"Give Us More Wilcox, Please!" begged award-winning sf writer-editor Terry Carr in a letter to Fantastic Adventures in the early 1950s. Princess of the Seas, which has never been reprinted since its original pulp magazine appearance, is one of Don Wilcox's most celebrated science fantasy novels. Like all Don Wilcox's best work, it is a dream extravaganza. In an era when other writers were aiming for scientific accuracy, Wilcox, who knew his science, aimed at a different effect. For Wilcox wrote Science-Fantasy, with the accent on fantasy. His tales were more like what a wide-screen, Technicolor MGM adventure epic come sf film, starring, say, Errol Flynn, would be like if any had ever been made.

If you love wacky, off-the-wall sf, then you won't be able to resist the writer the 1940s hailed as Don "the madman" Wilcox. Come along as the hero, the explorer, Stupe (for Stupendous) Smith, the cook, Gypsy Brown, whose Yiddish is as thick a her wits are nimble, plus a number of spies and moles, rocket off to the ocean world of Venus in search of a beautiful woman said to ride its sapphire seas on a horse. There you will meet, and fall in love with the princess Zaleese-Ocella-dudu-Valletha-Kolello-Enyuperra-dudu-Ferroteela-Conzanzi-Methopop Ling, her white stallion, Marble Boy, who courses the ocean waves with the same nimbleness with which he breasts its deepest depths; not to mention such unforgettable characters as the fearsome Wingmen, the Earth magnate, J.J. Wellington, whose treacherous actions unleash war between Earth and Venus, and Gooyay, the little boy who just may be the key to peace or total carnage.

Be prepared for zany situations, off-beat puns, daffy characters, and plenty of laughs! (SF critics and Wilcox's colleagues of the period are divided over whether his particular approach to sf was tongue-in-cheek and intended to be funny, or merely the result of the copious quantities of whiskey needed to keep him typing at full speed to meet deadlines). No wonder, Lin Carter, the award-winning fantasist, hailed Don Wilcox's work as "Adult fairy tales!" Don Wilcox (1905-2000) was one of the most popular science fiction writers of the 1940s and early 1950s. The letter columns of Amazing, Other Worlds, Fantastic Adventures and other Golden Age science fiction pulps are filled with letters from fans, among them soon to be Hugo Award winners like Terry Carr and Robert Silverberg, praising his work and begging for more. Most popular of all were Wilcox's novels, such as The Ice Queen, Cats of Kadenza, The Serpent Has Five Fangs, Land of Big Blue Apples.