The January Ansible features this distressing note:
Publishers and Sinners. The US Science Fiction Book Club, now owned by Bookspan, is apparently shutting down. A December notice on the SFBC website warned that orders will no longer be processed after 2 January 2025, with the strong implication that subscribers’ accumulated ‘Member Credits’ would vanish if not used by then. [F770]
If the announcement does indeed signal the end of the Science Fiction Book Club1, that is a great pity. The SFBC was, in its time, of tremendous importance to SF fans like me2, a great institution of the field whose demise should be acknowledged and mourned3.
Originally an imprint of Nelson Doubleday, Inc., the SFBC first appeared in 19534, offering subscribers affordable hardcover science fiction and fantasy books. It just so happens that I have handy a list of the first books reprinted by the SFBC5. These were:
- Double Jeopardy, Fletcher Pratt
- Needle, Hal Clement
- Rogue Queen, L. Sprague De Camp
- The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr.
- The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham
- The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury
- The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
- The Mixed Men, A.E. Van Vogt
- The Puppet Masters, Robert A. Heinlein
- The Sands of Mars, Arthur C. Clarke
- The Stars Like Dust, Isaac Asimov
- Takeoff, C.M. Kornbluth
Members could buy three of these classics for a single American dollar! Which then had the buying power of about $11 (2024 USD), which was still significantly cheaper than the $2.50 (which would have been $30 in 2024 USD) a single regular hardcover would have cost.
A reader of my vintage would likely have encountered the SFBC via ads in magazines or more memorably, sturdy cardboard ad inserts in mass market paperbacks.
These were solidly bound into the books and removing them would destroy the paperback. Luckily, the order form was a tearaway that could be removed safely. To give you an idea of how durable those inserts were, the early 21st century SFBC was still getting 1970-era insert order forms mailed in by optimists hopeful that thirty-year-old offers would still be valid.
The SFBC books were invaluable for a number of reasons. They made available reprinted hardcover editions at a price far lower than regular hardcovers. This helped stretch limited book-buying budgets (although it made the shelving issue more difficult. Hardcovers take up more space than paperbacks).
As they were mail order, SFBC books were available to isolated readers where other books were not. Decades ago, books were not available at the click of a button. Most books reached readers via brick-and-mortar bookstores and not every town had one of those.
While not every book offered was a timeless classic—don’t ask me what Pratt’s Double Jeopardy was about—enough of the novels, collections, and anthologies on offer were classics, such that an SFBC subscription was an excellent way to become familiar with the American science fiction field as a whole6. Editor Ellen Asher in particular had a keen eye for science fiction and fantasy7.
Another advantage for the scheme: the SFBC embraced an order system seemingly calculated to take advantage of procrastinators and other disorganized people. Monthly selections were dispatched automatically unless the member remembered to send in a form requesting that month’s selection not be sent out. The advantage to the SFBC is obvious. The advantage to the subscriber was that they had the opportunity to read books they might otherwise have never thought to try. In this case, sloth equaled serendipity.
The Science Fiction Book Club and the affordable hardcovers they offered enabled my relentless science fiction addiction expanded my access to science fiction and fantasy. Without the SFBC, my tastes in SF would no doubt be very different than they are, if indeed I had not left SFF behind entirely. I have no doubt this is true for other readers as well. Therefore, if these are indeed the SFBC’s final days, I mourn its passing8.
- “The” is a bit misleading, as there have been a number of organizations that used the name Science Fiction Book Club. I am referring to the American SFBC.
- Of course, the SFBC was of particular importance to me as it was the first company to pay me to read and review books.
- Unless it turns out the SFBC isn’t dead and we’re all overreacting, in which case pretend this is a piece about all the films in which Sean Bean’s character died or something.
- A curious fact discovered during the SFBC’s 50th anniversary was that apparently the name of the person who founded it was so well known in 1953 that nobody at SFBC saw fit to write it down for the benefit of later generations. I believe the editor was (probably) Walter Bradbury but I could be wrong.
- Along with every book published by them up to 2001.
- In the 21st century, the SFBC produced original anthologies, whose genesis may be found here.
- Not to snub the other SFBC stalwarts, but Asher isn’t praised half as much as she should be.
- Unless the reports of the SFBC’s death are an exaggeration, in which case, wow, Sean Bean sure has played a lot of characters who died, hasn’t he?
Indeed, SFBC offered a great value. There is a small downside, though: As a collector I look for first editions of old titles at yard sales or estate sales, and get really excited when I see something like ‘Gateway’. Then I flip open the jacket, or look for a number code on the back, and realize it’s a book club edition. Yes, I realize book club editions are usually slightly smaller than the first editions, but unless they are side by side it can be hard to tell.
I’m tempted to say “Curse you SFBC” but I can’t really, they did a good service for impoverished readers. How good a service? I see many, many BCEs out there in estate sales.
Yep, SFBC editions are the bane of collectors everywhere!
Sometimes they’re incredibly similar in dimension and presentation to the first trade editions too, as in the case of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
I never joined the Science Fiction Book Club, but my university SF/gaming club had a lot of SFBC editions in their library. Also one of those ads (I think from a Galaxy magazine) led me (age six or seven) to ask my mother “What’s an aphrodisiac?”
I’m trying to remember when I joined the SFBC. It would have been in the late 1980s, before I graduated from college, because I took the whole summer off a couple of times to go camping with my parents, and I got some auto-shipped titles that broadened my horizons considerably.
I too will miss them. I mean, Sean Bean has had plenty of roles where his character survives, he’s just so good at a death scene that everybody remembers those!
There are worse gigs than being the go to guy for “the character dies” roles.
I’ve got a couple of sfbc editions. They’re more robust than paperbacks.
I grew up in the 80s/90s suburbs with plenty of bookstore options but always loved the SFBC catalog because they wrote their own blurbs/descriptions, which sometimes enticed me more than the publisher versions. Sad to see it go but honestly surprised that these types of clubs made it this far into the post-Amazon era. (Book of the Month, for instance, has made the smart move of courting BookTokers and Youtubers. Not sure how much juice is in that move but they’re still going.)
Alexa, play Taps
As you know, Bob, when Ansible credits the news to File 770, even if it does not link directly, you can: https://file770.com/pixel-scroll-12-16-24-baby-yoda-is-three/
https://www.sfbc.com seems to be up and running in now, in some way: no news of its demise, but the advert “Join now” is crossed out.
The notification I got as a member is that they will no longer be processing orders after February 1. They stopped issuing member credits in December, though you could still use any you had up until 2/1, or purchase books from the website with a credit card until then.
What happens after 2/1? Your guess is as good as mine, but it’s not looking good. :(
Bookspan, SFBC’s owner, runs several book clubs (The Literary Guild, Mystery Guild, History Book Club, etc.). Two other of their book clubs, The Good Cook and Crafter’s Choice. have also been closed down.
Their sites refer you to The Literary Guild site, which has top menu items for both. Their “Browse” drop down does have a “Science Fiction” entry; that page is empty at the moment, however.
So I expect SFBC’s titles will find their way over there, with perhaps some of the horror going over to Mystery Guild, which does carry “Supernatural & Horror”.
Since Bookspan has several bookclubs, I would think the marginal cost to run one more bookclub would be small, since you could use the staff and shipping that you already have for the other clubs. I wonder if they’ll end up shutting them all down. I have fond memories of SFBC, but I buy very few books now, preferring to get them from the local library, which has more room than I do.
I’m sure the assembled book clubs have common staff for such things as shipping, fulfillment, customer service, et al.
Editorial/acquisitions staff, specialized in the particular subject matter of the club, is another matter.
Interesting. When I read for the Mystery Guild, the rule of thumb was that the customers had very conservative tastes–I think the catch phrase was they didn’t like the future and were not crazy about the present–so SFFH stuff you’d think would be offered from them wasn’t.
I was a member back in the seventies from seventh grade through my first year or two of college. I read a fair amount of new releases as book club editions and still own a handful of them. While I’m sad to read of their likely passing I honestly thought they had been gone for decades along with record clubs. It’s pretty hard to imagine anyone spending more for an inferior (if still acceptable) edition when you can buy the actual publishers version online for less. Still, R.I.P. with many fond memories.
I still remember my first four books for ten cents, from an SFBC ad in Galileo Magazine:
Isaac Asimov, The Hugo Winners (two, two volumes!)
Brian Aldiss, Galactic Empires (two volumes again! *Six* books for a dime!)
Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy (I liked Asimov, and hadn’t read this yet)
Larry Niven, A World out of Time (I’d read “Rammer” in a Galaxy anthology, and the SFBC ad was the first I’d learned that it had been expanded into a novel.)
Galileo is in the Internet Archive, and looking at the ad is the first time in decades I remembered that it also came with a “FREE Star Trek Plaque”: a metal rectangle that looked like a big postage stamp complete with half-perforations along the edges, with a picture of the ship and “U.S.S. ENTERPRISE” along the bottom. That’s long gone, but I still have all the books, albeit battered and mostly jacketless.
It’s been a very long time since I was a member, but I’ll always remember it fondly.
I also got the Hugo Winners for my ten cents. I still have it on my bookshelf. That was an excellent deal.
Both my father and I were members of SFBC. Indeed, I think I got a bunch of his books as hand-me-downs. Asimov’s Hugo Award anthologies were favorites. SFBC books did make shelf space a premium. I think I finally chose mass market paperbacks as an even cheaper option with a larger selection. I didn’t realize SFBC had survived for so long. Farewell!
We were members for many years and have a bunch of SFBC editions in our library.
I’m sure I’ve got dozens of anthologies, and novel series editions, and best of collections from SFBC, some bought in the 70’s and quite a few I’ve looked for and bought used much later, and frankly, they are all still in great shape, some if them after a dozen reads, a dozen moves and many years of abuse.
I got a lot more efficient at turning down selections after it became possible to do that online. So efficient that at some point they quietly dropped me as a member, without my ever formally quitting. But there was definitely a serendipitous element to forgetting to mail in the card. My reaction to finding an SFBC package in the mail was always a combination of “oh crap not again” and “I wonder what this will be.”
Omnibus editions. That is what I remember and miss the most. Having all 3 of Leigh Brackett’s Skaith books in one big hardcover. Or Phil Farmer’s World of Tiers. Or Jack Chalker’s Four Lords of the Diamond. My bent is to hold off on a series until it is completely published, so SFBC omnibuses played right into my bias.
World of Tiers and Four Lords of the Diamond both seem like they’d be improved by collection in omnibus form.
I’m not sure I ever was a member, but I know for certain my mother was. I inherited everything she got from SFBC, in fact.
I understand the bit about book club editions being the bane of collectors. Besides being labeled, there were the rough cut edges on some of them that marked them as such.
Being more of an accumulator (my shelves overflow!) than a collector, I never cared.
I remember the “What if?/Why not?” inserts which you’ve got a photo of. And if I recall correctly, those inserts also ran regularly in the SF magazines of the day.
I also distinctly remember that ad insert.
I have a sad, if this is true. I belonged to the SFBC as a kid in the ’70s, and one of the top things on my “When I have both a stable income and a place with some actual room” list was “subscribe to the SFBC again”.
Between the SFBC and the really extensive SF section at the Huntington Beach Public Library, pre-High School Athelind read a WHOLE LOT of classic SF that I’d never have encountered otherwise.
I started membership in late high school as I recall (late 70’s). The ones I received then were definitely not a quality binding and paper, compared to the regular publisher editions. It was obvious which ones were SFBC. However, it did give me a chance to get some great books at a reduced price, especially living in a small town with no book stores. At some point, certainly by the 90’s, they upped the quality of the bindings and paper, so they were a much higher quality, only distinguishable from the publishers version because the size was just a wee bit smaller. I think they published 3 of my wife’s early books. I never liked the requirement to send the card back in to keep the automatic shipping. I finally learned I could opt out of that, so I had to actively order the books for them to arrive. I’m sure that negatively affected their sales some. I’m sad to see the club go away, but with the explosion of ebooks, I’m not surprised.
I joined SFBC in 1968, after my family moved from the edge of Washington DC to a village much too far from New York City — and then to an even smaller village where a tiny library was open maybe 20 hours a week; SFBC was a lifeline for my mind. Part (all?) of my first purchase was the two-volume Boucher anthology, which was already a decade old but was in enough demand to be offered for decades afterward — four wildly assorted novels and an even wilder assortment of shorter works. My membership lapsed at least twice due to moves, but lasted into the late 1990s before I started running out of space. When I’ve looked recently, the prices haven’t seemed as good compared to original editions as the prices in the 1960’s; I wonder whether it just wasn’t doing well enough — especially after they fired Ellen Asher, who then received a Special World Fantasy Award for her work. Asher did manage to reach a personal ambition: editing for the same house for longer than John W. Campbell, who had held the record for decades.
I was never a member of the SFBC, but when I was a kid in the 1950s, the small library in my very small town in Massachusetts had a separate shelf full of SFBC books, in addition to a few Heinlein and Andre Norton juveniles on the regular shelves in the room meant for what they now call middle-grade books. Since those regular shelves contained quite a lot of school stories and books about orphans written in the early 20th century, the juxtaposition seems a little odd, and I’ve occasionally wondered who liked SF and also did the ordering. I can’t recall if I got to check out the SFBC books, as the then-librarian might well have said they were “too old” for me, but my older brother checked them out for sure so I would have read them then. Many paperbacks on my own shelves have SFBC sign-up cards in them. Given the existence of e-books (alas, no longer generally cheap) and the expense of printing and mailing, I can see why the SFBC model might not work anymore, but sad to see it go.
I have to add that I belonged to Book of the Month club for years, and while returning the don’t-send cards was a nuisance, I got the two-volume squinty-print Oxford English Dictionary, with magnifying glass, FOR FREE so it was worth it.
I still have some of the hardcovers from then. I always looked forward to the monthly offerings. Slan and Foundation and Empire. Great pity if they need to close. Ebooks can not come close to a hands on book.
I bought the entire Discworld collection for a steal back in the 90s. I still have the set, and it’s in beautiful condition. They were a great resource.
Pretty sure I discovered the Discworld back in the 80s by failing to send in the reply form. Best irresponsible behavior ever, as it turns out.
I was a member for ~40 years and finally ended my membership in 2024 after not having bought anything for a couple years. I just found their offerings became incredibly lacking. Where they used to have both a large catalog as well as offering great omnibuses of both more mainstream things like The Last Herald Mage and things you wouldn’t find anywhere else like the complete C.M. Kornbluth short stories and the complete Asimov Lucky Starr books, the last few years have had much fewer SF/Fantasy/Horror offerings and leaned heavily on other genres/clubs to make the offerings look more than they were. The SF/Fantasy/Horror offerings they did have were nothing unique anymore.
It was the collections I couldn’t find anywhere else that kept me at the SFBC. It’s sad those went away, and due to that I’m only mildly wistful it is going away as it wasn’t delivering what it did in it’s heyday.
I was a member of the SFBC for a long time. It helped me discover a lot of authors I would otherwise not have heard from. First among them was Terry Dowling and his collection Rynocerous. I also enjoyed the hardcover collections of paperback book series.
I joined the Science Fiction Book Club in 1970. I have a couple of hundred of the books they offered. In the 1980s I wrote to them and told them I didn’t want to have to send in a card every month if I didn’t want the featured selections. They said “not a problem” and stopped requiring me to respond each month.
I had a large number of SFBC books, and still have some of them (lots of Asimov). I probably shouldn’t have been allowed to join as an eleven-year-old, but I did, and my neglect in returning the monthly postcards resulted in my nascent library growing quite a bit.
I’m just going to take a guess that one of the problems is awareness. I was a faithful subscriber to the SFBC back in the 70’s. I thought it was dead and gone a long time ago. In fact, when I saw the headline for the article, I thought it was going to be humorous time-travel article about it’s death way back when.
I’d have to go through the shelves to find the exact number of SFBC editions I have, but there are quite a few of them, starting from those I had to ask my mother to write checks for (because at 15, I didn’t have an account of my own). They’ve stayed with me through school, moves, multiple careers and the horrors of a library division-by-divorce. (My ex knew better than to try making off with any of the Preciouses.) This is sad news indeed.
Wow. It will indeed be missed. My father was a member, but he never had the time to read everything that came in. I did, though. If he had any idea was his adolescent daughter was reading (Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire and Harlan Ellison’s Again, Dangerous Visions stand out in my memory), he might have cancelled his subscription!
As a result, I sometimes refer to that time in my life as “all theory, no practice.” ;-)
Wow.
I was enrolled at least twice and stayed for years each time. The Boucher collection was great, and the omnibuses were a quick cheap way to catch up on a series. I used SFBC editions to get my mom hooked on Pratchett. But at some point in the early 2000s I realized that I hadn’t selected any of the offerings for close to a year. There were wonderful books coming out in SF, but they weren’t appearing in SFBC anymore. I wonder still whether that was due to Asher’s departure or publishers no longer seeing the value of putting their books in SFBC.
I was a member joining when I was 12 or 13 ( my dad gave me the dollar). I don’t recall when I stopped buying from them but after I read this article I thought I would look into it. The website allows you to choose a couple of titles but the “Join Now” button is not functional.
Very sad to see them go.
Oh, Ihave such fond memories of it! I even “joined” twice – once when I was but a sprite, back in the VERY early ’60’s – and after I had canceled that when I went away to college, I re-upped after I got married.
I go my copy of the “Foundation Trilogy” there, as well as being introduced to Julie Czerneda, and reading Brunner’s “Stand on Zanzibar (the same year it won the Hugo). And I can’t forget “Dangerous Visons” (and “Again, DV…”)
Sure, there were some fogettable stuff, most of which I can’t even remember, but it got a lot of mey early hard-earned shekels.
I hope this is ust a baseless rumor!
I was mostly a mystery reader in my youth and belonged to the mystery version. I also belonged to a history version while I was a history major in college. At some foolish point I had a membership in a business book club. I quickly quit that one once I realized I never got beyond the first chapters of the latest business treatise. There were also several paperback mysteries I got for some maolorder book club. I HATED book og the month once I realized they were abridged versions. The musik of the literary world.
My husband and I would rejoin, buy the lot for a dollar, etc., limp along for a year, and then quit. And they would ASK US TO REJOIN with the usual bargain opener, so we figured they knew who we were and were ok with us taking blatant advantage of them anyway. It was fun, even when we were broke college students.
I loved it. I was member from 1987 to 2024. The last few years, the club was nothing like it was before. They were just a re-seller of books from elsewhere. What I always loved was the omnibuses, and often the hardback versions of books that never came out in hardback.
I would welcome it back in the old form, but its current form I see why it is closing.
I posted a more long winded version of just this and I was a member for almost the exact same period. The omnibuses and the farther ranging stuff was what I liked, and as you said, the last few year that was completely lacking.
I completely agree with you about Ellen Asher. I was a member years and was very unclear on just what the editor of SFBCs role was. But, by hearing her talk at SF conventions (and hearing other people talk about her work), I came to realize how much she shaped what SFBC published and came to really respect her. Seeing her name listed on a panel at a convention, would put the panel on my list to go to, even if I wasn’t all that interested in the topic, because I knew the conversation would be interesting.
I was a member for a few years back in the 90s. It was a lot of fun, especially in those days -like stated in the article, it was a lot harder back then for us geeks to find books we wanted.
I loved just getting the catalog. Again, this back then, before all the blogs, podcasts, BookTube, etc.., so we had to take what we could get.
One downside though, I was forever forgetting to cancel the book-of-the-month. But fortunately, they were easy to return and get your credit refunded.
I grew up 45 miles from the nearest bookstores, where only paperbacks were sold. I joined SFBC in Fall 1972, and my isolation in rural Tennessee began to end. Record stores did the rest.
I thought the Club had ended around 2017. I probably made my final order around 2015. Now in fixed income retirement, used book portals and stores are my main method. But SFBC was vital to millions.
I was member from the 70’s on with a couple of short gaps, until they changed the rules to monthly fees or some such. I was also a member for much the same period of it;s sister”club” the Mystery Guild. I now am in the sad process of figuring out what to do with all these in this age of eBooks.
I was a member for years. Small Canadian town with no bookstores close by.
Sad!! I still have my treasured copy of “The Dragonriders of Pern” produced by the SFBC which was AFAIK the first time the three novels “Dragonflight,” “Dragonquest” and “The White Dragon” were bound together in one hardback. How many times did I read this book, along with the many others sent to me by this company?? At the time, I was a teenager with very little money and the SFBC allowed me to get great scifi at a price I could afford. It also introduced me to many authors I was unfamiliar with.
Early in married life, I discovered the blessings of the “one flesh” rule. I’d join the SFBC as me, get free books, & buy the requirement. Then I’d join as my spouse, with both of us getting free books, cancel the first membership, buy the requirement as him, then re-up as me, and start the cycle over again. My ferengi soul delighted in acquiring so many anthologies and omnibuses. I still have most of the originals acquired in younger days, when they arrived in my mom’s name.
I still have my original 3 selections when I joined SFBC in 1974: Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy and Bova’s Science Fiction Hall of Fame volumes 2A and 2B. The SFBC was a primary contributor to my library through most of my High School years. It was sad to see it’s decline over the last 5 years or so.