Eeee! Colin Kapp's Unorthodox Engineers re-released!

[julesjones]

Paging jhall1...

Just trundled over to Amazon to poke forlornly at the The Unorthodox Engineers listing to see if there's an affordable copy -- and found that it was released in ebook format by Gateway back in September. I think DRMed, alas, but at least it's available. 30 seconds later I was logged into my Kobo account and chucking a couple of quid at the Kobo server...

Gateway have several other books by Kapp in their ebook catalogue, so I may add to my collection.

http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/the-unorthodox-engineers -- Kobo (epub)
The Unorthodox Engineers - Amazon UK
http://www.amazon.com/Unorthodox-Engineers-Colin-Kapp-ebook/dp/B00F50EX5I/ - Amazon US

Comments

[nojay.livejournal.com]

I think at least one of the stories was published somewhere else, New Worlds maybe. Wiki wiki wikiwikiwiki... "The Railways up on Cannis" was in New Worlds, the rest were in New Writings in SF.

I got my Dobson hardcover from Rog Peyton -- one of the publishers or their distributors went bust in the 80s and when the liquidators were clearing the warehouse they found boxes of new books at the back covered in dust, this title among them along with a lot of Philip E. High and the like. They were banged out to the trade at firesale prices, a few quid per box and from there percolated out into the wider world.

Dobson's main market was libraries so one could forgive them for not pushing expensive (at the time) hardcovers into bookshops with any alacrity hence the rarity and inflated price of such books today. I suspect most of the copies on offer on De Nile are ex-library books, possibly even the one you used to check out.

[julesjones]

My local library in the late 70s/early 80s had an extensive collection of both New Worlds and New Writings, plus a vast array of Gollancz yellow jackets and a far number of Dobson -- although I hadn't made the connection then on Dobson being a library imprint.

Speaking of Philip E High -- yep, they've got him too. I wouldn't mind re-reading Sold For A Spaceship again. I forsee spending in my near future...