Best book from the ads at the back of an old Bantam paperback of Crompton Divided

Note: this is from the penultimate and antepenultimate page. The final page is all titles from RAY BRADBURY: America's most daring explorer of the imagination. A separate poll can be created if needed.

Lol Delany stuff really sticks out

I inserted an extra space in the thread title but otherwise I think I got it all right.

Yeah, it does stick out but still seems to be an interesting range of stuff, so it’s not a complete outlier.

What year is this from?

What year is this from?

1979.

Wow, the list on page two of other Bantam titles has some more good stuff not seen here.

Couple people on here I’ve never heard of. Pat Frank? Ian Watson?

Alas, Babylon was kind of like On the Beach in that it was an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic novel written by someone not known within the genre, iirc. You never read “The Very Slow Time Machine”?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alas,_Babylon?wprov=sfti1

Somebody paid Will Patton to record an audiobook of it, so it still seems to have an audience.

Watson's magic omnibus The Books of the Black Current got me catnipping on Rolling Speculative, where James Morrison also cited The Embedding. Don't know this title, but looks very Watsonian. What, we can only vote for one of these? Prob. Delany. Show the list on page two!

Okay, should be able to post that one in a little bit.

Bantam Science Fiction
Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed

FANTASTIC VOYAGE by Isaac Asimov
MONUMENT by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
NIGHTMARES AND GEEZENSTACKS by Fredric Brown
HONEYMOON IN HELL by Fredric Brown
ROGUE IN SPACE by Fredric Brown
WHAT MAD UNIVERSE by Fredric Brown
BEASTS by John Crowley
DHALGREN by Samuel R. Delany
NOVA by Samuel R. Delany
TALES OF NEVERYON by Samuel R. Delany
TRITON by Samuel R. Delany
UBIK by Philip K. DIck
NEBULA WINNERS TWELVE by Gordon Dickson
TIME STORM by Gordon Dickson
ALAS, BABYLON by Pat Frank
THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT WANTS YOU by Harry Harrison
HELLSTROM'S HIVE by Frank Herbert
DEMON SEED by Dean Koontz
NEBULA AWARDS STORIES TWELVE edited by Ursula K. LeGuin
THE DAY OF THE DRONES by A.M. Lightner
DRAGONSONG by Anne McCaffrey
DRAGONSINGER by Anne McCaffrey
A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
HIGH COUCH OF SILISTRA by Janet E. Morris
WIND FROM THE ABYSS by Janet E. Morris
LOGAN'S RUN by William F. Nolan & George Clayton Johnson
LOGAN'S WORLD by William F. Nolan
MAN PLUS by Frederik Pohl
CRITICAL MASS by Frederik Pohl & C.M. Kornbluth
LAGRANGE FIVE by Mack Reynolds
THE FEMALE MAN by Johanna Russ
CROMPTON DIVIDED by Robert Sheckley
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF ROBERT SHECKLEY by Robert Sheckley
THE JONAH KIT by Ian Watson
NEBULA AWARD STORIES NINE edited by Kate Wilhelm

Joanna Russ's name spelled incorrectly in the original.

Front page contains the full version of this quote

Sorry, left out
THE GOLDEN SWORD by Janet E. Morris, with whom I am still unfamiliar.

Hopefully will remember to add in case we decide to poll that list too.

Probably voting Walter Miller Jr as my favourite Delaneys and Le Guins aren't on there.

Was thinking same, as thats not my favorite Pohl (by some distance) either

lol @ their being a Logan's Run sequel

is Fredric Brown worth reading? why does he get so many entries on this list?

I must've read some of his short pieces at some point, but they left no impression

Janet E. Morris bridged two worlds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Couch_of_Silistra#/media/File:High_Couch_of_Silistra_front_cover.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Couch_of_Silistra#/media/File:High_Couch_of_Silistra_front_cover.jpg

Can't load that image.

lol @ their being a Logan's Run sequel

is Fredric Brown worth reading? why does he get so many entries on this list?

I haven't read enough of these to vote in good conscience, but I'm basically a "Martian Chronicles" guy.

Earthsea over Dhalgren for me

I was just contemplating re-reading those McCaffrey books the other day but I'm afraid they won't have aged well as opposed to my pre-teen memory of them

The only thing I've read by here was an anthologized early Pern story: blanking on titles, but it was from the 60s, orig. in Analog, I think (editor commented that she was one of Campbell's last proteges). Was immediately drawn into complicated intrigue, world-building and customized dragons (bred by lost Earthling colonists to psychic powers and bonding in pairs with humans, 4 life). The reversion or extension of feudalism went with retro-futuristic play of the dragon card in power struggles and other cultural activities. SF with the trappings and flavor of fantasy, so yeah planetary romance, as this article says (I'd just read Dune, so was especially up for McC.):
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/mccaffrey_anne
Though caveat:
McCaffrey and her collaborators and successors have, perhaps inevitably, allowed a touchy-feely Young Adult glow to soften the impact of its first volumes, losing in the process the clarity of her focus on strong women protagonists (see Women in SF), and her remarkable nuts-and-bolts attentiveness to the problems of living and gaining career success in Pern.
So, yet more stuff that gets better the farther back you go, maybe---then again, she wrote other interesting-looking books mentioned here.

There were at least two Logan's Run sequels, I owned the one on here as a kid.

My favourites are the Bradburys and the Delaneys and Earthsea but I'm conflicted about that one

Almost certainly Something Wicked for me

dow (and sfencyclopedia) generally otm about McCaffrey - I re-read some of those books recently and the writing and plotting and general ideas tend to devolve as the series goes on (and on, and on). It's important to remember that there was basically nothing like this before her, this kind of pulpy YA sf fantasy fiction with strong women protagonists, written by a woman. She invented that shit.

Norton's Ordeal In Otherwhere and Year Of The Unicorn pre-dates Pern by a few years. Don't know if they were the first.

idk anybody irl that read Andre Norton. Even as a kid, the only reason I knew the name was because of her foundation's grants to PBS lol.

but sure ok

She seems to have some staying power because recent writers like Aliette De Bodard, Ann Leckie, Craig Laurence Gidney probably a few others I'm forgetting have some love for her.

I didn't like one book I tried recently but I've got a bunch more to get to.

I'm sure the anthology Dow is reading has one of her stories.

Yep, this one: ANDREW NORTH: All Cats Are Gray | 1953. Haven't gotten there yet. Title seems familiar, but I don't recall ever reading anything by her. Very good selections so far.

title is from Mervyn Peake/Ghormenghast

Okay, reminder that I still need to read all that too!
I don't know how her whole life-cycle might compare to those of Norton and McC.'s valiant women, but already, in this 1934 Weird Tales tale I tripped on above, Jirel of Jorey is a badass with emotional conflicts to match or overmatch physical violence, of which there is plenty, in a pulpy yet non-gratuitous way. I don't know that such a combo would have been acceptable in a comparable male character (don't recall Conan having those feels, although creator Robert E. Howard seemed to flame out after his mother's death, right? So maybe Conan did have some perceptible vulnerabilities somewhere--or Red Sonja? Never read stories of her).
Here, at least, Jirel seems like an ancestor of 60s teen angst Peter Parker->Spiderman--and his future peer Paul Atreides, who will have not wanna be no Dune Messiah for the Universe--and all or many such subsequent superheros and heroines.

lol idk if you need to read *all* of it, I stopped after the first Ghormenghast book lol

Yeah, me too.

title is from Mervyn Peake/Ghormenghast

All Cats Are Gray

although huh I guess there is some idiomatic saying that predates Peake? idk

Poor Richard’s Almanac, if not earlier, I would hazard to guess.

No, that's "All Cats Are Gay."

"Like Horses!"

You guys have got to be kidding.

Usually see that quote attributed to Ben Franklin, although Wikipedia seems to have an earlier citation as well.

it's french you rubes

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.linternaute.com/proverbe/75/la-nuit-tous-les-chats-sont-gris/&prev=search

voted tombs of atuan btw, where earthsea starts to get interesting (i.e. not patriarchal).

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Rachel Bloom to thread!

Poor "The Farthest Shore" -- always the bridesmaid, never the bride.