r/VintagePaperbacks

title (Re-Birth) and UK title (The Chrysalids) Cover Art by Richard M. Powers

Side note : this book shared the Hugo Award that year with Frank Herbert 's Dune.

Cover illustration by Darrell K Sweet.

Can anyone identify the book Keith Gordon's character in Jaws 2 is reading? Image here.

An all-original anthology in memory of John W. Campbell, featuring an all-star lineup of authors he helped make famous. Illustrations by Frank Kelly Freas (the cover is the first one he did for the magazine in the 1940s (edit: 1953!), later of course made famous by Queen.

David St. John is a pseudonym of E. Howard Hunt of Watergate scandal fame or infamy.

When I read "illustrated", I figured artwork like the cover. How wrong I was! There's photos in there, albeit on the modest side (two are attached).

Enjoy!

Originally published in 1931 (!) as "Sin Preferred", this one would be published again in 1969. Maybe actually worth reading?

Enjoy!

Cover art by Josh Kirby

Cover design not credited.

“After the Rain” is an interesting science fiction novel that is also somewhat of a psychological horror piece as well. It starts out very contemporary of the time, 1955, when an odd, almost mad, scientist develops a way to create rain for drought stricken regions. His experiment goes wrong, and you are not a hundred percent sure if it was the scientist, nature, or God that brings on a flood of Biblical proportions that destroys the world.

The story is told in first person perspective by the main narrator, an English commercial advertisement writer, years later in a kind of memoir style. He and an opera dancer get stranded on a dingy above the streets of England. They eventually come upon a masterfully made raft containing six other survivors, and are permitted to join the lot.

Although it is somewhat of a slow burn, very contemporary of English novels of the age, the story becomes more than just one of simple survival. It gets twisted when a leading member of the crew develops a God syndrome, believing that he is the one whom the flood was created for and the one who was meant to re-establish the world in his right. Anyone that dares challenge his reign, or that he believes is not suitable for the New World Order, becomes an enemy. All-the-while, there is nothing left of the world but a virtually endless sea.

I will admit, this book does read a bit slower than I prefer, but I am so glad I stuck with it. The ending comes at a huge surprise, and it was very well worth reaching.