The Man who Japed

It seems like a lot of us are cleaning out our closets these days. It was clothes for me last week, take them out of town my wife said, don't want anyone in town walking around in your old t-shirts.

Doug was going through his garage the other day and brought me four very large and full boxes of old science fiction paperbacks.

Many of these are the old Ace Doubles, with two stories sandwiched upside down back to back. All fifties and sixties. These books were written at a time when manned space landings were entirely hypothetical. Because of this the creative possibilities were unlimited.

I jumped at the chance to get these books. For one thing, there are stories in this haul from my favorite authors, a lot of Philip K. Dick, Sturgeon, Asimov, Simak, Brunner. Tons of obscure authors that I had forgotten about if I ever read them in the first place. I haven't seen a few of these in this original form and publication before.

There is so much here that I won't be able to read it all. Don't know where to start, maybe some of the Conan's.

I love the cover artwork on these books. It was so much more interesting in the sixties, like the writing and much else. Covers here by Jeff Jones, Freas, so many highly inventive masters of the genre.

I thought I would share a few of the covers with you. If any of you would like to borrow a good book, stop by the gallery.

I was so very lucky to meet many of these artists and authors at the early days of the Comic Con at the El Cortez. Gracious and wonderful to a person.