The Empire of a Thousand Planets

This is book 2 in the Valerian and Laureline series, they being a couple of chilled dudes from the future who work for the Spatio-Temporal Service of Earth. They travel through space and time having various adventures. 

I enjoyed the first book in the series and this one is pretty good too. Written in the early 1970s, it has a kind of hippie sci-fi feel to it (think Dark Star) rather than the techno-fascist sci-fi horror that came later (think... well most other things).

Compared to the first book there is maybe a little less out-and-out adventure and action but a more involved storyline. The first book also took place on a ruined future (for us, past for them) Earth while this takes place in a remote corner of the galaxy. It's all quite implausible, our heroes have amazing abilities and no doubt a lot of luck but also very enjoyable.

Great play is made by the publishers on the similarities between Valerian & Laureline and the later Star Wars epics of George Lucas. Did Lucas get some "inspiration" from this? Who knows, it could all be a co-incidence but there do seem to be quite a lot of co-incidences...