Comics, Pulps, and Paperbacks: Why such a discrepancy in values? 10 10

[moonpool]

[Pat Calhoun]

[rodan57]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a lot of Ace sic-fi and here you go and post six out of seven right off the bat that I don't have.

[frozentundraguy]

 

I have a lot of Ace sic-fi and here you go and post six out of seven right off the bat that I don't have.

 

That's the great thing about these Ace paperbacks and others for that matter, there are loads of choices. Here's one more.

 

 

 

[Pat Calhoun]

& 'The Paradox Men' is one of the great SF novels !!!

[frozentundraguy]

 

Sweet cover! The girls attributes are such that it takes a moment to spot the extra eye in her forehead.

[Flex Mentallo]

& 'The Paradox Men' is one of the great SF novels !!!

 

One of my favorites as well. It was first published as a novella in the May 1949 issue of Startling Stories as 'Flight into Yesterday'.

 

Below is the first book publication in 1953. (I've steadily been upgrading my paperbacks to hardback and greatly enjoying the hunt for some of the rarer titles and editions. Harness was at the top of my list.)

 

 

It was renamed The Paradox Men by Donald Wollheim for reprint as the first half of Ace Double #D-118 in 1955.

 

"The novel plays high, wide, and handsome with space and time, buzzes around the solar system like a demented hornet, [and] is witty, profound, and trivial all in one breath." Brian Aldiss

 

It was Harness who invented the concept of force fields which protect people against high-velocity weapons like guns but not against knives or swords, an idea later used in Frank Herbert's Dune (1965).

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

'The Rose' is a wonderful and ultimately moving novella by Harness also from 1953. He failed to sell it to a U.S. publisher. It first appeared in the British magazine Authentic Science Fiction in that year. It was not republished in paperback in the UK until 1966, and it wasn't until 1968 that UK publisher Sidgwick & Jackson issued the (now very scarce) hardback edition. Its revival in the 1960s was the result of the interest in Harness's work of Michael Moorcock, It actually didn't make it into print in the United States until 1969. The hardback is a brute to find in decent shape. Nice copies tend to sell for quite a lot of money.

‘In a world where a terrifying Ultimate Weapon is just about to be perfected, a scattered handful of people are on the brink of making a giant evolutionary step and becoming more than human. The Rose is the story of two such mutants, one man and one woman.

On their foreheads, strange horn-like growths sprout. On their backs, disfiguring humps grow. Together they fight in a new and deadly version of an ages-old battle, all the time seeking the mysterious Rose that will resolve the puzzling enigma on which the future of life itself depends…’

 

'This astonishing tale... transfigures its source in Oscar Wilde's "The Nightingale and the Rose" into a transcendent paean to the victory of art over the coercions of science.' John Clute

 

 

 

Harness made a kind of comeback in 1968 with the Ring of Ritornel when his earlier work began to be more appreciated. For whatever reason, it was 10 years before he wrote another novel, Wolfhead, in 1978.

 

I personally don't find the later works quite recapture the earlier magic (a bit like Joseph Heller after Catch 22), though others may disagree.

 

Though he was nominated for multiple Hugo and Nebula awards in later years, I find it astonishing that he never received an award for either of these fine works. The Rose was nominated for a retrospective Hugo in 2004 alongside other novellas published in 1953 but lost out to A Case of Conscience by James Blish.

 

So there is some justice that he was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2004.

[comicjack]

Good stuff

[moonpool]

 

Some of my Avons'. I enjoyed reading The Moopool a lot.

[Doohickamabob]

Some of my Avons'. I enjoyed reading The Moopool a lot.

Love 'em!

[Doohickamabob]

A recent favorite. Great title, great image.

[sacentaur]

A recent favorite. Great title, great image.

 

What a great cover!

[moonpool]

A recent favorite. Great title, great image.

Can't go wrong with Exotics

[Doohickamabob]

A recent favorite. Great title, great image.

Can't go wrong with Exotics

Hey, those Luther Gordon books look familiar! (Your copies look much nicer than mine.)

[Doohickamabob]

Here are the other two Exotic books in my collection. Cover-wise and condition-wise, I like 'em a little more than the first two.

[Doohickamabob]

In a similar vein, here are my Quarter Books. I am pretty sure Exotic, Rainbow, Ecstasy, Quarter, Diversey, Venus, and Cameo books were often connected to each other, along with some other digest-sized publishers (including Avon). Hard to keep up with them all.

 

I've posted several of these before, but never got organized enough to group them by publisher.

 

[Doohickamabob]

Here are some Rainbow, Ecstasy, and Venus books. (Again, a few new additions here and there.) Most of these aren't too difficult to find with a little searching, but they're severely difficult to find in grade. Which is why most of my copies are ratty.

[Doohickamabob]

Diverseys. I am lucky to have found the two #1 issues (at top) as a fluke. Though the Reform School Girl photo cover is famous, I am partial to the Broadway Virgin photo cover. Many of the books from this publisher are fairly tough to find in grade.

[Doohickamabob]

Some Avons.... The first photo is nothing new, but I never get tired of looking at these covers. The 2nd photo is a recent acquisition, "The Woman Aroused." I love the cover image but especially appreciate the dripping blood at the top.