SF collectors of Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, etc. I have news

Cafe Society
1

I’ve finally got GnomePress.com resurrected. Gnome, founded in 1948 by Martin Greenberg and David Kyle, was the leading small f&sf press of the postwar period, publishing I, Robot and the Foundation trilogy, the Conan books, and an all-star list of writers, including Heinlein, Clarke, Simak, Kuttner & Moore, van Vogt, de Camp & Pratt, Hubbard, Leiber, Clement, Williamson, Leinster, Norton, Doc Smith, and on and on.

Despite how central it was to sf history, there’s never been a comprehensive bibliography of the 86 books published. Nor has there ever been a complete listing of the variant editions for collectors. Even the order of publication has been wrong for over four decades. I’m correcting all the lapses. You’ll find on GnomePress.com full bibliographies listed in my new order of publication, in alphabetical order by author, and in alphabetical order by title, with several variants listed nowhere else, including some by Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke. I accompany them with articles detailing the research and logic that went into reordering them. And there is a 15,000 word history of Gnome, compiling all the old and some new information that should be of interest to historians and anyone fascinated by this critical period when sf first became respected as a genre. A history of the genre up to 1948 is next.

I’m putting up the bibliographies first because all dealers and collectors need to have this data. I’m always frustrated by how much is left out of online listings because almost nobody knows anything about Gnome that isn’t listed in Lloyd Currey’s incomplete book of sf first editions. I’ve found new variants no one knew about; I’m positive more could be found if people knew to look at the color of boards. Please help me get the word out.

More is coming. I’ve gathered every scrap of info extant about Gnome and written 150,000 words on it. There will be 86 articles, one on each title, posted in order of publication with color images of every cover and boards, making another history of the press and sf from 1948 to 1962. And articles on every other aspect of its history.

If you have any questions about Gnome or an author or anything in particular you want to see just let me know. And if you have suggestions for how to let the right people know about this, definitely please let me know.

Everything of course is free. Nothing to sell here. Just information that people might want.

2

So are there any Heinlein works out of print? Or were they all recovered from the little houses?

I bookmarked the site, in with Atlas Obscura and the like.

3

Wow. I salute you!

4

Congratulations! This is awesome!

5

I love many of the authors you mentioned so I’m intrigued.

6

Depends on your definitions. Gnome published a couple of Heinlein collections that were never reprinted as is. But all the stories were recycled into other collections. I’d be surprised if any of his works were no longer available in some form.

7

Wow! “We are not worthy, we are not worthy!”

Thanks!!

8

Thanks, guys. I’ve been working on this for years so it’s great to have it appear in public. It’s been a battle. Mostly one of formatting for the internet and finding mistakes after reading something a zillion times. And still another hundred to go.

9

Many thanks.
:slight_smile:

10

Awesome!

11

Nice work! And thank you for doing it.

12

This is awesome.

I’d like to hear more of the story of Gnome Press since I mostly associate it with the forward to Asimov’s Foundation’s Edge which is, shall we say, less than complimentary of the publisher.

13

When I put up the chapters on Asimov’s books, you’ll see a lot of his quotes along the same vein. (In fact, there are some on The History of Gnome Press page.)

Martin H. Greenberg was an academic who learned that a fortune could be made in mining old stories, in several genres, for anthologies. He eventually co-edited what some people think are 2000 titles. (Every source has a different number.) When he contacted Asimov for permissions for an early anthology, Asimov grilled him on whether he was the Marty Greenberg who was a crook (and the editor of seven Gnome anthologies, which were extremely well thought of in the day). After that he was (usually) careful to include the middle initial H. to distinguish himself.

OTOH, Asimov also wrote that “Greenberg was the kind of man you’d show up at a convention ready to murder and somehow wind up buying him a drink.”

14

Amazing! I hadn’t been aware that you had had the site up a while ago, but I went through it last night. An amazing accomplishment. And I recall that I was impressed simply that you had copies of each of the Gnome press books. Thi8s is orders of magnitude beyond that.

15

Am reading through the History section, and enjoying. Thank you, Mr. Mapcase.

16

What about the infamous “three stinkeroos”? I thought that those had never been seen by anyone but a few of his friends and the editors who rejected them?

17

Those were published back in 2005 in the collection Off the Main Sequence. I believe someone on this Board was involved

18

The three stinkeroos are listed here site: Robert A. Heinlein - Archives - The RAH FAQ

None of them were rejected - each was published in one of the lesser SF magazines of the time; Heinlein hated them enough that he never republished them while he was alive, though

Congratulations and thank you to @Exapno_Mapcase on the Gnome Press work

19

From 1937 through the end of WWII, there were an average of 4-6 sf magazines on the stands at any one time, although you would need to live around Times Square to spot them all. Probably 90% or more of the sf remembered today was published in John W. Campbell’s Astounding (and its fantasy companion Unknown). That means that five issues a month of sf, 250,000 words that were even at the time considered to be utter dreck, was what the world was exposed to. SF was considered to be droolings from illiterates for illiterates. Every mainstream reference was utterly negative until the atomic bomb dropped, after which Campbell looked like a forecasting genius and sf garnered instant raves from the same magazines. (I’ll put up my History of the Genre soon, which talks at great length about this reversal. Too great, probably.)

Gnome made all its money picking Campbell’s issues down to the bones to reprint them as collections and anthologies and “novels.” The owner, Marty Greenberg, obviously never felt comfortable with F&SF and Galaxy when they took over the field in the 1950s. So when the mine ran out, the hits stopped but he kept publishing for another decade.

Nobody remembers today but the field was at its lowest point in 1960, with veterans fleeing for other genres. Not one person saw a brand new group of writers making sf a top genre by the end of the 1960s. (Almost exactly like rock ‘n’ roll.)

I find Gnome fascinating not so much for what it published, but for the way it mirrors the story of the field so perfectly. Gnome rode the post-war wave like a champion surfer until the crest broke in 1953 and the mainstream turned against sf again with the same virulence. The New York Times Book Review had a semi-regular sf column from about 1949 to 1953 and then not again for many decades. Nobody else talks about this, but it mesmerizes me as a cultural historian.

20

I had to battle through some formatting issues, but The History of the Genre is now up.

I’ve also uploaded the first three Books articles, on The Carnelian Cube, The Porcelain Magician, and The Thirty-first of February, so you can see what those are like.

Because of the issues, please let me know if you see anything that looks weird or you can’t get to the page. Especially on phones. Thanks.