Tag: Walter Tevis

The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction – Ninth Series, Edited by Robert P. Mills – 1958 (1959) [Edmund A. Emshwiller] [Revised post…]

Great cover art by Emsh (Edmund Emshwiller) from 1959: Colorful, directly representational, complex, and dynamic.  Not tied to any specific story in the anthology, the art seems (?) to imply a kind of progression: from chimpanzee, to man-in-gray-flannel-suit (Don Draper in an off moment?), to an astronaut, to a kind of fearsome, glowing, lightningy, greenish-blue energy-dragon looking thing.  

The astronaut especially stands out: In his left hand he’s carrying some kind of weapon, as if arrayed for battle, or, an ambiguously sciencey probe.  If you look closely at the blue and red buttoned-box on his chest, you’ll notice the letters EMSH – as individual letters on the box – which represents Emshwiller’s logo.  This was typical of Emshwiller, for he cleverly and unobtrusively incorporated this abbreviation into all his compositions, in lieu of an actual signature at bottom.    

Like other Ace science-fiction anthologies, the title page includes a composition – this one by Jack Gaughan.

(The cover scan in this post is an update from the original, which appeared in June of 2017 and featured a rather worn and creased cover.  You can see the original image at the bottom of the post.)    

Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes

A Different Purpose, by Kim Bennett

Ralph Wollstonecraft Hedge: A Memoir, by Ron Goulart

“All You Zombies- ”, by Robert A. Heinlein

Casey Agonisties, by R.M. McKenna

Eastward Ho!, by William Tenn

Soul Mate, by Lee Sutton

What Rough Beast, by Damon Knight

Far From Home, by Walter S. Tevis

Invasion of the Planet of Love, by George P. Elliott

Dagon, by Avram Davidson

Fact, by Winston P. Sanders

No Matter Where You Go, by Joel Townsley Rogers

The Willow Tree, by Jane Rice

The Pi Man, by Alfred Bester

The Man Who Lost the Sea, by Theodore Sturgeon

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June 19, 2017 – 134

The Man Who Fell to Earth, by Walter Tevis – 1963 (1986) [Unknown Artist]; 1990 [Tim O’Brien]

He was sick; sick from the long,
dangerous trip he had taken,
sick from all the medicine – the pills,
the inoculations, the inhaled gases – sick from worry,
the anticipation of crisis,
and terribly sick from the awful burden of his own weight. 
He had known for years that when the time came,
when he would finally land and begin to effect that complex,
long-prepared plan, he would feel something like this. 
This place, however much he had studied it,
however much he had rehearsed his part in it,
was so incredibly alien – the feeling,
now that he could feel – the feeling was overpowering. 
He lay down in the grass and became very sick.

He was not a man; yet he was very much like a man. 
He was six and a half feet tall,
and some men are even taller that that;
his hair was as white as that of an albino,
yet his face was a light tan color;
and his eyes a pale blue. 
His frame was improbably slight,
his features delicate, his fingers long,
thin,
and the skin almost translucent, hairless. 
There was an elfin quality to his face,
a fine boyish look to the wide, intelligent eyes,
and the white,
curly hair now grew a little over his ears. 
He seemed quite young.

Yet he did have eyelashes,
eyebrows,
opposed thumbs,
binocular vision,
and a thousand of the physiological features of a normal human. 
He was incapable of warts;
but stomach ulcers, measles and dental caries could affect him. 
He was human; but not, properly, a man. 
Also, man like, he was susceptible to love,
to fear,
to intense physical pain and to self-pity.

____________________

(1990 Book-of-the-Month Club hardcover edition, art by Tim O’Brien)