Lawrence Person's Futuramen

I’ve been meaning to take pictures of my library for quite a while, and I finally got around to doing it. These are just the ones in my fiction library; I haven’t taken pictures of the non-fiction up in my office yet.

I started collecting hypermodern (i.e., post-Neuromancer) science fiction first editions in the late 1980s, concentrating on hardbacks of works and authors I felt were important. I have essentially completed that collection (though I am always adding new books as they come out), and am now trying to amass a collection of first editions of every important post-WWII work of science fiction, as well as selected fantasy and horror authors, which should keep me busy quite a while. Save one Stephen King ultralimited I bought pre-publication, I have never spent more than $400 for any single book (and precious few over $300). I won’t settle for later printings or copies with corner-clipped dust jackets, but my price ceiling has forced me to settle for ex-library copies of a handful of key works (for example, Dune and The Man in the High Castle). When I refer to an “imperfect” first, it’s generally (but not always) an Ex-Library copy. The rest tend to be Fine/Fine or gently read copies, though with a bit more flexibility for older titles. I am one “difficult” book away from having a complete collection of Hugo winners, and save the most recent one, have a complete collection of Nebula Winners, as well as many World Fantasy and Bram Stoker award winners, plus a smattering of literary firsts and prize winners picked up when I chanced across them.

Mine is a very extensive SF collection, but far from the largest or most valuable, even in private hands. I’m sure there are many old fans whose libraries would (or may still) put mine to shame. Before being broken up, the legendary collections of Sam Moskowitz and Forrest J. Ackerman would have easily blown mine away. Although David Hartwell has started selling pieces of his, from talking to him I’m sure what remains of David’s collection still exceeds mine by a good measure. Kurt Baty has assembled very close to a complete collection of all science fiction works ever published, but has not concentrated on first editions. Given the number of auctions I’ve lost to him over the years, I’m sure Larry Bigman’s collection leaves mine in the shade. Allen Lewis’ collection of hypermodern science fiction has a breadth that far exceeds my own. Mike Berro and Jerry Hewett have collections at least comparable to my own (and far more complete when it comes to Jack Vance). If I had to guess, my collection might sneak into the top 50 in private hands, but that may be too high.

Previous and far less complete attempts to document my library are here and here.

Unless otherwise noted, all the volumes listed under highlights are either the true first edition, or the first hardback edition (frequently British) when the true first was a paperback original. If the UK edition preceded the American, then the true first is the one I have, unless otherwise indicated.

These pictures were taken with a Kodak EasyPic V803 and edited in iPhoto. The gaps visible on shelves are what I call “expansion joints,” and are there so I can add new acquisitions. Caveats: I don’t have a tripod, and I don’t know how to do keystone correction for camera angle (especially apparent on the eight-high bookshelves). Still, an acute observer should be able to pic out numerous individual volumes…

Note: This is my personal/professional library, and none of these are for sale. For science fiction books I do have for sale, please see the Lame Excuse Books website.

A-B

• Some Isaac Asimov, including a complete Gnome Press Foundation trilogy, plus The Gods Themselves and imperfect copies of many of his early novels and short story collections.
• A. A. Attanasio’s Radix.
• Nicholas Baker’s Mezzanine.
• Some signed J. G. Ballard, including The Atrocity Exhibition (the true UK first, not the later but rarer pulped US edition) and some later books, plus unsigned copies of High Rise and Empire of the Sun, and an imperfect Crystal World.
• A complete Iain Banks collection (save his most recent one), including The Wasp Factory and Use of Weapons.
• A nearly-complete Clive Barker collection (missing some of the graphic novel and illustration stuff, as well as a recent book or two), including copies of The Damnation Game, various states of The Books of Blood, Cabal and the UK Weaveworld, the last two signed.
• An nearly complete Neal Barrett, Jr. collection (discounting the media tie-in stuff).
• A signed copy of Stephen Baxter’s The Time Ships, plus Timelike Infinity and imperfect firsts of Raft, Anti-Ice, and Ring. My Baxter collection is collection is complete up to the point (sometime shortly after 2000 or so) when he started cranking them out so fast I couldn’t even hope to keep up with him.
• A nearly complete Greg Bear collection (missing the Cheap Street Sleepside Story and one or two recent ones), including Blood Music, Eon, The Wind from a Burning Woman, Darwin’s Radio and Early Harvest, most signed or inscribed.

B-C

• Gregory Benford’s Timescape.
• A mint copy of Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man with his business card laid in, as well as an imperfect but inscribed copy of Who He?.
• A complete Michael Bishop collection, including No Enemy But Time, several inscribed to me.
• A nearly complete James P. Blaylock collection (missing one or two of the recent ones), including one of 100 hardback copies of the Axolotl Paper Dragons, as well as the signed, limited editions of The Last Coin and The Magic Spectacles.
• A mostly complete Robert Bloch collection, including an imperfect copy of Psycho.
• A woefully incomplete Ray Bradbury collection, some signed.
• A true (UK) first of Ernest Bramah’s Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat in dust jacket.
• David Brin’s Startide Rising and Uplift War.
• A mostly complete Poppy Z. Brite collection, including the hardback of Plastic Jesus.
• Peter Currell Brown’s Smallcreep’s Day
• An imperfect first of John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar, as well as a signed first of The Sheep Look Up, and an inscribed copy of The Stone That Never Came Down that formerly belonged to Christopher Priest.
• Stephen Brust’s To Reign in Hell.
• The Easton Press signed first hardbacks of Lois McMaster Bujold Barryar and The Vor Game, as well as the hardback first of Mirror Dance and The Paladin of Souls.
• A complete Octavia Butler collection (several signed), including Survivor, the rarest of her books.

C-D

• A complete Pat Cadigan collection (discounting some media tie-in stuff).
• Something like a complete Jack Cady collection.
• Inscribed firsts of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, as well as Songmaster, A Planet Called Treason and Cardography; indeed, all Card’s fiction hardbacks up to Xenocide; I read that and Prentice Alvin, and after that I stopped buying his books.
• A complete Jonathan Carroll collection, all signed or inscribed, including The Land of Laughs.
• Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve and copy of The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman that formerly belonged to Carter.
• Inscribed firsts of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
• A signed copy of Suzy McKee Charnes’ The Vampire Tapestry.
• C.J. Cherryh’s Cyteen and an inscribed SFBC (first hardback) Downbelow Station.
• An imperfect Ballantine Books hardback of Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, a decent Earthlight, a very nice Against the Fall of Night, an imperfect Rendezvous With Rama, a nice The Fountains of Paradise and the signed, slipcased PS Publishing edition of Tales from the White Hart.
• Some Hal Clement, including a signed, imperfect Mission of Gravity and a nice Iceworld.
• An extensive Storm Constantine collection.
• A nearly complete John Crowley collection, including signed or inscribed copies of Little, Big (reportedly Gollancz only did 300 hardbacks), The Deep and Engine Summer.
• A complete run (at least up through issue 17) of the signed hardback state of Postscripts (including Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Joe Hill, etc.).
• A bunch of Jack Dann.

D

• Closing in on a complete Avram Davidson collection, including one of only 25 hardback copies of El Vilvoy de las Islas
• An extensive Samuel R. Delany collection up to 1980 or so, all signed, including solid (but not pristine) Gollancz hardback firsts of Babel-17 and The Einstein Intersection.
• A complete Bradley Denton collection, all signed or inscribed, including The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians/A Conflagration Artist and Blackburn’s Lady.
• August Derleth’s Someone in the Dark (the second Arkham House book), sadly lacking the dust jacket, and a signed copy of The Mask of Cthulhu
• A not-yet complete Philip K. Dick collection, including Imperfect firsts of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Time Out of Joint, The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Ubik, and The Penultimate Truth, a nice set of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, nice copies of The Man Whose Teeth Were Exactly Alike, Martian Time Slip, The Game Players of Titan, Confessions of a Crap Artist, A Scanner Darkly and the slipcased Valis set with Cosmogony and Cosmology. (A number of paperback firsts appear on the paperback shelf, and a number of non-fiction works are upstairs in my reference library.)
• A complete Paul Di Filippo collection, including one of 100 signed hardback copies of Ciphers.
• An extensive Thomas Disch collection, including Camp Concentration, 334 and Torturing Mr. Amberwell.
• A complete hardback set (save a few of the most recent volumes) of Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction, including the very rare first three Bluejay Books editions, several signed by many of the contributors.

D-G

• A complete Greg Egan collection, including a copy of Axiomatic inscribed to his editor David Pringle (Egan signatures, much less inscriptions, are vanishingly rare), as well as firsts of An Unusual Angle (only 100 hardback copies), Quarantine, and Permutation City.
• A complete George Alec Effinger collection, many inscribed to me.
• A nearly-complete Harlan Ellison hardback collection (though I lack several of the most difficult paperbacks).
• A fair amount of Philip Jose Farmer, including a beautiful copy of To Your Scattered Bodies Go (formerly Buck and Juanita Coulson’s copy), plus signed copies of Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Love Song, The Adventure of the Peerless Peer and Up from the Bottomless Pit.
• The first English-language edition of Camille Flammarion’s Urania and the first U.S. edition of Lumen.
• A not-quite complete Neil Gaiman collection, including 1/26 signed, lettered, traycased copies of M is for Magic (with an original drawing by Gahan Wilson on the limitation page), one of 500 signed, numbered copies of Neverwhere, Murder Mysteries: A Play for Voices and Snow Glass Apples: A Play for Voices (both signed and limited in slipcase), Angels and Visitations, the signed/limited editions of American Gods and Anansi Boys, as well as signed copies of the trade state, plus a bunch of other signed Gaiman (not shown: hardback collections of the complete run of Sandman (both the first and the four-volume Absolute Sandman), plus a bunch of other Gaiman graphic novels, most signed, up in the graphic novel section on the second floor).
• An extensive John Gardner collection, including Grendel.
• A bunch of Ray Garton, including the Charnel House (true first) signed/limited edition of The New Neighbor.
• A nearly complete Jane Gaskell collection, including Strange Evil and King’s Daughter.
• A complete Mary Gentle collection (discounting her pseudonymous porn novels), including Ash: A Secret History.

G-J

• A complete William Gibson book collection (discounting Agrippa), all signed, including a Fine Gollancz Neuromancer (one of the highpoints of the entire collection) and a copy of Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine signed by both.
• William Goldman’s The Princess Bride.
• Alasdair Gray’s Lanark.
• A signed copy of Curme Gray’s Murder in Millennium VI.
• Signed copies of Ken Grimwood’s Elise and The Voice Outside.
• U.S. first edition of General Sir John Hackett’s The Third World War: August 1985, with a signed typed letter by Hackett laid in.
• Inscribed firsts of Joe Haldeman’s Forever Peace, The Accidental Time Machine and Camouflage, plus an inscribed, imperfect first of The Forever War.
• Peter F. Hamilton’s first ten or so phone books, including an inscribed first of The Reality Dysfunction.
• A fair amount (but by no means a complete collection) of Robert A. Heinlein, including imperfect firsts of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Double Star, Stranger in a Strange Land, and Starship Troopers (the last rather nice), and a pristine first of Sixth Column.
• A very imperfect true first of Frank Herbert’s Dune.
• Two different states of the signed, limited edition of Joe Hill’s 20th Century Ghosts.
• The Gnome Press editions of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Conqueror and King Conan.
• Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds, The Story of the Stone, and Eight Skilled Gentlemen, plus the signed Subterranean press omnibus.
• One of less than 100 copies of the H. P. Lovecraft/Russ Meyer crossover anthology, Hastur, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

J-M

• An essentially complete Shirley Jackson collection, including The Haunting of Hill House, The Road Through the Wall, Hangsaman and an imperfect copy of The Lottery.
• A complete K. W. Jeter collection (save the media tie-in work), including the signed, limited hardback of Dr. Adder.
• Ha Jin’s Waiting.
• One of 52 signed hardback copies of Graham Joyce’s Leningrad Nights, the second PS Publishing novella.
• Essentially complete James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel collections, including Freedom Beach, one of only 100 hardback copies, signed by both.
• Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon.
• I have a fair amount of Stephen King, but nothing approaching a complete collection (I may be an insane collector, but I’m not that insane), including one of 99 copies total (and one of only 33 with this cover art) of the PS Publishing (first hardback edition) signed, limited, tray-cased edition of Stephen King’s The Colorado Kid, plus a copy of the signed, limited edition of same, one of 1,250 signed, limited copies of the Mark V. Ziesing (true first) edition of Insomnia, the first four Donald M. Grant Dark Tower books, the signed, limited edition of Under the Dome (reportedly 1,500 copies, all of which were sold out within a day of being available for order), and an imperfect first of The Shining.
• A complete Russell Kirk fiction collection (including The Surly Sullen Bell, Old House of Fear, and his two Arkham House Books, The Princess of All Lands and Watchers at the Straight Gates, most signed.
• Henry Kuttner’s Robots Have No Tails.
• A complete R. A. Lafferty hardback collection (save the two Pendragon Press chapbooks I have in wraps), including Tales of Chiacago, Tales of Midnight, and Argo, and the Gregg Press The Devil is Dead.
• An essentially complete Joe R. Lansdale collection (see if you can spot the oddball exception), all signed, including the lettered edition of For a Few Stories More (with a young-adult vampire novel, Shadow Time, found only in this edition), the signed/limited edition of The Bottoms, one of only 26 signed, hardback copies of My Dead Dog Bobby and Triple Feature, one of only 100 signed hardback copies of Veil’s Visit (with Andrew Vachess) and Private Eye Action, As You Like It (with Lewis Shiner), inscribed copies of The Magic Wagon and The Nightrunners.
• Imperfect firsts of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and A Wizard of Earthsea.
• Something approaching a complete Fritz Leiber collection, including the Gregg Press (first hardback) editions of The Big Time and The Sinful Ones, as well as Nights Black Agents, The Wanderer, and Manly Wade Wellman’s copy of Rime Isle, inscribed to him by the publisher.
• The first English-language edition of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris.
• Being only slightly insane, I don’t have a complete H. P. Lovecraft collection, but I do have several of the latter Arkham House books, including The Horror in the Museum. (I also have the complete Letters and Essays up in my non-fiction library.)
• A complete Ken MacLeod collection.
• A complete George R. R. Martin (discounting some Wild Cards SFBC hardbacks), including the signed/limited edition Songs the Dead Men Sing, plus A Game of Thrones and GRRM.
• I’m closing in on a complete Richard Matheson collection, including the signed, slipcased state of Collected Stories, Hell House and an imperfect first of I Am Legend (though I do still need the Chamberlain Born of Man and Woman, Stir of Echoes, and the UK Shrinking Man).
• A complete Paul J. McAuley collection, save for a few recent ones.
• A complete Robert R. McCammon collection (including Blue World) save the UK Baal and a couple of recent ones.
• Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
• A complete Ian McDonald collection.
• Vonda McIntyre’s Dreamsnake and The Sun and the Moon.
• Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove.
• A complete China Mieveille collection, including Perdido Street Station and one of 400 signed, numbered hardbacks of The Tain.
• An imperfect first of A Canticle for Leibowitz.
• A few Yukio Mishima firsts (or rather, first American/English Language editions).
• David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.
• An inscribed copy of Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark.
• A somewhat random assortment of Michael Moorcock firsts, including Glorianna, all signed or inscribed.
• Signed copies of C. L. Moore’s Mutant and Black God’s Shadow.

M-P

• A complete Richard Morgan collection, most signed, including Altered Carbon.
• Some David Morrell, including First Blood.
• A good bit of James Morrow, many signed.
• Signed copies of Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
• Pat Murphy’s The Falling Woman.
• John Myers Myers’ Silverlock in a rubbed dust jacket.
• Something approaching a complete collection of Kim Newman’s works under his own name (don’t have the Jack Yeovil/GDW stuff), including Anno Dracula.
• Complete set of the Night Visions series, some (Barker, Lansdale, Martin) signed or inscribed.
• I don’t have a complete Larry Niven collection, but I do have a fair amount, including a Gollancz Ringworld, marred only by an excised front free endpaper, as well as an imperfect first of The Mote in God’s Eye.
• A complete Jeff Noon collection.
• The first three Naomi Novik books.
• A nearly complete Chad Oliver collection, including Mists of Dawn.
• Alexi Panshin’s Rite of Passage.

P-R

• Some Frederik Pohl, including signed or inscribed firsts of The Space Merchants, Man Plus and Gateway.
• Charles Portis’ True Grit.
• A pretty completely Tim Powers collection, including The Anubis Gates, the Charnel House Stress of Her Regard and Where They Are Hid, the Subterranean Press Declare, Three Days to Never and Ten Poems, the Hypatia Press The Drawing of the Dark, the Cahill The Skies Discrowned, and the NESFA An Epitaph in Rust.
• Christopher Priest’s The Prestige.
• A complete run of Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine.
• Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 (however, the Gravity’s Rainbow is, alas, a book club edition).
• A complete Alastair Reynolds collection, including Revelation Space.
• Some early Anne Rice, including Interview With a Vampire and The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, and a signed copy of Queen of the Damned.
• Maurice Richardson’s The Exploits of Engelbrecht.

R-S