Good Neighbors and Other Strangers by Edgar Pangborn

Published March 12, 2023

ITC Ronda Bold (1970) with several of its alternates, on the jacket of a book with science fiction tales by Edgar Pangborn (1909–1976), published by The Macmillan Group in 1972. We get to see the e with angled bar, the g with spur (cf. the Kabel-inspired ITC Grizzly, also from 1970), the forward-leaning s/S, the untailed Futura-like t, and both forms of a.

Cover art by Andrew J. Rhodes. No typographer is credited.

From the inner flaps:

The title story relates how one tearful stray from a herd of alien livestock caused great consternation on earth, and how the apologetic herders made amends. There is a novelette about the bizarre abduction of Harp Ryder’s young wife – told by the only man who will ever know the truth; the ten-legged blue bugs that can give you a dream – or a nightmare; the startling case of the man found huddling naked in the elephant’s cage at the zoo; and the shadow-monkeys from – where? – with their annoying habit of following along, even when you’re out parking with your girl.

Then there’s Darius, a most unusual cat; the pickup truck bound for Olympus; the chicken bone – well, not creature exactly; the remarkable journal of Dr. David Bannerman, recently deceased; and the ‘wrens’ Grampa hatched from his bear the summer he was 106.

Mysterical, mysterious, blood-curdling, or tipped with irony, all these tales are finely-drawn explorations of men facing ‘the other’ – entertaining testimony to the reach of our soaring imagination and boundless ability to cope with the unexpected and, sometimes, to the little quirks that make us human.

[More info on ISFDB]

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