Star Quest was Dean R. Koontz's first novel. Originally published in 1968

1968 in literature

The year 1968 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Dean R. Koontz's first novel, Star Quest is published....

, by Ace Books

Ace Books

Ace Books is the oldest active specialty publisher of science fiction and fantasy books. The company was founded in New York City in 1952 by Aaron A. Wyn, and began as a genre publisher of mysteries and westerns...

, Inc. This book was 127 pages and was published as an Ace Double (two novels in one volume) paperback together with Doom of the Green Planet by Emil Petaja

Emil Petaja

Emil Petaja was an American science fiction and fantasy writer whose career spanned seven decades. He was the author of 13 published novels, nearly 150 short stories, numerous poems, and a handful of books and articles on various subjects...

and was priced at $0.60.

Plot introduction

"In a universe that had been ravaged by a thousand years of interplanetary warfare between the star-shattering Romaghins and the equally voracious Setessins, there seemed now but one thing that might bring the destruction to an end. That would be the right catalyst in the hands of the right people. The right catalyst could well be the individualist rebel, Tohm... he who had once been a simple peasant and who had been forcibly changed into a fearfully armored instrument of mechanical warfare—the man-tank Jumbo Ten. But the right people? Could they possibly be the hated driftwood of biological warfare—those monsters of a cosmic no-man's land—the Muties?"