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De Camp, L. Sprague
THE WHEELS OF IF
book-date: 1949
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GRADING:
Berkley
1970
1st
Paperback
Paul Lehr
.75
VG

Tight and almost square; spine is flat; rubbing wear to front and back. No stamps, marks or writing. The reason I grade this lower is a 3" fold-trace at upper right corner of front cover, which continued inside with bend-traces on the first 22 pages.

The Wheels of If - a collection of 5 stories plus the title short novel by L. Sprague de Camp. These originally appeared in Astounding or Unknown - from 1938 to 1941. Some cannot be found in any other de Camp collection. Cover artist Paul Lehr is one of my 3 favorite SF artists - this book has never had a better looking edition.

(Foreword by de Camp)
The Wheels of If
The Best-Laid Scheme
The Warrior Race
Hyperpelosity
The Merman
The Contraband Cow
The Gnarly Man

(some story summaries / teasers):
"The Wheels of If" - The Wheels of If turned - and Allister Park, spun from our own New York through a dizzying succession of alternate worlds to New Belfast... biggest city in the Bretwaldate of Vinland, the country that might have been if some historical crises had turned out the other way. Park's frantic efforts to get back to his own if-world turn Vinland upside down, in this inventive classic of SF.
"The Gnarly Man" - Anthropologist Matilda Saddler first saw the gnarly man at Coney Island. There was a lurid banner next to the shooting gallery urging thrill-seekers to come see Ungo Bungo: "A ferocious ape-man, captured in the Congo at a cost of 27 lives!" Convinced the ape-man would turn out to be an ordinary man with lots of false hair, Dr. Saddler still couldn't resist going inside... and that's how she stumbled onto the anthropological find of all time. For Ungo Bungo was a bona fide Neanderthal man, born (as near as he could recall) in the year 50,000 B.C.!