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I was chief of the Air Force's project for investigating UFO reports -- Project Blue Book.It is well known that ever since the first flying saucer was reported in June 1947 the Air Force has officially said that there is no proof that such a thing as an interplanetary spaceship exists. But what is not well known is that this conclusion is far from being unanimous among the military and their scientific advisers because of the one word, proof; so the UFO investigations continue.What constitutes proof? Does a UFO have to land at the River Entrance to the Pentagon, near the Joint Chiefs of Staff offices? Or is it proof when a ground radar station detects a UFO, sends a jet to intercept it, the jet pilot sees it, and locks on with his radar, only to have the UFO streak away at a phenomenal speed? Is it proof when a jet pilot fires at a UFO and sticks to his story even under the threat of court-martial? Does this constitute proof? I'll give you the facts -- all of the facts. And you can decide for yourself. -- Edward J. Ruppelt

New Texas, the Lone Star Planet: its citizens figure that name about says it all. The Solar League ambassador to the Lone Star Planet has the unenviable task of convincing New Texans that a s'Srauff attack is imminent, and dangerous. Unfortunately it's common knowledge that the s'Srauff are evolved from canine ancestors -- and not a Texan alive is about to be scared of a talking dog! But unless he can get them to act, and fast, there won't be a Texan alive, scared or otherwise!

Here John Sheppard is a preacher who becomes good friends with the Venters -- who always seemed haunted. Eventually, Mr. Venters reveals that he was once a horse rider for a woman named Jane Withersteen -- a rich Mormon -- and her adopted daughter Fay Larkin. However, Jane's churchmen were displeased with her association with non-Mormons -- and the evil Mormons drove them into a narrow valley, and trapped them there. Venters had always intended on returning to the valley to search for the Jane and Fay, circumstances have prevented him from doing it. John Sheppard is fascinated by this story and wants to what he can to relieve the haunted look he sees in the eyes of Mr. and Mrs. Venters -- so he attempts to discover what happened to Jane and Fay. He discovers that Fay Larkin may still be alive -- and that her life has become the stuff of adventure, including kidnapping! And that somehow she has the strength to survive the most terrible of circumstances. . . .

Blurbs for books. Days are we write so many of them we could just . . . well. But it's clear we aren't the only ones who feel this way.H. Beam Piper sold "Crossroads of Destiny" to Fantastic Universe Science Fiction, which published it in their July 1959 issue. "No wonder he'd been so interested in the talk of whether our people accepted these theories!" they said of the story. We aren't at all certain what they meant by that, but you'll probably have a clue.The blurb for "Hunter Patrol" (Amazing Stories, May 1959 -- a collaboration with John J. McGuire) is equally oblique: "Readers who remember the Hon. Stephen Silk, diplomat extraordinary, in Lone Star Planet (FU, March 1957), later published as A Planet for Texans (Ace Books), will find the present story a challenging departure -- this possibility that the history we know may not be absolute. . . ."On the other hand, when "Dearest" appeared in Weird Tales, in March, 1951, the folks at that magazine blurbed it, "Many men have dreamed of world peace, but none have been able to achieve it. If one man did have that power, could mankind afford to pay the price?" An interesting thought, we say. And it seems to us that they had a lot more to say about the story than the SF mags did (above).On the other other hand (it makes us feel like such Moties to say that), when True: The Man's Magazine, published "Rebel Raider" in December 1950 they said, "Jeb Stuart left John Singleton Mosby behind Northern lines 'to look after loyal Confederate people.' But before the war was over, Mosby did a lot more than that. . . ." (We think they actually read the piece before they published it, by golly!)And on the last hand of all, there's no evidence that anybody at the house that published The Science-Fictional Sherlock Holmes, (1960 -- another collaboration with John J. McGuire) even read "The Return" -- they didn't say a word about it! Harrumph.

Evelina and Ann Eliza are two spinster sisters living together in a one bedroom apartment. They mend clothes to make money though they run a small shop where they sell bonnets and preserves that they've made themselves. Their lives are ordinary, if not a bit dull. Then Mr. Ramy, the clock maker, enters their lives and it isn't long before Evelina marries him. Right after the wedding day, Mr. Ramy takes Evelina away, leaving Ann Eliza guessing about Evelina's whereabouts. She must delve into Mr. Ramy's past in order to find her sister -- for Evelina may be in too much trouble for her to get out alone.

From "The Last Dream of Bwona Khubla":From steaming lowlands down by the equator, where monstrous orchids blow, where beetles big as mice sit on the tent-ropes, and fireflies glide about by night like little moving stars, the travelers went three days through forests of cactus till they came to the open plains where the oryx are.When Bwona Khubla had gone there three years ago, what with malaria with which he was shaking all over, and what with disgust at finding the water-hole dry, he had decided to die there, and in that part of the world such decisions are always fatal. In any case he was overdue to die, but hitherto his amazing resolution, and that terrible strength of character that so astounded his porters, had kept him alive and moved his safari on.There is not doubt that he was a fearful man. . . .*This peculiar collection is a very real treat: we envy you the reading of it. Among the treasures in this volume are "The Last Dream of Bwona Khubla," "How the Office of Postman Fell Vacant in Offord-Under-the-Wold," "The Prayer of Boob Aheera," "East and West," "A Pretty Quarrel," "How the Gods Avenged Meoul Ki Ning," "The Gift of the Gods," "The Sack of Emeralds," "The Old Brown Coat," "An Archive of the Older Mysteries," and "A City of Wonder," and a section he called Beyond the Fields We Know, which included "Publisher's Note," "Idle Days on the Yann," "A Shop in Go-By Street," and "The Avenger of Perdóndaris."

The book depicts working class poverty, the lack of social supports, harsh and unpleasant living and working conditions and a hopelessness among many workers. These elements are contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption of people in power. A review by the writer Jack London called it, "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of wage slavery."This is the novel that Upton Sinclair used to show horrific practices in the meatpacking industry in the first part of the twentieth century. Like most of Sinclair, the book ultimately becomes a paen to socialism. But the man could write, whatever his politics were, and ewww!, the meatpackers were up to no damn good at all anyway. Highly recommended.

Instead of flying straight to that old nest, he first flew over the tree so that he could look down into it. Right away he saw something that made him gasp and blink his eyes. It was quite large and white, and it looked -- it looked very much indeed like an egg! Do you wonder that Blacky gasped and blinked? You know Blacky has a weakness for eggs. The more he thought about it, the hungrier he grew. . . !

This book tells the tale of Eric, an orphan forced to work long hours in a cannery until one morning he decides to explore the woods behind the factory. There he finds refuge and love at the home of Helma and her daughter, Ivra. Helma is a human, but Ivra is a half-fairy child and introduces Eric to snow witches, bird fairies, wind creatures, forest children and the magic of the world around them all.

From the author's introduction: "The stir and tumult of a camp do not favor calm or sustained thought, and whatever is written herein must be regarded simply as the immediate effect produced by men powerfully moved, and scenes swiftly changing upon what I hope is a truth-seeking mind." He described his impressions of the Boer army when he first saw it, as a recently taken captive: What men they were, these Boers! I thought of them as I had seen them in the morning riding forward through the rain-thousands of independent riflemen, thinking for themselves, possessed of beautiful weapons, led with skill, living as they rode without commissariat or transport or ammunition column, moving like the wind and supported by iron constitutions and a stern, hard Old Testament God.

The change of color is likely and a difference a very little difference is prepared. Sugar is not a vegetable. -- Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein wrote many odd and peculiar texts and this work -- Tender Buttons -- is among the best known of them. Stein's wonderful and peculiar approach to the language seems to focus on sounds and rhythms rather than the sense of words. Abandoning the sense of things, it's said, she attempted to capture "moments of consciousness," independent of time and memory. That may and may not be the case, but over the years, this and many similar works have been described by critics as a "feminist reworking of patriarchal language." We don't know about that, but we do like the work, just as we like Stein.

There be islands in the Central Sea, whose waters are bounded by no shore and where no ships come -- this is the faith of their people. In the mists before the Beginning, Fate and Chance cast lots to decide whose the Game should be; and he that won strode through the mists to MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI and said: "Now make gods for Me, for I have won the cast and the Game is to be Mine." Who it was that won the cast, and whether it was Fate or whether Chance that went through the mists before the Beginning to MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI -- none knoweth.More than eighty books of Lord Dunsany's work were published and his oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays.

At first blush, Widdershins a conventional haunted house story involving an unsuccessful writer, who moves into an empty house in hope that isolation will help his failing creativity. His sensitivity and imagination are enhanced by his seclusion, but his art, his only friend and his sanity are all destroyed in the process. . . .The story can be read as narrating the gradual possession of the protagonist by a mysterious and possessive feminine spirit, or as a realistic description of a psychotic outbreak culminating in catatonia and murder, told from the psychotic subject's point of view. The precise description of the slow disintegration of the protagonist's mind is terrifying in either case.

Throughout his adult life, Blackwood was an occasional essayist for various periodicals. During his late thirties, he relocated back to England and started to write stories of the supernatural. He was successful, writing at least ten original collections of short stories and eventually performing by radio and television to tell them.

"The Happy Prince" In a town where a lot of poor people suffer, a swallow who was left behind after his flock flew off to Egypt for the winter meets the statue of the late "Happy Prince", who in reality has never experienced true happiness. Viewing various scenes of people suffering in poverty from his tall monument, the Happy Prince asks the swallow to take the ruby from his hilt, the sapphires from his eyes, and the golden leaf covering his body to give to the poor.Wilde is a man remembered for plays like "The Importance of Being Ernest," works like "De Profundis" and the scandal that attended it, and of course "The Picture of Dorian Gray" -- but in many respects, this book (and a couple others like it) are Wilde's real treasures. Highly recommended.

Lots of people know that Walter de la Mare was a fantastic poet, but his weird fiction is much less well known. It shouldn't be -- he was a marvelous fantasist, and The Return is a heck of a book. Arthur Lawford, recovering from a long bout with influenza, takes a fateful walk in an old cemetery one afternoon, returning a changed man who neither his wife, nor his friends, nor himself -- recognizes. . . . (Jacketless library hardcover.)

Full of swordplay and daring feats, the novel is considered a classic example of 20th-century pulp fiction. It is also a seminal instance of the planetary romance, a subgenre of science fantasy that became highly popular in the decades following its publication. Its early chapters also contain elements of the Western. The story is set on Mars, imagined as a dying planet with a harsh desert environment. This vision of Mars was based on the work of the astronomer Percival Lowell, whose ideas were widely popularized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

This is a suspenseful novel set in Brooklyn around the time of the end of World War I. It continues the story of Roger Mifflin, the book seller in Parnassus on Wheels. It also details an adventure of Miss Titania Chapman and a young advertising man named Aubrey Gilbert.(Jacketless hardcover intended for the library trade.)