Science Fiction Book Club Preview and Mail Order Zine "Things to Come" Full 1996 Year Run Archive of 13 Issues

Science Fiction Club Archive

Archive

Science Fiction Book Club promotional zine archive full year run, 1996. Thirteen booklets (twelve monthly issues and one special collector's issue) with previews and mail order forms for new speculative fiction, including works by George R. R. Martin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Dan Simmons, Connie Willis, Robert Jordan, Susan Cooper, Alfred Bester, and Joan D. Vinge. Full page cover illustrations and interior display art records the Science Fiction Club distinctive mid-century sci-fi/fantasy aesthetics.

Things To Come. The Science Fiction Book Club, Indianapolis: Book Club Service Center, 1996. Thirteen illustrated, staple bound booklets, each approximately 15 to 25 pages. 7.75 x 5 inches. Archive includes:

[1] January 1996. Featured selections Mercedes Lackey’s Storm Rising and Kevin J. Anderson’s Star Wars: Darksaber, with Jody A. Lee’s jacket art reproduced across the cover and opening spread.

[2] February 1996, Special Expanded Issue. Dan Simmons’s Endymion and C. S. Friedman’s Crown of Shadows, with Gary Ruddell’s Endymion art extended from the cover into the featured selection.

[3] March 1996. Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton, and Mercedes Lackey’s Tiger Burning Bright, Julian May’s Magnificat, and Donato’s throne room cover composition.

[4] April 1996. Terry Goodkind’s Stone of Tears and Poul Anderson’s Harvest the Fire and All One Universe, with Keith Parkinson’s jacket art and an alternate selection for Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar: Upsetting the Balance.

[5] May 1996. Stephen R. Donaldson’s This Day All Gods Die and Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms, followed by material advertising alternate history, vampire fiction, and P. N. Elrod’s Jonathan Barrett, Gentleman Vampire.

[6] June 1996. Connie Willis’s Futures Imperfect and Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon’s The Silver Gryphon, with notices for Orson Scott Card, James Morrow, and Terry Brooks’s First King of Shannara.

[7] July 1996. Joan D. Vinge’s Dreamfall and Michael Flynn’s Firestar, with Michael Whelan’s Dreamfall jacket art and an alternate selection for Alan Dean Foster’s Dinotopia Lost.

[8] August 1996, Special Expanded Issue. S. P. Somtow’s The Riverrun Trilogy and Timothy Zahn’s Conquerors’ Legacy, accompanied by the club’s announcement of the 1995 Nebula Award winners and offers for John Clute and Peter Nicholls’s The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

[9] September 1996. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Exile’s Song and Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection, advertised as containing five Hugo and three Nebula nominees.

[10] October 1996. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Blue Mars and George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, placing Martin’s first Westeros novel within the club’s ordinary monthly sales cycle before the series acquired its later audience.

[11] November 1996, Special Expanded Issue. Richard Bachman’s The Regulators, C. J. Cherryh’s Cloud’s Rider, and Lois McMaster Bujold’s Memory, with additional full page offers for Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.

[12] December 1996. Robert Jordan’s A Crown of Swords and Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire, with a Wheel of Time series synopsis and Joel Rosenberg’s The Silver Stone as the featured alternate.

[13] Special Collectors’ Issue, 1996. Susan Cooper’s five volume The Dark Is Rising omnibus and Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination, followed by a “Secrets of the Trade” section advertising Isaac Asimov’s Magic and Gold, Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Robin Scott Wilson’s Paragons.

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. The mail order format preserves the mechanics of genre circulation in the early days of chain bookstores and online retail displacing the mail order club model. Light handling wear and occasional edge rubbing; November issue with a torn and creased upper right corner; contents otherwise complete. Overall very good condition. A complete annual record of the Science Fiction Book Club's mail distributed catalog network.

Item #23717

Price: $450.00