randy_byers | Image of the Day (Reply)

Yesterday I splurged on a couple of old collectible books, which is something I haven't done in years. Pictured above is a first edition of Garrett P. Serviss' A Columbus of Space. The book was published by D. Appleton and Company in 1911, although the novel was first serialized by Bob Davis in All Story in 1909. Serviss is little remembered today, but he is a fascinating transitional figure in American science fiction. This story of a scientific expedition to Venus on an atomic powered spaceship is full of smart world-building and reads like an imaginary midway point between Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose "Under the Moons of Mars" was serialized in All Story in 1912. The climax foreshadows Asimov's "Nightfall". (This is one of the books that Gernsback reserialized in Amazing as an example of the kind of scientifiction story he was interested in publishing.) I love the cover of this edition, and there are four interior illustrations on color plates that are also wonderful. This may well be the oldest book in my collection now, almost exactly a hundred years old.

I also picked up a first edition of Murray Leinster's Operation: Outer Space, which was published by Fantasy Press in 1954.

I don't know what got into me. A sudden overwhelming rush of book lust. (Well, I had actually been faunching after the Serviss since I spotted it in Bob Brown's latest catalog last weekend, but I couldn't make it to the shop until yesterday.)