More SF joins the ranks that cover my shelves, from a Jack Vance Demon Princes sequence novel to a promising Orbit anthology with early Vernor Vinge, Carol Emshwiller, Harlan Ellison, etc.
And the covers! Powers and Lehr at their best…
And what happened to SF art the 80s? (the Rudy Rucker novel cover terrifies — in a bad way).
As always, thoughts/comments are appreciated!
1.The Palace of Love, Jack Vance (serialized 1966)
(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1967 edition)
From the back cover: “Kirth Gersen had dedicated his life to revenge–to killing, one by one, each of the five Demon Princes who had murdered his parents in the historic Mount Pleasant Massacre.
Two Demon Princes were dead, three were left.
Wealthy and unrelenting, Gersen spares no expense as he journeys from the sinister planet of the poison-masters to the slave city of Sabra to learn the whereabouts of his quarry… Viole Falushe.
Braving one hair-raising obstacle after another, Gersen tracks down the elusive Falushe at the strange please temple known as the Palace of Love, where at last their deadly confrontation takes place…”
2. Orbit 4, ed. Damon Knight (1968) (MY REVIEW)
(Paul Lehr’s cover for the 1968 edition)
From the back cover: “In ‘Windsong’ Kate Wilhelm paints a disturbing picture of symbiosis between computers and human beings. ‘Probably cause,’ by Charles L. Harness, depicts a presidential assassin brought to trial on evidence given by a clairvoyant. And in ‘One At a Time,’ R. A. Lafferty offers a way of stretching out a man’s life-span to hundreds of years.
Also included are stories by Harlan Ellison, Jacob Transure, Carol Emshwiller, James Sallis, Robert Silverberg and Vernor Vinge.”
3. The Masters of Solitude, Parke Godwin and Marvin Kaye (serialized 1977)
(Uncredited cover for the 1979 edition)
From the back cover: “WAR WAS THE ONLY HOPE FOR SURVIVAL.
The Plague was once again upon the people of the Forest–a pagan world of sensuous goys governed by the covens, tribes of hunters and magicians. They were separated by ancient rites and bloody clashes, but the ravages of this unstoppable death united them in a quest for the cure.
THE CITY HELD SURVIVAL’S SECRET.
It was a megalopolis hundreds of miles long, purged of passion, guided by technology, and guarded by the Self-Gate–an electronic mirror that shredded minds. Their medicine was the cure, by eons of silence separated the City and the Forest. Except once, a woman…
AND SURVIVAL WAS TO BE WON IN SOLITUDE.
Only once in history had a dweller left the City–a woman in search of a legendary weapon. Now her son–wanderer, seer, madman–wielded the magic of his mind and the awesome weapon to soar beyond the blood fields of combat to wage the final war–a solitary warrior against civilization.”
4. Software, Rudy Rucker (1982)
(Joe DeVito’s cover for the 1987 edition)
From the back cover: “THE LAST GASP OF THE BABY BOOMERS. It’s 2020 and the entire state of Florida has been turned over to millions of pheezers (freaky geezers), who are mostly content staying stoned on geriatric acid, grooving on old tunes and saving up for artificial organs.
But one pheezer still has big ideas. Cobb Anderson has just been contacted by the rebellious bopper robots he fathered and helped to free back in the 20th century. They made him an offer he can’t refuse–the ultimate high–immortality!”