Originally shared by Zenopus Archives
Yesterday's vintage paperback haul: Breakaway: a novelization of the first episode of SPACE:1999 by EC Tubb (who also wrote the Dumarest of Terra series that inspired Traveller), Wishbringer: a novelization of the Infocom Text Adventure game by Craig Shaw Gardner, Quest for the Unicorn's Horn: a 1985 AD&D-compatible Swordquest gamebook by Bill Fawcett (of Mayfair games), and Vols 4, 6 and 8 from the famous Ace/Lancer Conan series.
Very cool! Never heard of Swordquest - is that a choose your own adventure type book?
ReplyDeleteI had that Conan Userper poster in high school. Also the one with the frost giants.
ReplyDeleteI'm a Howard fanatic.
ReplyDeleteWhat printing are those white-spine Conan's? (I don't do the black-spines, unless I'm "rescuing" them).
Are the white covers un-illustrated, and do they have the Galaxy and Cosmos Magazine ads on the last 2 pages?
The original Frazetta pic (for 'Buccaneer') had Conan choke-holding a Turanian while swinging an axe. I had that poster from the same series Chris Holmes
ReplyDeleteThat was a good one too, as was everything Frazetta did.
ReplyDeleteAlso intrigued by that "SwordQuest" one. At first, from the name, I thought it was tied to the old Atari games!
ReplyDeleteYou can find great info choose-your-own-adventure-type books at gamebooks.org — gamebooks.org - Item - Quest for the Unicorn's Horn - Demian's Gamebook Web Page
ReplyDeletegamebooks.org - Series - Swordquest - Demian's Gamebook Web Page
ReplyDeleteAndy C Nick Monitto The Swordquest books are basically CYA, but more like Fighting Fantasy / Super Endless Quest / Lone Wolf, because you have a character with stats and conduct D&D-like combat with monsters. I also have #4 which I read about 5 years ago. I can't say it was particularly good at integrating the game system with the CYA format. The page that Shannon Appelcline linked (thanks!) talks about some of the flaws with the series. Still they are interesting artifacts of the time when gamebooks were hot.
ReplyDeleteRobert Fairbanks The ACE SF printings with the white covers are unillustrated. There's an ad for ACE Science Fiction on the last page of Vol 6 and the 2nd to last page of Vol 8. The last page of Vol 8 has an ad/order form for Andre Norton's Witch World series. The copyright page has very little info, just giving a date which I think is the same as the Lancer originals. There's no indication of printing number/date. The black cover printing, on the other hand, states 8th printing, Jan 1983.
ReplyDeleteZach H Yeah, they did that.
ReplyDeleteIf the cover has a price of $1.95 (not $2.25) and the spine has no ACE medallion and no notation that it's "SF". Those're the ones I look for.
Also the later printings have larger print.
Gotta have the book # too, and it's gotta be 'boxed'.
ReplyDeleteRobert Fairbanks Is there a particular reason for those? Are they the first ACE printings?
ReplyDelete