Sunday, November 9, 2008

Paperback 161: Amazing Stories (December, 1956)

Paperback 161: Amazing Stories (December, 1956)

  • Contains: "A World of His Own" by Robert Silverberg and "Tracking Level" by Harlan Ellison
  • Cover artist: Ed Valigursky
Yours for: $10


Best things about this cover:

  • In the future, "Deal or No Deal" is a lot more interesting.
  • I'm pretty sure those ladies were not born ladies - it's nice to see that, in the future, transsexual and transgendered people will have steady work as game show hostesses
  • Man, that guy really wants to kill Howie Mandel. But then who doesn't?
  • This picture does not make it appear as if "Women Were His Pawns." Unless he's forcing them to act out some adolescent fantasy of his - I guess that's possible

Best things about this back cover:

  • I own one of these books!
  • Never before has the word "ANY" looked so exciting
  • If you don't look closely, you can almost miss the flying saucer mountain scape in the background
  • Love the unnecessary quotation marks around "top drawer" - do not love the quotation marks that open with "Handsome ... and then never close. Spine-tingling!
  • Ad copy always hyphenates "science-fiction," while the book covers themselves Never do. Eeeeerie.
  • I love how specific they are about the amount I would normally be paying ... "$8.65, you say ... oh my."

Page 123~


[click image to enlarge]
  • "Would you ... become a peeping tom?" - they really know their audience, I think
  • The "Space Club" appears to be a kind of asexual personals section for the Nerdiest People On Earth.

~RP

6 comments:

Wendebular said...

Poor Walter. They made a typo in his job description (I assume), and he isn't even allowed to move. At least he has own telescope, I guess.

Michael5000 said...

Is the unclosed quotation mark on "Women Were His Pawns ironic, then?

Rex Parker said...

Yes, ironic. . . and yet I fixed it. How weird?

rp

Rex Parker said...

That is, "how weird."

Anonymous said...

Those ads are the most depressing thing I've seen this year. Possibly any year.

Belvoir said...

Yeah, those ads are sort of sad. Reminds me of the personals in "The Queen's Throat" by Wayne Koestenbaum. He printed the personals from "Opera News" in the 40's and 50's, these requestts for pen-pals from shut-ins, the elderly, repressed gays in small towns. A lot of pathos in these requests for friendship.