Mutiny in Space by Avram Davidson (Pyramid, 1969)

By way of a blatant – though hopefully not unenjoyable – filler post whilst assorted summer holiday business keeps me from the writing desk, let me present this archetypal example of two-fisted sci-fi (‘planet of the amazons’ / ‘war of the sexes’ sub-division).

Originally published in Worlds of Tomorrow magazine in August 1964 under the title ‘Valentine’s Planet’, the, uh, charmingly unpretentious artwork for this Pyramid edition comes courtesy of Jack Gaughan.

Probably a bit of a quickie for Gaughan, we might surmise, as the accomplished and somewhat expressionistic covers he provided for such authors as A.E.Von Vogt, Jack Vance and some US Moorcock editions are frequently a joy to behold. (You can click through to this post on the Monster Brains blog to get a full eyeful of his talents.)

Plus, bonus thrill! A pull-out ad for the Science Fiction Book Club!

GOTHIC ORIGINALS: Appendum.

Before we temporarily put the gothic horror theme aside, I thought it might be a good opportunity to throw in a few choice examples of the seemingly never-ending supply of gothic pulp paperbacks that seemed to be flooding the market just as the accompanying cycle of movies was running out of steam in the late 60s/early 70s.

Largely forgotten by critics and collectors (possibly with good reason), these books seem to have been marketed at a presumably female readership lurking somewhere between the ‘horror’ and ‘romance’ sections (not that I’d imagine there was an actual horror section in most bookshops in those days, but y’know what I mean), decades before all that Anne Rice business took off.

Interesting that ‘Satan’s Daughter’ claims to be “in the tradition of ‘Burnt Offerings’”, suggesting that there was once a five minute window in which that was a big selling point. (I saw that movie recently – it was pretty good!)

‘Castle Garac’ author Nicholas Monsarrat is probably better known for his epic WWII novel ‘The Cruel Sea’, which I remember sat on my parents’ bookshelf throughout my childhood, never much tempting me to read it. (I’ve not seen the movie of that one - it looks alright.)

(Macfadden, 1970)

(Pocket Books, 1976)

(Pyramid, 1968)

Psychedelic Sci-Fi Round-up, part # 1:The ‘60s

(Tandem, 1968)

(Lancer, 1968)

(Hodder, 1967)

Even more-so than movies or comic-books, you might assume that lower tier sci-fi paperback designers would have been a bit slow in picking up on youth culture trends, but just look at all this bad trip, pop-art madness - merely a taster of the innumerable eye-grabbing volumes that were hitting shelves prior to 1970, all waiting to be harvested from book fairs and charity shops the world over.

All of the above are more or less trad pulp skiffy yarns enlivened by some way-out graphics, but by way of contrast, here’s a rather toe-curlingly try-hard attempt to bring SF to the new youth market. The logic is sound: hippies read sci-fi, and half the people who write it seem to veer in that direction too, so let’s bang out some sci-fi for hippies. The execution however? I think I'll pass. ('She Stripped For Cider' in the author biog made me laugh though.)

Wikipedia reveals that 'The Unicorn Girl' is the middle volume of an apparent 'Greenwich Village Trilogy' published by Pyramid. Characters were shared, but each volume was written by a different author, the other two being respectively credited to underground press luminary and Crawdaddy! editor Chester Anderson, and "professional magician and magic author" T.A. Waters. Presumably any resemblance between "Mike and Chester, fearless hippy explorers of a thousand worlds" and their apparent creators would be wholly coincidental..?

 

(Pyramid, 1969)

All cover artists and designers featured in this post are uncredited, by the way.