Friday, September 17, 2010

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

AceD103.SolarL
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.

AceD103
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]

8 comments:

Rick said...

Howard Hawks wanted Leigh Brackett to write the screenplay for THE BIG SLEEP (because of a hard-boiled detective novel she had written he admired).

He was dumb-founded when she showed up because he had assumed from the gender-neutral first name that Leigh Brackett was a male. He wasn't displeased though: he liked women who worked in men's worlds...

Michael5000 said...

Let's say the local environment requires a full protective suit pressure helmet and portable oxygen, and your adversary is stuck on the barren, lifeless surface clad in only slacks and a long-sleeve T-shirt. In those circumstances, tossing a boulder that will, depending on the gravity well, either plunge or drift down to crush him is simply overkill. Bad form, spaceman!

Lisa in Oz said...

Red shirt! That dude is SO gonna die. Wearing a red shirt in sci fi is like stamping "expendable" across your chest.

Rex Parker said...

Good point, tho' as Michael notes, without any apparent oxygen supply, he may already be dead at this point; the guy up top may simply have propped up red-shirt's corpse to act as the target in some strange boulder-throwing game.

Tosser said...

I think the artist who did the PKD cover is Valigursky.

Rex Parker said...

@Tosser,

Just checked it out and it seems you are right. Thanks a lot.

RP

Marla said...

"Descent rap." Pretty sure that must be "ramp," but I like the rap thing too.

al boraq said...

"she disappeared down a descent ramp toward Cartwright's private quarters."

What an unusual way of saying she 'went down on him'.