Novels

Invasion

See Also: Winter Moon

Mass Market Paperback

Release Date: 1975
Copyright: ©1975 by Aaron Wolfe
Publisher: Lancer Books
Page Count: 190
ISBN-10: 0-373-72009-2
Cover Price: .95
States: No statement of printing

Laser Book #9
Cover Illustration by Kelly Freas
Introduction by Barry Malzberg


Notes

The autograph of cover artist Kelly Freas is unique to my copy.

Expanded into Winter Moon by Dean Koontz

From the introduction:
“…Aaron Wolfe is a pseudonym. He is thirty-four years old, married with one child and lives in the midwestern United States.”

Briefly attributed to Stephen King after the discovery of “The Bachman Books”

This cover is featured in the book The Great American Paperback by Richard A. Lupoff on page 250 with the following caption:
”In the 1970s Harlequin attempted to replicate is [sic] success as a romance publisher with science fiction and mystery lines. Neither was successful and both were soon cancelled, but a number od collectables came out of the experiment, including this pseudonymous novel by Dean R. Koontz.”This entry is not listed under “Koontz, Dean” in the book’s index.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Frank Kelly Freas in Richard E. Geis’ Science Fiction Review #19 (YEAR) regarding his work on the cover art for Laser books:

FREFF: Let’s at least glance at the LASER situation. What was your reaction to being offered the whole series, instead of having it done by different artists?
FREAS: I said, “‘Roger, I don’t want to do the whole series. I don’t want to have anything to do with series. I don’t like series.” But they asked me to come up to Toronto and look over their operation, which I did, and they explained what they were trying to do and why…and it sounded like a hell of a good idea to me They are aiming at a very specific audience. This does not mean that as an artist or writer you are being restricted; it means that you are being asked to develop the skill to communicate to this particular group. You can have an infinite number of ideas to play around with, but you have to approach the group in their own language.
FREFF: But what about doing painting after painting in that same format?
FREAS: That’s the funny part of it Rather than finding it limiting I find it exciting. It presents the challenge of constantly having to make the format look different than it is, but can you think of anything that offers you more variety than a human face? In a sense I am a frustrated portrait artist. Something that hangs on a wall doesn’t do so much for me, but a character study like the LASER covers gives me the opportunity to do portraiture or to invent whoever I want to. And I have considerable freedom with the backgrounds. I’m functioning pretty much as my own art director. I don’t have
to submit roughs to anybody, or argue about them…
FREFF: Raging envy, but enough of that.

Last updated on March 5th, 2018