(no subject)
There was a Tor Double of Poul Anderson's 'No Truce With Kings' and Fritz Leiber's 'Ship Of Shadows.'
That's the best news I've heard all day. In fact, the best thing I've heard all day. For those of you who don't know, a Tor Double is a sort of small paperback which has two novellas, usually SF or more hard-edged/quirky fantasy (the kind of fantasy you'd find in Astounding, not the kind you'd find someone on the aetherseine writing a crappy d20 product about) in it. One of them would be in one half, and if you flipped it end for end there would be the other, so they each got a cover. They were great. I used to have one with 'Enemy Mine' and some kind of odd story about this guy who got transported into Moby Dick (I didn't really get the story, but thinking back I bet it was pretty good).
I'm pretty sure the marketing strategy of the Tor Double was that it was for that kid whose parents kept getting him stupid Flash Gordon shit because they thought that was what SF was all about. This kid's parents see the Tor Double and they're all "I'll bet little Timmy would love that! It's got those rocketship stories in it, and there's two of them!" and then Timmy gets it, but he's happy too because it's got some great shit in it, like Enemy Mine, or the above, or maybe 'Lest Darkness Fall' (I don't think Lest Darkness Fall was a Tor Double, but it was the kind of thing that could have been).
That's the best news I've heard all day. In fact, the best thing I've heard all day. For those of you who don't know, a Tor Double is a sort of small paperback which has two novellas, usually SF or more hard-edged/quirky fantasy (the kind of fantasy you'd find in Astounding, not the kind you'd find someone on the aetherseine writing a crappy d20 product about) in it. One of them would be in one half, and if you flipped it end for end there would be the other, so they each got a cover. They were great. I used to have one with 'Enemy Mine' and some kind of odd story about this guy who got transported into Moby Dick (I didn't really get the story, but thinking back I bet it was pretty good).
I'm pretty sure the marketing strategy of the Tor Double was that it was for that kid whose parents kept getting him stupid Flash Gordon shit because they thought that was what SF was all about. This kid's parents see the Tor Double and they're all "I'll bet little Timmy would love that! It's got those rocketship stories in it, and there's two of them!" and then Timmy gets it, but he's happy too because it's got some great shit in it, like Enemy Mine, or the above, or maybe 'Lest Darkness Fall' (I don't think Lest Darkness Fall was a Tor Double, but it was the kind of thing that could have been).