There’s still some Sunday left, so here’s Center of the Sun again with “Home”.
Archive for March, 2014
Shoegazer Sunday: Center of the Sun’s “Home”
Sunday, March 30th, 2014Science Fiction Collector’s Watch: Gardner Dozois’ Personal Archive Offered Up for Sale
Tuesday, March 25th, 2014Bookseller James Cummins is offering up Gardner Dozois’ personal archive for sale for a mere $150,00:
35 linear feet (17 standard archive boxes and 11 letter files). The Science Fiction Archive of Gardner Dozois. Generally very good to fine (some early note books and letters with toning or crumpling). References: Encyclopedia of Science Fiction http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/dozois_gardner. Item #262493
Papers and correspondence of science fiction author, editor, and anthologist Gardner Dozois, whose early stories established him as one of the most talented writers of the American New Wave (though at first perhaps better known to his fellow authors than to a wide readership) and whose subsequent work as editor and anthologist has shaped the field of science fiction more than anyone since John W. Campbell. His stories were collected in The Visible Man (1977), Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys with Gardner Dozois (2001) and When the Great Days Come (2011); many of his story collaborations (with Jack Dann, Michael Swanwick, and others) were collected in Slow Dancing through Time (1990) and The Fiction Factory (2005). Dozois twice won a Nebula Award, for his stories “The Peacemaker” (1983) and “Morning Child” (1984). “Counterfactual” (2006) won the Sideways award for works of alternate history. His first novel, Nightmare Blue (1975) was an adventure tale co-written with George Alec Effinger; his novel Strangers (1978), a love story between human and alien, like his fiction and the anthologies he produced, challenges many of the earlier notions of science fiction. Another novel, Nottamun Town remains unpublished; it is present in the archive in many draft forms and in a finished typescript.
Snip.
For nearly twenty years (from 1985 to 2004) Dozois was editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction, where he discovered and encouraged many new talents in the field. He won 15 Hugo Awards during this period. Dozois’ circle of personal and professional correspondence has been wide ranging and it documents the changes in the genre over more than four decades. He was an early and clear-headed reader of James Tiptree, Jr., and the introduction Dozois wrote for the Gregg Press edition of Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home (1976) presented an analysis that was psychologically acute and was in no way overturned by the revelation the next year that Tiptree was Alice Sheldon. Tiptree letters in the archive (12 T.L.s., 1974-1977, and 9 postcards) include Tiptree’s reponse to the introduction and the letter in which Alli Sheldon reveals her identity to Dozois in advance of the public acknowledgment.
Snip.
The correspondence also documents long friendships with Pat Cadigan, Eileen Gunn, Howard Waldrop, Mary Rosenblum, Joe Haldeman, Jack Haldeman; the long connection with agent Virginia Kidd; and working relationships with Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, and almost every notable science fiction author and editor of the late twentieth century and into the new century. Since 2005, an increasing portion of Dozois’ correspondence has been electronic, and the archive includes a digital file of approximately 35,000 e-mails (sent & received) and 2,250 electronic documents.
$150,000 is:
A. Too rich for my blood.
B. Probably a comparative bargain for an institution or serious SF collector who has everything else (“Just put it over there between the first edition Alice in Wonderland and all those Lovecraft manuscripts.”)
Library Additions: Eight Signed Jack Vance Books
Tuesday, March 25th, 2014The most numerous books I bought from that 70% off sale were signed Jack Vance:
Hayajan Covers Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” in Arabic
Monday, March 24th, 2014It’s taking me some time to catalog those signed Jack Vance book and do my taxes, so here’s a musical oddity: a Jordanian band covering Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” in Arabic. Enjoy!
Shoegazer Sunday: Stumbleine Covers “Fade Into You”
Sunday, March 23rd, 2014Yet another cover, this one UK’s Stumbleine covering Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You.”
Books Signed by Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber
Saturday, March 22nd, 2014Three more books from that big 70% off purchase:
Library Additions: Two Books Signed By Michael Shea
Friday, March 21st, 2014More from the big 70% off sale purchase:
Michael Shea was probably the finest dark fantasy stylist of his generation, and Nift the Lean is a classic work that I expect to be read for years to come. He died unexpectedly on February 16th at age 67. I never had a chance to meet Shea in person.
Library Additions: Chacal #1 Signed by Tom Reamy
Thursday, March 20th, 2014I just got a big box of books from a dealer holding a 70% off sale, which I’ll probably be cataloging for the next week or so. This is the item that made me start piling things in the virtual basket for immediate purchase:
Chacal No. 1. First edition magazine original, a Fine- copy with slight bumping to top of spine. Signed by contributors Tom Reamy, Howard Waldrop, Richard Corben, Tim Kirk, and publisher Arnie Fenner.
Tom Reamy was widely acclaimed as the very best SF writer in Texas, winning a John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer as well as a Nebula Award for “San Diego Lightfoot Sue.” Reamy died of a heart attack on November 4, 1977 at the horrifically young age of 42. Reamy had no books of his own published during his lifetime, and things signed by him are genuinely rare and seldom come on the market.
Chacal was Arnie Fenner’s first magazine, a big color glossy magazine featuring first-rate fantasy fiction and art. (After two issues this would be followed up by Shayol, which had more of a science fiction focus, co-edited with Fenner’s then-wife Pat Cadigan.)
Howard believes that this was almost certainly signed at the 1976 Worldcon in Kansas City, which is the only time he recalled all of them being together at the same place and time after it was published.
Price paid: $29.99.
RIP: Lucius Shepard, 1947-2014
Thursday, March 20th, 2014Though I have seen no official word, people on Lucius Shepard’s Facebook page are mourning his death this morning.
Shepard was one of the most important new writers of the 1980s, with most of the stories in The Jaguar Hunter nominated for or winning major awards. His output fell off in the 1990s, then came back in the 21st century. He was certainly one of the finest prose stylists of his generation.
Shepard suffered a stroke while in the hospital in August of 2013.
It looks like the terrible year for deaths in the field that was 2013 is extending into 2014…
Library Addition: Harlan Ellison’s Flintlock
Wednesday, March 19th, 2014It’s not so much that I’ve been on a crazy buying spree of these last few books as that: A.) I bought a few things between January and now I hadn’t had time to catalog yet, B.) I paid for pre-publication books a while back that just now showed up (as with this book), or C.) Actually, I did go on a crazy buying spree last week, and I have to catalog stuff before those books show up.
So…
Ellison, Harlan. Flintlock. Charnel House, 2013 (actually 2014). First edition hardback, #55 of 274 signed and numbered copies, a Fine copy in decorated boards, sans dust jacket, as issued. Unproduced screenplay for James Cobrun’s Derek Flint character.
I have one additional copy for sale at $145 ($5 off cover price).