Science Fiction Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s

Ever since I established Existential Ennui's first permanent page, Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s, five years ago, the bulk of the dust jackets I've added to the gallery have wrapped books of a crime or spy fiction bent – those being the genres I've been most interested in, and accordingly have collected the most of, for most of those five years (and even before that). But right from the get-go I've included dust jackets from books from other genres (and indeed no genre at all) besides, notably science fiction. Among my earliest additions to the page was Roy Sanford's wrapper for the 1951 Rupert Hart-Davis first edition of Ray Bradbury's The Silver Locusts (alias The Martian Chronicles) – one of my most prized books – alongside John Rowland's jacket for the 1957 Heinemann edition of Nevil Shute's On the Beach and Donald Green's one for the 1959 Constable edition of Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon.

With my recently reignited fervour for SF, I thought it high time I added some more science fiction jackets to the gallery. Most of the SF I've been picking up over the past eight months or so has either hailed from the 1970s onwards or been paperbacks – or both – but I have acquired a handful of hardback firsts from the '50s and '60s as well, plus there are one or two other books I've had in my possession for longer than that which, for whatever reason, I haven't got round to adding to the page. Such as this one:

A British first edition of Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, published by Heinemann in 1955. This was one of the first books I bought when I moved down to Lewes from London nine years ago and got seriously into book collecting, acquired from Lewes' Bow Windows Bookshop for a tenner – on reflection something of a bargain, even given its damaged – but still complete – dust jacket; the cheapest comparable copy I can see online at present is listed for over £100. That jacket is by Eric Mudge-Marriott, whose work also appears on, among others, the 1954 Cassell edition of (John) Ross Macdonald's Experience with Evil (alias Meet Me at the Morgue), the 1955 Heinemann edition of David Duncan's Dark Dominion, and the 1965 Cassell edition of William Haggard's The Hard Sell (a copy of which I have in the loft somewhere).

A more recent acquisition from Bow Windows is this British first edition/second impression of Ray Bradbury's early short story collection The Golden Apples of the Sun, published by Rupert Hart-Davis in 1953. Boasting among its tales an all-time Bradbury classic, "The Sound of Thunder", the book's dust jacket is by Bradbury's longtime artistic collaborator, American designer Joe Mugnaini, who also designed the differing jacket of the 1953 US Doubleday edition, as well as this:

The 1959 Hart-Davis edition of The Day It Rained Forever, a 1962 second impression/ex-library copy of which I acquired for a couple of quid from Jamie Sturgeon at the last but one Lewes Book Fair. I bought a bunch of SF off Jamie at the most recent Lewes Book Fair in October too, including this:

A first edition of Jonathan Burke's intriguing Pursuit Through Time, published by Ward, Lock in 1956. Sadly there's no art credit for the dust jacket (the style looks very familiar to me but I can't place it) so I've added it to Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s under 'Designer Unknown'.

Also from the most recent Lewes Book Fair, from a different dealer, came this British first of Andre Norton's Catseye, published by Gollancz in 1962 (and once owned by a Prof. Spratt, according to the ex libris stamp on its endpaper). The wrapper is by Alan Breese, who created jackets for over a dozen Gollancz editions of Andre Norton books throughout the 1960s.

Lastly, from where I'm not quite sure – it's a recent-ish acquisition but I can't recall where from – a first edition/second impression of James Blish's A Life for the Stars, published by Faber in 1966 (originally 1964), dust jacket by Robert MacLean, who I believe was an American artist and children's book illustrator. Bizarrely, this is actually the second copy of the Faber edition I've owned; I did have a third impression but I've no idea what I did with it, hence why I bought this second impression from... somewhere... that and the fact that I also own Faber first/seconds of the other three novels in Blish's Cities in Flight sequence (which have rather different dust jacket designs). Anyway, I've added this and all the other SF wrappers in this post to Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s under their relevant designers (where known), all of whom are new to the gallery.

Science Fiction from the Lewes Book Fair: Poul Anderson, Keith Laumer, Ursula Le Guin et al

It was back in March at the Lewes Book Fair, where I bought a first edition of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, that I embarked on the science fiction book collecting odyssey which has proved such an enjoyable diversion over the past six months – for me if not for my illusory readership – and the Lewes Book Fair has continued to provide, with a bunch of cheap SF paperbacks at the May fair and a haul of cheap SF hardbacks – plus a couple more paperbacks – at the most recent one at the start of August.

Those hardbacks came courtesy of that book dealer's book dealer Jamie Sturgeon, who, knowing that I was on a science fiction kick, brought along what little SF he could find in his stock (he largely deals in crime fiction) – much of it space opera of one sort or another, which was just what I was looking for. He'd actually brought some SF to the previous Lewes Book Fair too, but that was for another collector – I know nothing about this person; for the sake of argument let's call them The Adversary – who was also keen on SF. On that occasion, by the time I got to Jamie's table whatever SF he'd had was gone – to be fair, he'd brought it along especially for The Adversary – but this time I was there early doors. I left one or two things for The Adversary, but I must admit I took the lion's share. Sorry, The Adversary, but as I'm sure you understand, when it comes to book collecting, you win some, you lose some.

And what I won – or rather purchased, for around a couple of quid each – on this occasion were: a first edition (ex-library but complete, with no pages removed) of Louis Charbonneau's Antic Earth (alias Down to Earth) (Herbert Jenkins, 1967), which I quite like the sound of despite its terrible online reviews; first editions of Ray Bradbury's short story collections The Day It Rained Forever (an ex-library – but again complete – 1962 second impression of the 1959 Hart-Davis edition), jacket by Joe Mugnaini, and Long After Midnight (1976 US Knopf), jacket typography by Ray Cruz, painting by Fuseli; a first hardback edition of Damon Knight's 1959 second novel A for Anything (alias The People Maker) (White Lion, 1974); a first of Hal Clement's second short story collection Small Changes (Robert Hale, 1969), jacket by Brian Netscher; a first of Robert Silverberg's short story collection Sundance and Other Science Fiction Stories (Abelard-Schuman, 1975); a first of Poul Anderson's Trader to the Stars (Gollancz, 1965); and a first of Keith Laumer's Bolo: The Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade (Millington, 1977), jacket by Lorie Epstein, photography by Graham Tucker.

I think I'm most pleased with the Anderson, which collects three of the author's Nicholas van Rijn stories – part of Anderson's wider Technic Civilisation future history – and which isn't terribly common in its Gollancz edition, and certainly not in this nice a condition; the Laumer, which is the first collection of the author's Bolo (futuristic tanks) military SF stories – the first of which, "The Night of the Trolls", I've read and rather enjoyed – and which is extremely scarce in this, its only British edition; and the Clement, which is another of those curious Hale SF books I've been picking up here and there.

The two paperbacks came from another dealer at the Lewes Book Fair (possibly the guy who runs Ubu Books in Brighton's Open Market) and are the British first editions of Ursula Le Guin's first and second novels, Rocannon's World and Planet of Exile, both published in the UK by Tandem in 1972 (both originally published in the US by Ace in 1966). I'd planned on reading some of Le Guin's science fiction at some point, so coming across these editions of the first two novels in her Hainish Cycle, with their fantastically gothic Peter Goodfellow covers, was serendipitous. For me, anyway; less so for The Adversary.

2017: Odyssey to... Bookshops in Worthing, Leigh-on-Sea and Tunbridge Wells

The science fiction (primarily hard SF and space opera) book collecting odyssey begun in March of this year – in Lewes and thereafter pursued with vigour variously in London, Eastbourne, Chichester, the Isle of Wight and Brighton – has proceeded apace, with additional stops in, among other places, Worthing, Leigh-on-Sea, Tunbridge Wells and, naturally, Lewes and Brighton – those last two being my 'manor', so to speak.

The Worthing excursion, which took place in June and was combined with a mooch around a handful of seafront gaffs with my mum, Rachel and Edie to look at paintings and sculptures and photography and suchlike on the annual Worthing Artists Open Houses trail, was to the reliable Badger's Books (where I once purchased a signed Victor Canning first edition), the bijou science fiction section of which produced literally a handful of books. Clutched in my filthy paw there I have a 1976 New English Library paperback of Christopher Priest's first short story collection Real-Time World (with a cover by, I believe, Bruce Pennington); a 1987 Futura paperback of Kim Stanley Robinson's early novel The Memory of Whiteness; a 1980 New English Library paperback of Bruce Sterling's debut novel Involution Ocean; a 1975 Eyre Methuen first edition of Alfred Bester's Extro, alias The Computer Connection; a 1977 Heinemann first of Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle's The Incandescent Ones, and 1979 Millington firsts of Piers Anthony's Vicinity Cluster and Kirlian Quest, books one and three in the author's Cluster series.

By far the biggest haul of books came from the two bookcases of SF in Leigh Gallery Books in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, which I visited twice on successive July days during a weekend trip to Rachel's folks' place nearby (twice because after the first visit I couldn't stop thinking about a book I didn't buy, so I went back the next day and got it – and some others). (I spared Rachel and Edie the tedium of having to hang around a secondhand bookshop by abandoning them on the little beach at Old Leigh after we'd had fish and chips for lunch – in the Mayflower pub – with Strangehaven creator Gary Spencer Millidge, who lives locally.)

Those visits produced books by, among others, Gregory Benford and Larry Niven (a 2015 Titan paperback of Shipstar, the sequel to their Bowl of Heaven), John Brunner (a 1974 New English Library paperback of The Dramaturges of Yan), Joe Haldeman (a 1992 New English Library first edition of Worlds Enough and Time, the third book in his Worlds trilogy), Ken Macleod (2001 and 2002 Orbit paperbacks of Cosmonaut Keep and Dark Light, books one and two in his Engines of Light series), Paul McAuley (a 2015 Gollancz paperback collection of his Confluence trilogy), Loren J. McGregor (a 1987 US Ace paperback of The Net), Naomi Mitchison (a 1976 New English Library reissue of Memoirs of a Spacewoman), Richard Morgan (a 2007 Gollancz first edition of Black Man, which was the book I couldn't stop thinking about and went back for the next day), Keith Roberts (a 1972 Panther paperback of The Inner Wheel) and Kim Stanley Robinson (a 2012 Orbit first edition of 2312).

The 'among others' were probably the more interesting books of the haul; more interesting to me anyway – your mileage may vary – but in any case those were the ones I was more inclined to go to the trouble of photographing. Top row, left to right: a first edition of Piers Anthony's debut novel Chthon (MacDonald, 1967); a first (ex-library) of John Paget's (alias John Aiken) World Well Lost (Robert Hale, 1970), another of those intriguing Hale SF books I've been picking up here and there; a first hardback edition of John Brunner's Times Without Number (Elmfield Press, 1974), jacket by Josh Kirby; a first of Cordwainer Smith's The Rediscovery of Man (Gollancz, 1988), jacket by John Avon. Middle row, left to right: paperbacks of John Varley's short story collection The Barbie Murders (Futura reprint, 1986) – which contains some of his Eight Worlds tales – and novel Millennium (Sphere, 1985); a paperback first of Gregory Benford's Across the Sea of Suns (Orbit, 1985), second in Benford's Galactic Centre saga; a paperback first of Murasaki (Grafton, 1993), a shared world anthology edited by Robert Silverberg and written by Benford, Greg Bear, Poul Anderson and others. Bottom row, left to right: a paperback first of Christopher Priest's A Dream of Wessex (Pan, 1978), his fifth novel; and paperbacks of Brian Aldiss's Earthworks (Granada/Panther, 1979, cover by Peter Goodfellow) and Enemies of the System (Triad/Panther, 1980), both of which are signed.

Tubridge Wells I took the bus over to on a rainy day late in July having learned that Hall's Bookshop (which I wrote about a couple of years ago when it was taken over by Adrian Harrington) was having a summer half price sale. There wasn't a lot of science fiction on offer, but I did manage to find one or two – or three or four – intriguing items, namely...

A British first edition of John Brunner's Total Eclipse (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975); a US first edition of Brunner's A Maze of Stars (Del Rey, 1991), jacket by John Berkey; a British first of Brunner's The Wrong End of Time (Eyre Methuen, 1975), and a US first of A. E. van Vogt's Rogue Ship (Doubleday, 1965), jacket by Peter Rauch.

Two of the Brunners, Total Eclipse and A Maze of Stars, are the late author's own copies, both bearing his 'ex libris' bookplate on their front pastedowns. (The Wrong End of Time may well be Brunner's own copy as well, but it doesn't have a bookplate.) The van Vogt, on the other hand, has on its front free endpaper a heartfelt 21st birthday inscription (non-authorial) to a Marty from his "understanding but confused friend and athletic foe, Barry," who also advises Marty to "keep cool".

As for the wares from Lewes and Brighton – and other such exotic locales – I think I'll save those for another post. This one's quite long enough as it is.