Lancer Books - Genres

Genres

Lancer's science fiction and heroic fantasy books were noted for his frequent use of cover art by Frank Frazetta. Frazetta began doing covers for Lancer with John Benyon Harris's The Secret People (1964) and Ted White's Phoenix Prime (1966), and later did several covers for Lancer's Conan series.

In addition to science fiction and heroic fantasy, Lancer published private-detective adventures with sexual themes, true crime and espionage stories, plus gothic romances such as Shadows (1970) by Jan Alexander (pseudonym for Victor J. Banis. Lesbian fiction authors published by Lancer included Rea Michaels (Duet in Darkness, Cloak of Evil), Sylvia Sharon (pseudonym used by Paul Little) and Florence Stonebraker.

Lancer Books published paperback editions of classic novels, reprinting public domain works. This series was designated Magnum Easy Eye Classics, as the typography of the books was larger, enabling readers to avoid eye strain. Among the authors represented in this series were H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Clemens, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, Helen Keller and Bram Stoker. Besides the complete and unabridged text, each book included a brief, unsigned biographical article about the author. Because the works were in the public domain, Lancer included a copyright notice for the special contents (i.e., the biographical information) for each book.

Lancer also published books of social commentary, such as The Angry Black, edited by John Williams. Lancer's popular culture titles included The Beatle Book (1964). Comic strips were collected in Broom-Hilda (1971).