My Facebook doppelganger got me thinking about John Adamses again, and I remembered that in the course of my research of post-apocalyptic fiction, I came across a book by one John Adams published in 1967 called When the Gods Came. I bought myself a copy of it, but haven’t read it yet. Here’s the cover copy:

Men had fought wars throughout history, but never such a war as the one which destroyed the cities of earth and turned vast areas into badlands, stretches of intense radioactivity where nothing could grow and no one could live. It also produced the deviates, mutants who had warped bodies and strange talents.

But there were others who had still stranger talents, mental powers exceeding those of the mutants, and whose bodies did not bear the sign of the deviate. Their origin could not be traced to an atomic war; even they themselves had no idea whence they came.

Forced to take part in the abortive war between the Eastern and Western Federations, one man and one man eventually escaped and discovered creatures similar to themselves. But to discover their origin they had to go back five thousand years; and the answer lay not on earth, but somewhere in the stars.

ARCADIA HOUSE 419 Park Ave. South, New York 10016

Looks like it’s going for a pretty steep price on Amazon at the moment ($99). It originally cost $3.50, so that’s quite a markup. I don’t recall what I paid, but I’m sure it wasn’t in that neighborhood.

UPDATE: My pal Rightcoast said, in an LJ comment: "John Adams was a pen name for prolific British author Johns S(tephen). Glasby. He wrote a few stories within the Cthulhu Mythos and a ton of other stuff in all genres."

Links:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/g/john-s-glasby/
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?John_S._Glasby
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Glasby