Paperback 38: Pyramid G-665

Paperback 38: Pyramid G-665 (PBO, 1961)

Title: The Ghoul Keepers
Editor: Leo Margulies
Cover artist: John Schoenherr

Yours for: $11


Best things about this cover:

• So red
• "I am the eye in the sky, / Looking at you -ou -ou, / I can read your mind..."
• What kind of title is The Ghoul Keepers? Is it supposed to be a pun on "Goal Keepers?" I hope there is at least one story in here about monsters who play soccer.
• There is nothing recognizable in this cover painting except the supremely miserable man (possibly bleeding from his eyeballs) who is about to impale himself on the spear-like branches.
• That man is clearly damned - he has been cursed with an obscenely long thumb on his right hand ... and an exoskeleton.
• "Seabury Quinn" is the most made-up-sounding name ever ever. Ever. Actually, it's just the "Seabury" part. Unless you are a racehorse, that is not an acceptable name.

This book is so beautiful. I wish you could see it in real life. Pristine. Unread. The kind of book collectors dream of. Several of the featured writers here are top-notch - the top three on the list, specifically. One of my students, whom I'll call Cindy Loo Hoo, is writing her Honors Thesis on short horror fiction. She will undoubtedly want to look at this book. But I am too neurotic a collector freak to let her actually read it.



Best things about this back cover:

• Here we see the man falling in the opposite direction. And in black-&-white. How interesting.
• I actually love the cheeky reference to "The Shadow" in the footnote.
• Answers to the quiz:

1. Mermen
2. Sasquatch
3. a vampire (trick question)
4. Caspar
5. that quiet guy next door
6. Betty & Veronica

RP

Paperback 30: Bantam F2817

Paperback 30: Bantam F2817 (1st ptg, 1965)

Title: 13 French Science-Fiction Stories
Editor: Damon Knight
Cover artist: Uncredited

Best things about this cover:

• I think I had a dream like this once.
• How can so much skin be so unsexy?
• "... when French l'amour meets science fiction" = "When French 'the love' meets science fiction" = corny and stupid.
• "It's the story of a voluptuous naked cat-woman who shoots a rocket out of the back of her head in order to keep a horde of flying sun-angels from stealing her newspaper, and the nearly nude one-armed bald chick in diaphanous tatters who turned her back on the whole ordeal."

Best things about this back cover:

• If the giant fonts here are to be believed, the French are known for two things: love and wackiness
• "From the land of Zola and Maupassant ..." - like it's some exotic, far-off world. I like that they chose the authors with the most science-fictiony-sounding names. Zola was a favorite of the mid-century paperback world because he had literary credibility but was also, you know, a little dirty. His paperback popularity in the 40s and 50s is actually pretty remarkable. I have many Zola works in my collection, many of them with lurid covers. The paperback industry could make just about anyone seem like a dirty writer if it wanted to.
• Why are the three lines in the middle of the page in different colors? Somebody really needed to keep a tighter rein on the design team here.
• "They gave the world Jules Verne" - perhaps the weirdest claim that's ever been made about the French. "Please, take Jules Verne. We no longer have any use for him."
• "Imaginative" spelled backwards is Evita Nigami
• Writing "Imaginative" backwards is not terribly imaginative
  

RP