Paperback 497: Sleep with the Devil / Day Keene (Lion 204)

Paperback 497: Lion Books 204 (PBO, 1954)

Title: Sleep with the Devil
Author: Day Keene
Cover artist: sadly, uncredited

Yours for: $15

Best things about this cover:

• One of my favorites for a number of reasons, most notably the unusually cartoony style of drawing. It's like I'm looking at a still from a modern animated noir series (which should exist— "Archer" is great, but I'd love something more noirish and serious).
• Hate to break this to you lady, but in a number of different ways, that dude is Not Interested. 
• Her robe is awesomely foldy. This cover owes half its lineage to Japanese artists like Hokusai and the other half to Saturday morning cartoons.
• I went through a big Day Keene phase in the '90s. Didn't everyone?
• Perhaps my favorite part of this book is the bookshop stamp—in case you can't read it, this book was once the property of the "JUNQUE SHOPPE" (of Hoquiam, WA). All "-unk" words should be spelled that way. Junque in the trunque! 
• The name "Hoquiam" comes from a Native-American word meaning "hungry for wood" (wikipedia), as in "The lady on this cover looks very Hoquiam."

Best things about this back cover:

• Again with the cartoony greatness.
• Her hair looks like a topographic map.
• I thought maybe the designer was trying to get an acrostic going, but I don't think LWAJ means anything.
• Ferron! "... he began to erase himself from existence." Look, he's almost done! Just the head to go!

Page 123~

He wished now he hadn't been so greedy. He wished he had listened to Lydia. If they had gone away together, as she had wanted to, they could be nearing the Newark airport. By noon, late afternoon at the latest, they could be in Miami, lolling in the sun, with nothing to do but get drunk and spend Whit's money and make love.

The Miami tourism bureau needs to hire this writer. I've never had the slightest desire to go to Miami, but now it's all I can think of.

~RP

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Paperback 496: The Jewels of Aptor / Samuel R. Delany (Sphere 28894)

Paperback 496: Sphere 28894 (1st ptg, 1971)

Title: The Jewels of Aptor
Author: Samuel R. Delany
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $6

Best things about this cover:

• Image lifted from a "Welcome to the Wonderful World of Scientology!" poster
• "Let's get high and listen to the new Phallus Eruption album!"
• I always thought the Washington Monument could stand to be a little ... gayer.

Best things about this back cover:

• This font is killing me. That "w" is totally making out with that "e."
• If there's one way I like my vivid images, it's crammed.
• "Denouement," Ha ha. I haven't seen that word since high school. So Shakespearean.

Page 123~

The knot's invention was ingenious. At the vibration, two opposed loops shook away from a third, and a four millimetre length of rubber band that had been sewn in tightened and released a fourth loop from a small length of number four gauge wire with a holding tonsure of three quarters of a gram, and the opposing vibration returning up the cord loosed a similar apparatus on the other side of the plug.

Dang. Sex toys of the future are complicated.

~RP

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Paperback 495: Bridge of Sand / Frank Gruber (Bantam S3926)

Paperback 495: Bantam S3926 (1st ptg, 1969)

Title: Bridge of Sand
Author: Frank Gruber
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $12

Best things about this cover:

• Very late for my collection. I own it because a. it has a fully painted cover (in an era when these were giving way to the Tyranny of Text—branding/author's name inflation); and b. it's by Frank Gruber, writing here at the tail end of a loooooong career that began in the pulps (his "Pulp Jungle"—a memoir of his early writing career, is very much worth reading).
• That said, I don't love this painting, or, more specifically, this color scheme. It definitely conveys "oppressively hot and sandy," but I just end up wishing I had clearer views of all the interesting characters. Dude in the fez wants his time in the spotlight!
• World's tiniest minarets, stage left.
• Apparently this guy's gun holds hand lotion: "Damn dry Egyptian weather ... wreaks havoc on my soft skin."

Best things about this back cover:

• "Amazonian lesbian!" Top that. You can't. Game over.
• VENGEANCE! My penchant for tales of vengeance probably also had something to do with my buying this book.
• I call this painting "Someone Really Doesn't Like Brown Mustard."
• Violence should not come in "potpourri" form. Really hard to take seriously.
• "Fills the cauldron of suspense ... decants the wine of mystery ... warms the tea kettle of perversion ... etc.!"

Page 123~

It was in Ahmed Fosse's power to reveal that fame to Charles Holterman, to dangle the possibility of it before Holterman, and then ... to destroy it, just before he killed Holterman.

Ahmed knew a little bit about fame from his brother Bob. Also, this paragraph really needs one more "Holterman."

~RP

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Paperback 494: The Meandering Corpse / Richard S. Prather (Pocket Books 50292)

Paperback 494: Pocket Books 50292 (1st ptg, 1966)

Title: The Meandering Corpse
Author: Richard S. Prather
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $8

Best things about this cover:

• "I feel like I've got something on my back, but I can't see it, and can't quite reach it. Do you see anything?"
• This is how they mark blondes after a flood so that you know there's no one left living inside.
• I'll buy that she's a corpse, but I see nothing that suggests meandering. Primping topless while seated in a spotlight is not "meandering."
• Shell Scott was so popular he got his own Head icon. He and Mike Shayne are the only dicks I can think of who got this honor, though I'm sure there are more.

Best things about this back cover:

• You had me at "Zazu."
• I did not know that birds climbed ladders.
• I'm unsure of the implications of this conversation. Is he saying she oughta be 18 before skinny-dipping? Are women more inclined to skinny-dip as they get older? Shell seems oddly judgmental. Either that, or he just likes 'em a bit more mature. "Call me when you're 45, toots."

Page 123~

"I squeezed the steering wheel tight in my fists and jammed my foot down on the accelerator, jammed it all the way down and left it there."

"Must get home .... can't ... miss ... 'America's Next Top Model'!"

~RP

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Paperback 493: Atoms and Evil / Robert Bloch (Gold Medal s1231)

Paperback 493: Gold Medal s1231 (PBO, 1962)

Title: Atoms and Evil
Author: Robert Bloch
Cover artist: Uncredited [Richard Powers?]

Yours for: $11

Best things about this cover:

• I like how the title functions like a form-fitting dress on ... whatever that one-eyed creature waving its arms at us is. Now put an all-text dress on your average paperback cover girl, and you've got something.
• There was probably a time when the title "Atoms and Evil" was evocative of ... something. Considering "atoms" are just the basic building blocks of, well, everything, the title doesn't have quite the situation-specific punch it oughta.
• Is crazy multi-armed cyclops supposed to be some kind of anthropomorphic approximation of a mushroom cloud. More like a tree-trunk cloud.

Best things about this back cover:

• Acrostic time!
• OMG I *love* love love the test tube motif on the left. Brilliant design feature.
• "Prefontal robotomy!" Rich.
• If I had to read only two of these, I'd go with Vorm and Mr. Goofy, hands-down.

Page 123~

"I don't really want the world to revert to neurotic or psychotic behavior just so I can have a practice. But damn it, I can't stand to see the way things are going. We've done away with stress and privation and tension and superstition and intolerance, and that's great. But we've also done away with ourselves in the process. We're getting to the point where we, as human beings, no longer have a function to perform. We're not needed."

Anson's right. Futuristic dystopias are for the 'bots.

~RP

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Paperback 492: Alpha Centauri or Die! / Leigh Brackett (Ace 01770)

Paperback 492: Ace 01770 (1st ptg, 1970)

Title: Alpha Centauri or Die!
Author: Leigh Brackett
Cover artist: Uncredited [Carlos Ochagavia]

Yours for: $5

Best things about this cover:

• "Uh ... I don't think they're home." "Did you ring the doorbell?" "Of course I rang the doorbell. What did you think, I'm just gonna stand here and ... wait, I hear something. Someone's in there. 'Hello! Hello?!'" "This is ridiculous. Who needs this much security?" "Don't be rude. 'Hello!' Maybe there's a dress code or something. I told you not to wear that stupid egg costume..."
• Space Station Security—powered by Simon and some reel-to-reel tape.
• I went through a Leigh Brackett phase in the late '90s, after I found out that she a. co-wrote "The Big Sleep" screenplay (with William Faulkner), and b. wrote the screenplay for "The Empire Strikes Back." She's a very competent writer who should probably be better known.

Best things about this back cover:

• Wow, that is some stain. I think that stain is now home to some microbial life forms. Appropriate for scifi.
• I thought the dude's name was "To [rhymes with 'Bo'?] Kirby"
• In space, no one can hear you complain about the tryranny [sic!]

Page 123~

They sweated it out crouched under their tarps, and after it was over they wallowed on through the mud to make a camp where they had stopped before, clear of the forest.  Damp and tired, they huddled around a hopeless little fire and chewed a cold supper.

Lollapalooza is the same no matter what planet you're on.

~RP

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Paperback 491: 24 Hours to Kill / James McKimmey (Dell First Edition B169)

Paperback 491: Dell First Edition B169 (PBO, 1961)

Title: 24 Hours to Kill
Author: James McKimmey
Cover artist: Robert McGinnis

Yours for: $10

Best things about this cover:

• Dishevelment, thy name is this lady.
• I like the double entendre of this title: "She had 24 hours to kill ... everyone in the room!"
• Let me answer the obvious question: yes, Robert McGinnis painted everything in sight from about 1957-64. Every paperback cover, every magazine cover, every line on every freeway, etc.
• Her slip is behaving oddly ... in relation to gravity, I mean. It's somehow coming together in a lacy, snowflaky formation to prevent us from getting the upskirt view we all so richly deserve.
• Her smirk is killer.

Best things about this back cover:

• Paradox! The back cover copy writer's second-best friend after HYPERBOLE!
• I want a business card that states my occupation as "Killer-hero of the state's young punks."
• "Teen-age" my eye. I mean, look at her feet. Those bunions say a hard-worn 28, minimum.

Page 123~

He blinked, stunned. Then he said, "I'll be right down, Rod." He hung up and picked up the machine gun. "Stay here, Sue. Lock the door and don't leave this office under any circumstance." He strode out and down the marble steps, trying to control the wild anger surging in him. . . .

I find that when I'm trying to control my wild, surging anger, I'm more often successful when I'm *not* holding a machine gun.

~RP

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