Here's what I picked up from Thanksgiving through Christmas of last year. Most of these were purchased from an antique mall in Owego, New York, for $1 - $4 each.
The 'Mutants Amok' entries got favorable reviews from Glorious Trash ('Mutant Hell is even more brain-addled than its predecessor, and I mean that as a compliment'), so they were worth getting. 'Passport to Eternity', The Ballard anthology, would seem to be an Old School Treasure......
The Avram Davidson anthology and the Manley Wade Wellman volumes are the top 'finds' here......the Ace version of 'The Languages of Pao' is nothing more than a direct copy of the typeset of the smaller-sized, 1966 Ace paperback (#F-390), which tells you that Ace could at times be utterly cheap and mercenary in how they approached publishing.
The 'Brak' volumes caught my eye, what with their understated, highly stylized Charles Moll covers. The Zelazny book is one of the Ace 'illustrated' sf mass-market paperbacks, and a member of a series that launched in the mid-80s. It features copious, high-quality black-and-white illustrations by Esteban Maroto.
The Vance anthology may constitute a 'find' (or not). 'Uncut', the anthology of stories by British author Christopher Fowler, is rather obscure, but may be worthwhile. I suspect the Philip Jose Farmer novel 'Flesh' is filled with New Wave Excess, but I'll give it a try......
3 comments:
Wow, that's an awesome haul of books. There's several there I would probably buy myself just because I like the covers (one of the things I miss most about not living the US any more is not being able to go to used bookstores and picking up dirt cheap copies of old SF & fantasy paperbacks). Anyway, happy reading!
Lots of cool covers! I love the cover of Down to Earth, and the Frazetta on Night Walk is great.
Some good reads, too. I have the same edition of The Devil is Dead and a different edition of The Best of Jack Vance, both of which I have praised at length on my own blog.
I have the DAW edition of Languages of Pao with the Star Wars-inspired space ships on it. A lot of people praise Languages of Pao because it is about science, but The Anome, which is about adventures and wars and liberty, is more my speed. I had the edition you found of The Anome and its two sequels, gave all three to a friend after I read them like 8 years ago.
I have that edition of the Davidson collection, read a few stories but they have not stuck with me. Should try it again some day.
I am a sword and sorcery fan, and I started that edition of Brak, borrowing it from my brother, but didn't like it and didn't finish it.
Congrats on these great finds; I love going to antique malls myself, and have also found lots of good books at them, tucked among the old lamps, faded pictures, yellowed magazines, etc. Looking forward to your reviews of them!
The Wellman Silver John novels aren't easy to find and are always worthwhile. Likewise the Lafferty - the man could write!
"Flesh" seemed to be one of an almost endless series of Tarzan-porn by Farmer
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