Science Fiction Club Book Preview and Mail Order Zine "Things to Come" Archive, 1972-73

Science Fiction Book Club

Archive

Science Fiction Book Club promotional zine archive, 1972 to 1973. Six trifold booklets with previews and mail order forms for new speculative fiction, including works by John Brunner, Clifford D. Simak, Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle, and contributors to the Nebula Award and Science Fiction Hall of Fame series, with additional advertisements for works by Ursula K. Le Guin, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, James Blish, Harlan Ellison, and Michael Moorcock as the club’s monthly selections. Full page cover illustrations and interior display art records the Science Fiction Book Club distinctive mid-century sci-fi/fantasy aesthetics.

Things To Come. Garden City, New York: The Science Fiction Book Club, August 1972 to December 1973. Six illustrated issues. Trifold booklets printed front and back, six pages per booklet. 7.75 x 5 inches. Archive includes:

[1] Things To Come, August 1972. The cover promotes John Brunner’s From This Day Forward. Also advertises Edmund Cooper’s The Overman Culture, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, René Barjavel’s The Ice People, Erich von Däniken’s Gods from Outer Space, and collections by Ray Bradbury, K. Laumer, Poul Anderson, Frank Herbert, Gordon R. Dickson, and Harlan Ellison.

[2] Things To Come, March 1973. The cover announces Nebula Award Stories Seven, edited by Lloyd Biggle, Jr., with a dark fantasy cityscape signed “R. Lons.” A feature promotes David Gerrold’s time travel novel The Man Who Folded Himself. Also advertises work by Poul Anderson, Katherine MacLean, Robert Silverberg, George Zebrowski, Kate Wilhelm, R. A. Lafferty, Steven Goldin, Gardner R. Dozois, Joanna Russ, and Doris Piserchia.

[3] Things To Come, April 1973. The cover promotes Clifford D. Simak’s Cemetery World with a blue and black image of a spacecraft above a vast necropolis. The central spread pairs the novel with Flashing Swords! #1, edited by Lin Carter and featuring Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, and Carter; the outer panels advertise works by Wilson Tucker, Isaac Asimov, David Gerrold, Robert Sheckley, Robert Silverberg, and Harry Harrison.

[4] Things To Come, May 1973. The cover announces Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two A, edited by Ben Bova. The feature promotes Gérard Klein’s The Overlords of War, translated by John Brunner. Also advertises Poul Anderson, John W. Campbell, Robert A. Heinlein, C. M. Kornbluth, Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Eric Frank Russell, Cordwainer Smith, H. G. Wells, and Jack Williamson.

[5] Things To Come, June 1973. The cover presents Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two B, also edited by Ben Bova. The interior names Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Algis Budrys, Theodore Cogswell, E. M. Forster, Frederick Pohl, James H. Schmitz, T. L. Sherred, Wilmar H. Shiras, Clifford D. Simak, and Jack Vance, and pairs the anthology with Andre Norton’s Forerunner Foray.

[6] Things To Come, December 1973. The cover advertises The Inferno by Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle, with a catastrophic orange and black image of London beneath a blazing sky, signed “D. K. Stone.” The central spread promotes Robert Silverberg’s Chains of the Sea, including stories by Gardner R. Dozois and Gordon Eklund, while the outer panels advertise Philip José Farmer, Damon Knight, Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Michael Moorcock, Edward L. Ferman, Gordon R. Dickson, and Gérard Klein.

The Science Fiction Book Club was a mail order book club established in 1953. The club advertised and distributed canonical anthologies, contemporary experiments and discounted classics. These issues include claims for the Science Fiction Hall of Fame volumes as chosen by members of the Science Fiction Writers of America and descriptions of the Nebula Awards as determined by professional writers. Their mail order format preserves the mechanics of genre circulation before chain bookstores and online retail displaced the mail order club model. Light to moderate toning, edge wear, handling creases, scattered soiling, and several short marginal tears. Overall good to very good condition. A six issue record of the Science Fiction Book Club's advertising and mail order organ for the expanding American science fiction readership of the early 1970s.

Item #23709

Price: $550.00