June 8th, 2014
Here’s “Faded Hearts,” another track from School of Seven Bells’ Put Your Sad Down EP. When I first listened to the EP, I kept skipping it because I didn’t like the sound of the first 15 seconds or so. But once you get past that it’s a really engaging song. And Alejandra Deheza still has a great voice.
The music for both this and “Put Your Sad Down” are both sort of pop-electronica on the surface, but lyrically and emotionally, both are dealing with the same affecting subject matter: how to convince someone who’s dying to keep living.
Tags: Music, School of Seven Bells, Shoegaze, Shoegazer
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June 7th, 2014
This is pretty awesome.
Basically, Stephan Pastis, the man behind the Pearls Before Swine comic strip, managed to strike up an email conversation with the Bill Waterston, the famously reclusive creator of Calvin & Hobbes.
The end result was that Watterson secretly drew panels in Pearls Before Swine strips.
Start here and keep scrolling forward through today.
(Hat tip both Michael Swanwick and Ted Cruz, who each shared it on Facebook…)
Tags: Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes, comics, Michael Swanwick, Pearls Before Swine, Stephan Pastis, Ted Cruz
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June 3rd, 2014
From the annals of inexplicable crimes, here’s news that two 12-year old girls tried to murder a friend as a sacrifice for Slenderman.
You know, the entirely made-up CreepyPasta horror character.
It’s bad enough to be offered up as a human sacrifice to a real dark god, much less an Internet meme. It’s like a deranged bassist attempting to murder Harry Shearer so he can take Derek Smalls’ place in Spinal Tap…
(First video yanked, replacement inserted.)
Tags: creepy, CreepyPasta, crime, Horror, Slenderman
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June 2nd, 2014
L.W. Currey had another $10 sale, so I bought several signed books at that price, and a few that were slightly more expensive.
Card, Orson Scott. The Folk of the Fringe. Phantasia Press, 1988. First edition hardback, #140 of 400 signed numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and Fine slipcase, new and unread. Supplements a trade copy. Bought for $10. (Original list price was $75.)
De Camp, L. Sprague and Fletcher Pratt. Wall of Serpents. Avalon, 1960. First edition hardback, a Near Fine copy with some bending at head and heel in a Very Good+ dust jacket, with crimping and rubbing at head and heel and slight dust staining to back cover. Signed by De Camp. Supplements an unsigned copy. Bought for $17.50
Pohl, Frederik. The Early Pohl. Doubleday, 1976. First edition hardback, a Near Fine copy with remainder speckling at heel in a Fine dust jacket. Inscribed by Pohl: “To Fred—/Cordially/Fred Pohl/(No relative!)/Fred Pohl/198-” Bought for $10.
Shepard, Lucius. The Jaguar Hunter. Kerosina, 1988. First edition hardback thus (contents differ from the Arkham House edition), #128 of 250 signed numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and Fine slipcase, new and unread. Supplements a signed copy of the Arkham House first edition. Bought for $22.50. (Originally issued at £40.00.)
Shepard, Lucius. The Scalehunter’s Beautiful Daughter. Mark V. Ziesing, 1988. First edition hardback, a #104 of 300 signed numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, new and unread. Supplements a signed trade copy. Bought for $10.
Silverberg, Robert. Thebes of the Hundred Gates. Axolotl Press/Pulphouse, 1991. First edition hardback, a #78 of 300 signed numbered hardbacks, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, new and unread. Supplements a signed trade copy. Bought for $10. Pulphouse wildly overproduced a number of titles, including this one, but $10 (down from the initial list price of $35) seems about right…
Simmons, Dan. Prayers to Broken Stones. Dark Harvest, 1990. First edition hardback, #329 of 500 signed numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and Fine slipcase, new and unread. Supplements a signed trade copy. Bought for $37.50. (Originally issued at $75.)
Tags: Books, Dan Simmons, Fantasy, First Edition, Frederik Pohl, Lucius Shepard, Orson Scott Card, Robert Silverberg, Science Fiction
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June 1st, 2014
Jay Lake lost his long, well-documented fight with cancer today. He was 5 days shy of his 50th birthday.
I saw Jay at the San Antonio Worldcon. When he rolled up in his scooter, I went “Jay, you know the same conversation you’ve already had with every one of your friends this weekend? Let’s just pretend we already had that conversation.”
He was a swell guy and a good writer who will be missed.
I’m actually about to go off and visit a relative recovering from cancer in the hospital, which is one reason this is so brief…
Tags: cancer, Jay Lake, Obituary, Science Fiction
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June 1st, 2014
Imagine Mazzy Star on Quaaludes, but not as good. That’s Trespassers Wiilliams, a sort of twangy Shoegaze-meets-Slowcore outfit. Here’s “Lie in the Sound,” which strikes (as much of their work does) as slight, pleasant chill-out music.
Tags: Mazzy Star, Music, Shoegaze, Shoegazer, Trespassers William
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May 30th, 2014
Stumbled across this cover of Genesis’s “Entangled” off Trick of the Tail by a band called Hydria while looking for something else, and liked it enough to put it up.
It’s a crunchier, almost power ballad version, which actually works quite well for the song.
Tags: Genesis, Music, progressive rock, video
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May 29th, 2014
Auction houses other than Heritage do occasionally offer up notable science fiction first editions. On June 18, Bonhams is offering up:
A first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in a tattered dust jacket. Copies in dust jacket are not unknown, but they do come on the market fairly infrequently, so even one (like this) with significant chips is likely to go for a pretty penny.
The first U.S. edition of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth.
However, the most expensive item in the auction is probably not SF, but one of the 150 signed oversized arches paper first editions (out of a total of 1,000 copies for all states) of James Joyce’s Ulysses, once owned by a friend of Vladamir Nabakov. These were rare enough to begin with, but the oversized paperback nature pretty much guarantees it’s designed to fall apart over time, so even remotely intact copies are very expensive when you find them. A comparable copy of this edition in a more common binding state sold for $35,000 at Heritage in 2012, and James Cummins has a copy of the arches paper edition that once belonged to composer Virgil Thomson listed for $75,000. It wouldn’t surprise me to see some collector of modernist highpoints go bonkers over this…
Tags: book auction, Books, Fantasy, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Joyce, Science Fiction
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May 26th, 2014
After dinner Saturday night, we finally watched the typeface geek movie Helvetica.
Chances are pretty good that if Helvetica is the type of movie you enjoy seeing, you’ve already seen it. But if not, and you’re interested in fonts, it is indeed worth watching.
A few random topics that came up during conversation at dinner and during the movie:
A primer on bad logo design in comic form. “Nazi Jim’s Panzerotti” cracks me up every time… (NSFW language.)
Crazy LARP-er high on acid attacks car with a sword. Quick thoughts: 1. Sadly, the article doesn’t specify just what type of sword was used. 2. The linked interview is pretty much a checklist of everything a defense attorney would tell you not to say when you’ve been arrested for a potential felony. 3. Silly high elf! You can’t possibly joust with Morgoth, since he’s still safely imprisoned beyond the Door of Night…
Once Patrick McGoohan (of The Prisoner fame) directed a movie called Catch My Soul, described as a hippie rock opera version of Othello starring Richie Havens in the title roll. It already sounded like an epic train wreck, but between completion and release, the producer got religion and added 18 minutes worth of religious material before release. It was not well received, and a version called Santa Fe Satan was also re-released to zero acclaim. For a while it was thought to be a lost film, but recently a copy showed up (under the Santa Fe Satan title) and evidently screened at a North Carolina film festival in April.
Want an example of something even I find thermonuclear-grade cute? Pet rats hugging tiny teddy bears. I’m even willing to extract the word “adorable” from its lead-lined vault for these…
Not quite in the same league, but still weapons-grade cute:
(I saw it on Gail Carriger’s Facebook feed; not sure of the original source.)
Tags: crime, cute, Fantasy, Helvetica, Miscellaneous, Movies
Posted in crime, Fantasy, Movies | 1 Comment »
May 26th, 2014
This is an upgrade book, replacing an Ex-Library copy:
Zelazny, Roger. A Rose for Ecclesiastes. Rupert Hart-Davis, 1969. First edition thus and first hardback edition, a Fine copy in a Fine- dust jacket with very slight spine fading. First hardback edition of Four For Tomorrow. Levack, 17b. Kovacs, V11c/V20. Zelazny’s first short story collection.
Tags: Books, First Edition, Roger Zelazny, Science Fiction
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