Lagrange Series by Mack Reynolds
Lagrange #1
The Five Way Secret Agent (UC)
Mack Reynolds
Here, the world situation has become so confused that a young American living on Negative Income Tax finds himself drafted into an international espionage assignment by no less than 5 opposing interests. It is a story of humor and adventure that will be hard to forget!
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Lagrange #2
Satellite City (UC)
Mack Reynolds
Satellite City: The most expensive, the most luxurious resort in the history of Man. No request, no whim or pleasure, was denied. Where anything was possible … for a price. Satellite City: The haven and the playground of only the very rich and the most powerful. It was the most amazing pleasure complex ever built—and it looked down on Earth from orbit 22,000 miles high. Yet, for all its glitter, there was something ominous about Satellite City – no nation or international body had any jurisdiction there, it was a law unto itself; no one knew who owned it; or what went on within its secret council rooms. Until one man penetrated the wall of secrecy and discovered Satellite City's hidden masters.
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Lagrange #3
Lagrange Five (UC)
Mack Reynolds
There was once a group of like-minded people called the L-5 Society, founded in 1975. Their sole purpose was to "place a colony at LaGrange Point #5, the one trailing the Moon at 60 degrees" or "to found the first colony in space." The board of directors included the sci-fi powerhouses of both Robert Heinlein and Jerry Pournelle. The Society even had a monthly magazine, eloquently named L-5 News. In 1986, the Society merged with the National Space Institute. In the novel LaGrange Five, Mack Reynolds shows us in fiction how such a society would exist, which ends up operating more like fantasy than reality. Rex Bader is a private investigator from earth who is called to Island Three at the LaGrange Point to solve the mystery of the missing professor and father of the entire LaGrange Point project. At the same time as the investigation, the cases of Wide Syndrome (a contagious kind of claustrophobia) are on the increase and there are talks of revolution. Who is behind all three scenarios and what can Rex do to save the day? Yes, the premise does sound hokey and the novel will disappoint you as it is, indeed, hokey. I admire Reynolds' gusto about the subject of the L-5 community, but the storyline is flat, all laid out and very predictable. I would say it was written for the juvenile audience if it wasn't for the occasional swear words and the one sex scene. I also admire Reynolds' insistence that the pseudo-syndicalism style of government with its superior intelligent human beings will make an `idyllic utopia.' The socialist/communist stance of the novel is clearly made as is the persistent claim that modern society isn't working and drastic social change is needed to raise equality, fairness and Utopian ideals. His head is obviously in the clouds. This all comes from me- one registered with the Socialist Party! Too dreamy, too optimistic. Besides the high idealism involved, the writing style is for the birds. I don't know why Reynolds insists on repeating the name Rex Bader at the beginning of every chapter and interspersed though the paragraphs. And why does the mild idiosyncratic expletive "Wizard" have to appear 30 times through the 227 page book? Its repetition is annoying, as is the reiteration of L-5 facts. It seemed like every fact had to be repeated twice even though very little of it led into the plot's predictable solution at all.
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Lagrange #4
The Lagrangists (UC)
Mack Reynolds
L-5 a point in the Earth Moon system where orbits are forever in the new age of freedom and plenty can begin.
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Lagrange #4
Trojan Orbit (UC)
Mack Reynolds
Island One, the U.S.'s first space colony & symbol of an American renaissance, is in trouble. Low morale, shoddy worknamship, unexplained malfunctions & avoidable accidents have become a way of life, & nobody seems to know why. Is it the Russians? Home-grown anti-technologists? Arabs afraid of cheap solar power from space--or something even more sinister? When the President ordered secret agent Peter Kapitz to find out what was going on, Peter's first discovery is that the Soviets are indeed involved. His second is that they are not alone. He will probably not live to make a third.
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