When Pulphouse first unveiled the short story paperback, I remember thinking “That’s stupid.” For all they bragged about “buying a single story for $1.95,” you could buy an entire issue of Asimov’s (with 5-10 times as much content) for $2.50. And, indeed, they were not swift sellers. Though a few of these (the Wolfe, the Lansdales, etc.) became slightly collectable over the years. (And a few of the companion Short Story hardbacks even more so.)
Almost all of these are paperback originals thus (though some of these have previously shown up as the title stories in collections, like Bloch’s Yours Truly, Jack the Rapper or Zelazny’s The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth), though exceptions (like Blaylock’s Paper Dragons) are noted. Some of the early ones (“Loser’s Night,” “Xolotl”) are the first publication anywhere, but most of the stories have appeared somewhere previously. Unlike most Library Addition entries, these will be listed by series order rather than alphabetical by author.
All of these are Fine copies unless otherwise noted.
“Author, J.Q.” Issue Zero. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #0, a binding dummy for the entire run of the series, with bank pages. Would never have bought this on it’s own, but since I was buying the entire thing I got this too. This one has a tiny bit of edgewear on rear spine join.
Bishop, Michael. The Quickening. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #12.
Zelazny, Roger. The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #13. Not to be confused with the short story collection of the same name. I needed this for my Zelazny collection.
Haldeman, Joe. More Than The Sum of His Parts. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #14.
Clemence, Bruce No Way Street. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #15. Guy had this, and a story in Synergy 3, and that was it…
Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn. The Spider Glass. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #16.
de Lint, Charles. Uncle Dobbin’s Parrot Fair. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #17. One of the harder titles to find.
Williams, Walter Jon. Dinosaurs. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #18.
Charnes, Suzy McKee. Listening to Brahms. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #19.
Robinson, Kim Stanley. Black Air. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #20.
Etchison, Dennis. The Dark Country. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #21. Not to be confused with the short story collection of the same name.
Aldiss, Brian W. Journey to the Goat Star. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #22. Tiny bit of rubbing along spine.
Wagner, Karl Edward. Where the Summer Ends. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #31.
Lee, Tanith. Into Gold. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #32.Tiny rub on spine.
Willis, Connie. Daisy, in the Sun. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #33. Tiny rub on spine.
Bell, M. Shayne. Inuit. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #34.
Wilson, F. Paul. The Shade of Lo Man Gong. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #35.
Wilson, F. Paul. Buckets. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #36.
Martin, George R. R. The Pear-Shaped Man. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #37.
Butler, Octavia. The Evening and the Morning and the Night. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #38. Holy moley, the prices on this online are crazy. The prices for the signed hardback I can at least sort of understand, since Butler died young, but the prices for unsigned copies like this are still crazy. I had no idea.
Dozois, Gardner. The Peacemaker. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #39. Supplements a copy of the Short Story Hardback edition.
Wolfe, Gene. The Hero as Werewolf. Pulphouse, 1991. Issue #40. This is one I did actually need, and I still need the hardback version. Also, this is the last one from 1991. Pulphouse put out 40 of these in 1991. This is called “channel stuffing.” I wasn’t dealing books at the time, but I’m pretty sure SF/F/H dealers were not thrilled at this tsunami of small press books of dubious sales-worthiness.
Oates, Joyce Carol. The Bingo Master. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #41.
Holder, Nancy. The Ghosts of Tivoli. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #44.
Brin, David. Dr. Pak’s Preschoool. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #45. Supplements a copy of the Cheap Street edition (which precedes).
Lansdale, Joe R. Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #46. Isajanko, The World Lansdalean C03.a.i. Supplements a copy of the Short Story hardback version.
Somtow, S. P. Fiddling for Waterbuffaloes. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #47.
Murphy, Pat. Rachel in Love. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #48.
Le Guin, Ursula K. Nine Lives. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #50.
Bloch, Robert. The Skull of the Marquis de Sade. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #51.
de Lint, Charles. Merlin Dreams in the Mondream Wood. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #52.
Kress, Nancy. The Price of Oranges. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #53.
Busby, F.M. If This Is Winnetka, You Must be Judy. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #54.
Cadigan, Pat. My Brother’s Keeper. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #55.
Bryant, Edward. The Thermals of August. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #56.
Blaylock, James P. Paper Dragons. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #57. A few small rubs along spine. Supplements a copy of the Axolotl Press hardback (which precedes).
Resnick, Mike. Kirinyaga. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #58. Kelleghan, Mike Resnick: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to His Work A39.
Sloca, Sue Ellen. Candles on the Pond. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #59. As far as I can tell, this is her only publication anywhere.
Wu, William F. Shaunessy Fong. Pulphouse, 1992. Issue #60. Has some slight rubbing along front near spine. Last in the Short Story Paperbacks series.
Reference: Jack Chalker and Mark Owings, The Science-Fantasy Publishers: A Critical and Bibliographic History, 2002, page 719 (numbers 1 through 10), page 721 (numbers 11-20), pages 722 (numbers 21-30). This is what Chalker had to say about the Short Story paperback line:
In January, 1991, Pulphouse continued its expansion with the Short Story Paperbacks and the selected Short Story Hardbacks, although we’re still only half- convinced that these are in any sense legitimate books. What they were, though, was what seemed to be a quick way to make money, and if people bought them, fine. They brought the whole operation as of the start of 1991 at a whopping 80+ titles a year. It should be noted that the paperbacks series was supposed to be originals and reprints, but became, after the initial ones, primarily reprints, a move that, while understandable, seemed to us to take away the one good reason why most people might buy them.
Money held by SF/F/H collectors is a finite commodity, and Pulphouse in the early 1990s seemed to treat it as a limitless resource. If you’re publishing books by Lansdale, Zelazny, Wagner, De Lint, etc., that’s a license to print a little money. But Antieau, Clemence, Caraker? Not so much. Why they thought collectors were going to shell out money for such items is a mystery.
You may have noticed that Joel Hodgson and MST3K gang are having a new kickstarter for the next season (for values of “kickstarter” that include “not on the Kickstarter platform”). There are five days left and they are only 38% of the way to the first goal of $4.8 million, which will be six features and six shorts.
This one? Not so much. Despite announcing that Plan 9 from Outer Space will be among the riffed films.
Donor fatigue? The Biden Recession? Not doing enough promotion? Not enough boost from a non-Kickstarter platform? Disgruntlement over how long it took people to get their promised rewards from the last campaign?
I think it may be some combination of all the above.
Maybe the usual Turkey Day festivities will kick it into higher gear. But if they don’t, this may be the first MST3K fundraising effort to fail.
This is a two-pack of Hompavo LED Flame Light Bulbs. It simulates having a flickering firelight instead of your outdoor lights for the Halloween season. I’ve been using them since 2021 and they still work fine. If you like that sort of thing for Halloween, I recommend them.
See this?
It’s “Red Light Bulb 9W (60W Equivalent) E26 Base, LED Colored Light Bulbs for Halloween Christmas Party Holiday Lighting 2-Pack.” They’re absolute worthless garbage. Both bulbs stopped working within minutes of screwing them in and turning them on. No wonder there’s page after page of one-star reviews.
All around the world, people hear strange things from the sky. Here’s a roundup of the various “sky trumpets,” booming noises, hums and other things people have no explanation for.
Another purchase from that same private collector, and another case of “I already have this book, but not in this state.”
Simmons, Dan. Entropy’s Bed at Midnight. Lord John Press, 1990. First edition hardback, #93 of 100 signed, limited copies, a Fine copy, sans dust jacket, as issued, in a Fine slipcase. Reginald, Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, 1975-1991 33966 (but not this state). Supplements a signed, non-slipcased 1/300 edition.
Lord John Press is an interesting press. They started out as primarily a literary small press (John Updike was a particular favorite), but did several science fiction, horror and mystery firsts along the way, including Stephen King’s Dolan’s Cadillac, which (of course) sold out almost instantly.
About the time Carrion Comfort and Hyperion came out so close together, Simmons (like Clive Barker before him) got tagged as “The Next Stephen King,” and there was briefly a small press frenzy for publishing his work. I think Lord John did fine on this one, but some of the other Simmons titles they did (Children of the Night and The Hollow Man in particular) helped burst the small press bubble in the early 90s. They did too many copies in too many different states at too high price points, with the result that they sat on dealer’s shelves for decades. That, the wild overproduction of Pulphouse, and the unwise shift of Dark Harvest to mysteries, along with the founders of Phantasia Press and Underwood-Miller stepping away, helped dampen the small press boom in the early 1990s.
I will have one copy of the 1/300 signed limited edition of Entropy’s Bed at Midnight in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog, currently in progress.
Stephen R. Donaldson was someone I read back before I collected first editions, and the Thomas Covenant books were ones I read despite disliking the central character.
But I had a chance to grab signed firsts of the second Thomas Covenant trilogy from the same collector culling his collection as the previous Vance, Blaylock, etc. entries. All of these replaced unsigned book club copies.
Donaldson, Stephen R. The Wounded Land. Del Rey, 1980. First edition hardback (“First Edition: June 1980/1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10”), a Fine copy in a Near Fine dust jacket with faint crease down spine, small closed tear at top frotn, and wear at heel and points, signed and dated (“4/15/82”) by Donaldson, with bookmark for the trilogy laid in.
Donaldson, Stephen R. The One Tree. Del Rey, 1982. First edition hardback (“First Edition: April 1982”), a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, signed and dated (“4/15/82”) by Donaldson, with bookmark for the trilogy laid in. Note: While the other two first editions in the trilogy feature numberlines, this one does not. I know that this is not the book club edition (which I also have in hand), there are no pictures of a copyright page with a numberline for this title I can locate, and consensus is that they apparently just left it off.
Donaldson, Stephen R. White Gold Wielder. Del Rey, 1983. First edition hardback (“First Edition: April 1983/1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10”), a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, signed and dated (“5/6/89”) by Donaldson, with bookmark for the trilogy laid in.
The story I’ve heard from a couple of places is that Lester Del Rey’s boss at Del Rey/Ballantine (I’m assuming Ian Ballantine) walked by Lester’s office and asked “Shouldn’t we be getting in the new Donald Covenant manuscript soon?”
Del Rey: “Oh, I rejected it.”
Long pause. “You what?” Keep in mind that at this point, Donaldson was the biggest selling author in all of Ballantine Books.
Del Rey: “Yeah, it was told from a woman’s viewpoint. Books told from a woman’s viewpoint don’t sell to fantasy readers.”
The publisher stood there for a few seconds, then walked out without another word and called Donaldson from his office.
“Stephen, what are you doing right now?”
“I’m looking at the rejection letter Lester sent me.”
“OK, from now on, I’m your editor. Send me the manuscript.”
My relationship to Great Northern is weird. I liked what I heard off Remind Me Where The Light Is enough to buy it, listened to it a lot for a while, and then just…stopped. I can’t even explain why I stopped. It’s a mystery, like the waning of a pestilence. That album is superbly crafted Shoegaze-tinged pop that sounds bit like Tamaryn.
“Radio,” an earlier effort off Sleepy Eepee, is a different sort of beast, like Mazzy Starr crossed with some buzzy low-fi band. Singer Rachel Stolte has a compelling voice.
Despite not listening to them for years, YouTube occasionally offers them up in my feed. A good thing, too.
They evidently toured with Smashing Pumpkins this year, and are supposedly working on a new album.
