One of the last of the great pulp writers of SF's golden age, nonagenarian Bond offers plenty of good old-fashioned space opera fun in his third Arkham House collection (after 2002's Far Side of Nowhere
). Plucked mostly from minor pulp magazines of the 1940s, these action-filled tales, however dated or formulaic, remain surprisingly exciting to read. In "Luxury Liner," intrepid spacemen fly spaceships powered by engines made of vacuum tubes; brave earthmen and a Venusian fight tyranny and a "disintegrating machine" in "Phantom Out of Time." A highlight is the short novel Gods of the Jungle
, set in Angkor Wat, where Japanese invaders suffer from both American airmen and embarrassing political incorrectness. Period illustrations complete the time trip. (Sept.)
