The Dumarest saga Tubb's best known series is
The Dumarest Saga (US collective title:
Dumarest of Terra), a far future epic science-fiction saga charting the adventures of traveler Earl Dumarest as he attempts to find his way back to his home planet, Earth, from a region of space so far distant that the existence of the planet is believed to be nothing more than a myth. Originally written in what
Michael Moorcock has described as a "conscious and acknowledged imitation" of
Leigh Brackett's
Eric John Stark stories, the series subsequently developed a style of storytelling unique to Tubb. Published over a span of more than 40 years, the Dumarest Saga comprised 33 novels. The 33rd, which brings closure to Dumarest's search for Earth, was published in 2008 by Homeworld Press of Chicago. A pair of Dumarest short stories, entitled "Child of Earth" and "Figona" and published in the science fiction anthologies
Fantasy Adventures 1 (2002) and
Fantasy Adventures 2 (2003), were extracts from this longer work.
Cap Kennedy series Tubb's other main novel series,
Cap Kennedy, is
space opera in the style of
Perry Rhodan. Known as
F.A.T.E. in the UK (where only the first six books have ever been published), the novels follow the adventures of Captain 'Cap' Kennedy, a Free Acting Terran Envoy (F.A.T.E.) with licence to act as judge, jury, and executioner, and the power to intervene in any situation which threatens the peace of the Terran Sphere, an interplanetary federation centred on Earth. Independently wealthy and operating from his personal spaceship, the
Mordain, Kennedy is assisted on his missions by engineer Penza Saratov, veteran scientist Professor Jarl Luden, and alien navigator Veem Chemile, a humanoid chameleon who claims to be descended from the Zheltyana, an ancient race which dominated the galaxy in the distant past before vanishing without trace. The discovery of mysterious artifacts left behind by the Zheltyana on different worlds often provided the spring-board for the stories in the series.
Lester del Rey found that although the first volume managed to "avoid the primitiveness and the formula" that spoiled many similar series, the virtues of such series were also missing, leaving him unenthusiastic. He later noted improvement in a subsequent installment. Tubb wrote 17
Cap Kennedy novels, all under the pseudonym
Gregory Kern. These books were the basis for the Commander Scott series from German publishers
Bastei Lübbe. This series included all of the Cap Kennedy books by Tubb as well as a number of further novels, written under pseudonym by different German authors. Published in the format of
romanheft (a digest-sized version of pulp magazines), the series lasted for 42 issues from 1975 to 1976. (See the entry under the German Wikipedia,
Commander Scott.)
Space: 1999 series Tubb was the author of six novels based on
Gerry Anderson's 1975 science fiction television series
Space: 1999.
Breakaway (1975),
Collision Course (1975) and
Earthbound (2003) are novelizations of 11 scripts written for the series' first season format (including two that were subsequently filmed as second-season episodes), while
Alien Seed (1976),
Rogue Planet (1976) and
Earthfall (1977, revised 2002) are original novels set within the first season continuity. The latter rejected the format changes of the TV series' second season to provide a satisfactory conclusion to the
Space 1999 story. Tubb's short story "Random Sample" from
New Writings in SF 29 (1976) was revised to become "Dead End", a short story in the
Space: 1999 anthology
Shepherd Moon (2010). The original story's
Prometheus starship crew are replaced by the Moonbase Alpha characters in the
Space: 1999 version. "Random Sample" was itself a revised version of a much earlier Tubb short, "Entrance Exam", originally published in
New Worlds magazine (1951).
Other science fiction Tubb's best known standalone novel is
The Space-Born (1956), which started life as a serial for
New Worlds Science Fiction magazine entitled "Star Ship". An acknowledged masterpiece of the "generational starship" story, the book tells of a society who are the sixteenth generation of the original crew of a vast starship on a 300-year journey to Pollux from Earth. The plot centres on a protagonist whose job is to eliminate anyone who has become a burden to the society, through ill health, mental instability, or anyone over 40. Other notable standalone novels include
Alien Dust (1955), which charts the first 35 years of an Earth colony on Mars, and
Moon Base (1964), a science fiction detective thriller set on a British Moonbase where a biochemical computer is under development. The short story collections
Ten From Tomorrow (1966),
A Scatter of Stardust (1972) and
The Best Science Fiction of E.C. Tubb (2003) contain the best of Tubb's short form writing, including "The Last Day of Summer" (1955), "Little Girl Lost" (1955), "Vigil" (1956), "The Bells of Acheron" (1957), "Fresh Guy" (1958), "The Ming Vase" (1963), "J is for Jeanne" (1965), and "Evane" (1973).
Other genres Outside the field of science fiction, Tubb wrote 11 western novels, a detective novel and a Foreign Legion novel for
Badger Books. Once again, many of these were published under a variety of pseudonyms, including the
house name Chuck Adams, which were also used by other authors. In the 1970s he wrote a trilogy of historical novels set in Ancient Rome under the pseudonym
Edward Thomson.
Dramatisations Tubb's 1955 novel
The Space-Born was dramatised for French television in 1962 as a 90-minute play for
Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française. The production was directed by Alain Boudet from a script by Michael Subrela and broadcast on 11 December 1962. The short story "Little Girl Lost", originally published in
New Worlds magazine (1955), was dramatised as a segment of
Night Gallery in 1972. Adapted by Stanford Whitmore and directed by Timothy Galfras, with a cast featuring
William Windom and
Ed Nelson, the segment originally aired on 1 March 1972, paired with
The Caterpillar in the penultimate episode of the series' second season. Tubb's award-winning short story "Lucifer!" (later published in a slightly revised version under the title "Fallen Angel") was adapted for the 2023 film, "57 Seconds" starring
Morgan Freeman and
Josh Hutcherson. The title "57 Seconds" refers to the amount of time that the ring possessed by the main character sets back time. == Bibliography ==