The Great Gnome Press Science Fiction Odyssey

One of the hardest-to-come-by items from Gnome Press is the alternative jacket for The Forgotten Planet.  I mention it on the GP Trivia page, but in case you can’t be bothered to go and have a look, it’s was the product of a experiment in pitching the books at the juvenile market.  An undertaking that never flew and the jackets were never released ‘on book’ so to speak.  However, they do surface occasionally and one did on eBay a couple of weeks ago.

Harry at Ravenwood Books on eBay kindly allowed me to use his pics here for our interest and information.  Thanks Harry. The jacket came with a slightly soiled copy of the book.  I had a couple of questions about this and was a little concerned about the jacket being a copy.  I put this to the seller and was satisfied with his answers, the book comes from a source he has had no issue with in many previous dealings.  Considering this, and the fact that these covers should have seen no ‘reading use’  (never being released and of interest only to true collectors), as well as that it does make sense to put it on a reading copy of the book to make it easier to safely store and transport or post.

Here they are:

Looks to be in beautiful condition.  Both front and back.  Slightly awkward cover art by Ed Emshwiller.

Why the hell didn’t I bid on this??  I’m going to be kicking myself for I while, I suspect…

No wear down the wrap-around at all.  You can see the condition of the book (Currey ‘D’ binding) vs the jacket, which initially made me think twice.  But as I said, after consideration I had no issue with it.

It finished up going for $102 – an excellent price I thought.  Congrats to the winning bidder.

This entry was posted on June 15, 2010 at 12:20 pm and is filed under 1954, Close Up with tags Ed Emshwiller, Murray Leinster, 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.