Gollancz Yellow Jackets

[Who's Wee Dug]

There must be specialists on the Net. What about Charing Cross Road?

You would be wasting your time there as no-one specializes in SF/FANTASY there anymore they would just give you a general fiction price for if even they bought it. Try Cold Tonnage books or Porcupine books or even Abe books.

 

[daveac]

I was just reminiscing about my high school library and the fine SF selection they had in the very late 70s. A lot were Gollancz hard covers in a distinctive plain yellow dust jacket, with (if my memory serves me correctly) purple titles. I haven't seen one in years. Does anyone have any of these haunting their bookshelves? I'd love to know the titles.

I agree - it was easy to pick them out on the book cases.

I even bought a few from the library went they were updating.

Just to my left is 'Starburst' by Frederik Pohl

Cheers, daveac

 

[antiloquax]

I was talking about the Yellow Gollancz books with my father-in-law who is a big fan of SF.

I've spent a little while online looking for a list of titles they published. So far I haven't found exactly what I am looking for, although it was interesting to learn that 2011 is their 50th anniversary. To celebrate this Orion (who bow own Gollancz) have had a vote for the top 10 titles and these will be available next month.
I've also found that they are going to make the "Encycopedia of Science Fiction" available online. Which is a good thing.
They are also launching an SF "Gateway" dedicated to making available out of print titles in a digital format.

Anyway, my original thought was that if anyone knew of a list of all the Gollancz SF books, that would be very useful. It might help resolve some of those conversations with my father-in-law which begin: "Do you remember that SF novel in which ..."
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[GOLLUM]

I was talking about the Yellow Gollancz books with my father-in-law who is a big fan of SF.

I've spent a little while online looking for a list of titles they published. So far I haven't found exactly what I am looking for, although it was interesting to learn that 2011 is their 50th anniversary. To celebrate this Orion (who bow own Gollancz) have had a vote for the top 10 titles and these will be available next month.

I've also found that they are going to make the "Encycopedia of Science Fiction" available online. Which is a good thing.

I have hard copies of both the SF and Fantasy Encyclopedias..they are excellent reference books for anyone interested in Genre fiction. You'll find anythnig with John Clute's name against it is usually going to mean a high quality publication. Having met him before he can be a tad...opinionated?....but he generally knows his stuff and is very well read from my experience. Thanks for raising this exciting piece of Genre news.

Pound for pound I still feel the current Masterwork series (SF or Fantasy) is superior to the yellow jackets as good as a number of those titles are and subsequently I only have a few of the latter. As much as I like their work, I was a little surprised to see that Rothfuss and Lynch made it into the top 10 VG anniversary list of 'classics' albeit I understand this was based upon what I presume was voting from the general SFF community?

 

[Extollager]

Ooo, I don't know... I shy away from the trap of collecting a whole series. For one thing, in almost any series (e.g. Ballantine Fantasy) there are some titles that probably are not very good. If one does collect a whole series one begins with the cheap ones but can end up spending a lot for those last few titles. For example, my understanding is that the Ballantine edition of Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday is relatively rare:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Sea...ed=all&sortby=17&sts=t&tn=thursday&x=104&y=18

The novel itself is easy to find in inexpensive editions other than the Ballantine. So if I were committed to the BAF series, I'd spend a lot basically for a nice-looking paperback -- not for the story as such.

My own preference, and perhaps it leads me sometimes to spend an extra dollar or two, is not to buy series, but to buy "old" editions of books I want to read. For example, I may have paid a little more than I had to, for my copy of Asimov's Pebble in the Sky, because I chose a vintage paperback. But some of those older sf books have kind of nifty cover art; and conversely some of the more recent editions just are not appealing.

This is the edition I have:

http://www.goldenageofscifi.com/category/pebble-in-the-sky-by-isaac-asimov-1950/

Versus something like this:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Fra...://isbn.abebooks.com/bwk/27/55/0553293427.jpg

 

[thatollie]

I know exactly what you mean.
http://www.brucepennington.co.uk/

 

[blacknorth]

Pound for pound I still feel the current Masterwork series (SF or Fantasy) is superior to the yellow jackets as good as a number of those titles are and subsequently I only have a few of the latter.

Could you clarify why you think the Masterworks series is superior to the Gollancz yellowjackets? For one thing, most of the masterworks were originally published by Gollancz as yellow jackets - so the Masterworks series is really only a collection of yellowjackets greatest hits.

 

[Rodders]

I love the yellow jackets and when i started working in Security and was reading a lot, the Gollancz yellow jackets were my main source of new SF.

Coincidentally, i nearly bought the Aldiss's Hellconia series omnibus in the yellow jacket yesterday.