Exodus From Elysium

[allthingshorror]

Exodus from Elysium - Horwitz Publications 1965

The Robot Wife

Wally and Babs sound like any normal Martian couple. Except they are robot imitations created by Walter and Barbara. When they decide to dupe love-lorn SImon with Babs, Walter faces a jealous dilemma. Was it Babs or Barbara who made love with Simon?

All Mad, Except Me

The man witnesses an invasion of Earth by The Watchers, the galcatic tyrants. Chaotic havov, then weird supression terrigy the masses, until the man is the last sane being on Earth.

The Entity Strikes Twice

Macabre, eerie, improbable. Yes-no. An alien entity from another world strikes twice in the one family in a relentless battle of possessed persons.

Exodus from Elysium

Planet Elysium destroyed by a visiting spacecraft. Surviving Elysians rocket through galactic space. Destination, planet Earth. What will they find here?

Fairly easy to read collection under the Jonathan Burke name, and even for non sci-fi fans, the stories are not overly bogged down by unfamiliar jargon etc.

The Robot Wife is the weakest story out of the bunch, has William, the creator of Wally and Babs who are perfectly recreated humans in every way - even down to memories - regretting the day he put Wally in charge of the household so he could go for a bit of slap and tickle. Because when his wife Barbara finds out, her revenge is quite the f*ck you.

All Mad Except Me is an interesting spin on the last man on earth senario. Because there are other men on Earth, but he is the only sane one left. It is written like a how-to on writing a short story about writing a short story. If that makes any sense.

The Entity Strikes Twice is the stand out story for me. It is just plain creepy. While reading this I wondered if Stephen King had read this as his Suffer the Little Children (Nightmares and Dreamscapes) and this are very similar - even though John's is sci-fi and King's is balls out horror.

The main story Exodus from Elysium comes in at nearly 100 pages long and concerns Matthews coming home to earth from Elysium as the planet gets its ass kicked from bad aliens. Not the greatest story and does tend to wander off a bit, but comes in with a really sweet ending.

A good collection, but worth it for The Entity Strikes Twice alone.