Unless you count the withdrawn American edition of The Atrocity Exhibition (which is not the true first, as the Cape (which I have) precedes), the true first of J. G. Ballard’s Crash is (along with The Drowned World) among Ballard’s most expensive and difficult first editions. I’d been looking for an affordable copy of Crash for a while, and I finally found one:
Ballard, J. G. Crash. Jonathan Cape, 1973. First edition hardback, an Ex-Library copy with all the usual flaws, including stamps to pages and page block edges, in a dust jacket that, while intact, has been glued to the book, with a long, thin library sticker across the front, spine, back and rear flap, and a large square library affixed to rear, plus some glue wrinkling; call it a Good/Good Ex-Lib copy. Goodard and Pringle, J. G. Ballard: The First Twenty Years 101. Currey, page 23. Bought off an Australian bookseller for $68 plus shipping.
I think this ends this current run of Lansdale library additions. This one came from another publisher having a 50% off sale rather than a private collector.
Lansdale, Joe R. The Sky Done Ripped. Subterranean Press, 2019. First edition hardback, #324 of 350 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and a Fine slipcase. Third book in the Ned the Seal trilogy. This edition features a collection of sketches at the back not in the trade edition. Supplements a signed copy of the trade edition. Bought for $47.50.
Another book for my complete Lansdale collection from that same private collector:
Lansdale, Joe. R. Tight Little Stitches In A Dead Man’s Back. Pulphouse, 1992. First edition hardback chapbook, #70 of 100 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy, sans dust jacket, as issued. Short story hardback issue #28. Story originally appeared in John Maclay’s Nukes anthology in 1986. This is the first separate edition. Bought from a private collector for $75 (which is considerably more than I paid for The Steel Valentine).
I may have mentioned that I avoided the Pulphouse short story hardback line when it first came out, as I had a hard time thinking of them as real books rather than gimmicks, and didn’t expect them to hold their value. Now, after I’ve collected everything else by the author, I’ve been picking them up. Most can still be had cheap, but not this one.
Lots of people don’t like wasps. And even people who have no particular animosity toward ants are not wild about seeing hordes of army ants on the move.
Well, imagine waking up one morning and seeing a living rope of army ants attack a wasp nest on your house?
That’s gonna give some people the heebie geebies….
Lansdale, Joe R., Howard Waldrop and Neal Barrett, Jr. The Gonzo Tapes. Scorpio Inc., no date (Howard says he recorded his October 7, 1992; since they were first sold at Armadillocon, and that year’s Armadillocon started just two days later, I’m guessing it was released at the 1993 Armadillocon). First edition cassette tape package, containing three cassettes with two stories each being read by authors Joe R. Lansdale (“Steppin’ Out, Summer 1968” and “By Bizarre Hands”), Howard Waldrop (“French Scenes” and “The Passing of the Western”) and Neal Barrett, Jr. (“Winter on the Belle Forche” and “Class of ’61”), along with a single trifold sheet attached to the inside of the front case lid with adhesive to the back, a Fine copy. Bought from that same private collector for $10.
Neal Barrett’s wife Ruth was the driving force behind this project. According to Howard, these all sold out at the Armadillocon they were released at, but I know copies were easy to find for many years after. Now, however, you don’t see them much anymore, and there’s precious little information about this on the Internet…
Three Joe R. Lansdale chapbooks purchased from that same private collector:
Lansdale, Joe R. On The Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks. Roadkill Press, 1991. First separate edition chapbook, #488 of 500 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy. Originally appeared in the 1989 Skipp & Spector anthology The Book of the Dead. Bought from a private collector for $25.
Lansdale, Joe R. The Orbit #1. Subterranean Press, no date (but 1999). First edition chapbook original, a Fine copy. “The Official Joe R. Lansdale Newsletter.” First of two put out. With:
Lansdale, Joe R. The Orbit #2. Subterranean Press, no date (but 1999). First edition chapbook original, a Fine copy. Second and last issue. Bought for $15 for the pair off a private collector.
In the menagerie of paranormal/imaginary creatures, Shadow People are just that: shadow-like or completely black beings in the shape of people. Some say they’re evil spirits or aliens, others tricks of the imagination, fatigued brains or sleep paralysis nightmares. I mentioned this to a friend, and he said “Oh yeah, I’ve seen those!”
Hell, there’s an entire archive of people to have claimed to see them. Some seem benign or helpful. Others? Not so much. Some seem to wear hats. Then again, people now claim to see Slendarman and Chupacabras, so it hardly proves anything.
There are lots of “shadow people” videos on YouTube and most are painfully fake, obvious superimposition shots, etc. Want an unconvincing compilation video? Of course you do!
Here’s another one, with a couple of repeats, though these seem least slightly less embarrassing than most:
Researchers scanned the brains of 12 people with neurological disorders, who had reported experiencing a ghostly presence.
They found that all of these patients had some kind of damage in the parts of the brain associated with self-awareness, movement and the body’s position in space.
In further tests, the scientists turned to 48 healthy volunteers, who had not previously experienced the paranormal, and devised an experiment to alter the neural signals in these regions of the brain.
They blindfolded the participants, and asked them to manipulate a robot with their hands. As they did this, another robot traced these exact movements on the volunteers’ backs.
When the movements at the front and back of the volunteer’s body took place at exactly the same time, they reported nothing strange.
But when there was a delay between the timing of the movements, one third of the participants reported feeling that there was a ghostly presence in the room, and some reported feeling up to four apparitions were there.
Two of the participants found the sensation so strange, they asked for the experiments to stop.
The researchers say that these strange interactions with the robot are temporarily changing brain function in the regions associated with self-awareness and perception of the body’s position.
The team believes when people sense a ghostly presence, the brain is getting confused: it’s miscalculating the body’s position and identifying it as belonging to someone else.
There are multiple shadow people movies on IMDB, all of which get ratings that range from mediocre to horrible (and the best seems to be a romantic drama that has nothing to do with horror or the supernatural).
