Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Monday, June 17th, 2013
Books and related items, and no particular theme, other than interesting firsts I picked up. Been dawdling about getting this documented, and now I need to put it up so I can catalog a major acquisition of books I made Friday…
Bok, Hannes. Bok 1. Glenn Nigra, 1975. Portfolio with 12 loose Hannes Bok illustration sheets, portfolio folder Fine- with bumping to corners, all illustrations Fine. Uneven shading in pic is a scanner artifact, as the portfolio folder is actually slightly too large to fit on the scanner.
De Camp, L. Sprague, and Fletcher Pratt. The Carnelian Cube. Gnome Press, 1948. First edition hardback, a Very Good+ copy with bumping at head and heel and wear at heel and tips, and slight dust soiling at head, in a Very Good- dust jacket with 1/4″ loss at head, and slightly less loss at heel and tips, significant fading to red ink on spine (the cube is barely carnelian anymore), partial stamp on rear flap, top front (non-price) flap trimmed at very tip, and general wear. The first Gnome Press book. Chalker & Owings, page 197. Earl Terry Kemp, The Anthem Series*, page 191. Currey (1978), page 132.
Really only a placeholder copy, and I wouldn’t even have picked it up if it hadn’t been part of a lot with:
De Camp, L. Sprague, and Fletcher Pratt. Land of Unreason. Henry Holt and Company, 1942. First edition hardback, a Near Fine+ plus copy, with slight bumping at head and heel and slight dust soiling to page block at heel, in a Near Fine dust jacket with age darkening to rear cover. A very nice copy, and a splendid example of the Boris Artzybasheff dust jacket. Bought for $34 for this and the above (plus shipping and buyers premium) off Heritage Auctions.
McKillip, Patricia A. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. Atheneum, 1974. First edition hardback, a Near Fine copy with bend at head and heel in a Near Fine- dust jacket with crimping at head and heel, edgewear and a closed 1/4″ tear at top front cover. The very first winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Pringle, Modern Fantasy 100, #54. Bought for $26 off the Internet.
Swanwick, Michael. It Came Upon a Midnight. Dragonstairs Press, 2011. First edition chapbook original, #81 of 100 signed, numbered copies, a Fine- copy with one faint stray mark to front.
Swanwick, Michael. Midwinter Elves. Dragonstairs Press, 2012. First edition chapbook original, #15 of 100 signed, numbered copies, a Fine- copy with small stain on rear.
Vance, Jack. The Eyes of the Overworld. Gregg Press, 1977. First hardback edition, a Fine copy, sans dust jacket, as issued. Sequel to The Dying earth featuring Cugel the Clever. Precedes the Underwood/Miller edition. Hewett, A26g. Currey (1978), page 498.
Wolfe, Gary K. American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s. The Library of America, 2012. First Edition hardback thus, being a two volume compilation of some of the best American SF novels of the 1950s: Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants, Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human, Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow, Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man, Robert A. Heinlein’s Double Star, Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, James Blish’s A Case of Conscience, Algis Budrys’ Who?, and Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time, both volumes Fine in Fine dust jackets, new and unread, in a Fine slipcase. This is an example of book collecting madness, since I either have first editions of, or have already read, all the books here except Who?, but I thought this was a handsome set when it came out, and snapped this up when it showed up at Half Price Books.
*This is a newly published reference work on SF specialty publishers. I hope to finish a review of it Real Soon Now, and I’ll have copies for sale through Lame Excuse Books.
Tags: Books, Fantasy, First Edition, Fletcher Pratt, Gary K. Wolfe, Gnome Press, Hannes Bok, Jack Vance, L. Sprague de Camp, Michael Swanwick, Patricia A. McKillip, pics, Science Fiction
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Sunday, June 9th, 2013
The BBC is reporting that Iain Banks died at 59, just two months after announcing he had terminal cancer, and weeks after an update in which he was sounding a tiny bit more optimistic.
A great writer, of both SF and mainstream work, and he will be missed.
Tags: Books, Iain M. Banks, Obituary, Science Fiction
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Wednesday, May 29th, 2013
Jack Vance died Sunday, May 26, at the age of 96. Another towering giant of SF gone, and he was one of the best.
A few random images of some of the Jack Vance first editions in my library, just because:
Including an ultra-crappy cellphone pic of The Vance Integral Edition:
Tags: Books, Fantasy, Jack Vance, pics, Science Fiction
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Thursday, May 23rd, 2013
Since The Wailing of the Gaulish Dead just arrived in the mail, I thought I would do a post on all four of the Avram Davidson chapbooks put out by The Nutmeg Point District Mail/Avram Davidson Society:
Davidson, Avram. The Beasts of the Elysian Fields by Conrad Amber. The Nutmeg Point District Mail, 2001. First edition chapbook, Fine. Though there were 70 numbered copies, this one is labeled “review copy.” (There were also evidently 10 presentation hardbacks, which I’ve not seen.)
Davidson, Avram. El Vilvoy de las Islas. #7 of 25 numbered copies hand bound in quarter green linen with paper-covered boards, a Fine copy, with errata slip bound in and this copy signed by Don Webb at his introduction. Bought for $35 when they were offered to subscribers of The New York Review of Science Fiction (unless I’m confusing it with Michael Swanwick’s Puck Aleshire’s Abecedary, which was also bound by Henry Wessells and offered through NYRSF).
Davidson, Avram. The Last Wizard. The Avram Davidson Society, 1999. First edition chapbook original, #125 of 125 numbered copies, a Fine copy. (There was also a second printing.)
Davidson, Avram. The Wailing of the Gaulish Dead The Nutmeg Point District Mail, 2013. Perfect-bound chapbook first edition, one of 200 copies in heavy cardstock with self-wrapper flaps and errata sheet pasted inside, a Fine copy. More Adventures in Unhistory. I’ll have some to sell in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog.
Tags: Avram Davidson, Books, chapbooks, Don Webb, Fantasy, first editions, Science Fiction
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Tuesday, May 14th, 2013
You may remember that I’m collecting all the Hugo winners in first edition hardback. I finally picked up a limited edition of one of the ones I lacked.
Asimov, Isaac. Foundations Edge. Whispers Press, 1982. First limited edition (consensus seems to be that the Doubleday trade edition precedes by about a month), #282 of 1,000 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in quarter-bound leather over embossed cloth boards, top edge gilded in real gold, sans dust jacket, as issued. Hugo winner and Nebula Finalist. Chalker/Owings, p. 476. Bought off the Internet for $160.
By no means as good as the first three Foundation books. The trade edition is extremely common, but this signed edition isn’t. I’ll probably pick up the trade edition as well, but I’m waiting for a Fine/Fine copy to come along super-cheap…
Tags: Books, First Edition, Isaac Asimov, pics, Science Fiction
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Monday, May 13th, 2013
Three chapbooks, two (mostly) non-fiction, and one fiction round-robin to help complete my Joe R. Lansdale collection.
Michael Blaine, Dennis Etchison, James Kisner, Dean R. Koontz, Joe R. Lansdale, Richard Christian Matheson, Robert R. McCammon, William F. Nolan, Alan Rodgers, David B. Silva, J. N. Williamson and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. The Monitors of Providence. World Fantasy Convention, 1986. First edition chapbook original, one of 1000 copies given out at the 1986 World fantasy Convention in Providence, RI, a Fine copy.
Moorcock, Michael. Epic Pooh. British Fantasy Society, 1978. First edition chapbook, Fine- with tiny bit of creasing to bottom outer corner tip. Non-fiction.
(Smith, Clark Ashton) Sidney-Fryer, Donald. Clark Ashton Smith: The Sorcerer Departs. Tsathoggua Press, 1997. First edition chapbook, Fine-. A critical miscellany, plus one poem by Smith.
The coloration is actually even on the last two; the variation in the pics is a scanner artifact.
Tags: Books, chapbooks, Clark Ashton Smith, Dean R. Koontz, Fantasy, Horror, Joe R. Lansdale, Michael Moorcock, pics, Robert R. McCammon, William F. Nolan
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Tuesday, May 7th, 2013
Good news, everyone! There’s a new website called BookOS offering millions of free books to download!
Bad news, everyone! It’s a pirate site that most likely hasn’t obtained any e-rights for any of the millions of copyrighted works they have available!
Who are they pirating? Well, they have around a hundred works by Howard Waldrop that I know they haven’t bought e-rights for (because I asked him), and they have hundreds of works by:
Gail Carriger
Bil Crider
Paul Di Filippo
Harlan Ellison (good thing they picked someone whose never been known to sue anyone, eh?)
Neil Gaiman
Joe R. Lansdale
Elizabeth Moon
Michael Moorcock
Jerry Pournelle
Mike Resnick
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Gene Wolfe
Outgoing SFWA President John Scalzi
Incoming SFWA President Steven Gould
And that’s just a random handful of writers I know that I checked on (plus Harlan Ellison, whom I’ve met, and who I know has some good lawyers). I’m sure there are hundreds of others.
Perhaps the folks at SFWA might sit up and take notice. And if your work is being pirated, you might want to write support@bookos.org and ask them to pull it down.
(Updated: Good news, everyone! Support@bookos.org wrote back to say the Waldrop has been removed, and now there’s a notice saying “Link deleted by legal owner.”)
Tags: Books, piracy, Science Fiction
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Monday, May 6th, 2013
I managed to pick up three different Cheap Street Press books from a couple of different sources over the last week:
Benford, Greg. At the Double Solstice. Cheap Street, 1986. First edition chapbook original, a Fine copy, in original mailing envelope. Chalker/Owings, page 108, which lists this copy (with publisher’s greetings on (unnumbered) page 23) as one of 60 copies thus, one of apparently four states.
Benford, Greg. Time’s Rub. Cheap Street, 1984. First edition chapbook original, a Fine copy, in original mailing envelope. Chalker/Owings, page 107, which lists this copy (with publisher’s greetings on (unnumbered) page 19) as one of 73 copies thus, one of apparently four states.
Leiber, Fritz. In the Beginning. Cheap Street, 1983. First edition hardback, #67 of 128 copies of the “Collectors’ Edition” signed by both Leiber and illustrator Alicia Austin (there were also 10 lettered collector’s copies, and 7 lettered and 32 number publisher’s copies), a Fine copy, in full cloth with title labels pasted on front and spine, sans dust jacket, as issued. Chalker/Ownings, pages 106-107.
Also laid into this copy is the four page prospectus for the book:
I already had two other Benford Cheap Street books (the hardback Of Space/Time and the River and the chapbook of We Could Do Worse), which means I’m still missing:
Benford, Greg. Centigrade 133 (Cheap Street, 1990)
Benford, Greg. Matter’s End (Cheap Street, 1991)
Leiber, Fritz. Ervool (Cheap Street, 1980)
Leiber, Fritz. Quicks Around the Zodiac: A Farce (Cheap Street, 1983)
Leiber, Fritz Riches and Power (with actually includes Ervool) (Cheap Street, 1982)
Plus several Cheap Street books by other authors.
Tags: Cheap Street, first editions, Fritz Leiber, Gregory Benford
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Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
I continue to close in on my complete Jack Vance hardback first edition collection.
Vance, Jack. To Live Forever. Ballantine books, 1956. First edition hardback, a Fine- copy in a Near Fine- dust jacket with slight spine fading and tiny (1/32″) chipping at head and heel. Signed by Vance. Currey (1978), page 500, A1 (dark blue) binding. Hewett, A4ab.
Very nice copy of this early Jack Vance novel, and a middling difficult Ballantine hardcover.
Tags: Books, first editions, Jack Vance, pics, Science Fiction
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