…but only slightly.
Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter to collaborate on two novels.
Archive for the ‘Fantasy’ Category
Slightly More Plausible than that Greg Egan/ Kelly Link Collaboration…
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010Books Read: Naomi Novik’s Temeraire: Throne of Jade
Saturday, June 12th, 2010Naomi Novik
Temeraire: Throne of Jade
This is a solid follow-up to the first Temeraire book. In this one Lawrence and his Celestial dragon are forced to take a slow boat to China to see the Emperor, who is evidently most upset that his dragon (a gift to Napoleon) is now enrolled in the English aerial corps. Some have said they found their attention flagging through the long sea voyage (which takes up a bit more than half the book); actually, I didn’t find my attention flagging until right after they first make landfall in China. So I think the book could be trimmed a little (maybe 10%), but it still engaged me.
New Page for Lame Excuse Books
Thursday, June 10th, 2010Given TimeWarner’s continued incompetence, I’m slowly pulling all of my website from rr.com over to here. I now have the main Lame Excuse Books page at:
https://www.lawrenceperson.com/lame.html
If you’ve never bought anything from me before, Lame Excuse Books specializes in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and Slipstream first editions, with an emphasis on small press and signed editions. I have lots of books available by the like of Joe R. Lansdale, Howard Waldrop, Neil Gaiman, Charles Stross, John Scalzi, etc.
So update your book marks! And it wouldn’t hurt for you to buy a book or ten…
Recent Book Auction Results of Note
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010You may already have noticed that I buy a lot of books. Many I buy direct from the publisher (many of which I also sell copies of through Lame Excuse Books), some I buy from other book dealers, either off the Internet or at cons, some I buy off eBay (although that’s a lot less common since they drove away a goodly portion of the most interesting items by hiking fees into the stratosphere in their effort to turn themselves into an inferior Amazon clone), and a few I buy through auction houses, like PBA Galleries or Heritage Auctions.
Heritage just completed their 2010 June Signature Rare Books Auction, which, while not focused on science fiction the way the The Ventura Collection auction back in 2007 was, still had a number of notable science fiction and fantasy books up for auction, including a few titles made of Unobtanium. The interesting thing is that the three most notable fantasy titles didn’t sell:
- A Fine/Fine (not really, if you read the description, but close enough for this title) first edition of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit failed to attract the opening bid of $47,500.00.
- Likewise, a very nice set of The Lord of the Rings failed to garner an opening bid of $32,500.00.
- Finally, an Ex-Library first of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone failed to sell.
I thought the price estimate on the Lord of the Rings set was unrealistically aggressive, as decent sets in dust jacket can be had in the $10,000-20,000 range. Nice firsts of The Hobbit in dust jacket are very rare, but I’m seeing a few copies of that available in the $20,000 range as well. (If memory serves, several years ago L. W. Currey had, I think, a signed Fine/Near Fine+ copy in dust jacket listed for $68,000.)
What does all this mean? Who know? Up at the very highest end of the book market, auction prices can be extremely volatile depending on who’s bidding. Maybe the prices were just too high. Or maybe the big money is sitting out in anticipation of prices dropping due to a double-dip recession.
Neal Barrett Jr.’s Author Emeritus Party
Sunday, May 30th, 2010Since Austin’s own Neal Barrett, Jr. was named SFWA Author Emeritus for the 2009 Nebula Awards, FACT threw a party at Casa Siros to celebrate the occasion, with luminaries coming from as far away as Nacogdoches (Joe R. his ownself) to pay homage.
Susan Wade, William Browning Spencer (occluded), Neal Barrett, Jr. (holding up the art SFWA had commissioned, featuring himself and three of his characters), Don Webb
Susan Wade, William Browning Spencer, Neal Barrett, Jr., Don Webb
Susan Wade, William Browning Spencer, Neal Barrett, Jr., Don Webb
Neal Barrett, Jr. holding up the SFWA Author Emeritus, which is a kaleidoscope. (“Kaleidoscope” is also the name of an awesome Ray Bradbury story from The Illustrated Man.)
The back of Joe R. Lansdale’s head, Ruth Barrett, someone whose name I should remember, and Scott Cupp
A closer (albeit oblique) view of said painting; I took a straight-on picture, but the flash reflection on the glass made it impossible to see.
Neal iz 2 kewl 4 this skewl!
More of the same. Less of the sane.
Just a few of Casa Siros’ vast array of Glowing Gizmos.
Three excellent authors who have had their books published by St. Martin’s. Also, three authors who are not on The New York Times Bestsellers List. These two facts may be related.
Neal cuts the cake, while Carol is just slightly too slow to avoid being incriminated with the rest of us.
Joe R. Lansdale, William Browning Spencer, Don Webb, and Neal Barrett, Jr. Susan Wade would be in this picture, had she not been eaten by a Grue.
FACT party attendees. Just after this picture, one of their number was ritually chosen by lot to be stoned to death.
Joe R. Lansdale and William Browning Spencer, in the last known photo of them before being horribly devoured by Pixar characters.
“Walk towards the light….walk towards the light…”
Books Read: Paul Di Filippo’s Fractal Paisleys
Monday, May 17th, 2010Paul Di Filippo
Fractal Paisleys
Four Walls Eight Windows, 1997.
I like both Paul and his work, but these stories are so wacky that you probably should read them betwixt other works; read one after another, they seem both too odd and a bit too similar. Overall Strange Trades is the most balanced and interesting of his collections (at least among those I’ve read), followed by Ribofunk and The Steampunk Trilogy.
I have many of Paul’s works available over on the Lame Excuse Books page.
Gene Wolfe Recovering from Heart Surgery
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010A double-bypass and valve repair, according to Locus Online.. He’s evidently up and walking, and “his mind is as sharp as a tack,” which is a relief. Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Gene.
George Scithers, RIP
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010George Scithers, founding editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, has died. Those whose science fiction reading habit started after his tenure there may know little about him (especially since his reputation has been eclipsed by subsequent Asimov’s editors like Shawna McCarthy and Gardner Dozois), but many writers working in the field today remember two particular things about him:
- His love of short, 1-2 page pun stories (sometimes called “Feghoots,” after Reginald Bretnor’s “Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot” series of stories, of which Scithers published many).
- His use of an army of editorial assistants to personally comment on every rejection and sign his name. So an aspiring writer submitting to Asimov’s wouldn’t just get back a form rejection letter, they’d get back a slightly personalized form rejection letter with a tiny scribbled comment like “Needs work” or “Getting better,” with Scither’s name scrawled at the end.
Strangely, this combination may have done more to encourage new science fiction writers than anyone else of that era. You’d read one of those pun stories and go “That’s terrible! I could write a better story than that!” (And, eventually, you could.) Plus, once you got back your rejection, you’d notice the personalization and go “Ah-ha! A personal rejection slip! I’m getting close! Any day now I’ll sell a story!” Of such small, innocuous frauds were many a notable career launched.
The puns aside, Scither’s wasn’t a bad editor, and he won two Hugos at Asimov’s (to go along with two for editing his fanzine Amra). I never sold anything to him (being all of 17, with a single non-fiction sale to The Space Gamer under my belt, when he left the magazine probably had something to do with that), but he did well enough that the magazine survived, and I made my first fiction sale to Gardner Dozois in 1990.
RIP
Howard Waldrop and I’s Review of Alice in Wonderland
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010In Which I Fail to Review Gene Wolfe’s The Sorcerer’s House
Monday, March 8th, 2010Gene Wolfe
The Sorcerer’s House
Tor, 2010. $24.99
So, once again I’m faced with the problem of how to review a Gene Wolfe book. This is much akin to explaining to radio listeners what a great dancer Fred Astaire is: For those who have seen him, such an explanation is unnecessary; for those who haven’t, such an explanation is impossible. (“Aw man, you should have seen that move! It was totally graceful! Trust me…”) I’ve managed (somewhat) the feat before, having reviewed The Knight in The New York Review of Science Fiction.
Such it is with The Sorcerer’s House. I started a standard review, with a standard plot description (educated man just out of prison mysteriously given deed to house he was squatting in), discussed Wolfe’s literary experimentation (the book is told in epistolary format), and generally tried to jump through the usual hoops of a book review. Then after about three paragraphs, I read what I had written, and went “Damn, this is awful! If I had never heard of Gene Wolfe, this review certainly wouldn’t inspire me to pick it up!”
So: You should read The Sorcerer’s House, because it’s very good, it’s tricky, and it’s better than An Evil Guest. It’s got a fox woman, antique dueling pistols, an impossibly old samurai sword, a trapped vampire, werewolves, and a house that just seems to get bigger as it goes along, and, strangely, it all works.
But most of all you should read it because it’s Gene Wolfe.
Oh, it also has a scene where the protagonist tells his newly incarcerated twin brother that he shouldn’t go on about how excellent to food was, since he knows prison food is bad. And then he spends the next page or so describing what he ate.