July 31st 1972 – The Science Fiction Book Club – The Almanac Of The Fantastical

Above is an ad from the UK’s Science Fiction Book Club taken from a summer 1972 edition of The Observer. These adverts appeared in the paper, as far as I can see, once or twice a month, were relatively small, and were placed right at the bottom of one of the The Observer’s book review pages. In short, the Club gave every impression of needing to shepherd its finances carefully, even as they were peddling their wares to the more affluent and literate end of the newspaper market.

The UK Club was very much not to confused with the American company of the same name, whose business clearly operated on a far more substantial scale, as you can see in the scan immediately below, a single page from a 1971 flier:

Both Clubs sold reprint editions in hardback form. In this period, the UK’s SFBC was, self-evidently, selling far less exalted titles. (In the 1950s, the British editions were largely inarguably big-name novels with considerable reputations, but the ratio of the little-known to the famous gradually shifted over the years in favour of the former.) I offer this as yet another example of the gulf between what was readily available and affordable to lovers of the fantastical in America and in the UK. Of the British publishing schedule for Aug ‘72 to Jan ‘73, for example, only Lem’s Solaris would immediately strike most as an essential purchase. (Even so, it was hardly a bestseller, and its infamous ‘indirect’ translation by Kilmartin and Cox did readers few favours.) All else on the list are, at best, interesting. A few could only be loved, as the old phrase goes, by those who love that kind of thing. (No names, no pack drill, as another cliche runs.)

None of this is to suggest that the British Club was exploitative and, in being so, slapdash. Quite the opposite seems true. If, for example, its covers of the late 60s and early 70s often seem visually dull, that appears to have been the inevitable consequence of limited budgets. Within those obvious constraints, care was evidently taken and imagination lent whatever license the bank balance could support. The result was, relatively speaking, the chance for British readers to build up a library of affordable hardback sci-fi books. This was a rare opportunity in the time. In 1972, most sci-fi paperbacks cost around 25p to 40p, while the price of hardbacks generally started at £1.80. In that context, the Science Fiction Book Club offered an undeniably attractive prospect. The chance to experiment with books that weren’t always well-known was for most folks, after all, rather rare.

Below are scans of the books issued by the Club across the first seven months of 1972. To the reader I leave the pleasure of deciding whether the cost to a UK fan was justified by the returns.