Paperback 1022: Orbit Unlimited / Poul Anderson (Pyramid G615)

Paperback 1022: Pyramid G615 (PBO, 1961)

Title: Orbit Unlimited
Author: Poul Anderson
Cover artist: John Schoenherr (credited)

Condition: 8/10
Estimated value: $8-12

Best things about this cover:

• Tired of orbit plans that restrict your orbiting times or charge your over-orbiting fees? Then sign up for Sprint's new Orbit Unlimited plan. Orbit any time. Here we see subscribers enjoying the Orbit Unlimited Family plan...
• This cover is super boring. I'm kind of interested in the space surfboard, and in the rusty nose of whatever that vessel it is the astrofolk are exploring. But honestly the most interesting thing about this cover is the military surplus font and its alternate-letter coloring.
• I still haven't read a damn thing Poul Anderson has written, despite owning what feels like dozens of his books.

Best things about this back cover:

• Was it a trap? It's a trap! I hear it's a trap.
• Even this premise sounds boring. They left to avoid oppression. But then they got a message: "Oppression over!" Should they believe the message? Wait, stop, why are you putting the book back on the shelf? OK, no, wait, there's seexxxxxxxx...." Shelf time unlimited.
• "The Top-Selling American Book In Russia" is one of the weirdest promo claims I've ever seen on a book. I'm not even sure what that's supposed to signify to me.
• 1961: Everybody's Reading "The Gadfly"! 2018: Nobody Has Heard of "The Gadfly"!

Page 123~

"We'd better plan our next moves in advance. Also, it's time for a rest and a snack."

Finally, scifi I can relate to.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

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

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]

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

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 363: Fantasy & Science Fiction (Oct. 1957)

Paperback 363: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October, 1957

Includes stories by: Fritz Leiber, Richard Matheson, Lewis Carroll, L. Sprague de Camp, Jane Roberts, Anthony Boucher, Poul Anderson, H.P. Lovecraft, etc.

Cover artist: Ed Emshwiller

Yours for: $20


Best things about this cover:

• ... featuring the controversial story, "Anorexic Chicken Whores of The Mogron Valley!"
• Monster designs on this are Fabulous. Emshwiller is a cover art hero.
• Trying to understand, from an evolutionary standpoint, why the bird (background) should require an oxygen helmet while everyone else apparently easily breathes the miasma of peach atmosphere. Also wondering why giant deformed Gumby monster should have to brush his teeth.

Best things about this back cover:

• People were apparently Really excited about satellites in the late '50s.
• We're not really comfortable using slang, so ... we'll just put "top-drawer" in quotations, so you won't think you're actually supposed to store the books in the top drawer of your dresser.
• "Handsome, permanent bindings," to prevent annoying fall-apart.

Page 123~ (from "Full Pack (Hokas Wild)" by Poul Anderson & Gordon R. Dickson)

He was not a bad felino-centauroid at heart.

Can't believe that line is buried at the back of a F&SF Magazine. Should be the first line of some epic space opera.

~RP

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter]

Paperback 168: Tales of the Flying Mountains / Poul Anderson (Collier 01626)

***BIRTHDAY EDITION***

Truth be told, this book was not scheduled to be written up today. There was an interesting but visually bland book on tap for today, but I decided I needed something spicy to help me celebrate my birthday, so I skipped forward two books in line and found this. Enjoy!

Paperback 168: Collier 01626 (1st ptg, 1971)

Title: Tales of the Flying Mountains
Author: Poul Anderson
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $8


Best things about this cover:

• "Tales of the Flying Mountains," Or, "Psychedelic Ape Men Visit the Boob Museum"
• I've heard them called a lot of things. "Flying Mountains" is not one of those things.
• More proof that everyone in the early 70s was high. How I survived my infancy is a miracle.

Best things about this back cover:

• How many papers does Washington have?
• This book is apparently a collection of short stories, each of which originally appeared in Analog magazine between the years 1963 and 1965. Anderson published them under the pseudonym "Winston P. Sanders." They are all set in a common futuristic universe in which mankind has colonized the solar system. One of the reviews at amazon starts with the phrase, "Taking his cue from Chaucer..." (!?)

Page 123~

... and yet that spark, together with the dwarfed sun, reached across to grip this orb on which she dwelt and lock it fast for eternity.

This book should be called "Grip This Orb" (see cover painting)

~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