Picked up another signed Ray Bradbury chapbook:
Bradbury, Ray. The Other Foot. Perfection Form Company, 1982. First edition chapbook (presumed; no additional printings listed), a Fine copy, signed by Bradbury. As with The Veldt, this is a short story reader with questions for classrooms and reading comprehension questions in the back. Not in The Undead, which includes a number of other Bradbury chapbooks. Bought off eBay for $35.
All five of these books were picked up from Adventures in Crime & Space at Armadillocon, and all five came from the estate of late SF writer Carrie Richerson.
All three of these were bought from Joe R. His Ownself’s table at this year’s Armadillocon.
Another signed Farmer first:
Farmer, Philip Jose. The Lavalite World. Phantasia Press, 1983. First edition hardback, #192 of 250 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and a Fine slipcase. The fifth World of Tiers novel. Chalker/Owings, page 340. Bought off eBay for $34.99.
Another Half Price Book find:
Duncan, Andy. The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories. PS Publishing, 2012. First edition hardback, #80 of 200 signed, numbered copies, with an additional inscription by Duncan (“To/David –/Welcome/to the party!/Andy Duncan [with snake doodle]/NCSU/9/12/12.”) on the title page, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and decorated boards. Supplements a trade edition copy. Bought for $7.99; list is £39.99.
Herman Melville was born 200 years ago today. I have friends who have read considerably more of Melville than I, but I have read Moby Dick, and it’s still worth talking about.
It’s a slow, giant, weird, sprawling novel that I ended up enjoying, though it took me quite a while to get into it. I ground down the first time when I was almost a hundred pages into the book, when the protagonist spent a page describing a painting he could barely see in a dim bar, and I realized it was going to be another hundred pages before he actually got on the ship. A bit later I picked it up again, reading a chapter a night before bed, and finally got through it that way.
It’s easy to see why modern readers find it such a hard slog. The plot develops very slowly, and the book packs in multichapter digressions on whales and whaling technique. (“It occurs to me that the lengthy digression of the last chapter requires an equally long digression in this chapter…”) For me, the book started to pick up when I realized, right after Stubb instructed the old black cook to preach a sermon to the sharks, that each and every crewman on the Pequod was completely and utterly insane.
But the plot does slowly but surely assert itself, and by the time you reach the climax, the three day chase after Moby Dick himself, you’re right there.
The true first edition of Moby Dick was as The Whale, a British triple-decker published by Richard Bentley in a first edition of 500 copies in October, 1851. The first state binding depicts a downward swimming whale on the spine of all three volumes:
There’s also a remainder state purple binding. The one-volume American edition (titled Moby Dick, or The Whale) followed from Harper & Brothers a month later, in a variety of binding states.
And there’s a blog dedicated to collecting various editions of Moby Dick, though it hasn’t been updated since 2015.
Also worth noting: Ray Bradbury wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s movie adaptation, and also wrote a novel, Green Shadows, White Whale on the experience of writing the screenplay. I own first editions of both, with Green Shadows, White Whale signed, and I also have a signed copy of the audio cassette version of the book. (I also have a signed first of Green Shadows, White Whale for sale through Lame Excuse Books.)
I don’t collect Andre Norton, but I do sort of half-assedly collect NESFA Press, and this was a good chance to pick up a signed, limited Norton cheap:
Norton, Andre, editor. Grand Master’s Choice. NESFA Press, 1989. First edition hardback, #44 of 275 signed, numbered copies, a Fine- copy with deep groove across top of half title page, title page and table of contents (I’m guessing a manufacturing process flaw), in a Fine- dust jacket with slight non-breaking crease along bottom inside flap. Anthology where Nebula Grandmaster winners Robert A. Heinlein, Jack Williamson, Clifford Simak, L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Andre Norton and Isaac Asimov pick their personal favorites of their stories. Bought for $15 from Half Price Books, marked down from $30 during their most recent coupon sale.
Here it is, the giant roundup of all books I bought during the first half of the year. Some, but not all, of these have been covered here before.
Now you can produce your own performance of Cigar Box Faust. Dragonstairs Press is offering everything you need to mount your own production! The theater (a cigar box), the cast (a cigar in the title role and a cigar cutter as Mephistopheles, the sun, moon, and stars– well, cutouts and glitter), an mp3 file of Swanwick reading the text, and a chapbook of the script (a limited edition, signed by Michael Swanwick and numbered)!
Another Half Price Books find:
Rothfuss, Patrick. The Name of the Wind. DAW, 2007. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine- dust jacket with the barest trace bend at points and a trace of haze-rubbing. Bought at Half Price Books for $14.99. Popular fantasy that seems to go in the $300-400 range these days.
A kickstarter purchase:
Campbell, John W. Frozen Hell. Wildside Press, 2019. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. Longer version of Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” recently rediscovered. Introduction by Silverberg. Bought off Kickstarter for $25.