 "Gateway
to Elsewhere"
by Murray Leinster
Ace Books, 1954
Since this is a Ace Double
Novel Book, it doesn't have a back cover, but the inside blurb reads: "There
are other worlds...and it is possible to travel from one to another. In
fact, we constantly visit the frontier cities without ever knowing it.
Tony Gregg was just an ordinary everyday American until the day he came
into possession of an old Barkut coin. He knew it was more than just a
collector's curio because there was no such place on any map of Earth,
past or present. He learned then that it could be used as a key--a key
to a GATEWAY TO ELSEWHERE. That was the beginning of one of the most fabulous
and fantastic adventures that ever befell a young man looking for excitement.
For Gregg plunged forthwith into a fourth-dimensional world of the Arabian
Nights, where the djinns of Aladdin's Lamp were rampaging realities,
and a lovely princess was waiting to be rescued!" I know this is a little
more fantasy than the usual selection on the Book Shelf, but once you get
a few pages into this paperback you can tell that it's pure bachelor reading
material. This everyman bachelor travels to a mythical Arabian Nights land
where half-naked slavegirls and amorous djinnee are throwing themselves
at him--which would be enough right there. (The "I Dream of Jennie" fantasy
come to life!) But he also find out that these classic shape-shifting djinns
are actually made of atomic bomb material (a nice cold war-era touch) whose
weakness is a bad case of hay fever. After blowing one of these bomb-djinns
up, he, of course, becomes the King of the Djinns and gets the slave girl
of his dream. Pure bachelor fantasy with a classic theme...the perfect
book for the Book Shelf!
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