The Great Gnome Press Science Fiction Odyssey

I had a big box arrive two days ago, a rather special big box that I had been really looking forward to, and there’s a small but interesting story behind it.

I had an email out of the blue from one Brian Pearce.  The email’s subject was Gnome Press, by way of Red Jacket Press. I knew who Red Jacket Press were as I have referenced them a couple of times here.  In case you don’t, they are a small publishing company who specialize in faithful reproductions of early out-of print specialty press titles such as those by Gnome Press. You can find their site here.  Anyway, Brian came across my site and decided to send me an email.  He introduced himself and Red Jacket Press and explained how they came to be.  It turns out that Gnome Press co-founder David A. Kyle is his father-in-law!!  Wow.  Brian nicely offered to send me copies of the two GP books he has in print – Judgment Night by C.L. Moore and Wilmar Shiras’ Children of the Atom.  He would also include a re-bound jacket-less ex-library copy of City and the Gnome BCE of Sands of Mars.  Great!!  I of course was very enthusiastic about the idea.  So, in the Big Box were those four books plus two more!!  Brian also threw in a copy of another one of their reprint titles, Roads by Seabury Quinn originally from Arkham House, and George O. Smith’s GP title The Path of Unreason.  I am very happy and grateful to say the least!!

Needless to say, I inspected the Gnome reprints very carefully.  I don’t have Judgment Night yet, but I do possess a copy of Children of the Atom – I’ll do a comparison between the two here sometime, and also a mini-Close Up on Judgment Night.  I can tell you though, that these facsimile editions are very, very good.  Beautifully presented with a hard slipcase, I can see a lot of work went into expressing the feel of the original books.

Of course the other books will also make their way onto this blog sooner or later.  They are all fantastic additions to my library.  Thank you very much Brian.

This entry was posted on October 28, 2009 at 8:22 pm and is filed under New Arrivals with tags David A. Kyle. 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.