When we started the press, we had no idea how to distribute, but we knew indie bookstores wanted to carry our books. Thus, we signed up with Ingram, and now we’re sold across the nation (and to some degree, the world).

One of Galactic Journey’s writers (its youngest, as it turns out) was a budding artist. I wanted The Kitra Saga to have pictures. Thus, an illustrated YA series!

Janice, Lorelei, and I all have professional performance experience. We like to read. Why not make audiobooks? Thus, Kitra now has an audiobook, and more of the books in the series are in production.

Tom Purdom’s exquisite masterpiece, I Want the Stars, was perfect for an audio version. Thus, it now has one as well!

It’s a long time coming. I actually approached Tom last September with the idea of me narrating his book. He liked my sample chapters (though he personally quibbled with my degree of acting; I see an audiobook as a kind of radio play; he liked a flatter style), and he gave me the go-ahead. But for various other reasons, other projects kept taking priority, and he passed away before I could finish the book.

That galvanized me, and I threw myself back into it, finishing the audio version. It’s actually been done for a month—but the loss of two dear friends and the demoralizing results of a national election (all within 48 hours!) created further delay.

But now we’re back in gear and on schedule to release an audiobook at least once per quarter, knock on wood. I think you’ll particularly like this one. Tom created such a rich world, and a huge cast of characters. I tried to do them justice.

I hope you enjoy.

~Gideon

Get the Audio Book!

One of the occupational hazards of being an historian, particularly of the times half a century passed, is that you meet a lot of the people you are researching. When I was composing a history of the earliest Moon probes, I befriended most of the original scientists and engineers at Space Technology Laboratories. I even facilitated a reunion of the team in ~2007.

While it’s great to get history from the horse’s mouth, it also means knowing a lot of people who are in the sunset years of their lives. It means getting frequent word of yet another friend passing away, never to be heard from again.

I started Galactic Journey back in 2013, when it was 1958 in Journey time. Now it’s 1969. I’ve gotten to meet and enjoy the company and correspondence with a lot of the big writers of the time: Larry Niven, Robert Silverberg, Michael Moorcock, David Boutland (Rome), Ted White, Lexy Panshin, Kit Reed. I was saddened by the passing of the last two, and I mourn their loss and the stories they never got to share.

The one that’s hit me hardest is Tom’s death. He passed away from cancer on January 14.

Tom had one of the longest careers in science fiction. He started getting published in the latter ’50s, and until his passing, probably was the senior science fictioneer. Maybe it was Moorcock (it certainly is now). Arguably, it was Silverbob, though he hasn’t published much lately, to my knowledge. Of course, none of these holds a candle to Jack Williamson, who wrote from the ’20s to the ’00s, but being #2, perhaps Tom tried harder.

It is thus ironic that it took me so long to discover Tom. I didn’t read his first book, I Want the Stars, until 2019 (1964 in Journey time). It had a terrific impact on me, this progressive, prescient science fiction adventure, released in an almost disposable format—one half of an Ace Double. The timing was good. We had just launched Journey Press, and rediscovering lost gems was one of our core missions.

And it turned out that Tom was not only still alive, but still producing science fiction, regularly appearing in the table of contents of Asimov’s Science Fiction. I emailed him, and he promptly wrote back, and a friendship was born. Shortly afterwards, I Want the Stars was back in print after 56 years of lying fallow.

Tom and I kept in frequent contact after that. He went through great effort to sign bookplates for his novel and mail them to us so we could give them to bookstores. He appeared on a special episode of The Journey Show featuring writers. He told me anecdotes of his time in Philadelphia fandom (a favorite story: a fellow Philadelphian and Ace Double author was Samuel R. (“Chip”) Delany. Once, Tom suggested he and Chip pose for an author photo together. Since Ace Doubles were printed inverted, back to back, he proposed that one of them be standing on his head!)

He had two distinct phases of science fiction writing—the ’50s-’70s and then the ’90s-’20s. Though he was Vice President of the Science Fiction Writers of America in ’72 and head of the eastern SWFA branch in the late ’70s, he considered himself a journalist first, devoting much of his time to music critique.

He was also a mensch of the first order, quietly doing good all of his life. He worked with inner city charities, and he marched with MLK on Washington in 1963. Tom always had time for a chat, and his mind was razor sharp all the way to our last conversation, the day after Christmas of last year. I won’t lie: for me, the week of January 14th was essentially lost. I was pretty deep in despair after I heard the news the morning of January 15. I still can’t believe he’s gone.

Tom maintained a website, and it has his bio on it. It’s worth a read, like all of his work. Please, discover his stories, meet the man as best you can now that he’s gone. I can’t think of a better way to honor my friend than to enjoy the tales he spun.

~Gideon

In 1964, Ace Books published I Want the Stars, the first novel by a young science fiction author named Tom Purdom. It was about as humble a beginning as it gets, only half of a two-sided “Ace Double” (along with Ken Bulmer’s Demon World).

But what a revolution it sparked! Tom’s book, detailing the journey of Jenorden and his five friends/crew-mates as they search the galaxy for meaning in a post-utopian future, packs more progressive themes in its short length than a lot of books twice its size:

• It’s the first science fiction novel to feature a protagonist explicitly of color.
• It’s the first science fiction novel to portray a queer couple (in this case, two women) without judgement or negativity. They simply are.
• It’s one of the first science fiction examples of implicit polyamory (Tom would go on to explore explicit polyamory in a short story published that year in Galaxy Science Fiction).
  
  Other earlier authors, like Ted Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, and Philip José Farmer, had flirted with progressive themes, making oblique references to homosexuality and exploring gender in alien races. But Tom laid it all out on the table in a way that had never been done before. It’s a ball Samuel R. Delany, a fellow Philadelphian and Ace Double author, would pick up and run with in works like Babel 17 (1966).

I Want the Stars ushered in a brand new era of science fiction, one that envisioned a society that had long since resolved any prejudice against queer, gender, and non-couple relationship models.

And that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Science fiction can be aspirational as well as cautionary, and when Tom wrote his first book, he knew the way to convincingly portray the future was to take the most progressive ideas of the time (ideas that are still progressive) and make them reality–in his stories. The result is a book that is nearly 60 years old, yet reads like it was written this year:

This is a fascinating book, not just because Purdom knows how to put together a well-paced, character-driven story but because of how modern it feels.

Hugo Finalist Alasdair Stuart, from The Full Lid

When we discovered this book back in 2019 as part of the reading we do for Galactic Journey, we immediately knew we’d found something special. So special that we reached out to Tom, delighted to find that he was (and is) not only still alive, but producing several stories a year for the big SF magazines. Indeed, he didn’t get his Hugo nomination until 2000–36 years after I Want the Stars came out!

Thankfully, Tom was more than happy to let his book come back into print, and he also contributed an autobiographical piece on the making of I Want the Stars, which we included when we republished the novel in June 2020.

In addition to appealing with a modern audience for its progressive mindset and compelling tale, many were quick to note another point of resonance:

It’s all-but impossible to view this in isolation from Star Trek and the way Jenorden and crew explore their experiences, without Starfleet’s comforting military framework, is engrossing precisely because of the fragility of the crew. Especially in their first interactions with the alien species, Horta.

Hugo Finalist Alasdair Stuart, from The Full Lid

That brings up another interesting point. I Want the Stars predated Star Trek by two years. We know Gene Roddenberry read science fiction. Many of the writers for Star Trek were science fiction authors. Is it just coincidence that two of the names for alien races in Tom’s book, ‘Horta’ and ‘Borg’, ended up on the shows?

Either way, there’s no question that I Want the Stars will appeal to fans of the hopeful Trek vibe, folks who like a ripping galactic adventure, and readers who want to see where the seeds of modern science fiction were first sown.

(Tom just celebrated his 87th birthday on April 19–what better gift to give him than picking up a copy of his first book and enjoying it anew!)

Today, we are launching Tom Purdom’s timeless classic, I Want the Stars, now back in print after 56 years!

Eight hundred years from now, Earth is a paradise. Humanity has faced its greatest challenges…and won. Every wish is fulfilled. Every need is met.

But is that enough?

Jenorden wants more, wandering the galaxy with his friends as he seeks the answer. He knows his life is missing something. But what?

And when aliens from another galaxy appear, offering to answer any question and reveal any secret, are their motives sinister…

…or sincere?

Perhaps the first science fiction novel to star a person of color, I Want the Stars is a hopeful tale of tomorrow, one that resonates even more strongly today. You do not want to miss this amazing book!

Get your copy today!

Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963) and Kitra continue to be extremely popular. If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, or if you’ve got friends who might want one, consider ordering them!

We also now have custom bookplates for Rediscovery and Kitra! If you’d like an autographed copy, we will be happy to mail you a signed bookplates! Just drop us a line.

And, as always, if you like what you’ve read, please consider leaving a review both at the book page on Journey Press and at Amazon/Goodreads. We really appreciate it!

Be well, and happy reading!

Gideon