Paperback 993: The Farm / Louis Bromfield (Signet D1260)

Paperback 993: Signet D1260 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Farm
Author: Louis Bromfield
Cover artist: James Avati

Condition: 8/10
Estimated value: $15-20

Best things about this cover:

• Hay rides have always sounded like hell to me, but this doesn't look so bad.
• This is probably the single hottest Avati cover of all time. Note that 99% of all Avati covers involve people standing motionless and looking sad.
• It really is exquisite as a piece of figurative art—those heads, arms, calves, feet!—and all the peripheral details are rendered with keen-eyed precision as well.

Best things about this back cover:

• Jeez, Omaha World-Herald. Dial it back a notch.
• I'm here for the hot rural action, not "Indian massacres." Come on, Bromfield!
• He looks like Mickey Spillane's yokel cousin.

Page 123~

And for days Johnny was haunted by a vision of Greataunt (sic) Jane clad in a pink union suit with a corset cover of passementerie.

When you don't have internet porn, you make do.

~RP

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Paperback 901: The Queen's Awards / Ed. Ellery Queen (Perma Books M-3015)

Paperback 901: Perma Books M-3015 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Queen's Awards
Editor: Ellery Queen
Cover artist: William George

Estimated value: $10-14

Best things about this cover:

• Hunting Che Fear Hand Strangulation Revolutionary Ponytail! I love this story!
• Those frames are a bit ... ornate. That said, I'd kill for a real-life version of Strangulation in Red, frame and all.
• Ellery Queen was a pseudonym for these guys. Also the name of the main character in their novels.

Best things about this back cover:

• I give the opening alliterative salvo a C-.
• "Anyway you like your murders..." is a phrase that bespeaks a certain Coliseum-esque savagery in the typical mystery story audience.
• Eleazar Lipsky wrote the story that was the basis of the film noir classic "Kiss of Death" (1947).

Page 123~ [From "The Stroke of Thirteen" by Lillian de la Torre ("as told by James Boswell, August 1780") (!?!?!)]

"The ingenious Captain Donellan," replied Dr. Johnson, "is a disciple of Linnaeus. He grows the oriental poppy. With that cord-handled claw by his tent he sacrifices the capsule of the poppy, as I have been told they do it in the East Indies where he served. He collects the gum that forms. To put a name to it, it is opium. I smelled opium in the affair when I was informed that Allan MacDonald had been hearing 'sounds colored crimson,' as drugged men may do."

18th-century drug-induced synesthesia! Who saw that coming?

~RP

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Paperback 839: Man from Tomorrow / Wilson Tucker (Bantam 1343)

Paperback 839: Bantam 1343 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: Man From Tomorrow
Author: Wilson Tucker
Cover artist: Uncredited

Approximate value: $6-10


Best things about this cover:

• "OK, so main guy shoots beams out of his eyes, and then the lady in his head shoots beams out of her face and … I don't know … let's say, whirlpool aliens wicker man done. Got it?"
• This floating head has his own internal floating head. That's pretty high-end.
• Font colors are wicked stupid.
• Ooh, this novel "tells of something which may be happening now." Ooh, is it Armageddon? Winter? The Greater Rochester Arts & Crafts Festival!? I'm gonna have to read this.

Best things about this back cover:

• And the razor frisbee takes out another alien.
• "Perhaps" … way to sell it!
• The Paul Breens = your next band name.

Page 123~

Paul wondered if this new woman in the adjoining apartment would be a plant.

"A ficus, maybe," he fantasized.

~RP

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Paperback 836: The Jungle Seas / Arthur A. Ageton (Signet S1200)

Paperback 836: Signet Giant S1200 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Jungle Seas
Author: Arthur A. Ageton
Cover artist: James Meese

Estimated value: $5-10


Best things about this cover:

• "I think that's … yeah, that's just a freckle, Kathy. You're gonna be fine."
• Navy Vampires of Tonga!
• He likes it when you scratch him here. *Really* likes it.
• James Meese wants you to know that he can sure as hell paint hands. All hands, all day, mother*ckers!

Best things about this back cover:

• Dude's like, "Squirrel!?"
• "… a book to join THE CAINE MUTINY … on that shelf of books I haven't read."
• "full-bodied" [wink!]

Page 123~

"Yes, sir. Was I groaning?"
"Were you groaning? Boy, you let out a scream that scared me right out of a sound sleep. Who's Rogers?"

"Uh … Rogers? … uh … he's this guy … you know … definitely not a former lover, if that's what you're thinking … oh, no wait. I mean 'Ginger'! 'Ginger Rogers!' Forget that other stuff I said. Ginger Rogers. Guys scream for her, right? Right. Ginger."

~RP

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Paperback 834: The Lying Days / Nadine Gordimer (Signet D1237)

Paperback 834: Signet D1237 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Lying Days
Author: Nadine Gordimer
Cover artist: James Avati

Estimated value: No idea (only one copy listed at abebooks, and it's a laughable $276.58) (Real value probably closer to $20)


Best things about this cover:

• Everything I don't like about Avati rolled into a neat, boring ball. Still. Inert. Dull.
• This one is so inert that you are encouraged to see it as a photo, and not a real woman. The flowers laid over the top are a nice touch, but the overall effect of this cover is still snoresville.
• "More Exciting" is not a convincing direct quote.
• OK, her shoulder's kind of hot. And that is generally the best thing I can ever say about an Avati cover: "Kinda hot." He's an artist that likes to paint vaguely sexy situations, but emphasis on "vaguely."

Best things about this back cover:

• Nadine Gordimer would go on to win the Nobel Prize. I believe this is her first novel.
• Her author photo is fantastic.
• I read the first few pages of this just now. Deeply concerned about race, as you might expect from someone writing from deep inside Apartheid-riven South Africa.

Page 123~

Joel, from whose book and whose talk I was even beginning to see that the houses we lived in in Atherton and on the Mine did not make use of space and brightness and air, but, like a woman with bad features and a poor complexion who seeks to distract with curls and paint, had their defects smothered in lace curtains and their dark corners filled with strands of straggling plants which existed for these awkward angles between wall and wall, as one evil exists simply for another.

~RP

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Paperback 830: Trinity in Violence / Henry Kane (Avon 618)

Paperback 830: Avon 618 (PBO, 1955)

Title: Trinity in Violence
Author: Henry Kane
Cover artist: Uncredited

Estimated value: $10-$15


Best things about this cover:

• A great cover mucked up by someone's bright idea of a teaser. "Let's put the first words of the book on the cover! It'll be revolutionary!" "Where are we gonna put them?" "Why … here, right across the bottom half of the dame. Nobody likes dames on covers anyway. It's words, Words they cry for!"
• I feel like she's so pinned in by darkness that we really Need the color from the bottom half of her dress. It honestly takes me several takes, every time I look at this thing, to realize it's a fur over her right shoulder and not some weird dark thing in the foreground blocking my view.
• Also, is the apartment building on fire? If not, why is there thick black smoke around the title?
• She looks an awful lot like my second college girlfriend. My girlfriend tended to wear more clothes and carry fewer guns than this lady, but still … if this lady we're looking at is named "Rosie" (as that damned block of text suggests), then that's another weird connection, as "Rose" was an element of my girlfriend's name.
• There's something quintessential about this cover. Not great on its own, but great at capturing a certain cover type: generic, be-hatted, trenchcoated sap stands in as proxy for reader/viewer. Doesn't matter what he looks like. It matters what She looks like. And it matters that she's trouble.

Best things about this back cover:

• I love the primitive video game-like swarm of armed "A" logos. I just need a Peter Chambers icon and a joystick.
• Henry Kane looks like he wants desperately to escape the photo shoot.
• "The Scandinavian?"

Page 123~

He nudged a pinky-point at his thin mustache.

From his picture, it looks like Henry Kane knows from thin mustaches. Authenticity, thy name is Kane.

~RP

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Paperback 808: The Golden Blade / John Clou (Graphic Giant G209)

Paperback 808: Graphic Giant G209 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Golden Blade
Author: John Clou
Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Yours for: $12

Best things about this cover:

Ron Weasley fantasizes about gutting that lousy scar-faced pretty boy.
Easily the best painting you'll ever see of a shirtless caped redhead admiring his primary phallic symbol. (Secondary phallic symbol safely sheathed on right hip)
I am not a fan of these big dumb historical romance montages, but if you gotta do it, yeah, go with Robert Maguire. Grace and beauty of his painting will soften the overwhelming cheese of the subject matter.
Everything about that woman is improbable. Actually, I would change that to "probable" if you just moved her indoors. There's no way she's that artfully, nakedly posed out there in the dirt of the battlefield.


Best things about this back cover:

• Everybody dance now.
• "Enough with the hip-shaking. Fill my goblet and then polish my sex boots, woman!"
• I like the blue-skirted lady, or, as I call her, The Mead Whisperer.

Page 123~

The day after Cholan's party arrived at the cave. Juji went hunting. He was pleased that Gesikie offered to accompany him, for he wanted an audience to acclaim his skill with the bow.

This page also features Jhotuz, Kisil, and Temujine, in case you're interested.

~RP

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Paperback 794: Buffalo Bill / Shannon Garst (Pocket Book Jr. J-48)

Paperback 794: Pocket Books Jr. J-48 (2nd ptg, 1955)

Title: Buffalo Bill
Author: Shannon Garst
Cover artist (and illus.): Louis Glanzman

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• Bed hat.
• Three keys to killing Indians: big-ass hands, mustache wax, and fringe for miles.
• This is a pretty bad cover—a portrait-studio picture mapped onto a generic, over-bright backdrop filled with a montage of tiny, generic "action" scenes.

Best things about this back cover:

• Thanks for the buffalo-killing, dick weed.
• William F. Cody met danger early. Then he had lunch, took a nap, and went to Pilates.
• I like Yellow Hand because it sounds like a 19c. name for a nefarious Chinese criminal organization, rather than what it is—a mistranslation of Yellow Hair, a Cheyenne warrior Cody shot and scalped. "Ever the showman, Buffalo Bill returned to the stage […] his show highlighted by a melodramatic reenactment of his duel with Yellow Hair. He displayed the fallen warrior's scalp, feather war bonnet, knife, saddle and other personal effects" (wikipedia). Again, I say, dick-weed.

Page 123~

The redskins knew the country and were as hard to hunt down as the wild animals of the forest.

Everything you need to know about American attitudes toward Native Americans in one short sentence. (cc Dan Snyder)

~RP

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Paperback 787: The Man Who Never Was / Ewen Montagu (Avon 640)

Paperback 787: Avon 640 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Man Who Never Was
Author: Ewen Montagu
Cover artist: uncredited

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• Exciting to imagine Ghost Major—riding the seas, thwarting the Nazis.
• Less exciting when you find out "the man who never was" was actually an "anonymous corpse" that doesn't reanimate or nothin'.
• This cover manages to be clever without being particularly interesting or exciting.

Best things about this back cover:

• More visual riffs on The Invisible Man theme.
• Silly Germans—Tricks are for Victorious Americans!
• "Operation Mincemeat" sounds like a WWII-themed Looney Tunes short featuring Sylvester and Tweety Bird.

Page 123~

An attempt at an immediate thrust into the area of SALONICA and THRACE need not be reckoned with.

And that's how Major Martin avoided the clap.

~RP

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Paperback 774: Strive and Succeed / Horatio Alger (Value Book 102)

Paperback 774: Value Books 102 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: Strive and Succeed
Author: Horatio Alger
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12


Best things about this cover:

• Strive and succeed at beating the shit out of other boys.
• "Yeah, I took your tie. Whaddya gonna do about it, punk?!"
• This must be the part where the boy grabs his bootstraps and pulls himself up. Otherwise, it just looks like some rich, entitled fuck is picky on the poor drunk kid.

Best things about this back cover:

• That name again: HORATIO ALGER!
• Aw, man, for a split-second I read that as "stories … of hard-on success," and I was intrigued.
• I once read a book about a "supposedly worthless mine." It was called "The Luminaries." I wish I had read this one instead, for many reasons, not least of which is its reasonable 184-page length.

Page 123~

The two boys started for the school, and arrived nearly half an hour early. They entered the house, and, by means of a stout cord, soon secured the hen to the "master's" chair.

It's a heart-warming tale of honesty, thrift, perseverance and poultry pranks.

~RP

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Paperback 761: Guys and Dolls / Damon Runyon (Pocket Books 1098)

Paperback 761: Pocket Books 1098 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: Guys and Dolls
Author: Damon Runyon
Cover artist: photo cover / unknown

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• Brando unsure about quality of doll's breath!
• I sort of kind of love this art/photo hybrid. Also, the Vincent Price-esque title font. Random.
• LOVE the full-body "fuck off, boys" pose of the be-stoled smoking doll. Classic.

Best things about this back cover:

• Well, it's … uh … not particularly soiled or torn. That's something.
• "Master of the Main Stem" — not a phrase I'd ever really want to be called.
• Lusty Slice was my favorite Slice Girl.

Page 123~

Dave the Dude is more corned than anybody else, because he has two or three days' running start on everybody. And when Dave the Dude is corned I wish to say that he is a very unreliable guy as to temper, and he is apt to explode right in your face any minute. But he seems to be getting a great bang out of the doings.

When your corned, a great bang is just the thing.

~RP

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Paperback 759: Inspector Maigret and the Strangled Stripper / Georges Simenon (Signet 1188)

Paperback 759: Signet 1188 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: Inspector Maigret and the Strangled Stripper
Author: Georges Simenon
Cover artist: Robert Maguire

Yours for: $9


Best things about this cover:

• That guy has the best "[sigh] Dames…" face ever. Ever.
• His hands are amazing. This pose is so weird, the framing of the stripper so unusual. I kind of want to shout "Get Out Of The Way, Dude!" but then I remember a. she's dead, so that's kind of wrong, and b. artistically, this cover is original and cool.
• It's hard to believe she's dead with her right arm in that position and her right knee up like that. I say she's alive, and therefore, "Get Out Of The Way, Dude!"

Best things about this back cover:

• "Yes, I smoke a pipe. Why? Because I'm manly and Belgian—what the fuck do you care, buddy?"
• Mmm, "dark bistros" and "smoke-filled dives" … tell me more.
• Simenon is one of those writers I keep meaning to read and never do. I read one novel, I think: "Maigret à New York." In French. I enjoyed it. The end.

Page 123~

They had only about five hundred yards to go in the nearly deserted boulevard. The nightclubs, their signs glowing in the rain, couldn't be making a fortune in this kind of weather, and the bedecked doormen stayed under cover, ready to unfurl their big red umbrellas.

~RP

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Paperback 758: Beyond Eden / David Duncan (Ballantine 102)

Paperback 758: Ballantine Books 102 (PBO, 1955)

Title: Beyond Eden
Author: David Duncan
Cover artist: Richard Powers

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• "I see the source of life itself—there! Beyond Eden. Eden … hey Eden … *EDEN*, would you get your giant body out of the way so we can see the damned source of life itself!?" 
• Eden looks like giant space actress who has forgotten her line.
• Richard Powers is the king of interplanetary fever dreams and wackadoodle future machines. My favorite scifi/fantasy cover artist (even if this isn't exactly his best work) (with respect to Valigursky, Emshwiller, etc.).

Best things about this back cover:

• Living Water ™ —part of the Coca-Cola family of horror beverages
• Excellent back cover art by somebody's 13-month-old niece.
• If the "man" and the "woman" had names, this cover might be milligrams sexier.

Page 123~

Spectralium grew rapidly in Gayley's pilot tank.

That is some grade-A space porn right there.

~RP

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Paperback 753: The 1,000-Year Plan / Isaac Asimov // No World of Their Own / Poul Anderson (Ace D-110)

Paperback 753: Ace D-110 (1st ptg / PBO, 1955)

Title: The 1,000-Year Plan / No World of Their Own
Author: Isaac Asimov / Poul Anderson
Cover artist: [Ed Valigursky] / Uncredited

Yours for: $25


Best things about this cover:

• The Minister of Eyebrows is not pleased.
• Rocket-shooting epaulets! Sign me up.
• I saw this sitting on top of the pull boxes at my comic book store and asked the owner if I could look at it. She said, "You like it? Take it." So there's one more benefit to buying local.

Best things about this other cover:

• Are we not men? We are Smear-Face.
• This looks like a very polished sci-fi artist's sketchpad. Buncha vaguely space-y stuff, no real concept.
• The capitalization scheme here is irking me. Titles capitalized, great. Uncapitalized, ok. First two words only … that just adds to the half-baked feel of this entire cover.

Page 123~

Through the shrieking din and confusion, Wienis' bull voice sounded, "Get the flares! Get the flares!"

~RP

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Paperback 710: The Deluge / Leonardo da Vinci (Lion Books 233)

Paperback 710: Lion Books 233 (1st ptg, 1955)

Title: The Deluge
Author: Leonardo da Vinci
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $15


Best things about this cover:

• If Leonardo had lived the 1950s and written B-movies: this.
• She's a maniac, MAAANiac ... 
• Steve tried valiantly to rescue all the damsels on Mount Severe Shaving Injury.
• This is exactly how I imagined the 16th century.
• "I get it, Lydia—your boobs are magnificent. Can't we please get off this rock now!?"
• Please check out his left hand. Now good luck purging it from your nightmares.

Best things about this back cover:

• I give this a C- for vagueness.

Page 123~ [This is from L's notebook, and it's quoted in a lengthy editor's note.]

And the surface of the earth having become at last a burnt cinder, all earthly nature shall cease.

Charming.

~RP

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Paperback 669: Mambo to Love + I See Red / Dale Clark + Sterling Noel (Ace Double D-109)

Paperback 669: Ace Double D-109 (PBO / PBO)

Title: Mambo to Murder / I See Red
Author: Dale Clark / Sterling Noel
Cover artist: Uncredited / Uncredited

Yours for: Not For Sale (donation to the collection from Laurie Gagne)


Best things about this cover:

• "Dammit, Lily, you said we were gonna Tango to Terror! I can't mambo—you know that! I haven't got the hips for it! Dammit, Lily!"
• I love old-timey tough guys with their high-waisted pants and short loose ties and rolled cuffs and adamant stances and aggressive cigarette-gripping. This guy looks sooo much like a noir actor I can't place ... I mean, I can see him, but can't remember name or even movie. Usually a detective, I think.
• Lily is reaching into her clutch because she is definitely going to shoot tough guy and then go drink at BAR across the street.
• This is a great painting, actually. Lots of great details, including her hair, expression, chest ... everything about her, really. Also the full ashtray on the sill. Nice.
• I believe the original, unstickered tagline read "She taught him the steps to a danse macabre!"

Best things about this other cover:

• Miranda wanted her boudoir photo shoot to be "terrorist-themed" for some reason.
• What's the opposite of "Fear Hand"? (*That's* the opposite of "Fear Hand").
• Most of the things I want to say involve profane word play linking the title "I See Red" and the word "snatched," but I'm too modest so I'll just make the banal observation that "I See Red" is an anagram of "Desiree."
• Also, I keep reading "snatched bigot." And, occasionally, "snatched bigfoot."

Page 123~ (of Mambo to Murder)

"Nobody asks me any questions," I grinned, "without buying the answers."

~RP

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Paperback 542: A Many-Splendored Thing / Han Suyin (Signet D1183)

Paperback 542: Signet D1183 (2nd ptg, 1955)

Title: A Many-Splendored Thing
Author: Han Suyin
Cover artist: Stanley Zuckerberg

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "Frankness"! It's a worldwide phenomenon!
• Jerry begged Suyin for a rematch: "Best two out of three! Come on, please! Oh man, the guys in my arm-wrestling club are never going to let me live this down..."
• Can you splendor (?) other things besides love? Sorrow? Boredom? Pork?
• I am having trouble thinking of clever things to say because I can't get the first verse of this song out of my head:

And the back cover ...

Best things about this back cover: 

•  "Flemish"! Well there's a word you don't see much any more. The Flemish are the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of northern Belgium. They had some success with painting and money-lending back the day (the day being "the Middle Ages and Renaissance") 
• Ah, the good old days, when interracial love was a matter that required delicacy, understanding, and, above all ... Frankness. 
• It's telling that the lady on the cover is way more hyper-Orientalized than the photo of the actual woman here. The Asian signifiers / stereotypes on the cover must run to over half a dozen. If there's one things paperback buyers like more than frankness, it's Exotic Frankness. 

 Page 123~ 

Up these steps came the people I had always known. Not small Cantonese with light bones and clean faces, but squat, ugly people with flattened faces and heavy peasant legs, the varicose veins standing out in twisted knots like a brood of snakes. Men and women, dirty and poor. Nearly every one had a physical defect of some kind or other: harelip, a finger missing, deformed chests; and on all those naked coolie shoulders one could see the large round lumps raised by the pressure of the bamboo pole. 

 "Take me back to the small Cantonese with light bones and clean faces this instant!" I snapped at my rickshaw driver. 

 ~RP 

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Paperback 473: Warped / Michael Norday (Beacon B280)

Paperback 473: Beacon B 280 (PBO, 1955)

Title: Warped
Author: Michael Norday
Cover artist: Clement Micarelli

Yours for: $50

Best things about this cover:

• This is some golden age, bullseye, right over the plate, vintage lesbian paperback amazingness. Fantastic art, cool staggered-letter title design, and cover copy that alliterates like there's no tomorrow. Plus great lesbian code words like "twilight" and "twisted" and "strange" and "tormented" and "warped"; roughly half the vintage lesbian paperbacks in existence have at least one of these words in their titles (I made that stat up, but it feels right)
• I love the dramatic tension between these two women—the knowing, smug, hungry eyes of the tomboyish old pro, and the coy-yet-curious eyes of the frillier girl in the foreground. Her guarded posture suggests modesty, but her exposed and pushed-up boobs and her visible garters suggest ... something else. 
• That is one ugly bed. And pillowcase. They are far too hot to be making out in grandma's bed.

Best things about this back cover:

• Again, great design. A bit text-heavy, but I love the pink touches.
• I applied to Fern Mar, but got rejected. Dames only, apparently. I am, however, only too familiar with the "disgrace of an unwholesome campus weekend."
• Hell yeah, passion-ridden women!

Page 123~

A sudden panic swept over her. She remembered the look in Estrada's eyes when he had talked about Gwen up at O'Keefe's training camp. A sudden fury burst inside her. "Damn you! Where is she? Where—"

"Relax, baby. Relax."

Wait, lesbians have training camps? That's awesome.

~RP

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Paperback 471: Model for Murder / Stephen Marlowe (Graphic 94)

Paperback 471: Graphic 94 (PBO, 1955)

Title: Model for Murder
Author: Stephen Marlowe
Cover artist: Walter Popp

Yours for: $16

Best things about this cover:

• I have no idea what these people are up to, but that cigarette and that cigar are getting it on.
• Finally, a taut thriller about the exciting, dangerous world of copyediting.
• Steve is puzzled to find that his meticulously researched paper, "Broads: Stacked vs. Unstacked," merits only a B-. "I don't think I understand this whole 'Women's Studies' thing, Bernie."

Best things about this back cover:

• Kinsey!
• Out-Kinseyed Kinsey! "Screw this survey stuff, let's just install hidden cameras."
• Lady wrestlers! Be still my heart.
• Talk about ... Pop Grujdzak. Talk about ... Pop Grujdzak.
• If I had to invent a stupid-sounding last name, and had several days to do it, I still couldn't beat Wompler.

Page 123~

The clothing was Ken's naturally, and as I dressed and tested the stiffness in my left arm, I began to wonder. The arm couldn't have punched its way through a wet Kleenex tissue.

So ... he dresses up like Barbie's boyfriend and he has a lot of experience testing the tensile strength of wet Kleenex. He sounds dreamy.

~RP

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Paperback 388: Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy, August, 1955

Paperback 388

Title: Magazine of Science Fiction & Fantasy (August, 1955)
Authors: Poul Anderson, Henry Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Anthony Boucher, and Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Cover artist: Ed Emshwiller

Yours for: SOLD!


Best things about this cover:

• Farmer Ted Goes to Planet Blortron
• If Norman Rockwell did paintings about interstellar, interspecies sexual confusion, they might look something like this: "Wheeeere are youuuuuu goinnnng!? Youuuuu sed youuuuu luvved meeeeee... Take this hellllmet off riiight nowwww..."
• I love the highly underrated Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, and I'm pretty sure I bought this magazine ONLY because she had a story in it (she's more an eerie thriller writer than a scifi writer, normally)

Best things about this back cover:

• Well if Eva Gabor and Guy Lombardo say so, who am I to disagree?
• Love the font on "IMAGINATION."
• "Better newsstands" ... ??? "Man, this is one classy newsstand! ... it's got an awning and everything!"

Page 123~

from "The Tiddlywink Warriors" by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson

Too late, Alex remembered that he had left Toka without a supply of the potent liquor which was so much a part of everyday Hoka life. Whether known as wine, red-eye, rum, grog, uisgebeatha or Old Spaceman, it was always present in wholesale quantities. Now, for the first time, Alex found himself with a bunch who had it not.

When I am a very elderly man, living on some lunar outpost because of nuclear war / End Times, I will drink "Old Spaceman." Proudly.

~RP

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