Here’s a book I picked up less for the contents than as an affordable way to obtain Fletcher Pratt’s signature:
Pratt, Fletcher, editor. Civil War in Pictures. Civil War in Pictures, 1955. First edition (thus? no statement of printing, and there was a Garden City Books edition in 1955 as well, but what online references I’ve found (such as this from Henry Wessells) mention this Holt edition), a Near Fine copy with slight bumping at tips, a non-authorial bookplate on inside front cover (mostly obscured by the dj flap), and very faint yellowing to pages, in a Very Good dust jacket, with very shallow loss and head and heel, a 1″ semi-closed tear at bottom rear cover, same bumping at tips, and slight foxing to blind side spine. Signed by Pratt for members of the Civil War Book Club. $10 would have been very pricey indeed for 1955 (though it’s possible that was just for show and the club members received it for a substantial discount). Pratt died in 1956. Bought for $37.50 on eBay.
Two more signed Ray Bradbury Christmas broadsheets, both bought off eBay:
Bradbury, Ray. Christmas Greetings (AKA Scanning the Universe. Self-published, no date (but 1984). First edition broadsheet original, one sheet of paper, a Near Fine copy, folded for mailing. Inscribed: “Stephen! Ray Bradbury.” Yet another Bradbury poem referencing George Bernard Shaw. Credited to Ray and Marguerite Bradbury. Not sure if this has been reprinted anywhere. Bought off eBay for $35 plus shipping.
Bradbury, Ray. A Christmas Wish 1994 (AKA Go Not With Ruins In Your Mind). Self published, 1994. First edition broadsheet original, one sheet of paper, a Near Fine copy with a paper clip indention at top left. Inscribed by Bradbury: “Dear/Holly!/[line]/Happy New Year!/[line]/Ray Bradbury/ 1/3/95”. Credited to Maggie and Ray Bradbury. Bought off eBay for $34.89 plus shipping.
I won a three-book lot of signed Philip K. Dick firsts from Swann Auctions in May, and after a small shipping delay, they finally arrived.
Dick, Philip K. In Milton Lumkey Territory. Dragon Press, 1985. First edition hardback, one of 50 copies bound in quarter-leather with Philip K. Dick’s signature (cut from a cancelled check) pasted to the front free endpaper, a Fine copy, sans dust jacket, as issued. One of the Dick mainstream novels unpublished at the time of his death. Chalker/Owings (1991), page 132. Wintz/Hyde, Precious Artifacts, MS4.1. Supplements a copy of the simultaneous trade first hardback.
Dick, Philip K. Mary and the Giant. Ultramarine Press/Arbor House, 1987. First edition hardback, one of 125 copies bound in quarter-leather with Philip K. Dick’s signature (cut from a cancelled check) pasted to the front free endpaper, a Near Fine copy with 1/4″ of what appear to be sun-fading to the leather along spine and at top, sans dust jacket, as issued. Like all Ultramarine Press books, this is just the rebound Arbor House sheets with Dick’s signature added. Chalker/Owings (1991), page 611, calls for a limitation page, but I’m not seeing one. Wintz/Hyde, Precious Artifacts, MS5.1. Oddly enough, I never picked up the Arbor House first, so this supplements a UK first.
Dick, Philip K. Ubik: A Screenplay. Corroboee Press, 1985. First edition hardback, one of 50 copies bound in full leather with Dick’s signature mounted on the half title page, and signed by the introduction authors (Tim Powers and Paul Williams) and the artists (Val Lakey-Lindhan and Rob Lindhan, and Doug Rice), a Near Fine copy with apparent sun-fading to leather spine, sans dust jacket, as issued, in a Fine patterned cardboard slipcase. Chalker/Owings (1991), page 114. Wintz/Hyde, Precious Artifacts, SF34.2.
When the Dick “cancelled check limiteds” started appearing, there was widespread belief among collectors that they were extremely tacky, but damned if the things didn’t sell out almost instantly. Nowadays these typically retail in the $750-$1,250 range each. All three books bought for $880 at auction, including buyer’s fee and shipping.
Before I sent out the latest Lame Excuse Books catalog, I picked up some Armchair Fiction books for stock, as well as some for my own library:
Moore, Ward, and Geoff St. Reynard. RX Jupiter Save Us and Beware, The Usurpers! Armchair Fiction, 2011. First edition trade paperback original (a POD production, like all Armchair Fiction books), a Fine copy, new and unread. Two short novels in one package, Ward Moore’s RX Jupiter Save Us, and Beware, The Usurpers! by Geoff St. Reynard (which the SF Encyclopedia says was a pseudonym for Robert Wilson Krepps). Mainly picked this up for the Ward Moore, which does not appear to have been reprinted since its appearance in Future Science Fiction in 1954.
Moore, Ward and George O. Smith. Transient and The World-Mover. Armchair Fiction, 2013. First edition trade paperback original (a POD production, like all Armchair Fiction books), a Fine copy, new and unread. Two short novels in one package. Ward Moore’s Transient has a cover blurb says “lost in a landscape of confusion and distorted reality” and features a unicorn rearing above a guy in a spacesuit. Smith had quite a nice career in the 40s and 50s, with books from Gnome Press, Prime Press, etc. Neither of these seems to have been reprinted since their original magazine appearances (1950 for the Smith, 1960 for the Moore).
Shaver, Richard S. The Shaver Mystery Book Five. Armchair Fiction, 2014. First edition trade paperback original (a POD production, like all Armchair Fiction books), a Fine copy, new and unread. Three reprinted Shaver Mystery stories and “Mr. Shaver’s Lemurian Alphabet.” Companion to the four earlier Armchair Fiction Shaver Mystery volumes.
Shaver, Richard S. The Shaver Mystery Book Six. Armchair Fiction, 2015. First edition trade paperback original (a POD production, like all Armchair Fiction books), a Fine copy, new and unread. Four more reprinted Shaver Mystery stories, including one, “The Land of Kui,” with footnotes by editor Raymond Palmer, plus an Introduction, a Forward from the original magazine appearance, and the non-fiction piece “The Key To Mantong,” an “ancient language” used in various Shaver Mystery stories. Shaver was almost as obsessed with philology as J.R.R. Tolkien, except without all that annoying in-depth scholarship and understanding…
Shaver, Richard S. The Shaver Mystery Book Seven. Armchair Fiction, 2016. First edition trade paperback original (a POD production, like all Armchair Fiction books), a Fine copy, new and unread. Four more reprinted Shaver Mystery stories and “The Dictionary of the Mantong Language.”
Silverberg, Robert. Masters of Science Fiction Vol. 11: Robert Silverberg: The Ace Years, Part One (Chalice of Death AKA Earth Shall Live Again! AKA Vengeance of the Space Armadas AKA Lest We Forget Thee Earth, Starhaven and Shadow on the Stars). Armchair Fiction, 2017. First edition trade paperback original (a POD production, like all Armchair Fiction books), a Fine copy, new and unread. Includes five Silverberg short novels original published as Ace doubles under pseudonyms (Chalice of Death (AKA Earth Shall Live Again! AKA Vengeance of the Space Armadas AKA Lest We Forget Thee Earth) as by Calvin M. Knox, Starhaven and Shadow on the Stars as by Ivar Jorgenson), plus two stories (“The Impossible Intelligence” and “Overlord of Colony 8”) compiled into one volume, with a lengthy new introduction by Silverberg. The two stories have never been reprinted since their initial magazine appearances.
Silverberg, Robert. Masters of Science Fiction Vol. 12: Robert Silverberg: The Ace Years, Part Two (The Planet Killers, The Plot Against Earth, One of Our Asteroids is Missing). Armchair Fiction, 2017. First edition trade paperback original (a POD production, like all Armchair Fiction books), a Fine copy, new and unread. Includes three short novels (The Planet Killers, The Plot Against Earth and One of Our Asteroids is Missing as by Calvin M. Knox), as well as a novelette (“Death’s Planet, which has never been reprinted in English since its magazine appearance) and the short story “The Assassin.”
Wellman, Manly Wade, and Stanton Coblentz. Warrior of Two Worlds and Enchantress of Lemuria. Armchair Fiction, 2017. First edition trade paperback original (a POD production, like all Armchair Fiction books), a Fine copy, new and unread. Two short novels in one package. Warrior of Two Worlds, in which a dead warrior is resurrected to defend his planet from invaders, is a Wellman novel that evidently hasn’t been reprinted since it’s original 1944 appearance, whereas Coblentz’s Enchantress of Lemuria had one reprint in a paperback anthology back in 1971. Wellman was an extremely good horror writer, and I’m trying to collect all his work. Coblentz was a prolific and well-regarded early-to-mid 20th science fiction writer whose work was published by Fantasy Press and FPCI, but seems to have fallen completely off the map except for people who collect mid-century small press works.
Wellman, Manly Wade, and Ralph Milne Farley and Al P. Nelson. West Point 3000 A.D. and Holy City of Mars. Armchair Fiction, 2016. First edition trade paperback original (a POD production, like all Armchair Fiction books), a Fine copy, new and unread. Another Armchair Fiction double. The Wellman appears to have one previous POD publication. Farley, like Coblentz, is pretty much forgotten these days. Nelson evidently only did this and one other collaboration with Farley.
I still have the Ward Moores and the Wellman/Coblentz volumes available for sale through Lame Excuse Books…
Two bought for $10, a third for roughly half price, and a fourth at the usual dealer discount, all Fine/Fine new first editions, except where noted. .
Barker, Clive. Tonight, Again. Subterranean Press, 2015. Erotic stories and poems. Bought for $10 from a Subterranean Press sale.
Egan, Greg. Phoresis. Subterranean Press, 2018.
Powers, Tim. The Drawing of the Dark. Subterranean Press, 2014. First edition thus, preceded by the Del Rey paperback original and the Hypatia hardback, both of which I already have. Bought for $10 from a Subterranean Press sale.
Sterling, Bruce. Gothic High-Tech. Subterranean Press, 2011. First edition hardback, #34 of 200 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. Supplements the trade edition, which I already have.
Swanwick, Michael. The Proceedings of the American Martini Institute: Report of the American Martini Laboratory: The Evolution of the Martini. Dragonstairs Press, 2018. First edition chapbook original, one of 60 signed numbered copies, a Fine copy, new and unread. Like a title says: A history of the development of the Martini cocktail.
I’ll have a small number of these available in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog, which should go out tomorrow…
I heard about David Pringle’s ongoing Ballard/Moorcock chronology from him on Facebook, which lead me to tracking down these.
(Ballard, J.G.) McGrath, Rick, editor. The JG Ballard Book. The Terminal Press, 2013. First edition, first printing hardback (stated, though actually a POD book), a Fine copy in decorated boards, sans dust jacket, as issued. Oversized hardback (about the size and thickness of a high school yearbook) chock full of various Ballard tidbits, including an interview with David Pringle, additions to the Goddard bibliography, pictures of Ballard’s house, maps to the Shanghai of his youth, with many pages in color, etc.
(Ballard, J.G.) McGrath, Rick, editor. Deep Ends The JG Ballard Anthology 2014. The Terminal Press, 2014. First edition, first printing hardback (stated, though actually a POD book), a Fine copy in decorated boards, sans dust jacket, as issued. Oversized hardback chock full of various Ballard tidbits, including a previously unpublished Ballard work (“Crystal of the Sea”), a David Pringle interview with one of Ballard’s daughters, and a remembrance of another, plus sundry critical essays and (ahem) “Why I Want To Fuck Rupert Murdoch.”
(Ballard, J.G.) McGrath, Rick, editor. Deep Ends The JG Ballard Anthology 2015. The Terminal Press, 2015. First edition, first printing hardback (stated, though actually a POD book), a Fine copy in decorated boards, sans dust jacket, as issued. Oversized hardback full of even more Ballard tidbits, including the first part of David Pringle’s extensive Moorcock/Ballard chronology (indeed, hearing about that is what first made me track these volumes down), plus lots of critical essays, including one on Ballard, Dick and Baudrillard.
(Ballard, J.G.) McGrath, Rick, editor. Deep Ends The JG Ballard Anthology 2016. The Terminal Press, 2016. First edition, first printing hardback (stated, though actually a POD book), a Fine copy in decorated boards, sans dust jacket, as issued. Oversized hardback full of even more Ballard tidbits, including the second part of David Pringle’s extensive Moorcock/Ballard chronology, an English bookseller’s notes on selling Ballard, an interview conducted by Paul Di Filippo, etc.
Please note that copies of all four will be available in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog, which should go out this week.
Here’s another book with a ridiculously small print run:
Webb, Don. Deep Dendo and Other Poems. Dunham’s Manor Press, 2018. First edition hardback, one of only 25 hardback copies, a Fine copy, new and unread. Don’s latest poetry collection.
