Blast from the past
In the ongoing process of trying to clean the Augean stables apartment (and NOT really grateful to whichever cat it was solved the problem of what to do with the box full of all the really awful drek books that I felt guilty about even giving away--!) I came across one of the ones I bought because Big Name Author and cheap but haven't been able to chew my way through after three tries, even though it's pretty short.
The book is a somewhat battered Signet first edition of Brian Aldiss' Starswarm, which sold in 1964 for 50 cents and which I got for $1.50, and which I will probably never finish but am holding onto for its curio value. The cover has some truly awful art, which I will scan and post later on tonight if I can, it looks rather like someone noticed that the blobs and drips on their palette could be fingerpainted into a crude human form and then put it on a red background, and the typesetter must have just gotten a nifty new "curve" feature, either that or they didn't plan out how much room they would need at a 60-point size - but it's the advertising copy on the covers and inside pages that's really interesting to me.
Front reads:
Another exciting
chronicle-novel
of the far-distant
future when
the descendants
of man have
swept across ten
thousand worlds...
The back says:
ISLAND UNIVERSE
Two moons circle the dead planet Earth...but the race of man who eons ago escaped its withered crust live lives of bizarre variety on Starswarm. A part of the neo-human species who populate the far-flung sectors of a wondrous galactic cluster, they struggle to survive, to shape their destiny, to control forces they themselves have brought into being...
Under that, after a row of giant asterisks almost large enough to be used as shower-slip decals of that era:
BRIAN ALDISS, one of today's handful of superlative science-fiction authros, was born and educated in England. He spent the war years in service and the following eight years as a bookseller. Since 1957 he has been Literary Editor of the Oxford Mail. Other books by Mr. Aldiss in Signet Editions are Starship, and The Long Afternoon of Earth.
PUBLISHED BY THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
And under that, in big red letters:
COMING AS A SIGNET PAPERBACK
JAMES JONES'
LUSTY, BRUTAL NEW
NOVEL OF COMBAT
THE NEW BESTSELLER BY THE AUTHOR of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY... "IT IS JAMES JONES' BEST." --New York Times
with a photo of the book itself next to it.
This gives me a huge laugh, because The Thin Red Line is the bestselling WWII novel based on the author's own experience which is full of explicit descriptions of infantrymen sucking each other off and having hard-ons for each other and wondering if that makes them gay, or if "you're not really gay if you're the guy," something that it's rather hard to find acknowledged in reviews of Jones' writings except in the most glancing and passing of ways. (Though you can easily find talk about how From Here To Eternity was controversial and censored in the classic film version due to its discussion of [female] prostitution and adultery.) Waaaay more explicit than all those coy Gor novels that we are told were the only recourse of fans who wanted sex in their fic but couldn't find it anywhere than in schlocky SF back in ye good old days... Yah right. I worked in libraries full of old books, kiddos.
On the inside front cover, the blurb reads:
10,000 worlds...
and more, are home to the
myriad heirs of man. Vast dis-
tances separate one sector
from the next. Adaptation in-
exorably influences the minds,
the lives, the genes. But all are
man, regardless of subrace,
creed, or the color of skin,scale,
or pelt.
STARSWARM!
Sounds promising. But - meh. I'd have to try to reread yet again to explain why I can't get into, let alone through it. Maybe later.
And now, on the next page of the front matter, we get to the crux of my post:
Other SIGNET Science Fiction You'll Enjoy
THE LONG AFTERNOON OF EARTH
by Brian Aldiss
The nightmarish story of a handful of people in the future trying to survive the death throes of an Earth which has stopped rotating.
STARSHIP
by Brian Aldiss
The gripping story of a weird journey into space and a search for a lost heritage.
THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH
by Robert A. Heinlein
The title story and nine additional tales by the "dean of science fiction."
METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN
by Robert A. Heinlein
A group of Earth men with extraordinarily long life spans are forced through jealousy to flee into space.
On the inside back page this continues, with ordering information:
Other SIGNET Novels You'll Enjoy
JOURNEY BEYOND TOMORROW by Robert Sheckley
Barbed and brilliant science fiction about a South Sea Islander who finds himself in an insane 21st century America.
LEVEL 7 by Mordecai Roshwald
A terrifying story of the future when mankind lives underground waiting tensely for push-button death.
WHEN TIME STOOD STILL by Ben Orkow
A devoted husband finds a way to suspend time until a cure is found for his wife's fatal disease.
ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute
The gripping bestseller about men and women bravely facing inevitable extinction.
THE GENERAL by Alan Sillitoe
A powerful parable of mankind's drive to self-destruction - the story of a General ordered to shoot an entire symphony orchestra, captured accidentally in total war. By the author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
1984 by George Orwell
A nightmare projection of a future police state ruled by "Big Brother," where "War is Peace" and all values are transvalued. Afterword by Eric Fromm, renowned psychologist.
--Ah, ye Goode Olde Dayes, when things were simpler, more innocent, more carefree and happy, when the American people trusted their government and looked forward optimistically to the future of unending prosperity...
The book is a somewhat battered Signet first edition of Brian Aldiss' Starswarm, which sold in 1964 for 50 cents and which I got for $1.50, and which I will probably never finish but am holding onto for its curio value. The cover has some truly awful art, which I will scan and post later on tonight if I can, it looks rather like someone noticed that the blobs and drips on their palette could be fingerpainted into a crude human form and then put it on a red background, and the typesetter must have just gotten a nifty new "curve" feature, either that or they didn't plan out how much room they would need at a 60-point size - but it's the advertising copy on the covers and inside pages that's really interesting to me.
Front reads:
Another exciting
chronicle-novel
of the far-distant
future when
the descendants
of man have
swept across ten
thousand worlds...
The back says:
ISLAND UNIVERSE
Two moons circle the dead planet Earth...but the race of man who eons ago escaped its withered crust live lives of bizarre variety on Starswarm. A part of the neo-human species who populate the far-flung sectors of a wondrous galactic cluster, they struggle to survive, to shape their destiny, to control forces they themselves have brought into being...
Under that, after a row of giant asterisks almost large enough to be used as shower-slip decals of that era:
BRIAN ALDISS, one of today's handful of superlative science-fiction authros, was born and educated in England. He spent the war years in service and the following eight years as a bookseller. Since 1957 he has been Literary Editor of the Oxford Mail. Other books by Mr. Aldiss in Signet Editions are Starship, and The Long Afternoon of Earth.
PUBLISHED BY THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY
And under that, in big red letters:
COMING AS A SIGNET PAPERBACK
JAMES JONES'
LUSTY, BRUTAL NEW
NOVEL OF COMBAT
THE NEW BESTSELLER BY THE AUTHOR of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY... "IT IS JAMES JONES' BEST." --New York Times
with a photo of the book itself next to it.
This gives me a huge laugh, because The Thin Red Line is the bestselling WWII novel based on the author's own experience which is full of explicit descriptions of infantrymen sucking each other off and having hard-ons for each other and wondering if that makes them gay, or if "you're not really gay if you're the guy," something that it's rather hard to find acknowledged in reviews of Jones' writings except in the most glancing and passing of ways. (Though you can easily find talk about how From Here To Eternity was controversial and censored in the classic film version due to its discussion of [female] prostitution and adultery.) Waaaay more explicit than all those coy Gor novels that we are told were the only recourse of fans who wanted sex in their fic but couldn't find it anywhere than in schlocky SF back in ye good old days... Yah right. I worked in libraries full of old books, kiddos.
On the inside front cover, the blurb reads:
10,000 worlds...
and more, are home to the
myriad heirs of man. Vast dis-
tances separate one sector
from the next. Adaptation in-
exorably influences the minds,
the lives, the genes. But all are
man, regardless of subrace,
creed, or the color of skin,scale,
or pelt.
STARSWARM!
Sounds promising. But - meh. I'd have to try to reread yet again to explain why I can't get into, let alone through it. Maybe later.
And now, on the next page of the front matter, we get to the crux of my post:
Other SIGNET Science Fiction You'll Enjoy
THE LONG AFTERNOON OF EARTH
by Brian Aldiss
The nightmarish story of a handful of people in the future trying to survive the death throes of an Earth which has stopped rotating.
STARSHIP
by Brian Aldiss
The gripping story of a weird journey into space and a search for a lost heritage.
THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH
by Robert A. Heinlein
The title story and nine additional tales by the "dean of science fiction."
METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN
by Robert A. Heinlein
A group of Earth men with extraordinarily long life spans are forced through jealousy to flee into space.
On the inside back page this continues, with ordering information:
Other SIGNET Novels You'll Enjoy
JOURNEY BEYOND TOMORROW by Robert Sheckley
Barbed and brilliant science fiction about a South Sea Islander who finds himself in an insane 21st century America.
LEVEL 7 by Mordecai Roshwald
A terrifying story of the future when mankind lives underground waiting tensely for push-button death.
WHEN TIME STOOD STILL by Ben Orkow
A devoted husband finds a way to suspend time until a cure is found for his wife's fatal disease.
ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute
The gripping bestseller about men and women bravely facing inevitable extinction.
THE GENERAL by Alan Sillitoe
A powerful parable of mankind's drive to self-destruction - the story of a General ordered to shoot an entire symphony orchestra, captured accidentally in total war. By the author of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
1984 by George Orwell
A nightmare projection of a future police state ruled by "Big Brother," where "War is Peace" and all values are transvalued. Afterword by Eric Fromm, renowned psychologist.
--Ah, ye Goode Olde Dayes, when things were simpler, more innocent, more carefree and happy, when the American people trusted their government and looked forward optimistically to the future of unending prosperity...