Pat Calhoun

here's a fave of mine: wonderful novel as well...

bump: found on Hoffman's wiki page. original is a POSTER 46mb several feet either way. download if you have a giant printer or enjoy mousing over pointillist blowups of pb covs...

Some of the early Fantasy Press books, like 'The Forbidden Garden' and 'The Black Flame', are illustrated editions: the perfect enhancement for a classic novel. Here's Donnell interiors from the Weinbaum...

This one, an anthology of old Chinese ghost stories, has wonderful patterned plum-colored boards... (PS- Invisible Links above is by Selma Lagerlof whose intricate descriptions of plant life add exquisite depth to her narratives. A Swede, she was the first woman to win the Nobel Lit prize.)

While most of the books in my hardcover collection have DJs, they are interspersed with those without them: often older books with nice decor on the cloth boards, and those, though fewer in number, do much to lend the whole library an antiquarian look. Here's some from my files with fun stuff on the covers.

Ages ago I let myself be talked into going to see 'Carrie'. I detested it, and years later, after my brother died, I went down to San Diego to decide which books in his collection should be shipped up to me and which should be junked. I came upon his copy of Carrie (upper right) and thought 'toss this monstrosity', then I saw that it was a first edition and quietly slid it to the keep stack.

I have the mag version of Hamilton's 'Sun Smasher': two worthy covers and titles for this enjoyable yarn.

I shall get a 'Seeds of Life'...

sad that #20 was the final issue of the title...here's Tara splash

here's the Wonderman splash for that issue:

With Tara the space pirate and Wonderman's interplanetary adventures (Silver Knight is great too tho' fantasy) late issues of Wonder Comics should qualify.

Our pals at Atlas Tales have a JIUW9 cover story splash: this yarn starts the bonanza with a bang...

Of all the Atlas fantasy-/-horror titles Journey Into Unknown Worlds is rare in that the early issues were predominantly SF. JIUW #9 is cover-to-cover SF: more importantly all 5 stories are fabulous and those jackpot issues are few and far between.

not the same title as Surf's above as it lacks the exclamation point, but trying to make it a 'killer' day here- in the best sense of the word...

Picked this out with Fantasy Reader #13 to share the shipping, and because I always buy a few books for my late brother JCC's birthday 9/7, and because I like Lion and didn't have a Prather: this early (May 1952) pbo is one of the few he wrote that wasn't part of his Shell Scott series that ran at Gold Medal all through the '50s and '60s (my mom was a fan), and when GM picked up 'Lie Down, Killer' they ran it through several printings and covers then ditto in their Crest reprint line.

I had so much fun with 'PN40' (Avon SF Reader #3) that I bought an Avon Fantasy Reader #13 to have a copy of Fowler Wright's 'Original Sin', a story that made a huge impression on me as a child: I've never forgotten it, and still consider it a towering short story masterpiece. The opening part of 'Original Sin' describes the Doctrine of Futility which prompts humankind to commit race suicide by lethal injection...

Go, Cat! your combo of wise and young-at-heart is a winner: wishing you well -Pat

I remember the day I bought this back in Dec 1979. We were taking my infant son Crane down to the East Bay (Berkeley-Oakland) for his first visit to Gina's pals there. While Gina was catching up with them Crane and I made our first bookstore run. $50 was heap o' scrill to us: but the magic kicked in, and I ended up with two children in tow...

While we're still raucous here's the one that started it all. My parents brought this greenstone tiki back from New Caledonia where their romance was the happy face on war's end in the South Pacific. It cast a spell on me at an early age: not only did I never fight it - the magic sustains me still...