Ace Double (D-497) 1961 paperback. Condition averages Good(+): tight and square with flat spine, (spine has a little edgewear in spots), age tannning is mild to moderate and uniform (about as good as you'll find for its age.) No stamps, marks or writing. The Cummings half looks great, with very light wear - I'd grade it VG+ to near-Fine. On the "Woodcott" side, the cover at right/top shows broad waviness (best viewed from an angle, looks like a shallow dent & will not show in scan) - the sort that indicates exposure to moisture at some point (and I think the ink-depletion at upper right 1" corner of cover confirms this theory.) Interior pages show no stain-trace, but some of the pages at the beginning have a subtle waviness, which is totally gone by the middle of this side of the book. Regardless of wear, this is one of the rarer Doubles - most people probably never realized that "Woodcott" was John Brunner.

Ace Double D-497 (1961): Wandl the Invader by Ray Cummings, bound with I Speak for Earth by John Brunner writing as "Keith Woodcott." This is the first paperback appearance for either book.

Wandl the Invader: (135 pages, cover by Ed Valigursky) was serialized in Astounding February through May 1932 - this is the first book publication. This is a sequel to Brigands of the Moon (which was serialized in Astounding in 1930.)
Man had set up commerce in the bounds of the 9 planets of the solar system, when a maverick was discovered: a tenth planet, heading inwards from interstellar space towards the Earth-Mars spaceways, with the potential to upset astronomical calculations and raise turmoil on both inhabited worlds. This was no barren planetoid - Wandl the Invader was a manned world, inhabited by minds and monsters with conquest in mind!

(Bound with) I Speak for Earth: (cover by Ed Emshwiller, 120 pages) appears to the first publication in any form. Earth was given an ultimatum: "One citizen of your planet shall go to the capital of the Federation of Worlds. He shall live there for 30 days. If your representative can survive and demonstrate his ability to exist in a civilized society with creatures whose outward appearance and manner of thinking differ from your own, you will pass the test, and be permitted to send your starships to other planets of the galaxy. If he fails the test, if prejudice, fear, intolerance or stupidity trip him up, then your world will be sealed off from the stars forever! Earth knew the test was rigged, and they were expected to fail. Given a year to come up with a single representative of the best of Earth, an ingeneous solution was adopted: send one body, with identities of the 6 best superimposed. They were: Joe Morea- space engineer and inventor; Fritz Schneider- World leader and psychiatrist; Rohindi Das - mathematician and poet; Stepan Prodshenko - physicist and gymnast; King Ti-Pao, biologist and painter; and Lawrence Tshekele - linguist and educator.

To my knowledge, this Brunner half has not been reprinted elsewhere, making it another of the hard to find titles by him. There were 4 books and a handful of stories published as by "Keith Woodcott." John Brunner (1934-1995) was well-known for writing (a lot of) "literate space opera," many of which appeared in Ace-Doubles. During the Sixties, his writing style matured, and he started getting Hugo nominations, culminating with the Hugo winner in 1969: Stand On Zanzibar.