After the 1954 Ace Double edition, it remained out of print for over five decades, until it was reprinted in A Logic Named Joe in 2006 (above right, cover by Kurt Miller), one of three major omnibus collections published by Baen (the others being Planets of Adventure, from 2003, and Med Ship).Ī.E. Gateway to Elsewhere was never one of Leinster’s more popular novels. I was also surprised to see Gateway to Elsewhere called an “ACE Original.” That’s a bit of publisher hyperbole, as the novel had already been published twice by the time it appeared in paperback. I was a little surprised to discover that, by 1954, Leinster was already being called “the dean of science fiction writers.” It was a title he was to retain until his death in 1975. Murray Leinster, dean of science-fiction writers, is at his best in this ACE Original. For Gregg plunged forthwith into a fourth-dimensional world of the Arabian Nights, where the djinns of Aladdin’s Lamp were rampaging realities, and a lovely princess was waiting to be rescued! That was the beginning of one of the most fabulous and fantastic adventures that ever befell a young man looking for excitement. He learned then that it could be used as a key - a key to a GATEWAY TO ELSEWHERE. He knew it was more than just a collector’s curio because there was no such place on any map of Earth, past or present. Tony Gregg was just an ordinary everyday American until the day he came into possession of an old Barkut coin. In fact, we constantly visit the frontier cities without ever knowing it!”
“There are other worlds… and it is possible to travel from one to another. Here’s the blurb on the inside front cover: Two years later, it appeared as half of Ace Double D-53, with the new title Gateway to Elsewhere, and a splendid cover by Harry Barton. The entire novel was reprinted in the January 1952 issue of Startling Stories, still under the title Journey to Barkut, with a handsome cover by Earle Bergey (see below).
#Elsewhere vintage serial
Gateway to Elsewhere originally appeared in a two-part serial in the seventh issue of the small circulation digest Fantasy Book in 1950/51 under the title Journey to Barkut. Jenkins, in 1946) and The Black Galaxy (in Startling, March 1949).
It was Leinster’s first fantasy novel, although he’d previously published two SF novels, The Murder of the U.S.A. Of the two, Gateway to Elsewhere is significantly lesser known. And now we come to one of my favorite Ace Doubles: Murray Leinster’s Arabian Nights fantasy Gateway to Elsewhere, paired with the classic science fiction novel The Weapon Shops of Isher by A.