Mach 1: A Story of Planet Ionus is a 1957 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Allen A. Adler

Allen Adler

Allen Adler was an American writer, also involved in theater in various ways. With Irving Block he wrote the story for the screenplay for Forbidden Planet, based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, but was a victim of the Second Red Scare and was blacklisted from the film industry.-Biography:Adler was...

. A paperback version was published in 1966 by Paperback Library with the alternate title Terror on Planet Ionus.

Synopsis

While testing an experimental warship, the "Mach 1", a human pilot and his companion are kidnapped into space by aliens from the planet Ionus, which turns out to be a moon of Saturn

Saturn

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...

. There, they confront an oversized monster named Karkong who is menacing the Ionians. Karkong follows them back to Earth. Chaos ensues.

Critical reception

Damon Knight

Damon Knight

Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, critic and fan. His forte was short stories and he is widely acknowledged as having been a master of the genre.-Biography:...

wrote of the novel:

This is no novel: it is half-heartedly "novelized" screen story. The blank-faced characters stand up and speak their lines woodenly, without any perceptible motivation; of characterization, explanation, depth of any kind there is none...[the book is] so bad that ordinary epithets will not do. It is incredibly, stupidly, loathsomely bad... The style is pretentious, ignorant and vulgar.

External links

• Mach 1: A Story of Planet Ionus at The Open Library