Guest of Honor Tim Powers and Robert Silverberg, discussing the difference between writing a novel every two years and writing a novel every two weeks. James Patrick Kelly lurks menacingly in the background.
Steve Gould, explaining to me how he had not only moved back to New Mexico, but had actually moved back into the same house after two years in Texas.
Michael Swanwick, back from his stint in the home for the criminally insane. (Wait, are you sure he said “medical problems”? I’m pretty sure I heard “mental”…)
TAFF winner John Coxon.
Willie Sirois, counting the money he has just extracted from my pocket. Again.
After a few technical difficulties, I think I have this sussed out…
Scott Edelman, Cory Doctorow, John Scalzi, Ian MacDonald
Alastair “Ten Book Contract” Reynolds
Lou Anders
Ellen Datlow and Susan Casper, counting up the money from the marks
Gardner Dozois and Joe Haldeman
The one only Pat Cadigan, shortly after she drank Andre the Giant under the table.
Joe Haldeman and Robert Silverberg, getting together to see if either of them could actually remember the 60s.
Martha Wells
David Hartwell looms large in science fiction.
Copy-editing Goddess Deanna Hoak
John Scalzi, displaying the horrific befuddlement and inevitable mental degeneration that comes with being SFWA President.
Right before I snapped this picture, Ian McDonald said he always photographs horribly, then went out of his way to demonstrate the accuracy of the statement.
My apologies if I’ve misspelled anyone’s name, but I haven’t had breakfast yet. More later…
If I were in Asheville, NC the weekend of October 28-30, I would totally go to Moogfest. In addition to Brian Eno, it’s a veritable feast of Prog Rock goodness, including Tangerine Dream, M83, and half of King Crimson in the form of the Adrian Belew Power Trio.
Since M83 may be unfamiliar to many readers, here’s them doing “We Own the Sky:”
One of my favorite authors is Gene Wolfe (which you might have noticed before), so naturally I’ve tried to collect all his books. This includes all his chapbooks, some of which can be quite difficult to find.
Among his hardest to find are the ones he did for Cheap Street. Over the years I have picked up four of the five pure chapbooks done by them (as well as the two hardback books, Empires of Flowers and Foliage and Bibliomen), but frequently I would have trouble remembering which of them I have, a difficulty not aided by rather bland exteriors of the chapbooks themselves and the fact that all came in a standard Cheap Street envelope when I bought them, none of which revealed what was inside.
So, for both the sake of Gene Wolfe collectors, and to jog my own memory, I’ve scanned the title pages of each of the ones I have (click to embiggen):
Or, to list them in order of publication:
Wolfe, Gene. At the Point of Capricorn. Cheap Street, 1983.
Wolfe, Gene. The Boy Who Hooked the Sun. Cheap Street, 1985.
Wolfe, Gene. The Arimaspian Legacy. Cheap Street, 1988.
Wolfe, Gene. Slow Children at Play. Cheap Street, 1989.
I think I paid in the $35-$40 range for each of those.
Chalker and Owings says that seven copies of each of the above were done as leather-bound hardbacks. Not only do I not have those, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of them offered for sale.
As far as I can tell, I’m only missing two Wolfe chapbooks now:
Wolfe, Gene. The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Was the Sun. Cheap Street, 1991.
Wolfe, Gene. The Grave Secret. The Pretentious Press, 1991.
You may remember me raving about Black Dynamite, Michael Jai White’s awesome parody of low-budget 70s Blaxpotation films.
You may be pleased to know that the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim is doing Black Dynamite: The Animated Series. Click on the link to see the pilot. The show itself is set to premiere in 2012.
Having been interned as a child in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in World War II (the source of Empire of the Sun), Ballard has always been interested in what happens when you strip away the veneer of civilization. Much of Fox’s piece concerns Ballard’s later novels, which I have not read, “all of which feature middle class professionals either diving into or being pulled into revolutionary, nihilistic violence due to ennui, boredom, or a cancerlike consumerism which has replaced religion and patriotism at the center of their psyche.” (Though I have a number of Ballard first editions, I’m still catching up on the reading them, having just finished The Crystal World earlier this year.) Ballard’s penultimate novel, Millennium People, evidently features “middle class professionals in suburban London instigating terrorism and revolution in an effort to shock a sense of meaning back into their lives.” Which does tie rather neatly into the London riots of the last week…
Interesting piece, if only for the gratification of confirming that many other people loath Holden Caulfield every bit as much as I do.
Biggest surprise: Several people (including John Crowley) naming Gravity’s Rainbow as their least-liked great book. I didn’t get far into it myself, but I’m not sure I gave it a fair shot. The problem is finding a big block of time (something I’m preciously short on) to give it another go, as I have the impression that it’s not amenable to the “one chapter a night” method I used to read Moby Dick…
I may have mentioned that I have a large library. I started out collecting first edition hardbacks of “hypermodern” (which in my case meant “post-Neuromancer“) science fiction (with some fantasy and horror works and authors thrown in for good measure), and once I had collected everything I wanted there, I started going after every important post-World War II SF work, toward which I’m making significant progress. Hence this list of books I’m still looking for.
By and large, I don’t buy later printings, copies without dust jackets, copies with price-clipped dust jackets (unless all copies of the true first edition were released that way), copies with facsimile dust jackets, or overly crummy copies. Most of the books I buy are in Fine/Fine condition, but that relaxes a bit the older (and pricier) books become. I have picked up Ex-Library copies in dust jacket when the better copies of the true first can’t be found under a grand. I also only buy first state bindings and dust jackets, unless there’s no priority, or the true first state is insanely rare (such as with Stanley G. Weinbaum’s Dawn of Flame).
With that in mind, I compiled a list of first editions on my want list, so here’s a significant portion of that list (omitting things available relatively cheap, or hideously expensive), listed alphabetically by author. I also put down all the Manly Wade Wellman and Jack Vance books I was looking for, since I have so many I was having a hard time keeping track of what I had and what I was still missing.
Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Arthur Baker)
Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot (Gnome Press)
J. G. Ballard’s Crash (Cape)
J. G. Ballard’s The Drowned World (Gollancz)
Alfred Bester’s Tiger! Tiger! (Sidgwick & Jackson)
James Blish’s A Case of Conscience (Faber & Faber)
Robert Bloch’s The Opener of the Way (Arkham)
Philip K. Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney (Gregg Press)
Philip K. Dick’s Counter-Clock World (White Lion)
Philip K. Dick’s Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (Doubleday)
Philip K. Dick’s A Handful of Darkness (Rich & Cowan, 1st state in blue boards stamped in silver, in first state dj (no mention of World of Chance))
Philip K. Dick’s The World Jones Made (Sidgwick & Jackson)
Philip K. Dick’s World of Chance (Rich and Cowan)
Harlan Ellison’s The Fantasies of Harlan Ellison (Gregg Press)
Robert A. Heinlein’s Between Planets (Scribner’s, unclipped $2.50 dj)
Robert A. Heinlein’s Beyond This Horizon (Fantasy Press)
Robert A. Heinlein’s The Door Into Summer (Doubleday)
Robert A. Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky (Scribner’s)
Robert A. Heinlein’s Glory Road (Putnam)
Robert A. Heinlein’s Methuselah’s Children (Gnome, 1st state binding, 1st state dj)
Robert A. Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters (Doubleday)
Robert A. Heinlein’s Red Planet (Scribner’s)
Robert A. Heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo (Scribner’s, unclipped $2.00 dj)
Robert A. Heinlein’s The Star Beast (Scribner’s, unclipped $2.50 dj)
Robert A. Heinlein’s The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (Gnome)
Robert A. Heinlein’s Waldo & Magic Inc. (Doubleday)
Robert E. Howard’s The Coming of Conan (Gnome Press)
Robert E. Howard’s The Dark Man (Arkham House)
Robert E. Howard’s Skull-Face and Others (Arkham House)
R. A. Lafferty’s Horns on Their Head (Pendragon Press HB)
R. A. Lafferty’s Funnyfingers & Cabrito (Pendragon Press HB)
Joe R. Lansdale (as Ray Slater)’s Texas Night Riders (Chivers)
Fritz Leiber’s Two Sought Adventure (Gnome)
Fritz Leiber’s The Secret Songs (Rupert Hart-Davis)
H. P. Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Others (Arkham House)
Richard Matheson’s Born of Man and Woman (Chamberline Press)
Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man (David Bruce and Watson)
Chad Oliver’s Another Kind (Ballantine HB)
Chad Oliver’s Shadows in the Sun (Ballantine HB)
Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan (Eyre & Spottiswoode)
Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast (Eyre & Spottiswoode)
Mervyn Peake’s Titus Alone (Eyre & Spottiswoode)
Jack Vance’s Araminta Station (Underwood Miller)
Jack Vance’s The Deadly Isles (Bobbs-Merrill)
Jack Vance’s The Dragon Masters (Dennis Dobson)
Jack Vance’s Ecce and Old Earth (Underwood Miller)
Jack Vance’s Four Men Called John (Gollancz)
Jack Vance’s The Houses of Iszm (Underwood Miller)
Jack Vance’s The House on Lily Street (Underwood Miller)
Jack Vance’s The Eyes of the Overworld (Gregg Press)
Jack Vance’s The Last Castle (Underwood Miller)
Jack Vance’s The Many Worlds of Magnus Ridolph (Dennis Dobson)
Jack Vance’s Monsters in Orbit (Dennis Dobson)
Jack Vance’s Seventeen Virgins/A Bagful of Dreams (Underwood Miller HB)
Jack Vance’s Showboat World (Underwood Miller)
Jack Vance’s Son of the Tree (Underwood Miller)
Jack Vance’s Strange Notions/The Dark Ocean (Underwood Miller)
Jack Vance’s To Live Forever (Ballantine Books HB)
Jack Vance’s Vandals of the Void (Winston)
Jack Vance (as Alan Wade)’s Take My Face (Mystery House)
Jack Vance (as Peter Held)’s Isle of Peril (Mystery House)
Stanley G. Weinbaum’s A Martian Odyssey and Others (Fantasy Press)
Manly Wade Wellman’s Carolina Pirate (Washburn)
Manly Wade Wellman’s Clash on the Catabwa (Washburn)
Manly Wade Wellman’s The Ghost Battalion (Washburn)
Manly Wade Wellman’s Gray Riders (Aladdin)
Manly Wade Wellman’s Haunts of Drowning Creek (Holiday House)
Manly Wade Wellman’s Mystery at Bear Paw Gap (Washburn)
Manly Wade Wellman’s Napoleon of the West (Washburn)
Manly Wade Wellman’s The South Fork Rangers (Washburn)
Manly Wade Wellman’s The Specter of Bear Paw Gap (Washburn)
Gene Wolfe’s The Grave Secret (Portentous Press chapbook)
Gene Wolfe’s The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Was the Sun (Cheap Street chapbook)
Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley (Putnam)
If you have nice copies any of the above, and if you’re willing to sell it to me considerably cheaper than can be found on Bookfinder.com, drop me an email at lawrenceperson@gmail.com and I’ll consider it.
No, really. I wouldn’t call myself a Jerry Lewis fan (his brand of humor had already gone out of fashion by the time I was born), but he did do an excellent job in The King of Comedy (which is, I can assure you, not the film you want to watch while you’re depressed). Anyway, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in here, even if you take his claim of banging Marilyn Monroe with a grain of salt. I was unaware he had written a highly-praised book on directing, or taught directing classes attended by Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas. He also seems to be a remarkably astute businessman, since he made the studios promise to give all the rights to his movies back after 30 years.
Anyway, it’s an interesting piece, even if you’re not particularly a Jerry Lewis fan.
