Recently the “reading virus” caught me again and let’s be honest, that is not a bad disease!
I have a rather nice collection of science fiction and fantasy books (I did mention that before). And recently I started to catalog them. And believe me, that is a lot of work. I have done about 25% by now :). And maybe because of this I started to reread old books and I must say I love it…
I thought it would be a nice that every time I finished a book to put here on my blog an article with all there is to know about the book and my opinions about it. So the first book wil be “Het onbekende”:
“Het Onbekende” (English: “The Unknown”) is the first of a series of story books published by “Luithingh”. The first print (and as far as I know, the only print) is dated in 1973. The book is named after and holds stories from the legendary SF magazine “The Unknown”, which was published from 1939 to 1943.
The foreword is done by no one less than Isaac Asimov (a name known to every Science Fiction lover). The book was edited by D.R. Bensen (another known name) and the translation was done by Jan Koesen. The cover was done by Henk de Boer.
The book holds eleven stories and there are some names among the authors that are known very well… names as Fritz Leiber, Theodore Sturgeon and L. Sprague de Camp. All the stories are very good quality. At least of one story I know that it was filmed: “Gisteren was het maandag” (English: “Yesterday Was Monday”) by Theodore Sturgeon.
This book was a real pleasure to read. I am always amazed who some authors are capable to push complete stories into some pages of a book. Fun fact, I can tell when I bought this book: 22 January 1987 and if I am correct I bought at “De Slegte” (a big Dutch shop chain where they also sell second hand books). I paid 6 guilders for the book.
I marked the book as finished reading on 30 January 2012 (and it was of course not the first time I read the book).
Some facts:
ISBN 90 245 0172 5
Published by Luitingh in 1973
171 pages