I've always had a minor thing for bookplates. This sort of thing. I loved finding them in old books - though I rarely did. Recently, after a recent thread about Jack Vance over on Palimpsest made me dig out this 1962 Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine from my attic, I rediscovered something that had fascinated me as a kid.

I wish my copy was in as
good condition as this.

The back cover of the magazine was given over to a full page advert:

The BEMs in your neighborhood won't run off with your books if you put inside the front cover of each book ... a gummed bookplate with your name printed on it!

Underneath this snappily pithy piece of Sixties advertising come-on were four small reproductions of bookplates with 'Your Name Here' written in the place where your name would go if you sent them $4 for 100 bookplates, $6 for 200, or a bargain 300 for $8!

One of them, drawn by artist Ed Emshwiller, was particularly fascinating to the childhood me, it showed a man holding open, and looking down at, a book - with an alien reading over one of his shoulders , and a robot keeking over the other. For years the image defined in my head what the robots in the SF books I read looked like - no matter how the authors described them. And for years I wanted that bookplate in my books. My Name There.

Now - through the mighty power of the washing machine sized laser printer in the office, several hours of endless fiddling on Adobe Illustrator, and a blatant disregard of any copyright laws that may apply - I now can.

My Name Here - at last!