Killer Crabs and School Kids (1980)

Night of the Crabs (1976)

 

Killer Crabs (1978)

 

The Origin of the Crabs (1979)

Crabs on the Rampage (1981)

 

Crabs' Moon (1984)

....and Crabs: The Human Sacrifice (1988) and Killer Crabs: The Return (2012) but the 1970's were over by 1985 so who cares about those two!

My introduction to the works of Guy N Smith was in the summer of 1980, when one of the first three books - I'm not sure which one - was passed around the boys dormitory of the residential outdoor education centre in Wales for five days of the summer holidays.  We were twelve at the time and overly keen to educate ourselves of the adult pleasures of sex and horror.  We didn't know that to begin with but when one of our number produced the lurid novel, "borrowed" from an older brother, the keenness with which we all demanded a read of certain pages, would have staggered our English teachers beyond belief.  Not being adverse to regular reading myself, I think I managed to read the whole thing, sexy bits and all, in one torch illuminated session.  Although, apart from the general memory of consuming the forbidden fruit and the "bloody stumps" of  hands being snipped off by giant pincers, I actually remember very little of the story itself.

I stumbled over the 3rd book in a charity shop a couple of days ago and at two quid for a near perfect copy, I snapped it up.  I found the 1st book, in similarly excellent condition, about a year before and for only half that price.  I'm going to read them over the next few months to see if and what memories they might shake free.  Could be interesting.  I might also have to invest in book 2

On reflection, that week away in North Wales turned out to be quite an education that I only came to recognised as such many years later.  I'll almost definitely write more about it here.  There were dead sheep discovered on the hillside.  A jukebox battle between Bowie and the theme from MASH, probably any number of ghosts lurking in the corridors and toilets and  kids being mean and horrible to each other almost every hour of the day.  Oh! and.I also proved that Déjà vu was a real thing, by blurting out the impending sequence of events just ahead of them actually happening.  Only my friend Mark heard me though so the rest of the world remains sceptical to this day.

But who cares what other people think!

Steve

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Cover art by Stephan Lavis (1980)

Perhaps the best known of all of Stephan Lavis' childrens book covers are this lot...The Narnia Chronicles.

 

 

 

 

 

Lovely work that also included the box to keep them in.

Steve

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham - Penguin edition (1980)

The Day of the Triffids.  John Wyndham - Penguin edition 1980

Art by Peter Lord

 

I'll be somewhat controversial now and say that John Wyndham has suffered from some fairly awful cover designs on his books over the years.  This one by Peter Lord I really like and, for the most part, the rest of the Wyndham back catalogue that I collected through the early 1980's. More on those later.

We'll also be back to look at Triffids - the walking, stinging  plant creatures - in more detail in future blogs because although the book its self was published in 1951, I grew up with a comic strip (1975), a movie (1962) shown on TV in the 1970's, as well as the 6 part BBC TV adaption (1981).  Triffids were everywhere back then, including any household or garden containing an unexpectedly large or troublesome plant that seemed to bare a grudge!
 

 

I quite like the 3rd cover of the 6 - that's by Mark Salwowski.  I've a little time for 1 and a little more time for 6 but  2, 4 and 5 are just jaw droppingly wrong.

 

 

Steve.