Science Fiction of the 20th Century - An Illustrated History by Robinson, Frank M - 1999

Collectors Press. As New in Fine dust jacket. 1999. Hardcover. 1888054298 . This specific hardback book is in like new condition with a hard board cover that has sharp edges and corners and has a tight binding. The pages are clean, crisp, unmarked and uncreased. The dust jacket is in fine condition with little wear if any. We package all books in custom cardboard book boxes for shipment and ship daily with tracking numbers.; "The book is a lavish, beautifully put-together work, with plenty of big colorful reproductions of classic pulp and contemporary cover art. There are a few mistakes (no, Cronenberg didn't direct the original Vincent Price version of 'The Fly'), but there's really one simple reason why I couldn't bring myself to give this book a 5-star recommendation. After having read it from cover to cover, there was a slight bad taste left in my mouth. Why? Because the author/editor, James M. Robinson, seemed a bit too relentless in his attempts to establish his own reputation and history in the field. Now I've read a LOT of science fiction in my time, but before I picked up this book I'd never even heard of James Robinson. So I was surprised by how often I came across reproductions of his book covers and/or mentions of his work. And they weren't presented in any sort of a 'personal note' type of format, nor do the captions for the illustrations even identify that the person who wrote the book being shown is the same as the editor who chose to include the image in this history. Rather, in most cases, you'll see Robinson's work discussed from the same third-person perspective as the other important works that surround it. This even extends, in one case, to including the work of another minor author apparently because it affords the opportunity to mention the fact that they'd collaborated with Robinson on OTHER projects. A quick count reveals cover reproductions of three of Robinson's novels (i.e. ALL of his science-fiction novels - he wrote a couple of techno-thrillers as well), a reproduction of a movie poster for a film based on one of those novels, and about five other mentions of his work in the text. A few of these would be fine - and the reproduction of one of his self-produced fanzines from the 1940's is a nice piece of nostalgia that certainly establishes his love of the genre. But it really felt like Robinson is trying to present himself as one of the more significant contributors to the genre. Personally, I just don't feel that Frank M. Robinson's fiction should be discussed more often than the work of Poul Anderson, or Robert Bloch, or Hal Clement, or Lester Del Rey or (to move to the end of the alphabet) Jack Vance or Gene Wolfe or Roger Zelazny. (Strangely enough, if you look up Frank M. Robinson in the index at the back of the book, he's not even listed. (Perhaps to make comparisons like this one a bit harder to do? Or maybe it's just sloppy indexing - SPIDER Robinson isn't listed in the index either, yet he's mentioned at least three times in the body of the book). At any rate, it really IS a beautiful book, and if you love this stuff as much as I do then you won't be disappointed by the overall package."; Folio 13" - 23" tall; 256 pages .