did have the good sense to snap up Robert Bloch collections others would pass on.
Todd, BELMONT’S Bloch books were the top of their quality. They still published a lot of dreck.