Sunday, April 23, 2023

Book cover: "Warriors of Noomas"

  • Title: Warriors of Noomas
  • Series: #1 of 4 in the Noomas series
  • Author: Charles Nuetzel (born 1934). "In retirement he has become involved in swing dancing, a long time lover of Big Band jazz," his Audible.com biography notes. "But more interestingly world travels have taken him (and his wife Brigitte) across the world, to Hawaii, Caribbean, Mexico, Kenya, Egypt, Peru, having a lifelong interest in ancient civilizations."
  • Cover artist who drew that toothy creature: Albert Nuetzel (1901-1969), who is Charles' father and was typically credited as Albert Nuetzell, according to the Internet Science Fiction Database.
  • Interior artist: Louis DeWitt
  • Publication date: 1969
  • Publisher: Powell Publications (Powell Sci-Fi) of Reseda, California. The company published about two dozen books in 1969 and 1970, including five by Charles Nuetzel, and then went kaput. Perhaps its most notable publication was 1969's Memos from Purgatory, an updated edition of the nonfiction book by Harlan Ellison that was first published in 1961.
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 211 (followed by several unnumbered pages of advertisements)
  • Cover price: 95 cents in 1969, the equivalent of $7.80 today
  • Provenance: There's a stamp on the inside front cover for Greg's Book Mart (see below), and it's a different Greg's Book Mart stamp than the one I wrote about in 2018. This one notes locations at the Wheatland Shopping Center in Lancaster and the Meadowbrook Antique Market in Leola, both in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Also, the name "Josie" has been written on the first page.
  • Back cover excerpt: "In his first thrilling adventure, Torlo Hannis wakes up on the planet of Noomas without memory of any past life, yet aware that he comes from a vast inter-galactic civilization." (Too bad he wasn't wearing a handy Galactitag.)
  • Dedication: "To: JUAN SEBASTIAN WEIR. Without whose father's indirect help this book would not have been possible."
  • First sentence: "I, Torlo Hannis, was born at the age of twenty-eight, without memory of my past life, without knowledge of the world in which I found myself."
  • Last sentence: "The silence is deafening for it leaves many questions unanswered."
  • Random excerpt from the middle #1: "The scene which we saw in the distance was beautiful in its primitive savagery. Colorful pennants flew from hundreds of spears around and in the city. Flying grav-disks were engaging in battle in the air along the perimeter of the wall."
  • Random excerpt from the middle #2: "Youi began singing a light, delicate ballad, but as if touched with too much liquor, slightly offkey."
  • Goodreads review: In 2009, Charles wrote: "I read this when I was hungry for a continuation of [Edgar Rice Burroughs'] sword and planet stuff and it was satisfying. Good swashbuckling adventure."
  • Amazon review: In 2013, Keith T. Gibson wrote: "This is basically a cheap knockoff of the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. ... The planet and landscapes aren't described very well, which removes one of the biggest reasons for reading these types of stories, and the story shows no originality, but on the plus-side, the hero isn't mindless, and actually thinks some of the time."
Posing with the back cover of Warriors of Noomas is LP. Technically, her name is Lost Pengin, but the rule is that you're allowed to call her anything that has the initials LP, so I call her Licorice Pizza, natch.

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