The Great Gnome Press Science Fiction Odyssey

Martin Greenberg, editor
1950

A little bit against my better judgment, I bought another copy of Men Against the Stars.  The attractions were price, condition and second state jacket.  The price was good – only $16, the condition of the book itself is NF and the jacket is VG (with a proviso), so I have both states of the jacket now.  I’ll compare the two books briefly here.  Click the pics to step through to larger images.
The newer copy is on the left.  You can see it’s a bit brighter and has much less wear.  That strange cracky/flaky wear I mentioned in the initial Close Up is evident on this jacket too, but to a much lesser extent.  I’ve been thinking about that and I suspect it might be a result of such a black-ink-loaded jacket.
With the jacket off, we can really see a difference.
Apologies for the inconsistency, but the newer acquisition is on the right here now.  It’s very obvious that the spine is much cleaner and it’s a little difficult to tell, but the boards are a lot sharper and in like new condition.
The other major area of interest is the second state of the jacket.
You just need to check out the vintage of the titles promoted on the back to determine which is which here.  Interestingly, you can see Gnome Press relocated sometime between the printing of these jackets.  Note that unusual wear on the older jacket.
Just a couple of other areas of interest on the more recent copy, a quick peek inside reveals that the pages and, more particularly, the free endpapers and paste-downs are very clean.  No marking at all and only a little discoloration.
In the original Close Up I pointed out and commented on the spotting on the edges of the block.  There is absolutely none here.  Very nice.  The last thing I want to look at is the tape on the inside of the jacket.
Someone has applied reinforcing tape to the wrap- around on the spine.  This is invisible externally, but it does bug me that it’s there.  I hope that over time it’s not detrimental.  It could be special book tape.  I would like to remove it and if anyone has some advice on that it would be appreciated.
All in all, I think it was worth getting this copy.

This entry was posted on June 4, 2009 at 10:08 am and is filed under 1950, Adventures in Science Fiction Series, Close Up, Comparisons with tags Martin Greenberg, Men Against the Stars. 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.