Vintage Paperbacks: New Tales of Space and Time & The Explorers

Long before I began collecting vintage robots and ray guns, I was buying first-edition science-fiction paperbacks from the Forties, Fifties, and Sixties. I was attracted to the classic stories, of course, but also the wonderful cover art and the depictions of rockets, space men, aliens, and other worlds. With hundreds of books filling my shelves, I like to think that I've built the kind of library I'd have had were I born a few decades earlier. 

Now, since I happen to think that books are most fun when you share them with other people, I've decided to add them to the rotation of robots, ray guns, and other weirdness. Enjoy!

__________

New Tales of Space and Time, edited by Raymond J. Healy

Cover art by Charles Frank

Pocket Books No. 908. Printed: 1952, © 1951

FROM THE BACK COVER

"Here are ten amazing stories of space-travel, robots, cybernetics and the haunting possibilities of life in the future. Each is an exciting adventure into the stimulating world of Science Fiction -- where the 'unusual' is commonplace and the 'impossible' is probable. For a quick idea of what each masterful story is about, the reader can turn to the editor's short introduction preceding every tale." 

NOTES

This excellent anthology originally appeared in hardcover 1951, and features such authors as Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Anthony Boucher, P. Schuyler Miller, A. E. Van Vogt, and many more. The cover art was awarded first prize in a contest held by Pocket Books at the Art Students League in New York City. Painter Charles Frank beat out more than 200 other entries. 

The Explorers, by C. M. Kornbluth

Cover artist unknown

Ballantine Books No. 86. Printed & © 1954

FROM THE BACK COVER

C. M. Kornbluth has produced some of the most satisfying suspense and keenest satire to be found in science fiction. The Space Merchants, the novel of a huckster's utopia on which he collaborated with Frederik Pohl, was hailed by the New York Herald Tribune as "a book so rewarding that it should henceforth show up on all lists of science-fiction classics." 

His solo flights -- from the memorable Take-Off to his most recent novel, The Syndic -- have been no less successful and have firmly established the name of C. M. Kornbluth among the brightest lights in this field.

The present collection -- the first ever published of his shorter fiction -- includes both one of his earliest stories ("Thirteen O'Clock") anda brand-new novelette, "Gomez," which appears here in print for the first time. Told with excitement and power, these stories display the delightfully ironic imagination of a writer who is master of his craft."

NOTES

Nine short stories, plus an introduction by Frederik Pohl.