20 Million Miles to Earth – Larque Press | The Digest Enthusiast

“As Shuster and Bailey rush to investigate, they find a strange reptilitan creature, eight feet tall with a prehensile tail. Dead—apparently electrocuted by the relatively low voltage of their power lines.”

Henry Slesar (1927–2002) was a prolific author, scriptwriter, and copywriter, famous for his twist endings. He is created for coining the phrase “coffee break” during his early years as an advertising copywriter. His first fiction sale was “The Brat” (Imaginative Tales Sept. 1953).

Two years later he wrote the novelization of the Columbia Pictures’ classic 20 Million Miles to Earth for Ziff-Davis in the the one-shot digest, Amazing Stories Science Fiction Novel.

Read the complete synopsis of Slesar’s novel, with highlights of the differences between film and novel in The Digest Enthusiast No. 14. Available now:
14C (full color print)–$20.00 from Lulu.com and Amazon.com
14BW (b&w print)–$12 from Amazon.com
14 Kindle (full color digital)–$4.99 from Amazon.com
14 digital (full color digital)–$4.99 from Magzter.com

Steve Carper explains his criteria for One-and-Dones in the excerpts below from part one of his series that appears in The Digest Enthusiast No. 7–9:

“My criteria are subjective, obviously. I only include fiction; anthologies and collections count alongside novels, but nonfiction is out . . . . To be included, publishers had to be legitimate companies devoted to putting out the work of others . . . . Trying to settle on a definitionof a “digest” was surprisingly difficult . . . . I do not include chapbooks . . . . This [series] is my attempt to merge all my research into a single source listing.”

Steve proceeds in alphabetical order.

“Amazing Stories Science Fiction Novel is about as awkward an appellation as publishers’ lines ever get. Fortunately, its sole book was the 1957 movie tie-in 20 Million Miles to Earth by Henry Slesar. This is a prime collectible because of its rarity and the gigantic space lizard from Venus on its cover.”

Per the criteria, not a true One-and-Done as it was published by giant Ziff-Davis, but nevertheless a fascinating one-shot.