" In this universe the night was falling; the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered; and along the path he once had followed, Man would one day go again"

Arthur C. Clarke Against the Fall of Night

Monday, October 16, 2017

London Trip 1, SKOOB BOOKS, New Arrivals


We are back from a lovely trip to London. I stated before I left that I hoped to find some SF Penguins, however while I found a lot of older Penguin books for sale, I did not find many of the specific titles or cover artists I hoped to find. I also did not find any SF titles from the British SF publishers Digit or Badger books. While we did visit a number of interesting used book stores, only one, the wonderful SKOOB Books had an extensive SF section. You go in the main floor entrance and down the stairs and yeah!! books. After 3 or 4 visits, it was not far from our hotel, I had amassed a large number of British editions to bedevil my efforts at packing, along with the heavy guides and art books from the museums and galleries we visited. Thank you Helen for the photos of the shop.



http://www.skoob.com/

While this will probably stretch to several post, lets start with some highlights. If you had asked me to list some paperbacks I hoped to find, the first two (below,) could well have been one and two on the list.


I have long lusted after this Bruce Pennington cover for Space, Time and Nathaniel from The New English library edition, and the stories I have read so far have been very good,


Many years ago, when I was more of a SF reader and less of a collector, a very good friend, (now sadly deceased) gave me a copy of Solar Wind a book on the SF stylings of Peter Jones and I have loved Jones' gaunt skull-faced aliens ever since. This is the Jones cover I particularly wanted and I know I will think of Rod whenever I pick it up.


This Boyd title with a cover by Peter Cross, was a book I hoped to find and The Kraken Wakes is my favourite Wyndham. Cover by Denis Piper


Another book I wanted the minute I saw the cover, in this case on the blog of the Unsubscriber.
https://unsubscribedblog.wordpress.com/2015/10/14/from-the-library-of-the-unsubscriber-no-19-cover-oddities/
The cover artist is uncredited, any ideas?


I had never seen this edition of The Sirens of Titan (fifth impression, 1975) with a cover by Jim Burns but I knew I was bringing it home the minute I picked it up. 



To see the cover in it's full wrap around glory try

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