Paperback 351: Solar Lottery / Philip K. Dick & The Big Jump / Leigh Brackett (Ace Double D-103)

Paperback 351: Ace Double D-103 (PBO / 1st ptg, 1955)

Title: Solar Lottery / The Big Jump
Authors: Philip K. Dick / Leigh Brackett
Cover artist: Ed Valigursky / Robert Schulz

Yours for: $80

Best things about "Solar Lottery" cover:

• In space, dodgeball Really sucks
• In space, they like to get high on nitrous and throw shit at stray Star Trek characters.
• First prize was the Earth itself! Second prize: a set of steak knives. Third prize: you're fired.
• Philip K. Dick. Paperback original. Word.

Best things about "The Big Jump" cover:

• God likes to apply his eyeliner with rocket ships.
• Hate this cover, but Leigh Brackett is one of the greatest pulp/scifi authors that time forgot.

Page 123 of "Solar Lottery"~

"I'll stop him," Wakeman repeated. "Some way, somehow."

"Between drinks, maybe." Rita halted for a moment to tie the laces on her boots, and then she disappeared down a descent ramp toward Cartwright's private quarters. She didn't look back.

Whoa, Rita. Nice burn.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

57 Books from the University Book Sale: Book 55

Titles: Catch-as-Catch-Can / Then Came Two Women
Author: Charlotte Armstrong
Cover artists: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $9

• Had mainstream cover artists / designers just given up by the mid-60s. I'm seeing a lot of slop lately. What is the concept here? Girl in pink dress running — OK. But then, what, a rough pencil sketch of her shins from a different angle, blown up as a background + random EMT running to check her gigantic left ankle + wee man tickling her right heel??? Maybe the lady in the pink looks so nauseous and is running so fast because she's trying desperately to escape from this cover concept. "Oh god, it's terrible, boo hoo, save me!"
• When Drexel Drake talks, people ... honestly, I don't know what people do. Drexel Drake is a porn name.

• Responsible housewife by day, trashy Cougar by night...
• Love the attire on the women. Also love little miss Bad Seed in her best buggy-riding attire.
• "God, I hate my two moms..."
• That is some supernatural shit that Bad Seed's hair is doing at the tips.

Page 123~ (from Catch-as-Catch-Can)

But she could see. That his hand and arms moved nervously and secretly to thrust the gun into the thick shrub beside which he was standing. He turned his body and wavered like a shadow.

Who let her break that first sentence in two like that?! Jebus! Also, I'm trying to imagine what that last sentence is supposed to look like. And failing.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 204: The Girl Who Had to Die + The Blank Wall / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Ace G-512)

Paperback 204: Ace G-512 (1st ptg / 1st ptg)

Title: The Girl Who Had to Die / The Blank Wall
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• There was this floating head that liked to eat sailboats, which made the tall, dark, mysterious man on the beach very sad. The end.
• What is it with the rainy day covers on all these Holding novels? Dreary and decidedly unhot. More skin, please.
• Actually, on third or fourth look, the streaks look less like rain than like the trim on some elaborate fur hat. Or a really, really bad haircut.

Best things about this other cover:

• This is one of my favorite pieces of crime fiction ever written. Ever. Seriously, it's that good. And unusual. Super suspenseful, with really complex and interesting characters. Women that aren't just femmes fatales. Just great. Provides a fascinating glimpse into domestic life during WWII (i.e. while the husband is away at war). Wish it would stay in @#$@ing print!
• More lazy art. Etch-a-sketch posing as op-art. And I think the guy from the other cover just walked through the book and ended up here. That lady is not a very good hider.

Page 123~ (from The Blank Wall)

"Here's something you might be glad of," he said, and held out three little capsules, bright yellow.

~RP

Paperback 203: Who's Afraid + Widow's Mite / Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Ace G-524)

Paperback 203: Ace G-524 (1st ptg / 1st ptg, ca. 1963)

Titles: Who's Afraid / Widow's Mite
Author: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Brulé / uncredited

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Man hands. Seriously, look at those things. My god. I fear for her upper head.
• "I remember embracing some generic man ... and the corpse of Bela Lugosi was there ... oh, it's all so fuzzy..."
• This book should be called "Who's Depressed?"

Best things about this other cover:

• "... and he threw the decapitated head of the young boy through the open window. The End."
• I guess there was a sale on "Dour Blue" at the art store when these covers were being painted.
• That blurb is pretty tepid: "Eh, you could do worse, I guess."
  
• Is a "mite" what I think it is? Dang, a "widow's mite" is "A small contribution made by one who has little" This is disappointing, as I was imagining this would be a story about a. a widow who kept a tiny bug as a pet, or b. a widow who enjoyed wearing a MITRE (of mysterious origin)

Page 123 (of "Widow's Mite")~

"Now!" she said. "Now you're going to get what's coming to you, you damn smug little bitch! You're going to be arrested, any minute. You'll be in jail tonight. And you'll end up in the electric chair!"

~RP

Paperback 144: The Girl from Las Vegas (J.M. Flynn) / To Have and to Kill (Robert Martin) (Ace Double F-111)

Paperback 144: Ace Double F-111 (PBO / 1st ptg, 1961)

Title: The Girl from Las Vegas / To Have and To Kill
Author: J.M. Flynn / Robert Martin
Cover artist: uncredited / uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• Q: What's the one thing that could upstage a half-naked, armed redhead reclining on your hotel room bed?
• A: Those pants

• This cover makes me feel funny ... I like that she's, uh, packing heat, but does she have to hold it like that. It's making me worried/confused. I think she's ordering me to kneel, but ... I'm scared to ask why.
  

• It's like Ann-Margaret killed "I Dream of Jeannie," stole her hair, and then ran off to Las Vegas to, I don't know ... let's say, join Clown College.

Best things about this cover:

• "Aaargh, Krull angry. Who paint words on Krull's back? Krull make someone pay for cleaning bill..."
• "Abridged" - HA ha. "Long story short, he married her, killed her, and then carried her half-shod corpse over the threshold. Cue the music, fade to black, roll credits."
• I should be keeping track of all the low-rent outfits that provide blurbs for my books. The Charleston News & Courier!? When did anyone ever take reading advice from South Carolina? (No offense, guys ... Go Gamecocks!)

Page 123~

He had shaved and changed into a light blue short-sleeved shirt and gray cord slacks. His attire surprised me a little, perhaps because I had subconsciously expected him to wear a dark mourning suit and somber tie. He still looked tired; eyes sunken, dark half moons beneath them. I leaned back in the chair and said, "Hi."

-from To Have and To Kill

~RP

Paperback 128: A Touch of Inifinity b/w The Man With Nine Lives / Harlan Ellison (Ace Double D-413)

Paperback 128: Ace D-413 (PBO / PBO, 1960)

Titles: A Touch of Infinity / The Man With Nine Lives
Author: Harlan Ellison / Harlan Ellison
Cover artists: Ed Valigursky / Ed Emshwiller

Yours for: $40


Best things about this cover:

• Harlan Ellison is a legend. A pop fiction legend. Smart, funny, imaginative, and just a great, great, page-turning writer. Hence the price of this book (he's super duper collectible).
• That said, this cover is not the most imaginative scifi cover I've ever seen. By a longshot. Spaceship that looks like prototype for Doctor Octopus shoots its oddly fiery gun at some unseen enemy / turkey buzzard while befuddled and square-jawed man with slinkies on his limbs looks on in what I'm guessing is disgust.
• The front part of the main ship's underside doubles as a waffle iron.

Best things about this cover:

• Scratch that. Eight lives.
• "I'd like to thank the Emmy voters for AAAAAAAAARGH!"
• This is how each episode of "American Idol" will end in Season 116. In fact, this is very much how I remember the moment that Kelly Clarkson beat Justin Guarini in Season 1.
• This painting looks like a still from a futuristic Christian rock video.
• The design and concept here are a mess. He mastered a maze ... but his head is being electrified by a giant statue and some eerily headphoned judges ... and he also is a cat or owns a lot of cat food.

Page 123~

"I still need that job done on my face, Patooch," Cal Emory said to the little cellulist.

-from "The Man with Nine Lives"

~RP

Paperback 112: Un-Man and Other Novellas (Poul Anderson) / The Makeshift Rocket (Poul Anderson) (Ace Double F-139)

Paperback 112: Ace Double F-139 (PBO / PBO, 1962)

Title: Un-Man and Other Novellas / The Makeshift Rocket
Author: Poul Anderson / Poul Anderson
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

• "This is a sad day indeed for Mexican space wrestling..."
• This painting is actually beautiful and haunting, while also being silly - a combination that goes right to the heart of why I collect these damned things
• I like the combination of genres - it's like scifi, western, and war story all wrapped into one (check out the dog tags hanging from the helmet of his presumably fallen comrade)
• "He could be stilled etc.": More proof that tag-line writers in the 1960s were completely and utterly high

Page 123~

"Ha ha!" bellowed van Rijn. "We spill all their apples, eh? By damn! Now we show them some fun!"

Best things about this cover:

• "Hey, has anyone seen grampa?"
• I can only hope that in the future, that style of mustache does indeed make a flaming comeback
• Um ... there is a pipe-smoking green goblin in that crate. I'm just sayin'...

Page 123~

This book has only 97 pages! So ... Page 23!

As for the longer-range scheme - oh yes, the plan. Well, like most terra-formed asteroids, Grendel had only a minimal gyrogravitic unit, powerful enough to give it a 24-hour rotational period (originally the little world had spun around once in three hours, which played the very devil with tea time) and an atmosphere retaining surface field of 980 cm./sec.².

~RP

Paperback 90: The Hot Diary (Howard J. Olmsted) / Ring Around a Rogue (J. M. Flynn) (Ace Double D-459)

Paperback 90: Ace Double D-459 (PBO 1960 / PBO 1960)

Title: The Hot Diary / Ring Around a Rogue
Author: Howard J. Olmsted / J.M. Flynn
Cover artist: uncredited / uncredited

Yours for: SOLD (early May 2008)


Best things about this cover:

• Don't make Robert Stack angry. You wouldn't like Robert Stack when he's angry
• This cover is great - quintessential hard-boiled with a mod style (again, love pink in my hard-boiled covers). They are both dressed impeccably. Her dress is fierce (love the black accents, especially the band and bow toward the hemline), and he carries off a trench-coat way better than most dopey goons.
• Does this count as "bondage?" I'm counting it. I imagine that her hands are tied. That, or she lost her right arm in the war or a freak fishing accident.
• "Never Write About Murder" - uh ... you just did.

PAGE 23~

I wouldn't have minded if she'd slapped me or swore at me. But her calm, unmoved acceptance of the kiss frosted me. It hit me where I lived, in my pride.

Best things about this cover:

• These two covers make a nice pair: "Things To Do With a Girl When You're Armed": "You can grab her like this ... or kiss her like this ... it's up to you."
• Here's a sexless sex scene if I've ever seen one. He looks ... wooden. "Let's see, I put my gun ... here, and my left hand reaches around like ... so. OK. What do I do with my lips again?" Etc.
• The painting here does nothing to up the eros. The paint looks hastily daubed on. She has that horrid bottle-blond rubbery head look (see the "Finger Man" cover), and rarely have I been so unmoved by so much female skin.
• "A Car, A Girl and A Gun" - or "Copywriter Gives Up, Decides Life's Meaningless" - that's him there, plummeting over that cliff in the car.

PAGE 123~

Deal grabbed him by the shirt front, yanked him from the sofa, and backhanded the expressionless face. Blood trickled from the corner of the flat lips but Chiong did not cry out.

~RP

Paperback 89: Bloodline for Murder (Emmett McDowell) / In at the Kill (Emmett McDowell) (Ace Double D-445)

Paperback 89: Ace Double D-445 (PBO, 1960 / PBO, 1960)

Titles: Bloodline to Murder / In at the Kill
Authors: Emmett McDowell / Emmett McDowell [who!?]
Cover artists: uncredited / uncredited :(

Yours for: SOLD 5/22/08


Best thing about this cover:

• I am in love with this woman. Absolutely, stone cold in love. Never mind that I can't see her face - I would run away with this woman. Anyone who can pull off the combination of that dress with those shoes, who has gams like that, wears thigh-highs, and packs heat. Oh ... yeah. I hope she plugs that trench-coated ghoul in the doorway and hits the road with me (note to wife: I'm mostly kidding)
• This book has been man-handled, but the great thing about vintage paperbacks is that manhandling often adds to the coolness of their look. The diagonal creases on this cover somehow work seamlessly into the whole overall design, which is already pretty angular - directing attention to the west and south west of the cover, where the action is.
• "An Axe For The Family Tree" - I have got to start collecting tag lines, writing them down, and ranking them according to all-time greatness. This one is good, not great - to be great, she would have to be hiding an axe in her hosiery.
• I like that she is painted in a completely different, more detailed/naturalistic style than anything else on the cover. Dude in the background looks like he's in an early 80s, Tron-esque video game.

PAGE 123~

Helm put down his bottle of beer. He was no longer smiling and his face was a shade redder.
"Knox, how would you like to get thrown in jail?"
"I hope that's a rhetorical question," said Jonathan.
"Rhetorical, hell! This is murder..."

Best things about this back cover:

• It's a front cover!
• I believe that this woman is a. blind (where is she looking?), b. wearing a wig, c. about to break into song, and d. tied up in the most ornate and inefficient way I've ever seen.
• I love our shooter - paranoid and shooting at imaginary enemies.
• This cover looks like experimental theater. Really, really bad experimental theater. Possibly about lesbians (No? OK, you tell me what that giant pink/lavender "L" is doing there?).
• I Love girly colors on my hard-boiled crime novels. God bless the boldness and unconventionality of mid-century cover art designers.
• Her shoes match the giant "L" and font color
• "Anyone for Murder?" - HA ha. How in the world does tennis terminology relate here? Furthermore, WTF is this?

PAGE 123~

Sorry, this book ends on page 108 (!?!?!). Well ... OK, here's PAGE 23~

"Could I see your credentials?"
"Of course," said Jonathan, and he took out his wallet and showed him a ten dollar bill.

-RP

Paperback 67: Law from Back Beyond (Chuck Martin) / Vengeance Valley (Roy Manning)

Paperback 67: Ace Double D-46 (PBO / 1st ptg, 1954)

Title: Law from Back Beyond / Vengeance Valley
Author: Chuck Martin / Roy Manning
Cover artist: Norman Saunders / John Leone


Best thing about this cover:

• This man is practicing the little-known art of rock phrenology.
• Jane has to ride out to retrieve her mentally-deranged brother, who suffers from the perpetual delusion that he is at the Alamo. Good thing his gun is merely an incense burner.

Best things about this other cover:

• I feel as if I could cut-and-paste this guy into another scene and he would look far more like a guy dancing than a guy falling off a demon-possessed horse (look at its eyes! vacant!)

RP

The Great Paperback Project - Paperback 1: Ace Double D-27

As some of you know, and most of you don't - why would you? - I have a fairly sizable collection of Vintage Paperbacks. They date from about 1939 (the beginning of mass-market paperbacks) to about the mid-'60s, when book design (especially the covers) started to get unimaginative and ugly. I like beautiful books. With libraries so abundant, there is little point owning books any more unless they a. are very useful to you, or b. are beautiful. Cheaply made books with stupid, generic, cooked-up-in-some-marketing-lab covers depress the hell out of me. Someday, I will share with you my theory of contemporary book design (including the ironic similarity between the cover art of "women's literature" and snuff films), but for now, I begin a much happier project - putting my beautiful books on display, web-style! A few times a week, I will post a new picture of a vintage paperback cover from my collection. At that rate, my entire collection should be on-line in about ... 12-15 years. May we all live that long.

These covers will appear in no particular order (just as the books sit on the massive shelves next to me). I pull book off shelf, I scan, up it goes. I hope to spread some wee bit of appreciation for the beauty of mid-century paperbacks. I knew nothing about them until I stumbled on pictures in Robert Polito's great Jim Thompson biography. I found out that I could Never afford any of Thompson's paperback originals (not true, I own a couple now), but when I went into one of the many local used bookstores in Ann Arbor, I found that there were lots of Thompson-era (i.e. '50s) paperbacks lying around, lots of them with sensational cover art, and often available for reasonable prices. So I started buying. And buying. And Buying. This is what I did instead of writing my dissertation. Seriously. Thank you, Mellon Foundation. I know I didn't get my dissertation done during my fellowship like I was supposed to, but I amassed a hell of a paperback collection, so your money was well spent.

Paperback 1: Ace Double D-27 (PBO / 1st ptg, 1953)

Titles: Double Take / The Fingered Man
Authors: Mel Colton / Bruno Fischer
Cover artists: "Paul" / Norman Saunders

Yours for: $17

"Don't shoot him! He's doughy. Shoot me between the shoulder blades instead."

Best things about this cover:

• She is hot
• Tag line: "She Was Hard To Meet And Deadly To Know" - "Meet" and "Know" are like the least active active verbs ever ... unless "Know" is biblical, in which case I take it back
• Brightness of her clothes (and lips) against drabness of the rest of the scene
• Love the "Killer's Eye View" - you'll see a number of these in my collection
• The gun is her spine - lots and lots of interesting / disturbing juxtapositions of women and weapons in my collection
• That's the roomiest interior I've ever seen on a standard automobile
  

And on the Flip Side...

"OK, ma'am, first thing you're going to want to do is stop choking yourself."

Best things about this cover:

• Her insane eyes, and insaner mouth
  
• The haunted phone that has wrapped its tentacle around her arm and is now forcing her to choke herself
• The gigantic, unmelting blocks of ice that look like three cars trying to pull into a narrow glass tunnel
• The original title: "Quoth the Raven," HA ha. Literary!
• The artist's signature ("Saunders") nestled along the edge of the newspaper

Ace Doubles are iconic mid-century paperbacks. Almost all paperbacks cost just a quarter from 1939 well into the '50s, but Ace Doubles were a little more, for good reasons. Double the content, double the cover art. Value!

One down, a couple thousand to go.

RP