Unto The Last Generation by Juanita Coulson

Elwood had made his name as an anthologist whose sheer output boggles the mind: in 1973-74, 39 Elwood-edited anthologies were put out by various publishers, or almost 25% of the new anthologies on the market during that time. The series was edited by Roger Elwood, who put his big stupid name on top of Freas’s art for the first thirty-odd books in the series. The most interesting thing about them nowadays is probably that each of them featured patented big-floating-head cover art by Kelly Freas. Laser Books was a Canadian science-fiction imprint from Harlequin Books (yes, that Harlequin) that published 57 novels between 19-a rate of three per month, all almost exactly 190 pages, which you’d receive in the mail if you subscribed to their service. All of this has a lot to do with the publisher, Laser Books, so you’ll have to bear with me for a digression before I get back to this particular book. If you read a ton of science fiction in the 1970s, it would have done its job admirably but perhaps not stuck around in your brain for very long. It is mildly entertaining, sufficiently well written, and interestingly conceived. Unto the Last Generation, her sixth novel, is a goodnatured Children of Men in which pluck, hard work, and willingness to compromise don’t exactly save the day, but push the characters well along the road to saving it. This is the first of her novels that I’ve read, although I can see by looking through her bibliography that I once read a story she wrote set in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons world of Ravenloft.

Juanita Coulson (born 1933) is an American science fiction writer who wrote sixteen novels and a bunch of short stories, was a prominent fan editor, and was one of the guiding lights of filk music-folk music about science fiction, which is a thing you should look into if you have not done so. Unto the Last Generation (Juanita Coulson, 1975)

Unto The Last Generation by Juanita Coulson