Balzan of the Cat People: The Blood Stones (Pyramid Books, May 1975). Cover artist unknown

Writing under the name Wallace Moore, Gerard F. Conway (1952 -), produced a 1970s trilogy billed as “The Tarzan of Outer Space.” Conway is known mostly for his comic book writing for Marvel and DC, where he wrote as Gerry Conway and is best known for co-creating the Punisher in 1974. He also has some TV and film credits, including for Conan the Destroyer.

I haven’t read any of his comics but have read the first two in his trilogy, and I own the third. I bought them because they have been billed as Sword & Planet fiction. I suppose they fit, although they’re not exactly typical, being more Tarzan than John Carter. The covers certainly stress that resemblance.

[Click the images for Tarzan-sized versions.]

The three books carry a series title at the top which reads: Balzan of the Cat People. The individual volumes, all published from Pyramid in 1975, are:

1. The Blood Stones
2. The Caves of Madness
3. The Lights of Zetar (which is also the title of a Star Trek Original Series episode).

All three clearly have the same cover artist but I couldn’t find any information on said artist. I even found a painting that was used as the cover for the original book but it was listed as “unsigned.” So who knows?

The origin story for Balzan is certainly S&P. The Rice family is on their way to Mars when their ship is sucked through a “space warp” to crash on an alien world. Only a child, Paul Brian Rice, survives. He is rescued by a bipedal, cat-like native and thus becomes Balzan.

Balzan of the Cat People: The Lights of Zetar (Pyramid Books, September 1975). Cover artist unknown

He does use a sword on occasion, which is described as having a “neutron” edge. His main weapon, though, is more Indiana Jones than John Carter. It’s a whip, called a “therb,” which a hollow handle that contains poison, which is dispensed through the tip of the whip.

I’ve seen these books panned pretty widely and I have to say the first two are not the best written stories. I gave them 2 stars each on Goodreads. There’s an interesting concept here but they read like they were written very fast. There’s very little of the exotica that I enjoy in S&P fiction.

Interestingly, they are not copyrighted to the author but to Lyle Kenyon Engle, who was a book packager of that era. He apparently was behind the Kent Family Chronicles that made John Jakes famous.

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Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.