Locus is reporting that Everett F. Bleiler has died. For those unfamiliar with his work, he was perhaps the preeminent science fiction bibliographer and historian. His Checklist of Fantastic Literature was the first truly important SF bibliography, and his books Science-Fiction: The Early Years and Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years are probably the most extensive and exhaustive coverage of pre-Campbellian SF ever published. His bibliographic knowledge of the field was so extensive that, among the living, only George Locke and Lloyd Currey even come close. (Though Texas’ own Jess Nevins is getting there.) I’ve reached for one of his works many a time, as have every serious SF bibliographer, historian, book seller or book collector. He will be missed, but people will still be consulting his books a century from now.
Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Everett F. Bleiler, 1920-2010: RIP
Thursday, June 17th, 2010Slightly More Plausible than that Greg Egan/ Kelly Link Collaboration…
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010The Latest Literary Abomination Mashup
Monday, June 14th, 2010
Ben H. Winters and Leo Tolstoy’s Android Karenina
My powers of prophecy are unparalleled, even when I’m joking…
Books 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.
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.
Book Proof Received:
Little Women and Werewolves
Monday, March 29th, 2010
No, really.
Louisa May Alcott and Porter Grand’s Little Women and Werewolves
Del Rey, 2010, $14.00
I try to create a parody, and instead it comes out as prophecy.
Books Read: Kage Baker’s The Women of Neil Gwynne’s
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010Kage Baker, The Women of Neil Gwynne’s
Subterranean Press, 2009.
By now you’ve probably heard that Kage Baker died of a particularly aggressive form of cancer on January 31 of this year. I did not know Baker (I may have said hello in passing one Armadillocon), and thus have no particular insight into her as a person. Her death probably makes The Women of Neil Gwynne’s, the tale of a bordello in the employ of a cabal of Victorian Steampunk inventors, a prohibitive Hugo and Nebula favorite.
Alas, I have the same response to this that I had to Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key, another Subterranean novella from her I read last year: Competently executed work that largely failed to engage me. Not everyone can be Tim Powers, but there’s an art to writing mock Victoriana, and Baker just didn’t nail it here. There’s a certain dry English reserve, but nothing from Ben Johnson/Oscar Wilde axis of cutting dry wit that really makes a work of this sort sparkle. Plus it doesn’t help that the real plot doesn’t get started until a third of the way into the book.
Books Read: Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010I know Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris is regarded as a classic, and the version I read (the U.S. first edition) evidently suffers from being “double-translated” (Polish to French to English), but this is still a bit of a dated slog. The characters combine the flat-effect of stereotyped scientists with the foolish incompetence of a horror-movie protagonist. Strangely enough, the only time the book really came alive to me was when all action ceased in favor of a an entire chapter of infodump on the various forms the living ocean created on the surface; it’s a shame Lem decided to spend the majority of the novel on the truly tedious psychological struggles of the deeply uninteresting characters examining the living ocean rather than the ocean itself.