Since I didn’t
get to visit my used book shops in Pennsylvania this past Father’s Day (where
Hopper and family spend the weekend with Hopper’s parents out in the
boondocks), I made sure to get to them this weekend driving over there to pick
up my girls from their weeklong vacation.
In two separate trips I bought six used books, all for about ten bucks.
What did I get,
you’re champing at the bit to know?
Okay, I’ll tell
you!
The New Springtime (1990), by Robert Silverberg
I read this book
in the early 90s, my return to SF since a bright-eyed bushy-tailed young
padawan. Having spent a dozen or so
years immersed in fantasy and horror, I found myself utterly captivating with
this world Silverberg created – a world of intelligent apelike and insectlike
creatures, balanced in some sort of outerworldly détente. I think.
Can’t remember much of it, other than the all-consuming effect it had on
me while I was reading it. So, after a
pleasant experience reading Silverberg’s Majipoor
Chronicles, I picked this up without hesitation.
Dark Stars (1969), edited by Robert Silverberg
Since I so
enjoyed the short stories of Silverberg’s Majipoor
Chronicles, I also seized on this anthology of other classic SF writer’s
works. Looking forward to this …
Tales of Ten Worlds (1962), by Arthur C. Clarke
Purchased for
reasons similar to the anthology above.
Never truly got into Clarke, though I enjoyed his Rama books and his Fountains
of Paradise. Will read this with an
open mind, possibly looking for other Clarkian scribblings to check out.
Devil’s Canyon (1998), by Ralph Compton
This was kind of
a stab in the dark. I was looking for a decent Western for a while now; hadn’t really read one since last winter, and I’m
still surprised at how much I enjoy them.
Staring at a bookshelf of Westerns in the store – must’ve been two
hundred gnarled paperbacks – I was at a complete loss. Had no idea which titles and authors were the
worthy ones. So, having heard of Compton ’s name before, I scanned the back covers
of the half-dozen that were his and selected this ’un. We’ll see.
Technos (1972) and Veruchia
(1973), by E. C. Tubb
Ah! The Dumarest Saga! How baffling and obsessively intriguing for
ten-year-old spaceboy! See here and here
for details but in a sentence: SF paperback found in my father’s Mysterious
Drawer of Books, began a dozen times but never completed, part of twenty-five
or thirty book collection of rugged human Dumarest searching the habitable
planets of the galaxy for clues of lost Earth.
A few years ago I read books 1 and 2.
This pair is 7 and 8 in the series if Wikipedia is correct. Should be good, quick reads.
Talking apes,
the Santa Fe
trail , twenty worthy
short stories, and Earl Dumarest. All
for ten dollars. Forty, fifty hours of
reading. Can’t beat that entertainment
value …
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