Used books

While unsuccessful in my goal of finding used copies of Dresden Files novels, my search of the used bookstores in the area did allow me to find two things I wasn't looking for. The first was Leigh Brackett's Outlaw of Mars which is a reprint of two of her earlier very slim novels (probably more properly novellas) The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman. Although I never had this particular printing of these under this particular title, I did have the two of them together as an "Ace Double Book"—although that has now been lost for some time, sadly.

The cover art on this book is really bad. It looks sorta like airbrushed van art with Eric John Stark as a vaguely humanoid creature sitting on the back of a dinosaur. He's pale and blonde with very stylish hair (for the late sixties or seventies); like some kind of Swedish ABBA groupie (nevermind that Brackett described as as extremely dark skinned; either an adaptation to or a consequence of a childhood spent on Mercury baking under the cruel sun.)

Despite the terrible cover art, I'm extremely gratified to replace my copy for only $2. The book is recently back in print again thanks to our friends at Paizo's Planet Stories line, but I haven't been to thrilled at buying a new trade paperback copy when I'd hoped I could find other copies used. An introduction by Michael Moorcock and better cover art aren't worth that much. As a testament to the quality of these two stories, this is at least the fourth time that they have been reprinted in book form. If you haven't ever read them before, buy the Paizo version, or trawl through Amazon for one of the older copies.

The other book I stumbled upon as a $6 well-maintained copy of The New Challenge of the Stars; a book that was quite formative to me as a child. The thrust of the book is that it attempts to apply science fact to science fiction about space travel. It does so in fairly non-technical terms (it was originally in the children's section of my public library as a kid). It was published in 1977 and at least some elements of this new (at the time) fangled hit movie called Star Wars can be found in it (Star Wars is mentioned two or three times in the text and the cover art is a not-so-subtle homage to the Death Star and Star Destroyers.)

Really, though, the book's easily worth more than the $6 I paid for it for the art alone. Every page has at least one—occasionally two—top class paintings on it. From scenes from H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds to pictures of pioneering lunar colonies, astronauts walking around on Mars, to planetscapes from worlds with closely paired binary twin suns and such sci-fi go-to concepts as generation ships made out of hollowed out asteroids.

Two paintings in particular stuck with me, and I've even mentioned them in posts here in the past. That surely merits me putting the book on a scanner and sharing a couple of the images. This lower painting is a night time landscape from a planet outside the Milky Way, and the top is a night time view from a planet inside a globular cluster.