The Bear's Den Info Files: Laser Books - A Canadian SF Connection

Sometimes you never know what little interesting tidbits you can find floating around. Here in The Bear's Den I'll keep trying to dig them out for our edification.

Laser Books was a line of 58 paperback science fiction novels published from 1975 to 1977 by Canadian romance powerhouse Harlequin Books. Laser published three titles per month, available by subscription as well as in stores. The books were limited to 50,000-60,000 words. They were numbered as a series, though with a few rare exceptions, each was a stand-alone novel. All the covers were painted by fan favorite Kelly Freas, a winner many times over of the Hugo Award for Best Artist.

In fact, although I didn't mind the fact that they were pretty 'light' reading, I often liked them more for the cover art than the story itself.

There were certainly more than a few mainstream SF authors who contributed to the Laser Books lineup, such as Stephen Goldin, Piers Anthony, and Tim Powers. There were even one or two who contributed under an alias. Case in point:

In 1975 Koontz penned a submission "Invasion" for then-fledgling Laser Books under the pseudonym "Aaron Wolfe" - although apparently he wasn't too happy with the result, and why he chose to release it under that nom de guerre.
So in 1994 he dusted off the old outline, re-wrote the storyline and fleshed it out, giving it more of his vaunted horror styling as compared to the earlier SF treatment. Havng read both submissions, I for one am glad he did. "Invasion" was entertaining, but "Winter Moon" was a far superior piece of writing.

Robert Coulson & Gene DeWeese submitted "Gates of the Universe" for release in 1975, and some 10 years later it was turned into a "choose your own adventure' game book by Amazing stories: