Ever searching for fine reading material to add to the overflowing shelves in my personal library, I recently visited a used bookstore on Madeira Beach aptly named Books to the Ceiling. I slowly made my way back to the back corner of the store, to the crowded shelves where all the science fiction and horror books had taken up residence as if exiled by the much larger mainstream fiction section.
Now, the books are generally arranged alphabetically by author's last name ... at least, that seems the intention of the store's proprietor and the various underlings who try to keep chaos from overwhelming the inventory. That said, the stacks of books do in fact reach the ceiling in certain places. Likewise, there are books neatly collected in piles on the floor in some areas.
That happens to be where I discovered a little treasure trove of 1970s speculative fiction periodicals. There were probably between 20 or 25 of them, and I picked through them and selected five or six that seemed most interesting to add to my collection. These are nice reading copies, nowhere near mint condition, but lovingly cared for by their previous owner(s).
Among them are the two pictured: the January 1976 issue of Galaxy, featuring fiction by Joanna Russ, Spider Robinson and Steven Utley; and the August 1972 issue of Fantastic Science Fiction & Fantasy Stories, featuring fiction by Avram Davidson, James Tiptree Jr. and Barry N. Malzberg as well as what I presume is the first publication of the Conan novella "The Witch of the Mists" by L. Sprague deCamp and Lin Carter.
The magazines, by the way, were priced at less than $1 each - cheap as chips!
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