The Queen of the Legion (1/300 Signed & Numbered Edition)
Cover Art by Glenn Barr
ISBN-13 9781893887008
Designed to match the “Legion of Space” books from Fantasy Press, this is the first title from Haffner Press. This title was originally published under the “Timescape” imprint of Pocket Books in 1983. It is a latter-day sequel to the previous “Legion of Space” stories:
The Legion of Space (Astounding Stories, 1934; book edition 1947)
The Cometeers (Astounding Stories, 1936; book edition 1950)
One Against the Legion (Astounding Stories, 1939; included in the hardcover edition of The Cometeers)
“Nowhere Near” (1969, included in the paperback edition of One Against the Legion)
Decades after the murderous assaults on the civilized worlds by the Medusae and the Cometeers–worlds protected by the Legion of Space–the Hawkshead Nebula is a new setting of danger and intrigue.
Jil Gyrel is a lonely girl on a dismal planet at the edge of that Nebula. Her life is changed forever when her father’s long missing spaceship reappears. The only survivor is her father’s best friend Shon Macharn. Macharn’s sudden marriage to Jil’s mother sends Jil on a course of events that ends with all of civilization at stake!
For AKKA–the cosmos’ ultimate weapon–has been stolen by murderous agents, and the horrors from within the Hawkshead Nebula have rendered the Legion of Space powerless. Jil encounters the wonders of the galaxy and leads a motley crew against the terrors of the Nebula in an effort to find her father and recover the secret of AKKA!
The last-written story of the Legion, “The Luck of the Legion,” was published in 2002 and is included in The Worlds of Jack Williamson. Chronologically, The Queen of the Legion is the final adventure of Giles Habibula.
Designed to match the "Legion of Space" books from Fantasy Press, this is the first title from Haffner Press. This title was originally published under the "Timescape" imprint of Pocket Books in 1983.
"It quite honestly moves me that now, nearly a half-century later in 1983, there is a new Legion of Space story by Williamson, just as rousing, just as readable.”
—Baird Searles, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
". . . a novel whose mood and style is of a piece with its predecessors, even given its innovative female protagonist. Pure and simple space opera . . ."
—Publisher's Weekly
". . . in 1983, Timescape published The Queen of the Legion as a paperback original. This novel introduced the plucky Jil Gyrel, a welcome distaff addition to the good guys searching for the deadly secret of AKKA, your basic cosmic ultimate weapon. Now it's 1998 and a start-up specialty publisher, Haffner Press has put The Queen of the Legion between welcome boards, with corrected text, and done it in style. The book's been deliberately designed and produced to fit into the format of the old Fantasy Press editions of nearly a half century ago. All the familiar (at least to collectors) touches are there, including a glossy stock tipped-in signed limitation page. Glenn Barr's cover illustration has the right look, the typography's correct, only the jacket paper stock isn't glossy enough. The price is a bit sobering at $75, but then that would be cheap by comparison with what old Fantasy press titles are getting onthe collectors' market."
—Edward Bryant, Locus
