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Got it in paperback, many years ago...these books seem to have lapsed from print, like many classics...nor, apparently, have they emerged as e-books yet.
Sometimes I despair for the fans that are just coming up...when I was growing up and gathering these books unto me, there was a lot in print, and there were regular reprints of things...later, I discovered the joy of used bookstores (even worked in one for awhile---"after you've read it, swap it for credit")...but now, if a young kid wants some Gordon R. Dickson (say, on our recommendations), it's "pay a premium price for a good copy."
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Robert Nowall: Got it in paperback, many years ago...these books seem to have lapsed from print, like many classics...nor, apparently, have they emerged as e-books yet.
Sometimes I despair for the fans that are just coming up...when I was growing up and gathering these books unto me, there was a lot in print, and there were regular reprints of things...later, I discovered the joy of used bookstores (even worked in one for awhile---"after you've read it, swap it for credit")...but now, if a young kid wants some Gordon R. Dickson (say, on our recommendations), it's "pay a premium price for a good copy."
I agree with that when it comes to buying a brand new book, but you can find the older classics at almost any used book store. I know my favorite used book store gets a lot of Dickson's books from time to time. Same thing with other well known authors. And a whole lot cheaper than the news stand price.
But you said a "good" copy. Yes, sometimes a used book isn't in pristine condition, but the ones I've bought are still in good shape... and collectible.
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I can't vouch for "collectible"---I say with exaggerated pride that I've never bought a book I didn't intend to read. Some of what I've picked up was pretty battered.
I do know that the paperback swap shops I found when I wound up in Florida in 1978 weren't available / accessible to me in the decade before when I lived in upstate New York...there were used bookstores, but they were more for hardcovers and rare editions and such...my means were meager in those days and paperbacks (new or used) were what I could afford.
I more or less abandoned the used bookstore market by the mid-1990s---my means had improved and I could buy brand-new paperbacks and even hardcovers. Also I'd depleted the market, so to speak---I'd bought the books that interested me (at the time), and what I might have bought (say, the real thin paperbacks that cost twenty-five or fifty cents when new) just weren't turning up. There were some things that got away, but, really, not much. I still drop into these stores once in awhile, but not real often.
However, there are other resources. Just today, I learned that Project Gutenberg has made Edgar Pangborn's A Wilderness of Spring available online...this is one of the "ones that got away" from me in my relentless searching as mentioned above...though I'd prefer a proper book, I will make due with what I can get. (And, now that I've realized things like that are available, I'll go looking for a few others.)
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