Here’s a couple that I’m sure I read out of the school library, so no later than the '70s.
A group of colonists, led by a guide, go through a portal to their intended planet of colonization. They have wagons and horses, simple stuff as opposed to fancy tech, and the main character (a teenage boy) is starstruck by the ‘wagon master’ (who has a white horse, a big moustache (extra big maybe on this detail), and matching six shooters). Some disaster happens, the guide is taken out of the picture, and somehow the boy winds up, step by step, being the one in charge. When rescue eventually arrives, the boy has a hard time adjusting to just being a child again, after being the leader of this beleaguered group for an extended period and treated as an adult and a VIP. End of the book has him, now grown, acting as a wagon-master for another group, and very much styled like his earlier hero. Hopefully the few details I think I remember aren’t too wrong.
Couple of not-quite-teens build a rocket ship (in their back yard?). They’d either been visited by or contacted by aliens on the moon (?), who helped them build their ship. The aliens need sulpher as apparently found in chicken eggs, so the boys end up taking chickens to the moon. I remember being taken with the details of building the ship, the materials needed, etc., but can’t say with any certainty now what those details might have been–I think I’d just be muddying the waters by trying.
I now patiently await the historically rapid responses!
The first is Tunnel In the Sky, by R.A. Heinlein, but you have some details wrong. The disastrous trip is the final exam of a class to be a wagon master guy.
Not sure about the second one, but it could be another of the RAH “Juveniles”.
Zakalwe, you are doubly correct. A quick check indicates this is indeed the book I was trying to remember, and I’m sure as I read I’ll find all of the details I was misremembering. I said white horse, big moustache, twin six shooters. More like pinto, beard and twin knives. :o
The Other Waldo Pepper, you are also correct, and how delighted I am to discover, after all these decades, that there are multiple books to be read!
How funny yet how unsurprising that your two answers should be posted almost in the same minute. Thanks to you both! I love the Dope!
Well, yes, Andy L, but you know all of these, and are usually the one getting the answers.
And more detail on Mushroom Planet, the ship the boys built was made out of wood, but the alien they met paints over it with some sort of resin that cures into an ultra-strong and airtight material. IIRC, he had put out an ad in the newspaper asking for help from someone who could build him a rocket.
A man is sculpting a giant mushroom into a woman. As the job is finished, either the sculptor or a friend of his sees this beautiful fungoid woman, and throws himself at her, biting into her flesh. . . and promptly dying. Poor guy. . . she was actually a toadstool!
There’s a story I remember reading as a kid in the 80s, the plot is about aliens invading and conquering Earth to plunder it.
I’m sure the remaining humans were reasonably primitive, there were no resistance fighters toting laser guns. It’s far enough in the future that when they stumble upon some forgotten weaponry, they don’t know what USAF means.
Eventually the aliens leave, having had their fill of whatever they took from Earth. The protagonist though, manages to kill one of the alien’s highers up in one on one combat.
Two things that stick out. The humans bring down an alien drone of some sort, breaking it apart it appears to be half machine-half living creature. Also, the alien killed by the protagonist has a bit of a chat with him, and a translation machine reveals that the aliens call humans “rats” and they actually translate the word human as rat when the protagonist tries to correct him.
The title I’m looking for is set in the contemporary 1960s. There are tunnel networks under cities, with entrances in basements. There are bad guys called elves living in the tunnels. The protagonist enters the tunnels to rescue a woman. An hallucinogenic fungus grows in the tunnels that the elves eat. I recall someone reading tea leaves.
Got it! “The Most Powerful Tailor in the World” by Michael Crichton. Appeared in Playboy Sept, 71. If it helps jog your memory that was the same issue that featured the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers game “Feds and Heads”.
