Posts Tagged ‘Purple Unicorn Books’
Sunday, August 21st, 2022
The final two items from the private seller culling his collection. Both of these were $5 each.
McCutheon, Marc. The Online Price Guide to Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror. McCutheon, 2000. First edition trade paperback original (essentially just side-stapled 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheets), a Fine- copy with slight bend at top front corners. An odd self-published volume claiming to list online prices realized for a wide variety of SF/F/H books, and while the authors hit most of the biggest names, the selection is otherwise somewhat random and haphazard. Has some tidbits for things that are potentially useful, but fails to provide a lot of title-specific first edition point information (like the various dj states of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot). I can see this being slightly useful for a real newbie the year it was published, but is of extremely dubious utility now. An oddity I bought cheap just because I had never heard of it and there was almost no information about it on the internet.
Wells, Stuart W., III. The Science Fiction Heroic Fantasy Author index. Purple Unicorn books, 1978. First edition trade paperback original (simultaneous with a hardback edition), a Very Good+ copy with 1/2″ tear at bottom of front spine-join, with light soiling along spine. A reference listing of genre books that was (like Marshall B. Tymn’s American Fantasy and Science Fiction: Toward a Bibliography of Works Published in the United States, 1949—1973) born obsolete, already superseded by far more comprehensive reference works published the same year. What was in the water that everyone rushed their SF/F/H bibliographical works into print in the 1978-1980 timeframe? You had Currey’s indispensable Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors: A Bibliography of First Printings of Their Fiction, you had the Firebell update of Bleiler’s Checklist, you Locke’s Spectrum of Fantasy, the first edition of Nichol’s Science Fiction Encyclopedia, the first two volume’s of Tuck’s own SF Encyclopedia, Tymn etc.’s Fantasy Literature, Miller’s Jack Vance bibliography Fantasms and even the Magill’s Survey of Science Fiction set. Extend it just a little into the early 80s and you get Bleiler’s Guide to Supernatural Fiction and the Levack bibliographies. And all this was just before the advent of desktop publishing.
Tags:Books, Fantasy, Purple Unicorn Books, reference works, Science Fiction, science fiction bibliography, Stuart W. Wells III
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