Philip Harbottle is back with two new videocasts in his invaluable British Science Fiction series, this time detailing the origins, execution, commercial struggles, and publishing history of E. C. Tubb’s Cap Kennedy series.
For those unfamiliar, publisher Don Wollheim created the series in the 1970s for his DAW Books imprint, inspired by commercial hits like Perry Rhodan, Doc Savage, and Captain Future, and the character title is clearly inspired by them, partly as a tip of the hat to Captain Future and the fact that Cape Kennedy was America’s space centre.
Philip outlines in Episode 90 how E. C. Tubb wrote two pilots to secure a role on the writing team: Galaxy of the Lost, introducing Kennedy and his three alien/specialist aides, and Slave Ship from Sergan, a more adult solo adventure). Wolheim was so impressed he bought and published them both in late 1973, and commissioned Tubb to write the entire series rather than work with a team of authors. However, he perhaps unwisely chose not to use Tubb’s name as a selling point, instead putting the books out under a previously-announced house pseudonym, “Gregory Kern”.
In the series, Cap Kennedy serves as a Free Acting Terran Envoy (F.A.T.E.) for ORDER (Earth’s World Government), acting with unilateral authority to stop interstellar threats before they escalate; aided by his trusty crew, Penza Saratov (a high-gravity, super-strong ship engineer), Professor Jarl Luden (a scholarly polymath), and Veem Chemile (a feline, chameleon-like alien).
Although the series borrowed from the popular series that inspired it, including an
ancient, vanished race, the Zheltyana, who had left dangerous artifacts behind, Tubb grounded the series in more realistic, believable writing, but despite his adult, well-received take on this populist SF saga (his complex plots cut short by demands for 40,000 word stories by Wollheim, sales in the United States were not as expected; not helped Philip feels, by unattractive cover art by Jack Gaughan, despite his acclaim for other work that earned him several Hugo Awards for Best Professional Artist; or hiding Tubb’s established name behind a generic house pseudonym.
Towards the end of the series run, the releases slowed to bi-monthly, then quarterly, the final books utilising Eddie Jones as cover artist – but the changes weren’t enough to see its cancellation, the final book, The Galactiad, published in Germany in 1976 –but remained unreleased in the US until 1983. (The series was hugely popular in Germany, “Cap Kennedy” becoming “Commander Scott” (a nod, perhaps to Star Trek?), running to 42 volumes by 1976, albeit the subsequent novels after the original 17 written by others).
In recent years, DAW gave Philip Harbottle permission to resell the series, and in 2011, he negotiated an e-book deal with Orion Books to release all 17 titles under their “SF Gateway” imprint as part of a much wider agreement for one hundred books by the Tubb, but sales still lag behind Tubb’s “Dumarest” series.
“Frankly, I find this baffling, and if you have not so far sampled any of the novels, I do urge Youtube viewers to give them a try!” Philip suggests to his audience.
“Currently most of the DAW paperbacks can still be found for around £5 a copy online, although the price of the last title is already much higher – and be warned that the prices are sure to rise.”
Episode 91 offers a guide to all 17 “Cap Kennedy” books by E.C. Tubb, so to supplement that, here’s a quick checklist… do watch the videocast for more background from Philip!
The “Cap Kennedy” stories by Tubb novels comprise seventeen ovels, nine of them entirely original, eight based on his own earlier stories. “A classic series which has been greatly overlooked!” Philip enthuses.
All 17 are currently in print in the UK, but only as E-Books in the Orion SF Gateway series.
Cap Kennedy #1 Galaxy of the Lost
DAW, September 1973, cover & frontis: Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, Sweden, Japan, Netherlands, West Germany, UK, and Italy
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
Captain Kennedy, Earth’s trouble shooter carries the Banner of Terran against the unknown sciences and alien psychologies of a thousand worlds…
Kennedy and his crew investigate the mysterious disappearance of spaceships and find themselves snatched between dimensions through a rip in the fabric of space. Trapped in an alternate universe, they struggle to understand what has happened to them.
Tubb’s menacing parasitical alien life forms anticipated the film, Alien. The resolution of the mystery is a very skilful reworking of the plot of Tubb’s early novel Alien Universe (1952), written under the pseudonym “Volsted Gridban”.
• Read a review of Galaxy of the Lost on Paperback Warrior
![Slavskepp från Sergan By Gregory Kergen (EC Tubb) ["Slave Ship from Sergan"] (1974 – Lindfors Förlag, Science Fiction Serien, cover by Jack Gaughan](https://downthetubes.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Cap-Kennedy-2-Slavskepp-643x1024.jpg)
Cap Kennedy #2 Slave Ship From Sergan
DAW, October 1973, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, Sweden, Japan, Netherlands, West Germany, UK, Tel Aviv, and Italy
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
Tubb’s original novel explores what happens when two types of inhuman intelligences got together to defy the Terran orders against interplanetary kidnapping, space hijacking, and human slavery. Kennedy saves the day, working on his own.
Cap Kennedy #3 Monster Of Metelaze
DAW November 1973, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, Sweden, Netherlands, West Germany, Japan, UK, Tel Aviv, and Italy
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
Were there unknown scientific marvels available on the planet Metelaze? Who was behind these offers of total power and absolute wealth? What, in fact, was the monster of Metelaze? And how could such a monster out of time and space be stopped?
“This is a fascinating revision of the main plotline in Tubb’s 1953 novel Tormented City, writing as “Charles Grey” with a cover by Ron Turner also known as Space Hunger, Philip notes.
Cap Kennedy #4 Enemy Within The Skull
DAW, January 1974, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, Sweden, Netherlands, West Germany, UK, Japan, and Italy
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
Within the buried recesses of the human brain there lurk the ravening beast instincts of a million years ago. Thousands of years of growing intelligence and social culture had buried this deadly strain – until an alien science learned how to release the killer impulse of the Earth-born psyche. The aliens were willing to sell their know-how to the highest bidder in exchange for an alliance against Terra.
Enemy Within The Skull is based on an earlier, unsold non-Kennedy novel which had previously been ‘mined’ for Tubb’s 1969 novelette “Quarry,” much of which is incorporated into the novel, suitably revamped.
Cap Kennedy #5 Jewel of Jarhen (Tubb Original Novel)
DAW, February 1974, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, Sweden, West Germany, UK, and Japan
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
Cap’s body hung between life and death while his mind had been thrown a million years into the past. This left his remarkable team members to break the mystery of the pre-galactic artifact on which all horror hinged. Between the three, there had to be a way to bring Kennedy back to life – and the Jewel of Jarhen under control…
Cap Kennedy #6 Seetee Alert! (Tubb Original Novel)
DAW, March 1974, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, Sweden, West Germany, and UK
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
Contra-terrene matter – seetee, as the astronauts call it – is the most dangerous substance in the universe. Reversely charged, when brought into contact with even the most stable of normal material, it will instantly disintegrate with a 100 percent energy diffusion. So when Cap Kennedy’s scout vessel, Mordain, brushed against a cloud of seetee that was being gathered and moved by unknown ships, it was not only a narrow escape for Cap and his friends but signalled an emergency of the highest urgency…
Cap Kennedy #7 The Gholan Gate (Tubb Original Novel)
DAW, April 1974, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, Sweden, and West Germany
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
The Gholan Gate, a doorway so ancient that its makers had vanished millions of years before the first Earthly life crawled out of the primeval oceans. It was still functioning in the possession of its discoverers. To go through it was to enter a universe where all your dreams came true – where your every wish was obeyed, every fantasy became reality, where you could play God to your heart’s content…
Cap Kennedy #8 The Eater of Worlds
DAW, May 1974, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, Sweden, and West Germany
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
On a far semi-desert world, shunned by trade routes, and unattractive to star travellers, there is a barren and isolated valley. Dominating this valley is a great time-eroded Sphinx-like construction – a mass known to the few who have looked upon it as the Skull of Sykoris. But what it was none knew – until Cap Kennedy himself released the frightful power of Eater of Worlds…
This story is a skilful variation of a sub-plot concerning a ‘universal solvent’ first used in The Metal Eater (1954), writing as “Roy Sheldon”.
Cap Kennedy #9 Earth Enslaved
DAW, June 1974, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, Sweden, and West Germany
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
It could have been a black hole – one of those terrifying rips in space that defy all laws. That it was artificial in origin did not make it any less deadly. Worst of all, that strange extra-galactic torus was drifting into an intersect with Earth in its orbit.
Revisits a plot originally used in DeBracy’s Drug (1953), written as Volsted Gridban, as Kennedy and his companions overthrow an alien tyranny on a parallel world.
Cap Kennedy #10 Planet of Dread
DAW, July 1974, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, and West Germany
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
Of all possible enemies, Cap Kennedy had yet to cross swords with the legendary master of galactic villainy, Dr. Kaifeng. In the struggle for the mind of the tyrant of Papan, they finally met – and Kennedy was the loser. There was only one chance to save the situation and that was to pay the price of the enigmatic super-surgeons of the Kraid. He would have to take a role in their eternal role-playing. The stage would be the past, a barbaric world of swords and sorcery.
Superb, epic adventure which introduces Kennedy’s arch-enemy Dr. Kaifeng, a futuristic version of Fu Manchu. The sub-plots are cleverly derived from Tubb’s Nebula classic novelette, “Talk Not at All” (1958), republished by Wildside Press in 2024.
Cap Kennedy #11 Spawn of Laban (Tubb Original Novel)
DAW, September 1974, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, and West Germany
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
The planet was fine for big game hunters. But there was something on Eriadne which was not just a hunt trophy – something which required the presence of Kennedy and his men to check on. One of these things was a fragment of Zheltyana construction which outdated all civilisations…
Cap Kennedy #12 The Genetic Buccaneer (Tubb Original Novel)
DAW, October 1974, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, and West Germany
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
Tampering with the genes of humanity to create a super-race – that was an ideal of many scientific Utopians. Tampering with the genes of humanity to create a super-army – that was a dream of many military commanders.
Tampering with the genes of humanity to create a horde of obedient but brilliant monsters, that was the scheme of Dr. Kaifeng…
Cap Kennedy #13 A World Aflame
DAW, November 1974, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, and West Germany
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
Millions of years before humanity and other intelligent races learned to roam the Milky Way, the Zheltyana had created an empire among the stars – rose, triumphed, and vanished. All that remained were a few ruins, some artifacts, and the knowledge that their powerful scientific secrets awaited rediscovery.
One such secret had been found on the feudal planet Naxos, under the tyranny of the half-mad Idalia Ancanette. Her scientists had tapped its mystery to create a pillar of energy which promised to make Idalia mistress of a hundred worlds – if it did not destroy Naxos before it could be harnessed.
An adaptation of a plot first used by Tubb in his earlier novel World at Bay (1954), written as “Paul Capon”, transposed from a near future Earth setting to a distant interstellar stage.
Cap Kennedy #14 The Ghosts of Epidoris (Tubb Original Novel)
DAW, February 1975, cover & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, and West Germany
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
The world was haunted. Every sunset the natives went home, locked their doors, and pulled down the window blinds. Ghosts didn’t scare Kennedy. As an agent of FATE, it took more than superstition to shake him. But Epidoris was the real thing. Monsters did appear in the darkness, people did vanish at night – in fact, a whole barracks had vanished, garrison, weapons, and building. That’s what brought Kennedy to Epidoris. That and one thing more… a creature of the infamous Dr. Kaifeng had turned up.
“This ingenious sense of wonder mystery story is reminiscent of the 1930s “Zoromes” stories of Neil R. Jones,” Philip notes.
Cap Kennedy #15 Mimics of Dephene (Tubb Original Novel)
DAW, April 1975, cover & frontis Eddie Jones
Reprinted in Canada, and West Germany
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
On Dephene, the native life-form is peculiar and unique. All protoplasmic life is equal to and one with the Mimics. These Mimics represent a threat to every world in the entire galaxy. Their power of mimicry would enable them to adopt the outward form of rulers and high officials. A man could never be certain that his companion was what he seemed to be.
When Kennedy went to Dephene, the speculation became pure nightmare, for both he and his crew was being duplicated over and over…
Cap Kennedy #16 Beyond The Galactic Lens (Tubb Original Novel)
DAW, December 1975, cover Eddie Joners & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada, and West Germany
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
Three times had the scientific genius, Kaifeng, slipped through the hands of the men of FATE – and three times those equally fanatic guardians of the fragile structure of interworld peace had tracked him down again. But now Kaifeng had something that the Free Acting Terran Envoys had never met before. He had a ship beyond all previous capacities, he had a crew of dedicated devils, and he had FATE’s finest operative as his hostage…
Commander Scott #17 Das Kosmiche Duell
(“The Cosmic Duel”; original title, The Galactiad)
Bastei 1976 (Translation, West Germany)
Cap Kennedy #17 as The Galactiad
DAW July 1983, cover Wayne Douglas Barlowe & frontis Jack Gaughan
Reprinted in Canada
• Buy the Orion eBook version from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
The things from beyond the Milky Way galaxy found the intelligent races of our universe amusingly slight. To them, possessors of vast cosmic power, the strivings of various humanoids to outdo each other were a source of contemptuous entertainment. They established a contest between the worlds. It would be an Olympiad of the whole galaxy – a Galactiad. Let these puny interstellar intelligences meet each other in contest. Pit one against the other—and let the losers beware!
There are plot resonances with Tubb’s “Malkar” short stories and novels unpublished at the time, all of which were later reworked in his 1980 novel Pawn of the Ompahalos.
• Check out books by E.C. Tubb published by Wildside Press here
• There’s a list of all the “Commander Storm” books published in German here (in German) – all are credited to “Gregory Kern”.
• Fritz Freiheit lists the authors of these German titles, post Tubb, here as: Horst Pukallus, Ronald M. Hahn, Manfred Wegener, H. G. Ewers, Mario Werder, Harvey Patton, and Hans Joachim Alpers
• Follow Phoebe Gaughan on Flickr – plenty of great Jack Gaughan art to savour
Who is Phil Harbottle?
Philip Harbottle is a life-long science fiction fan, regarded as a world authority on the works of John Russell Fearn, whose credits encompass writing “Garth” for the Daily Mirror, and the “Golden Amazon” for Spaceship Away (adapting Fearn’s stories).
He’s also very kindly contributed a number of synopses of early “Garth” stories to downthetubes, which we are adding as time permits.
Back in the 1950s, he adapted some of the Radio Luxembourg Dan Dare radio shows into comics at a young age – the only record of some of these tales known to exist, since very few recordings survive.
• Subscribe to 1950s British Science Fiction YouTube Channel here
• Vultures of the Void: The Legacy by Philip Harbottle (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
Philip Harbottle presents a fascinating guide to British science fiction publishing history
• Buy Across the Ages by John Russell Fearn, adapted into comics by Philip Harbottle here from Lulu
A vintage comic strip by Philip Harbottle, adapting John Russell Fearn’s much admired SF novel Across the Ages, has finally been published – some sixty years after the now renowned author and publisher drew it (Read our news item about this here)
• Books edited or published by Phil Harbottle on AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)
• Rayguns and Rocketships by Rian Hughes, featuring many of the covers in Philip’s videocasts, is available to order now direct from Korero Press | Order it from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link) | ISBN: 978-1912740048
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.
He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: Books, Digital Media, downthetubes News, Other Worlds
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