The Mars Monopoly by Jerry Sohl (1956)

The Mars Monopoly, a novel by Jerry Sohl (1956)

At left: Paperback edition (New York: Ace Books, 1956), #D-162, 183 p., 35¢. Cover art by Ed Valigursky. An Ace Double novel, bound with R. De Witt Miller and Anna Hunger’s The Man Who Lived Forever. Here's the blurb from inside the cover:

"A guy's gotta earn a living somewhere – and if it isn't on Earth, it might as well be on Mars. That is if the Syndicate would let you live on the red planet. Bert Schaun found himself washed-up as a round-the-world rocket racer, blacklisted by Thornton McAllister. He tried to make a new life for himself prospecting for uranium in the lonesome vastness of the asteroids. But McAllister’s fury hunted him even to Mars; the issue became a struggle to stay alive against the dangers imposed by McAllister’s interplanetary power. And then Bert found that he was not only fighting for his own survival, but for the survival, too, of a whole race of Martian outcasts. Singlehandedly, he had to combat genocide on the planet Mars!"

Perhaps best known as a script writer for The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and Star Trek, Jerry Sohl also wrote science fiction novels and short stories. One of his more obscure novels, The Mars Monopoly has not been reprinted in the United States. Surprisingly, given Sohl's orbit, the Los Angeles Public Library doesn't own a circulating copy of the book.

Students of Sohl might find some interest in Filet of Sohl: the Classic Scripts and Stories of Jerry Sohl (2003) and the Jerry Sohl papers (1958-1983) at the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center.

Jerry Sohl died November 4, 2002, in Thousand Oaks, California. His obituary appeared in the Los Angeles Times and his death was reported by several online sources, including SciFi.com and Locus Online.