Psychedelic Sci-Fi Round-up: Edge of Time by David Grinnell (Ace, 1958)

Just time to squeeze in a few new editions to this blog’s long neglected survey of psychedelic SF cover illustrations – beginning with two examples of the form produced before the term ‘psychedelia’ was even coined.

Though perhaps only marginally psyched out, this first one – by the “Dean of Science Fiction Artists” Frank Kelly Freas – is flat-out awesome. I’m not sure what else to say really. I mean, just look at it.

Random Paperbacks: A Woman in Spaceby Sara Cavanaugh(Ace/Stoneshire books, 1983)

When I added this early ‘80s romance paperback to my library, certain parties questioned my decision.

All I can do in response was to draw their attention to the cover photograph and back cover blurb, and to paraphrase Electric Wizard: you think you’re civilised, but you will never understand.

Research-wise, any chance I may have had of finding a brief history of the ‘Tiara’ series of books via google has been effectively obliterated by a popular children’s manga series of the same name, and the internet also gives us nada on ‘Sara Cavanaugh’ beyond a few cover scans and broad mockery of this novel, suggesting either a one-off house pseudonym or an unsolicited manuscript that got… well I hesitate to say “lucky”.

SF columnist & humourist David Langford obviously made his way through ‘A Woman in Space’ at some point however, as he picked out the following passage as part of a collection of sci-fi goofs & howlers:

“A few hours had passed since they had been pulled away from the moon. A few hours and millions of miles. The moon was no longer visible, not even as a star. The whole thing was so crazy, weird and far-out. It was as though they were floating in a giant vacuum.”

To Sir With Love by E.R. Braithwaite (Ace, 1961)

To conclude this brief series of loosely connected paperback posts, it’s difficult to say anything snarky about a book as big-hearted as E.R. Braithwaite’s ‘To Sir With Love’, so instead I’ll just leave you to enjoy this perfect time capsule of a front & back cover combo – to the earnest broadsheet liberalism of 1961, with love.

Meanwhile, elsewhere at Ace Books...

Recent Paperback Acquisitions # 1: Horror & Gothics

It’s been a while since I did any book cover posts, but in the past six months or so I’ve managed to build up a formidable backlog of material without taking the time to go to any particularly Herculean book-collecting efforts. Y’know how it goes I’m sure: just the odd psychedelic sci-fi paperback picked up here and there around London, a few trips further afield, a few donations from friends, all topped off with a mammoth haul from Baggins Bookshop in Rochester last weekend, and I’ve got pulp fiction coming outta my ears.

I’ve got some of the more interesting volumes earmarked for individual posts in the future, but in the meantime there’s more than enough left over for a few genre-themed gallery posts. First up: horror and suchlike.

As you might imagine, I find it eternally disappointing that the heyday of pulp paperback art (roughly early-‘50s to early-‘70s) never really coincided with the rise of horror as a saleable genre, and, as much as blogs like Too Much Horror Fiction might offer a convincing argument to the contrary, the slick graphic design of the post-Stephen King ‘black background / shiny text’ horror boom has never really appealed to me that much. There WERE plenty of odd horror-ish pulps from before that of course – New American Library big print gothics (see here and here for some great galleries of those), hippy era witchcraft shockers and post-Rosemary’s Baby cash-ins, even completely whacked out psychedelic Lovecraft/Weird Tales stuff (everybody’s favourite). But compared to the sheer volume of crime, sci-fi and romance novels that were hitting the shelves back then, they’re still relatively scarce items – hence finding a good one is always a treat.

(The first one here is borderline genre-wise, but it’s an awesome cover and clearly aligned toward the more overtly supernatural Ace/NAL gothic series, so let’s go with it.)

God, this getting a bit nerdy, isn’t it? Anyone’d think I actually did research on this stuff or something. On with the show!

(Ace Books, 1962)



(Ace Books, 1973)



(Fawcett World Library, 1965)



(New English Library, 1980)


(Corgi, 1963)



(Corgi, 1969)

(Thanks to my friend Kate for donating ‘Death Tour’.)

The Sweetheart of the Razorsby Peter Cheyney (Ace Books, 1958)

Do I need to tell you how much I love this cover/title combo? Wow, in short. It’s even got a bit of a Japanese exploitation movie feel to it, don’tcha think?

The artwork is signed in the bottom left, but I can’t read the signature. Any ideas?

It’s not much of a surprise to discover this novel is actually a slightly old-fashioned London-set mystery, seemingly devoid of razor-wielding sweethearts and originally published in 1947 as “The Curiosity of Etienne Macgregor”. (Ace Books editor: “the curiosity of WHO? Screw that!”)

The catchier new title wasn’t plucked entirely from thin air though, as a random visit to page 87 reveals that the stereotypical Chinese villain of the piece, one Suan Chi Leaf, gained notoriety for his performance as a knife-thrower in a play entitled “The Sweetheart of the Razors”. Mystifyingly, it seems this play was staged near my own childhood home in Tenby, South-West Wales.

Peter Cheyney will be best known to fans of European popular cinema as the creator of the wonderfully named Lemmy Caution, the embittered private eye who took on an open-source life of his own in the ‘60s via the auspices of iconic actor Eddie Constantine, who made a career out of playing the character, eventually turning up in everything from Godard’s “Alphaville” to Jess Franco’s “Attack of the Robots”.




When I first opened this book, I was all like, “signed first edition - sweet!” It was only later than my razor-sharp detective instincts recalled the bit on the back cover copy about Peter Cheyney being dead, and I became confused. Any ideas?