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An alien race from another planet is bent on destroying not only the Earth but its entire galaxy. Croyd, a superhuman secret agent of the future, who has the ability to move himself and events uptime or downtime, is assigned to prevent this distruction.
But Croyd's body becomes inhabited by the mind of a "gnurl" princess, Lurla, an alien agent who has infiltrated Earth, while his own mind is transplanted into the body of a surprised female Earthling!
Trapped in this inferior body, Croyd must work fast to recover his own. At the same time, he must destroy Lurla, before she has time to complete her deadly mission....
But Croyd's body becomes inhabited by the mind of a "gnurl" princess, Lurla, an alien agent who has infiltrated Earth, while his own mind is transplanted into the body of a surprised female Earthling!
Trapped in this inferior body, Croyd must work fast to recover his own. At the same time, he must destroy Lurla, before she has time to complete her deadly mission....
- GenresScience FictionFiction
184 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
66 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 28, 2013
The character of Croyd is a superhero unlike any created to date. I loved this book.
October 28, 2017
The story starts off with a bang (a mind swap which leaves our intrepid, manly super-hero trapped in the mind of a hooker. They have to share the body.
After that, the boredom started. Lots of running around and time-shifting, but quite frankly, I had trouble staying awake. The ending was okay.
Ian Wallace generally writes good stuff, but this one failed -- at least for me.
I won't be reading this one again.
After that, the boredom started. Lots of running around and time-shifting, but quite frankly, I had trouble staying awake. The ending was okay.
Ian Wallace generally writes good stuff, but this one failed -- at least for me.
I won't be reading this one again.
August 4, 2022
Read this shortly after it came out and recall enjoying it immensely. Now, though...well, the ideas contained therein are interesting, but there are times wallace's descriptive novelty got away from him and missed the mark. He wasn't much on dialogue, either. An interesting visit to my adolescent self in the form of what I once thought was great stuff.
July 1, 2015
I read this book way back when.... It is truly mind bending to read and fun. This book and Wallace's subsequent novels has made him my favorite sci-fi writer. I have read it several times, completing it the first time in 1970.
July 14, 2020
Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...
"The esteemed science fiction critic John Clute claimed quite adamantly that Ian Wallace’s Croyd (1967) and its sequel Dr. Orpheus (1968) “are among the most exhilarating space-opera exercises of the post-World War Two genre” (SF Encyclopedia entry for Ian Wallace). With this endorsement [...]"
"The esteemed science fiction critic John Clute claimed quite adamantly that Ian Wallace’s Croyd (1967) and its sequel Dr. Orpheus (1968) “are among the most exhilarating space-opera exercises of the post-World War Two genre” (SF Encyclopedia entry for Ian Wallace). With this endorsement [...]"
June 15, 2014
‘An alien race from another planet is bent on destroying not only the Earth but its entire galaxy. Croyd, a superhuman secret agent of the future, who has the ability to move himself and events uptime or downtime, is assigned to prevent this destruction.
But Croyd’s body becomes inhabited by the mind of a “gnurl” princess, Lurla, an alien agent who has infiltrated Earth, while his own mind is transplanted into the body of a surprised female Earthling!
Trapped in this inferior body, Croyd must work fast to recover his own. At the same time, he must destroy Lurla, before she has time to complete her deadly mission…’
Blurb from the 1968 Berkley paperback edition
Croyd is an agent of the Earth government of a future era. Semi-human (claiming to be the offspring of the Egyptian God Thoth) he is able to ‘uptime’, i.e. to jump short distances in time and has formidable strength and intelligence as well as few other ‘yoga tricks’ which he keeps up his sleeve.
One evening, meeting President Tannen secretly in a nightclub he is approached by a woman ostensibly seeking sanctuary from her abusive boyfriend. In reality, she is Lurla, an alien gnurl from the Magellanic Galaxy. Croyd takes her home but it is not long before Lurla uses her evil gnurl powers to swap their consciousnesses, leaving Croyd trapped in the mind of Greta (the woman Lurla had already been mentally inhabiting), and Lurla in Croyd’s body. Leaving Croyd/Greta unconscious she steals Croyd’s ship and heads for the Outer System, obviously up to no good.
It’s up to the real Croyd, and Greta, trapped in the same feeble woman’s body, to pursue Lurla, return everyone to their own bodies and save the galaxy.
Wallace (real name John Wallace Pritchard 1912 - 1998) was an American author and is now a somewhat obscure figure in SF history, although he published some fourteen novels between 1952 and 1982.
It’s clear from the outset that Wallace is heavily influenced by AE Van Vogt. Croyd himself is a typically Vanvogtian figure, very similar to the dual-brained Dellians of ‘The Mixed Men’. Indeed, Croyd is only part-human and his solutions to problems are usually cerebral ones, rather than a gung-ho shoot-out with any alien that looks him up and down the wrong way.
Despite the absurd way the story comes across in a bald synopsis it works surprisingly well. Wallace is inventive with his science and makes it seem like he knows what he’s talking about. The author was a psychologist when he wasn't writing SF novels, so it’s expected that he writes a great deal about the brain and its functions.
The one problem with this novel is that Wallace never really solved the issue of how to deal with prose in which there is a man in the body of a woman and a woman in the body of a man. Wallace merely carries on using ‘he’s and ‘she’s in reference to the possessing agents of the bodies concerned, which gets a little confusing after a while.
Unlike van Vogt, Wallace manages to get a handle on the plot and the structure. Characters do perform actions which are consistent with their motivation and the internal logic of the text.
Toward the end, however, the action gets a little chaotic. One could say a little Vanvogtian, with a bewildering series of events which finds Croyd back in his own body attempting to save the galaxy from a group of Lurla’s rival gnurls.
They have turned the planet Daphne (yes, Daphne, circling the binary suns of Fenris and Loki near the galaxy’s centre) into a gigantic bomb which will start an implosion of the galaxy. How this will actually be achieved is all a little vague, but we can forgive Wallace for that since the rest of his science seems either sound within the context of the novel or is else so deftly dealt with through plausible technobollocks that one doesn’t really question it.
Again, in Vanvogtian style, it’s a very sexist novel in which all the females eventually submit to Croyd’s superior masculine will and judgement, even Lurla who, in a possibly Freudian literary device, turns out to be (in her real form) an extremely tall and attractive lioness-of-sorts, and who is eventually tamed by her attraction to Croyd.
But Croyd’s body becomes inhabited by the mind of a “gnurl” princess, Lurla, an alien agent who has infiltrated Earth, while his own mind is transplanted into the body of a surprised female Earthling!
Trapped in this inferior body, Croyd must work fast to recover his own. At the same time, he must destroy Lurla, before she has time to complete her deadly mission…’
Blurb from the 1968 Berkley paperback edition
Croyd is an agent of the Earth government of a future era. Semi-human (claiming to be the offspring of the Egyptian God Thoth) he is able to ‘uptime’, i.e. to jump short distances in time and has formidable strength and intelligence as well as few other ‘yoga tricks’ which he keeps up his sleeve.
One evening, meeting President Tannen secretly in a nightclub he is approached by a woman ostensibly seeking sanctuary from her abusive boyfriend. In reality, she is Lurla, an alien gnurl from the Magellanic Galaxy. Croyd takes her home but it is not long before Lurla uses her evil gnurl powers to swap their consciousnesses, leaving Croyd trapped in the mind of Greta (the woman Lurla had already been mentally inhabiting), and Lurla in Croyd’s body. Leaving Croyd/Greta unconscious she steals Croyd’s ship and heads for the Outer System, obviously up to no good.
It’s up to the real Croyd, and Greta, trapped in the same feeble woman’s body, to pursue Lurla, return everyone to their own bodies and save the galaxy.
Wallace (real name John Wallace Pritchard 1912 - 1998) was an American author and is now a somewhat obscure figure in SF history, although he published some fourteen novels between 1952 and 1982.
It’s clear from the outset that Wallace is heavily influenced by AE Van Vogt. Croyd himself is a typically Vanvogtian figure, very similar to the dual-brained Dellians of ‘The Mixed Men’. Indeed, Croyd is only part-human and his solutions to problems are usually cerebral ones, rather than a gung-ho shoot-out with any alien that looks him up and down the wrong way.
Despite the absurd way the story comes across in a bald synopsis it works surprisingly well. Wallace is inventive with his science and makes it seem like he knows what he’s talking about. The author was a psychologist when he wasn't writing SF novels, so it’s expected that he writes a great deal about the brain and its functions.
The one problem with this novel is that Wallace never really solved the issue of how to deal with prose in which there is a man in the body of a woman and a woman in the body of a man. Wallace merely carries on using ‘he’s and ‘she’s in reference to the possessing agents of the bodies concerned, which gets a little confusing after a while.
Unlike van Vogt, Wallace manages to get a handle on the plot and the structure. Characters do perform actions which are consistent with their motivation and the internal logic of the text.
Toward the end, however, the action gets a little chaotic. One could say a little Vanvogtian, with a bewildering series of events which finds Croyd back in his own body attempting to save the galaxy from a group of Lurla’s rival gnurls.
They have turned the planet Daphne (yes, Daphne, circling the binary suns of Fenris and Loki near the galaxy’s centre) into a gigantic bomb which will start an implosion of the galaxy. How this will actually be achieved is all a little vague, but we can forgive Wallace for that since the rest of his science seems either sound within the context of the novel or is else so deftly dealt with through plausible technobollocks that one doesn’t really question it.
Again, in Vanvogtian style, it’s a very sexist novel in which all the females eventually submit to Croyd’s superior masculine will and judgement, even Lurla who, in a possibly Freudian literary device, turns out to be (in her real form) an extremely tall and attractive lioness-of-sorts, and who is eventually tamed by her attraction to Croyd.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews