Another fun and fabulous video Michael. Such a delicious abundance of time-capsule eye candy. So many of those covers are just ravishing, “Earth Man Come Home,” the 1960s reader from “Weird Tales” (re-using the fabulous 1933 Margaret Brundage cover), Clifford Simak’s 1958 “City,” with the haunting Ed Valigursky cover art …just wow. I love the abstract painting on Murray Leinster’s “Creature of the Abyss.” That stack of ace doubles with A.E Van Vogt’s “Empire of the Atom” on one side and Frank Belknap Lon’s “Space Station # 1 that is just so sweet. Ace Doubles were a whole fabulous world unto themselves. Once again, nicely done.
Thanks for that. It is enormously satisfying to see a video like this, being allowed to look over the shoulder of someone rummaging through their treasure trove of books. I knew when I sat down with my coffee and your first shot had A Canticle For Leibowitz in it that this would be fun. So many great books and memories. This was a thoroughly enjoyable 18 minutes.
did mine last year. forgot what i had. there was a few to say the least. no dust no pencil. my love of sf and horror is renewed. thanks to guys like you.
It’s so nice to see vintage books. I always think when someone bought those when they came out as a new . And what they were thinking about their book. ❤😊
We have a lot of books in common. At around 7 minutes where you can see Simak's 'City' we have almost all those piles in common. I loved those 'Bill the Galactic Hero' years ago. When I started out I was going for authors mentioned in my D&D books but after that it became all about collecting the Ace letter-number series of books and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. I managed the BAF but there are just too many Ace books and a lot were outside my preferred genres. I miss the days of going into used bookstores and finding all kinds of treasures but the few stores remaining these days know what those treasures are and put them behind glass or online. I managed to get Bradbury to autograph my 1951 Bantam edition of 'The Martian Chronicles' just before he passed when he was in NYC to meet with his publisher. I worked at the Borders Books in the WTC and our events guy somehow wrangled his publicist into bringing him by our store for the afternoon. The book is extremely fragile now and unreadable so it is more an artifact of the Golden Age rather than a book. He was exactly how you'd imagine him to be. I also had the fortune of meeting Joe Haldeman on several occasions as his brother Jack worked for the University of Florida where I was a student and he often stopped in to do signings. Piers Anthony and Meredith Ann Pierce live in the area as well.
Great video Michael. Nice to see your collection. This is how I felt about the daunting task of having to reorganise and shelve my Westerns once I moved house. If I did it in one sitting, it definitely would taken up a whole day
Going to my local Goodwill outlet ("The Bins" as we Thrifters call them) I see much vintage Science Fiction. I am limited on space. not having a spacious and luxurious Manor House, so I must leave much of it to it's eventual end, which is to the recycling plant. I try picking it up for resale, but it's such a low-demand genre overall that I cannot make them profitable to sell or even break even on (except for certain selected items which have some collector value) One of the biggest problems with keeping and storing these old paperback Sci-Fi books is that so many are printed on literal pulp. The paper they were printed on is not acid free and many of them (especially the ones with red edges for some reason) are now slowly disintegrating. Many of them have been stored in garages, attics, sheds and other non-climate controlled spaces and it seems that many of these places get quite warm, and heat seems to be a factor in this deterioration. I will say that I've gotten pretty handy re-gluing the spines where they are simply falling apart because the glue is just crumbled to nothing. Probably not a big deal where you live Michael (Bay Area, yes?) but here in Arkansas it gets very warm in summer and the humidity sends many a book to it's last musty, moldy, mildew-y end. So hurrah for your single-handed attempt to preserve these! (Say it with me, man: "Hoarder? Who, me? I'm not a hoarder. I can get rid of these any time, and I'd be fine, just fine, see? No problem at all...")
Say, I have a bunch of those! Looking forward to rereading The Silver Eggheads soon. I reckon the voracious vintage sci-fi bandits are skeered away by the Curse of Roger's Tomb.
Wonderful collection. I have (or, sadly, have had) some of the same editions. This also gives me something to show the wife when she complains about all of my old paperbacks. "See, it could be worse!"
This was great to see. Wonderful seeing all those sci-fi paperbacks. I’ve been going through all of my books, and will be following up my unhaul videos with library tours of what’s left, so you’ll see some stuff you’ll like in the science fiction world. I love the anthologies you’ve got, and some rare books like that lovely Buck Rogers book. Looking forward to seeing more of how and when you sort through them….
A most enjoyable video! I was thrilled to see that you have Andre Norton books in your collection. In the two years that I have been following Booktube, this is the first time that anyone has mentioned one of my favorite SciFi/Fantasy authors. Lovely carpet. Kay
I've done this several times with my own books. It's initially satisfying but I soon run into hurdles: do I keep all the anthologies together or shelve them according to editor? if I put the books alphabetically by author then what happens when a different author writes about the first author's character (as happens with all the non-Howard Conan novels)? do I leave space for books I'm missing in a series but intend to buy sometime? In the end my books swiftly return to a semi-organised state where I roughly know where to find something. Still, it's great fun getting to see all those marvellous covers Michael.
Yes, Treasury of Science Fiction was from the SF Book Club. I remember it with fondness. I think it was the first books I got from the book club. There was some great reading in those two books. If you would accept some advice from a Doc Smith fanatic, when you decide to read the Lensman series, start with the third novel, Galactic Patrol then go on to the last two novels before reading the first and second book. Triplanetary was not originally part of the series and First Lensman was written afterwards to help fit Triplanetary into the series for the Fantasy Press editions. Heinlein stated once that Smith wanted to continue the series but no publisher would have published it as Smith wanted it to be written. You'll get hints of where Smith wanted to go when you read Children of the Lens.
I used to belong to the Science Fiction book club way back. I joined it because of Omni magazine had ads for it all the time. I still have all the Ominis 😀
I have to say these were my favorite books of all time. Started when I was a young teenager. I’ve read other genres like crime and mystery novels but my heart belongs Science Fiction. Great collection. I had so many of them. I’m 70 and had to downsize and most of my books went.
Phwoar .. some super covers, I like to see design styles and fonts on vintage books and the art, never get bored of looking at a choice selection of books and some of these had great painted covers. I'd save the front from the cover to Science Fiction of the 30s, pop that in a frame. Thanks for the excitement warning, had my inhaler on standby.
Thanks for the tour! I love looking at vintage sci-fi books. I have a couple of those. So that’s only some of them, eh? The Lady of the Manor was right: no way you’re reading all of those before you croak.
This is a great video. As a disciple of Jules Burt I also collect vintage SF. I've recently organized and inventoried the lot. It took awhile but was well worth it. Still looking for Mummies In Outer Space.
Ah, time-consuming disasters. Contemplating one of those (organising all my digital music by genre OH WON'T THAT BE FUN) and currently engaged in another (trying to weed out duplicate files from my photo collection; I have a nice bit of software to do that job but it's not exactly blazingly fast. Then again it does have a couple of million image files to go through...). Wikipedia tells me there's actually a fourth Brak novel plus a short story collection. Regarding those SF Hall of Fame volumes: vol. 1, 2a and 2b are the kind of "authorised" ones, in that they were produced according to the original plan of finding the best pre-Nebula Award classics. Then about nine or ten years later Gollancz (who'd published the books in the UK) hired Arthur C. Clarke to come up with a "volume 4" (cos Gollancz had published volumes 2a and 2b as volumes "two" and "three"), which then got published as volume 3 in the US by Avon who then came up with their own volume 4. This is not a bibliographic nightmare at all.
Great video! Lots of overlap there between your collection and mine. I liked seeing all those anthologies - not sure you've made any videos about anthologies before except for single-author collections? But I haven't seen your entire ouevre yet. Anyway if you haven't read them I HIGHLY recommend both of the 30s anthologies, the Asimov Before the Golden Age and the Knight SF of the 30s - I just read the latter a couple of months ago actually, found a copy at my local library for 50 cents this spring. Also loved seeing the Dunsany BAF titles - I still lack Beyond the Fields We Know myself; I'm trying to complete the whole series and it's one of a dozen or so that I still don't have. Wish they were as cheap as they were back in the 90s and that I still had a prayer of finding them in any bookstores within an hour's drive of me. eBay is usually too expensive for my blood on these titles.
I love that Weird Tales cover, not sure why 🤔 If I can offer a tip. While you're doing this, compose an email (or text file), and using the dictaphone option, state the title and author (you can also say comma, full stop - this function recognises voiced punctuation) and create a list of your books (and you can also add the box number). Smelling what I'm cooking ? I did something similar last year. It was quite fast.
You haven’t read lensman! It’s weiird but fun, and really easy to read! But do publication order, I think it’s better…though your version (like I’m pretty sure all versions) spoil everything with the introductions to the novels added later, but that doesn’t make much of a difference…I guess it gives the series a sort of anime feel, anyway you’ll see when you read it, start with galactic patrol/grey lensman/second stage lensman, than I think it’s triplanetary, if you find it boring you can honestly skip it, then first lensman/children of the lens. Oh since we are talking space opera, I hope you have read the legion of space by Jack Williamson, it’s one of the best! And the sequel is good too
I myself would sort them all by author regardless of genre. Some are already borderline 2 genres and still others are harder to categorize. So all you need to know is the author to find anything. And of course the multi author collections at the end. What a nightmare it would be if I sorted my CD collection by genre.
Sounds like a job for a new superhero (that I just thought up), Classificon. This brilliant superhero classifies things into their proper categories. These all have _Great_ covers. You bought these books for their covers, didn't you? Any Larry Niven?
Bookcases? Naw. What Michael needs are floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelves. Although it would be cool to have a spinner rack for all those mass market paperbacks.
OMG !!! DO NOT read anything until you finish the LENSMAN series!! It is SO much fun. I am appalled that you haven't read that! OMG my idol has feet of CLAY! (Probably stinky venusian, leech filled, and toxic clay ) The next thing you'll say is you HAVEN"T read the Spider Robinson books!!! I'll have to go to the Crosstime Saloon to drown my lost illusion...
Exciting? Actually, yes, especially when I spot a book that I have in my own collection. For example, Isaac Asimov’s _View from a Height,_ which by the way is not science fiction. It is a collection of 17 science essays from his column in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. As for an organizing scheme, I place all my science fiction, fantasy, and horror together, then split them between mass market paperbacks and larger editions. Within each size, authors go alphabetically, and anthologies go at the end. Have fun with channeling your inner librarian. 😃
Well I know you are missing one Brak book because it is the one I own, The Fortunes of Brak. I will now be warding my house for invading killer robots for unrelated reasons...
