OtherEric

What the heck, I'll show off one of mine:

And, the highlight, despite being the only one that's not a first edition (it is the 1st paperback, though):

Right, we want a paperback thread? Let's show off one of my favorite writers, even if I'm not allowed to use his name around here...

Oh, hey. I guess I do have another short run that qualifies: I always think of these as the tail end of the Target run, not as a series on their own.

Great collection! Notice how the second issue has 16 less pages...Inflation? The 1948 issue seems to be one of the first, if not the first, of the Fox Giants that were composed of remaindered books. So it has an extra 16 page signature at the front that's unique to the book. It might be the only case on those Fox Giants which actually has the first page of the story on the inside front cover, other than just plain missing as is usual. It reprints the "Cattle Kate" story from Women Outlaws #1. So, not inflation as such. Just Fox being cheap and deciding they can get people to buy the books without the first story page after all. :-)

Just so I have something to play along with here...

Thank you. I'm not a particular fan of his, but he was not a bad writer of SF and it's always fun to discover something undocumented like that.

The lady in red love the cover and title. Was finally looking through the issue, when I noticed it included the story "Heritage of Osiris" by Fred Engelhardt. My question, if anybody has familiarity with pulp pseudonyms: is this actually a L. Ron Hubbard story? He's the only person I know who used the name, but that doesn't always mean much.

One of the premiere robot covers. Congrats, great pick up! (thumbs u One of? Nah, I think that's all on its own as #1 as far as robot comic covers go...

What the heck, they're pulps but I don't see them earlier in the thread:

And, I just felt like scanning a few more semi-random pulps to share. Each of these 3 books has one of the stories that formed Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles:

Nice one! I really do need to track down at least one Phantom Detective at some point, just to say I've seen one. Given how long the series ran it seems to get lost next to most of the other Hero Pulp characters.

And a couple new ones: Notable for having one of the shortest Shadow "novels" in the entire run; a mere 47 pages compared to 74 for Never Marry Murder by "Peter Reed", a house name which in this case is being used by John D. MacDonald. I have no idea why the pseudonym, since he doesn't have another story in the issue. Obviously this one starts off with part of "Gray Lensman", quite possibly THE classic space opera. It also has Heinlein's second story, "Misfit", and de Camp, del Rey, and Hubbard all have stories or articles in here as well. And that isn't even that unusual a line-up for Astounding in the 1939-1942 run. What an incredible run of issues Astounding was those years.

Yeah, we can dream about 2 for 5c pulps, can't we? Although I did only pay $10 for that issue, I think; and the page quality is amazing. So nearly that good a price once you adjust for inflation, at least in spirit.

OK, if we're doing Thrilling Mysteries... I think I posted this one a while back, but it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle:

Nice one! That's easily my personal favorite of the Cole Target covers; a very rare case for me where I did pay extra for a better presenting cover. Still a relatively cheap copy; but I'm the sort of collector who would rather have 10 beat up books I can read & scan rather than one beautiful one I don't dare open.

And this thread has been quiet too long, so let's throw up a couple minor recent finds: Unfortunately, this is one of the Bruce Elliot issues; while I don't dislike them nearly as much as a lot of Shadow fans they're still not that good compared to the Gibson stories. So the highlight here is a very early John D. MacDonald story. (It's only his 10th published story.) Pity about the taped spine here, but the cover is so odd it perhaps barely matters. I've read this issue cover to cover and I can't tell what the heck this is supposed to represent. Once again, the highlight is John D. MacDonald, who here has 3 stories taking up fully half the issue. His "novel" is actually longer than the Doc Savage story by about half a page.

Nice. I'll count myself as being half on the list, since I've scanned & uploaded more than a few books with Cole covers to the Digital Comic Museum. Need to get myself a copy one of these days soon as well...

Gratz on both! Although I've got a few examples of Doc pulps, in general I'm happy having the complete Bantam run. But even so I still envy you having the actual pulp despite not having it on my personal wish list. :-) The Op 5 is a bit simpler; I just envy you having a nicer copy than me.

Public Domain probably did apply. As far as I know, most Amazing Stories from that era were not correctly renewed, or possibly not even correctly submitted in the first place. Comic Book Plus certainly seems to think the issue is PD: http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=36913 and since it's post-1923 it can only be PD now if it was PD then with the way the laws work.

And an oddity from the creator of Doc Savage, writing under his own name this time: Now to see if I can track down the rest of the story...

And while it's nowhere near as clear a starting point as Action 1 is for comics, there's the book that seems to be mostly commonly agreed upon as the start of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. First Van Vogt, first Asimov in Astounding, and the very next month gave us... the first Heinlein story, and what I think is the only Finlay cover on Astounding. (Finlay apparently objected to his art being cropped.)

I think you may have lucked out on this one; even if you didn't get the book the way the seller has been acting would make me feel I dodged a bullet. Although I do hope it gets into the hands of somebody who will share it. The thought of hyper-rare books being hoarded rather than preserved and shared absolutely terrifies me. So even if I think you might be better off having not gotten it, I'm not sure the rest of us are. Here's hoping it pops up somewhere soon.