Friday, September 19, 2008

Gateway To Paradise

There aren't enough superilatives to do justice to the fine science fiction and fantasy books Haffner Press has been publishing for several years.

The latest is Gateway To Paradise, the sixth volume of The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson. This is my favorite Williamson so far because it contains the original novella that later became Darker Than You Think" still, to me, one of the five best novels ever written about the werewolf culture. Also included is the novel "Gateway To Paradise" which became one of the earliest of the Ace Double Novel, Dome Around Americas. An exciting adventure story and an grim reminder of Cold War days. There is an afterward in which Williamson discusses the stories and the era that produced them and a forward by Frederik Pohl who talks about his friend, a man credited with developing modern concepts of artifcial intellogence, anti-matter and genetic engineering. Several other tight, colorful pulp stories fill out the book.

Like previous volumes in this series, the full-color endpapers reproduce the original magazine covers (with artwork by pulp masters including Belarski, Cartier, Rogers, Bergey and Scott) of the stories herein, and the binding is designed to match the 1940s editions of Williamson's works published by Fantasy Press. The book is smythe-sewn, bound in full cloth, and printed on acid-neutral paper, with full-color endpapers reproducing the original pulp magazine cover art.

A gift for yourself or for a friend over the holidays. A fine addition to a fine line of books.

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