The Great Gnome Press Science Fiction Odyssey

Murray Leinster
1954

This is a book I have been looking forward to acquiring, and I’m glad to be able to do the Close Up.  I owe Mike at Mars Books & Wood a big thanks for allowing me a bit of flexibility in picking up this and ‘This Fortress World’.  It’s certainly an attractive cover, one of my favorites.  I think I’ll read it next.  There were two different versions of the dust jacket for this book.  See the Reference Errata, Anomalies, Trivia & Other General Info page for more detail on that.  This is one of three books in my library that have come from the library of Gregg and Tina Riehl, you will see their stamping on the first free end paper.  ‘This Fortress World’ and ‘The Shrouded Planet’ being the other two.  There are a couple of small issues we will examine, so lets have a look.

Beautiful cover, nice and bright.  Likewise the boards.

I really like that sprinkling of planets on the front of the boards there.  If you have been following the Close Ups, you’ll know I really appreciate those nice little touches.  The top of the text block is a little dust stained.

And as you can see, the bottom of the block look quite nice.  The block itself hasn’t succumbed to significant browning.

If we compare the head and tail of the spine, we can see that in a similar fashion to the block, the exposed boards at the top of the book have rust-colored spotting and the bottom is quite free of these blemishes.  The dust jacket is in fantastic condition apart from some small wear on the tail and those few nicks at the head.  The only problem is that it is price-clipped.  Darn.

There’s also a bit of glue staining you can see there.  The Riehl’s library stamp is on the front free end paper.  I’m not sure whether I prefer this kind of statement of ownership, or a regular book plate.

It does look quite classy though.  The cover art is credited to Ed Emshwiller as you can see below.

Or more precisely, the jacket design.  I don’t know if that is significant, but the actual art itself proclaims something different.

You can see quite plainly that Ric Binkley’s name graces the cover.  Interesting.  Let’s close the book on this Close Up and look at the clean rear cover and the vital stats.

Year: 1954
Paid: $45
Art: Ed Emshwiller credited, but Ric Binkley’s name on the cover.
Quantity: 5000 copies.
Binding: Currey priority ‘D’ binding. Grey cloth with dark red lettering on the spine. Nice sprinkling of celestial spheres on the front board.
GP Edition Notes: 1st Edition
Comments: A nice copy of this book, very pleasing.  An interesting little tidbit regarding the cover artist.
Expand Upon: wikipedia.com, Internet Speculative Fiction Database

This entry was posted on May 3, 2009 at 4:46 am and is filed under 1954, Close Up with tags Ed Emshwiller, Murray Leinster, Ric Binkley, The Forgotten Planet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.