Space Vulture
Released on December 30, 2008
Gary K. Wolf, best known for creating the Roger Rabbit characters and Toontown, and John J. Myers, Catholic Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey team up to co-write an action/adventure science fiction novel. Come along for the ride. Discover all the adventure, suspense, action and fun that Gary and John share with you in this rollicking tale of the spaceways.
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Reviews
Space Vulture Chosen as a Sci Fi Essentials Book
SciFi.com
Booklist Review
A publication of the American Library Association (ALA)
--Reviewed by Regina Schroeder
...Science fiction legerdemain swashed by a large brush, and a fun read.
Stellar Operations
--Article by Paul Di Filippo
If you know Star Wars, you know space opera.
Or do you?
SFReader.com
--Reviewed by Steve Davidson
What science fiction was meant to be. Eye-popping visions of things that might be, woven into a tale of hope, love and redemption.
Bookgasm.com
--Reviewed by Bruce Grossman
I can't think of another book that had me grinning throughout as much as Space Vulture, a total throwback to old-school science fiction of the pulp days...
Space Vulture is a novel that fathers and sons can enjoy together.
New Oxford Review
--Reviewed by Christopher Beiting
While Space Vulture isn't explicitly Catholic, it does faithfully reflect the values of an earlier time in American history, a time when Catholic values were shared to a greater degree by society-at-large. As such, it's one of those books written for adults, but perfectly safe for younger audiences as well.
SF Signal
--Reviewed by John DeNardo
A really fun throwback to the pulp science fiction of yesteryear.
Cinerati
--Reviewed by Christian Lindke
A story that speaks to the importance of family, of the proper relationship between siblings, and to what really makes one a hero.
The Catholic Register
--Reviewed by Samantha Hermack, Youth Speak News
...a fun, refreshing novel that is enjoyable to read.
SFRevu.com
--Reviewed by Andrew Brooks
...The authors have perfectly channeled the kind of pulp adventure tale in Space Vulture that has greatly influenced later generations.
Causticly-Speaking.Blogspot.com
--Reviewed by Eric Jamborsky, It's a Pulp World
...Enough escapes, chases, fights and plot twists to make a 12-chapter for Republic in their glory days of the Forties... It's a fun book.
PulpFictionReviews.Blogspot.com
--Reviewed by Ron Fortier
I love space operas and Space Vulture is one of the finest I have ever read... Do not miss this one!
Critical Mass
--Reviewed by Don D'Ammassa
...For those of us with long memories, this is a pleasant romp.
BookLoons
--Reviewed by Tim Davis
To sum up the experience of reading Space Vulture, two words will suffice: GREAT FUN!
Books Well Read
--Reviewed by Julie Vaux
This would have to be one of the funniest books I have read this year! If as an adult or teen or child you ever read and enjoyed reprints of 1930s and 40s sci-fi pulp you will love this! Enjoy ! ********** Look ten stars!
Sci Fi Weekly
--Reviewed by Paul Witcover
...Aspires to be a kind of sci-fi The Princess Bride. And it doesn't do a half-bad job of it.
Atomic Pulp
--Reviewed by Christopher Mills
...It's fun and it's damned cool that it exists at all.
Steven Silver's Reviews
--Reviewed by Steven H. Silver
Space Vulture is an entertaining romp and a throwback to the age of the pulps...It successfully captures the sense of wonder that allowed
Space Hawk to call itself "the Greatest of Interplanetary Adventures."
JeffreyMeyers.Blogspot
--Reviewed by Jeffrey Meyers
It had me grinning. This is great pulp space opera. The big adventure.
Goodreads.com
--Reviewed by Thomas's Review
Good fun, and good reading.
Rebels of Mars
--Reviewed by Wally Conger
A joyful ride. A 1950s space opera with a 21st century sensibility. I grinned the whole time I was reading it. I've stuck my copy of
Space Vulture on the shelf right alongside my old Lensmen books.
National Catholic Reporter
--Reviewed by Dennis Coday
"Awesome!" (From the reviewer's seventh grade son.)
SF Gospel
--Reviewed by Gabriel McKee
A rollicking good time.
The Sci Fi Catholic
--Reviewed by D.G.D. Davidson
...entertaining, fun, nostalgic sf. It's a good summer read, exciting and family-friendly...
The Curt Jester
--Reviewed by Jeff Miller
I thoroughly liked the characters... a quite fun book.
TheoCenTric
--Reviewed by Rich Vincent
What great fun! I had a great time reading this.
Book Calendar
If you want to read some fun, nostalgic, silly, adventurous pulp space opera, this title is for you.
Alternative-Worlds.com
--Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
...Fans will enjoy this fun space opera that takes readers back in time.
"Think they no longer write 'em like they did? Wrong! Here's the pure
quill, a real slam-bang heroic space opera written by men who haven't forgotten a beloved book they shared as boys. Read it, and have a thrilling adventure that would have been serialized in Planet Stories."
—Gene Wolfe, winner of the Nebula and World Fantasy awards
“What a time machine! Space Vulture takes me back to Alex Raymond’s classic Flash Gordon comic strip and the other great science fiction adventures that thrilled me as a kid. The book is full of color, action and fun. Gary K.Wolf and Archbishop Myers have brilliantly managed the neat trick of not only evoking a beloved genre but actually surpassing it.”
—Stan Lee
Once, when both the world and I were very young, there was a science-fiction magazine called
Planet Stories, edited by Malcolm Reiss (and, later, Paul L. Payne, Jerry Bixby, Wilbur S. Peacock, and many, many unlucky others) with the most garish, black-and-orange-splashiest covers (usually done by Leydenfrost) this side of the 1950s psychedelic posters. Its steamy action stories sported such titles as “Valkyrie from the Void,” “The Beast-Jewel of Mars,” and “When Kohonnes Screamed.” Parents and teachers who had learned to stand still for such science fiction magazines as
Astounding and Thrilling Wonder pretty much all loudly announced that they just had to draw the line at
Planet Stories (even when the magazine achieved a modicum of respectability with such writers as Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Poul Anderson, and [sh-h-h!] yours truly). But for young aficionados of blistering-action science fiction, or truly strange-creature science fiction, or what-the-heck-kind-of-a-world-have-I-landed-on-anyway science fiction, there was nothing, absolutely nothing, like
Planet Stories. When it died, to the everlasting relief of fathers and mothers and respectable professors, it was bitterly mourned by adolescent future NASAites everywhere.
And now, believe it or not, it’s back. It took a bishop to revive it—or should I say evoke it? It took an archbishop who teamed up with Gary K. Wolf of “Roger Rabbit” fame, it took the two of them exploring and reminiscing over their youthful reading pleasures to recreate the kind of science-fiction story that left me and thousands of others all across this great land positively red-eyed with excitement again.
It’s not stapled as a pulp magazine, true, but it’s available as a book now. And, as a book, it still has the taste and smell and feel of the true Valerian—it’s
Planet Stories, fellas, come all the way back to life again!
--William Tenn
"Space Vulture revives the same breathless style that made Tom Swift a staple of my boyhood, but spices it with a sly sensibility that never gets in the way of its page-turning plot.
Like Roger Rabbit, it takes familiar cut-out characters from our childhood memories and breathes 3-D life into them. Kids will love it for its cliff-hanger chapters; their dads will appreciate its humor, while recalling their own favorite childhood books.
Space Vulture provides a rollicking good time, with a spice of high camp and a moral underpinning far more sophisticated than the original space operas were ever capable of attaining."
--Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ
Astronomer at the Vatican Observatory
