Friday, August 23, 2019

The Fawcett Gold Medal Paperbacks of Robert Arthur Smith

British horror novelist Robert Arthur Smith, born on this date in 1944, produced these paperback originals between 1977 and 1991. He lives in Toronto today but other than that I could find out no real biographical info about him. I own copies of The Prey and Vampire Notes but have not read them; the latter book notes "by the author of The Leopard" but I could find no cover image for that title. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says Vampire Notes is "an unusually intricate take on Vampire topoi" and I thought "topoi" was a typo of "topics" till I looked it up and learned it is the plural of a new-to-me, and quite relevant, word! Weird, don't know how that escaped me all these years...


4 comments:

ishouldbeking said...

man oh man that PREY cover speaks to me on a visceral level. the others have a certain charm, but I could easily force myself to slog through anything with typography as ridiculous as the Prey cover. and the olde-fashioned typeface used for the blurb and author name lend an irresistible air of 80s fantastique. glorious stuff!

highwayknees said...

The Prey and The Toymaker are the only two here that I might be interested in perusing.Who can resist such hackneyed tropes as "creatures from Hell haunting the living?", or when evil toys become sentient and attack-er -uh, if that is indeed what transpires therein-I have no idea. The other titles look rather ho hum though.

Astroboymn said...

I read The Prey a few years ago and it's quite the goth shocker saga. It's not bad at all!

Thalia the Muse said...

That typography really is stunning.