The best publisher's series you've never heard of? Crown SF's Classics of Modern Science Fiction
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- Опубліковано 1 лип 2024
- Crown SF's Classics of Modern Science Fiction, ten books printed in 1984 and 1985.
Host: Richard Rempel
Channel: @vintagesf
List of episodes: vintagesf.ca/vintage-sf-2024/
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I've always said that a store, a market, a shop, are only as good as the products on their shelves and you've hit on that idea with this episode, Richard. You're right, "best publisher's series you've never heard of?" applies to me. These authors weren't "on the shelves" during my SF age of discovery and book acquisition (except Farmer). Asimov's forward is apt, and so astute of him to point out and lament. Thanks for bringing these across the radar screen! Cheers.
Whether it was poor marketing, quirky design or lack of author recognition, these books didn't seem to find an audience.
I have both of Farmer's collections from this set, and I always assumed they were volume 4 and 5 of a set of his collected stories! I'm so glad to learn that they are actually from a set of varied authors! Your videos rock! I do enjoy these weird small hardback books, I'm going to keep my eye out for more of them!
@@LiminalSpaces03 Thank you. Although an unusual size, I find them easy to hold with clean font and quality paper. Now I have a question for you. Liminal Spaces is cohosted by brothers. I’ve been assuming this is Chris since we are talking about vintage books. How would I tell which brother is commenting? Do you have different handles? For example this one is LiminalSpaces03. (BTW, still love your channel name. One of the best out there.)
@@vintagesf Thanks! Yeah, we need to find a way to differentiate. Jason (the one without the beard) doesn't comment often outside of our page, so yeah, you've always been talking to me, Chris (the one with the beard).
I've always found these books to be attractive. The ones I own were purchased for the authors that I enjoyed reading. If I'm remembering correctly at the time I bought them they were fairly inexpensive. I'm sure I don't have them all, but I do have the ones that I like. My particular favorites were Eric Frank Russell and Chad Oliver.
Still relatively inexpensive. The most expensive one for me was $10.00 USD. The quality of production seems to be there for a 40 year old book. I think initial sales were poor. The size, being hardcovers, and lack of author recognition may have relegated them to the bargain bins in record time. No wonder the series stopped at 10 books.
Well researched and informative as always Richard!
The only one of these I ever owned was Greener Than You Think by Ward Moore, and I'm pretty sure that was a paperback. I hadn't researched the series, and didn't know there were only ten. Back in the day, I would occasionally see some of these editions in Used bookstores that used to exist around the city (and are now mostly gone). I remember finding the design of the books rather appealing, but I was mainly looking for books on "100 Best SF" lists, and despite the "Classic' designation on these titles, I would look at these books and think to myself "I'm not aware of these books being all that important. They look cool...but these titles are not on my radar.". The exception was The Paradox Men by Charles L. Harness, which I had acquired and read previously, in a different edition. I had no idea who Chad Oliver was, and as for names of authors in this line of books that were authors I knew, these particular titles were not ones I was seeking. The Eric Frank Russell book would have been the most tempting after the Ward Moore book, but I was not much of a short story guy at the time; even if I would have seen Men, Martians and Machines around, I was more likely to buy an Eric Frank Russell novel.
So, they were these snazzy line of books I would spot specimens from, and the specific titles were never enough to make me buy. Greener Than You Think was the exception - not because it was on a "100 Best SF" list, or because I was loyal to the author already - I had actually read Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore a few years earlier and had a good but rather meh reaction to it, so Moore was not a priority - but The Death of Grass by John Christopher WAS on a reading list of "100 Best", and I decided to keep a look out for the Ward Moore book that was linked to it. I was also a big Jack Williamson fan, and although his Horror (Dark Fantasy?) novel Darker Than You Think is not a huge favourite of mine, I loved the similarity in titles, assuming Moore was doing a bit of a nod to one of my fave author's most famous novels. When I happened upon a copy of Greener Than You Think while browsing, knowing I did not see it around very often, I bought it and read it. The story progression is a bit predictable, but I loved the book, more than Ward Moore's highly praised alternate history novel, Bring the Jubilee. Jubillee is certainly the more sophisticated work, more subtle and thoughtful - but, y'know, if I'm a bit bored with something that's supposed to be "literary SF"....well then give me Greener Than You Think over Bring The Jubilee any day. Others would feel the opposite, I'm sure.
If this line of books had put those cool covers and sleek design on, oh, let's say Ring Around The Sun, or Bug Jack Barron, or A Mirror for Observers, right when I was looking for them or other classics that were known to me then...in that alternate history, I would have bought a lot of them! I regret I did not pick up one Chad Oliver, though.
@@sethball2475 I wonder which authors and books were being pursued before the series was cancelled. File under what if.
Although I'm not very known with this series, I actually do have the first one of this series...as Gamma Ray once wrote a song based on this Eric Frank Russell novel with the same title and that's why early in my start of collecting SF novels I added this one to my collection. I've also read it and thought it was a really good novel, I think Star Trek might've been inspired by it because it predates Star Trek and talks of a space federation in Russell's novel.
@@andrewb.3076 Star Trek definitely was a pastiche of Golden Age and 1950s stories. One of the reasons it connected with fans and science fiction writers.
Thank you for this. As a newer SF collector, this is a great source of information.
Love to do these overviews of series. Thanks for watching!
The only one of this series I owned was 'Men, Martians and Machines' by Eric Frank Russell. Like you, I found it in a used book store. I remember enjoying it but I don't remember much of anything else about it.
You mentioned that three of the books were by Chad Oliver and wondered if Crown had a contract with him. I think that is unlikely. Chad was first, and foremost, an anthropologist who taught at the University of Texas. He wrote SF, mostly short fiction, in his spare time. He wrote nine novels, of which three were Westerns, so the Crown books represent half of his SF books. Notice that two of the books were by Philip Jose Farmer. He and Chad Oliver were writers who never rose to the top of the field. They both presented unique viewpoints and they had dedicated followers, though. I wonder if George Zebrowski was one. That would be a more likely explanation.
@@paulcooper3611 Thank you for the information! Love learning more about authors.
@@vintagesf Sorry I can't tell you any more than that. I knew Chad to say "Hi" to, but that was all. Howard Waldrop, author of 'Them Bones' would have been the one to ask. He and Chad were friends. They went fishing together. Sadly, Howard died last January.
@@paulcooper3611 Sorry to hear that. Eventually I plan to read ‘Them Bones’. Sure are a lot of authors in the southwest.
On formats, the Crown SF classics are called just that because their format is Crown Octavo hardcover format.
The Ray Naylor book is in Demy Octavo, while the Stephenson is Royal Octavo.
You'll have heard me describing my hardcovers as Demy, Royal etc- and I have a bad habit of calling anything smaller than a Demy an Octavo, which is technically correct but rather unspecified. The Ray Naylor book is a Royal in its UK version.
I have some of these which I've shown in videos quite some time back, but some of mine are primarily UK editions which were issued by Robinson- they have identical livery apart from the publisher name and colophon symbol. Others are the US Crown versions. Some of them were not issued in the UK, such as the Charles Harness title. They're all nice little books and some of them are truly Classic, though I wouldn't make that claim for all of them in a literary sense.
Hoping to send you the Keith Roberts book on saturday by the way....
Mystery solved! Thank you Stephen. Tried to locate your video with book sizes and terminology to no avail. Should have emailed you the picture for input. So 'Crown' is both the name of the publisher and the format.
Ok, old snarky responses aside, I'm torn about this set.
The size, choice of hardcover, black spines, and using both "classic" and "modern" create an air of quality and curation that imposes an authority past my conscious mind directly onto my subconscious and causes me to think that they do make a very good-looking set.
On closer inspection:
I find the cover art on this specially crafted individually hand-picked set sadly lacking. Especially the airbrushed art (which at the time these came out) was only being used on the cover of children's SF books, read alongs with cassette tapes, and in deliberately gaudy advertising. (Or on an album of hit songs covered by unknowns.) They had been stylish for a while in the 70s like with Stanislaw Lem covers or Arthur c Clarke covers but by 1984 they were the mark of third-rate cheapness. At least in the States, the English still may be using this technique. . .
Also, there is immediately, instantly a question as to "what are the goals of this editor and this series", and "can we take them seriously if they have three books by one author, two books by another (but they're only short stories) and they were neither modern nor classic at the time."
*Now I have not yet read any of them* so I cannot comment on their inherent value as science fiction stories, or their value to the genre, but they do immediately raise red flags and make one with only a modicum of shopping experience quite suspicious. I was an avid shopper at the time, and did not see these books in new bookstores anywhere when they came out. I only came across them in a college bookstore later in the 80s, alongside a placard displaying the whole set, which as I said, raised red flags. Then early in the 90s, they were being offered by a speed reading course ; if you went to their one day seminar you got a free science fiction classic (which turned out to be a Xeroxed copy of one of them.)
It really gave the impression that these were substandard properties that the publisher, or media conglomerate was trying to use to invoke new marketing schemes, or squeeze a little bit of revenue out of.
Flash forward 30 years and I've bought two (Russel & Harness) and I'm considering two others.
Sooo, I obviously don't hate them. They do hold some sort of attractive magic. I don't know enough to proceed, but at just a sampling I will have bought half of the set. . .
Seriously. All of that goes through my head whenever I see them!
I hope this was not too much.
I first was interested in the Moore book after reading John Christopher's 'The Death of Grass'. It is the opposite of the premise in 'Greener Than You Think'. Then there was Harness. Then after reading 'Wasp' I was interested in Russell. Then ... well ... on my way to the set. I'm a sucker for uniform livery and publisher sets. I do agree about the art. On the other hand, I like that there is the consistency of the same artist for the series.
@@vintagesf I agree, it definitely pulls both ways; it's not like I haven't thought about it, and then I say : there's got to be a more efficient way to read Philip Jose farmer short stories!
Hi Richard. A very informative video. I also have these books in my collection. As well I have The Classic Philip Jose Farmer 1952-1964 from this series in a Book Club Edition and it is larger than the originals, at 8 3/8 X 5 3/4 inches and is not numbered. I have seen some videos on the Ace Specials but there is another Ace Series that I collect. Have you ever come across the Ace Series entitled "Science Fiction from the Great Years" ? There does not seem to be a lot of information out there about this series. I have seven of the titles, but there are at least 16 in this series. The earliest one I have is John W. Campbell's The Moon is Hell (First Ace Printing January 1973 and cover price 75 cents). There are two books of short stories, titled Science Fiction from the Great Years - Vols. 1 & 2, and they are edited by Carol and Fredrik Pohl. Perhaps the entire series was edited by them? If you have them as well it would be good to get a little more information on them. To me this seems to be a neglected series but there are some great authors, such as Pratt, Nowlan, Kuttner, C. L. Moore, Leinster, Cummings and von Harbou. (And the cover art is pretty good too) A few women authors seem to be included in this one. Thanks.
I've never heard of "Science Fiction from the Great Years" . I'll watch out for this one. Thanks for the tip. Here is a link to isfdb's entry isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?51
Ok, as long as I feel so free to tell you why I have problems with people loving or collecting Gollancz or that 10 volume classic SF set, I should also tell you my own personal Achilles heel. . .
I just watched MKV's weekend reading report/ wrap-up. M held up his copy of The Land Before Time by ERB.
I forgot if there's a better title but I believe Bison press calls it their "Classics of Science Fiction". It is almost all books that are in the public domain, sometimes literal reprints of old copies, not newly corrected or type set- so you would expect them to be inexpensive, but it's an academic press and price like an academic press! somehow I am still mesmerized by their symmetrical cover design, carefully chosen cover art, and of course Black cover. Stock.
so, I don't know that I can defend myself where this is concerned but it only seemed fair if you're putting up your beloved series I should mention my irrationally beloved series as well!
Perhaps you'll want to collect these too!!
I'd love to hear your reviews of some of them.
@@salty-walt I’ll watch MKV’s episode and comment again.
@@salty-walt Just looked them up. Bison Frontiers of Imagination. Beautiful covers. Don’t think I’ve ever held one. I’m going to watch for them.
@@vintagesf a really valuable selection too (except perhaps the *ton* of ERB - not that we don't love them, but a lot of them that are featured are available elsewhere. . . But where else do you go to find science Fiction by John Jacob Astor??)
How were the books?
Have yet to review them. One reason I collected them is that there are a number of authors and titles I was looking to read.
I see you went to town and bought yourself the set eh?
Collectoritis.
@@vintagesf Hahaha.
I know you found a couple on your book buying adventure, and talked about getting the rest but **WHAM!** all of a sudden.
@@salty-walt Bought five of them while on my trip to Toronto, Detroit and Boston. The other five came from a lot I purchased on eBay. Couldn't resist completing the set although I do have a couple doubles. I've wondered about offering my doubles, I have quite a few from collecting, to my viewers. I'd only want to have postage covered. I've thought about making a membership level at a very minimal cost, say $1 or $2, and use that money towards shipping books to the members. Do you think that is an idea that could work?