Ace Books' Lurid Heyday

It's sometime in the 1960s, I'm Downtown and I got money in my pocket for a change instead of lint -- I am a very happy boy. Happy not that I have money, or that I rode the bus without getting lost or mugged, or that I don't have parents peering over my shoulder. Nope. I'm happy because I have about thirty bookstores from which to choose, from the hole-in-the-wall shop where the magazines hold the faintly pleasant scent of LSMFT to the venerable three-story Wahrenbrock's to the vibrant Paperback Book Land. Well, maybe I was a little happy about being sans parents, for I could buy the kinds of books that Moms and Dads just don't get. Oh, no, not that kind of book, just a little...lurid:

Ace Books, founded in 1952 by publisher Aaron Wyn, could easily be credited with creating the specialty science fiction & fantasy paperback book market. While there had been small press publishers of speculative fiction for a few decades, they had all been hardback-oriented, chasing respectability; and though other pocket book publishers had issued sci-fi tomes, they were just part of a varied booklist. Even when other publishers, like Berkley, Monarch and Ballantine joined in on the bonanza, Ace still stood apart. Great stories (usually) by great writers (sometimes), but always great covers...wonderfully garish, even with a touch of grand guignol at times, but always delightfully lurid. Ace was bought up by Grosset & Dunlap in 1972, by G.P. Purnam's Sons in 1982, and by Penguin Books in 1996; while Ace retained its distinctive look for awhile, it eventually became a well-behaved corporate stepchild. Unfortunately, its lurid covers and low prices, are now, like everything else good, part of a world now long gone. Pity.

Swift Reading

The library offered by J. Calvin Lauderbach Elementary School in 1962 was, by today's standards, not only inadequate and substandard, but just downright inappropriate. Not a single book addressed the intolerance of races, the biology of sex or the viability of socialism; no book I read featured malcontent children who looked like a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, or acted like mafioso wannabes. Among the books it did have, however, were juvenile adventure series, and, one of the first I fell into was also one of the best -- the adventures of Tom Swift Jr.

For those of you too young to remember (why are there more young people with each passing year, and why am I having trouble finding elders to respect?) Tom Swift Jr was a scientific genius who traveled to all parts of the world and beyond, exploring mysteries, defeating bad guys and making people's lives better, all through science and technology, which were the great motivators of my age, the reasons why we proto-geeks were absolutely certain that we would have flying cars and cities on Mars by 2001...what a disappointment the future has been.

By the time I discovered Tom Swift, about twenty adventures had been published by Grosset & Dunlap, and after I devoured what was to be had in the school library, I set about to get books on my own. I was much more fortunate than modern kids in that Chula Vista had a few bookstores, and if I could get to downtown San Diego there were more than thirty; additionally, bookstores were located at most of the new shopping centers, department stores offered book sections, and books were a regular commodity at the local thrift stores. While a dollar was extraordinarily difficult to accumulate back then, you got a lot of bang for your buck.

This series lasted for 33 books, and fueled my interest in science. Another fan was NASA scientist Jack Cover, who in 1969, created a non-lethal stun-gun, which he named the Thomas A. Swift Electric Rifle...or as we call it today, TASER.