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

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Paperback 339: The Case of the Backward Mule / Erle Stanley Gardner (Pocket Books 6083)

Paperback 339: Pocket Books 6083 (5th ptg, 1961)

Title: The Case of the Backward Mule
Author: Erle Stanley Gardner
Cover artist: Uncredited

Yours for: $6


Best things about this cover:

• A conceptual mess. What century is it? Why is the space princess massaging her scalp, and what does it have to do with bizarrely mustachioed Chinese man on the donkey? No wonder I've never heard of "Terry Clane" and "Inspector Malloy"—how do you expect to get an enduring series off the ground with this muddled a marketing campaign?
• "Behold, as Eva Gabor summons miniature Chinese ghosts from the distant past using the power of her Magic Updo!"
• God, the more I look at this cover, the uglier and sillier it gets. Different colors on all the different (stupid) fonts? I'd cut Everything But The Girl and start over.

Best things about this back cover:

• "Don't touch anything! You're leaving blue fingerprints everywhere!"

Page 123~

"In our business, we don't do too much speculative thinking, Mr. Clane. We investigate. And when we investigate we make it a point to cover all of the possibilities."

"I see."

"Even," Malloy went on, "including that poker-faced Chinese servant of yours, Yat T'oy."

"I see."

~RP

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