The Remarkable Exploits of Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman

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The Remarkable Exploits of Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman
Lbiggs.jpg
first edition cover
AuthorNelson Bond
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherDoubleday Books
Publication date
1950
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages224

The Remarkable Adventures of Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman (sometimes referred to as Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman) is a collection of humorous science fiction stories by Nelson Bond, published by Doubleday Books in 1950. It comprises eleven of the fourteen stories in Bond's "Lancelot Biggs" series. Sometimes described as a novel, it presents the stories in a sequence of twenty-seven numbered chapters. The collection was reissued in trade paperback by Wildside Press many years later; no mass market paperback edition was issued.

Contents, in order of their appearance in the collection[]

  • "F.O.B. Venus" (Fantastic Adventures 11/1939)
  • "Lancelot Biggs Cooks a Pirate" (Fantastic Adventures 02/1940)
  • "The Madness of Lancelot Biggs" (Fantastic Adventures 04/1940)
  • "Lancelot Biggs, Master Navigator" (Fantastic Adventures 05/1940)
  • "Where Are You, Mr. Biggs?" (Weird Tales 09/1941)
  • "The Ghost of Lancelot Biggs" (Weird Tales 01/1942)
  • "Honeymoon in Bedlam" (Weird Tales 01/1941)
  • "The Love Song of Lancelot Biggs" (Amazing 09/1942)
  • "Mr. Biggs Goes to Town" (Amazing 10/1942)
  • "The Ordeal of Lancelot Biggs" (Amazing 05/1943)
  • "The Downfall of Lancelot Biggs" (Weird Tales 03/1941)

Not included in the book were:

  • "The Genius of Lancelot Biggs" (Fantastic Adventures 06/1940)
  • "The Scientific Pioneer Returns" (Amazing 11/1940)
  • "The Return of Lancelot Biggs" (Amazing 05/1942)

The eleven Lancelot Biggs stories included were revised for this volume to provide continuity from one episode to the next.[1] The Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections incorrectly lists "The Scientific Pioneer Returns" as one of the volume's included stories.

Reception[]

Time magazine received the book rather skeptically; its reviewer commented that "Author Nelson Bond, who used to write westerns, has merely put a Space Age icing on the old Wild West conventions" and that "to those who have never exposed themselves to the comic strips, the pseudo-scientific gobbledygook that spews forth from every page of Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman may cause some confusion for a while [although] [t]he persistent will get the hang of it."[2] P. Schuyler Miller gave the collection a somewhat mixed review, saying that "Bond lacks few of the tricks of the born storyteller, and uses them all blandly and shamelessly."[3]

References[]

  1. ^ Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections
  2. ^ "Books: Space Ahoy!", Time, August 14, 1950
  3. ^ "Book Reviews", Astounding Science Fiction. March 1951, p.144
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