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.
From the “Distant Stations Heard From department, here’s something that might be hard to come by in the future:
Buekes, Lauren. The Shining Girls. Umuzi (South Africa), 2013. First edition hardback, #224 of 1000 copies signed and numbered by the author, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, new and unread. Precedes both UK and U.S. editions.
A few notes:
I think this is the first South African book I have in SF library. Not sure how many of those thousand will make it up and over across the pond…
As a followup on my previous auction post, here are the prices realized on the items I highlighted in yesterday’s Heritage book auction. All prices include buyer’s premium:
Heritage Auctions has another signature book auction coming up on April 10, and there are several interesting SF/F/H first editions up for offer. Here’s a preview of a few:
Plus a few other miscellaneous SF items. However, the main strength of the auction overall is a number important scientific first editions, a signed first of ian Fleming’s Moonraker, etc.
An interesting interview at Grantland which is just that.
Still not sure I want to see Upstream Color.
Brilliant on a whole lot of levels:
One funny thing: The video game obviously has Kirk 2.0 rather than the Shatner version.
I suspect that someday Shatner’s later commercials may come to be seen as one of his most substantial bodies of work…
My own bibliomania is well documented. But every now and then I stumble across instances of bibliomania in others. Some are completely orthogonal to my own, while others have some overlap.
One with a bit of overlap is Awful Books, the page of a collector who has a fair amount of science fiction, fantasy, and horror works. However, Mr. Awful (the owner’s name is not readily apparent on the website) seems to be interested far less in the writing content than the physical quality and presentation of limited and ultralimited editions, which he details and reviews with copious pictures.
And here’s his own collection of limited editions. Including not only comics and artbooks I would never contemplate buying, but even Danielle Steel limited editions (“I bought for a song on eBay [about $15.00 each]”).
And while I’m not a big fan of post-first edition limiteds, I must admit that Hill House lettered edition of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is off the charts. (“Yo dawg, we heard you like traycases, so we created a traycase to hold your traycase.”)
Another example of bibliomania a little more closely aligned to my own madness preferences is Mike Berro’s Vance Tracker. “This page is dedicated to tracking the location of every special edition of books by Jack Vance. Primarily limited editions, but also rare trade editions, uncorrected proofs, and manuscripts.”
I’ve corresponded with Mike for well over a decade on our shared bibliomania (for Vance and others), and he was one of the driving forces behind the Vance Integral Edition. The tracker is well worth looking at if your Vance bibliomania pegs at “fanatic.”
The Criterion Collection has put up 23 of Akira Kurosawa’s films up for streaming free this weekend in celebration of Kurosawa’s March 23 birthday.
They’ve also put up some extras from the Criterion discs. Of science fictional interest: George Lucas on Hidden Fortress.
I was recently able to pick up two rare Jack Vance first editions, one of them one of his most difficulty hardbacks, the other a recent chapbook not even my hardcore Jack Vance collecting friends had heard of.
Not in any standard online reference sources. I found it via a Google image search for “Jack Vance chapbooks”. I can’t help thinking that this is going to drive some Jack Vance completists absolutely bonkers.