Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Monday, June 9th, 2014
I recently picked up eight hardbacks in the Starmont Reader’s Guide line. For many authors, these were the only critical companions to their work ever published, and I get the impression that the hardback book runs for the critical titles were pretty miniscule (Chalker/Owings The Science Fantasy Publishers estimates 75-80 hardbacks) and mostly sold to libraries. Starmont was distributed by Borgo Press, and sometime you’ll see these titles listed under the Borgo imprint or with Borgo price stickers affixed.
Some of these state First Edition and some don’t, but I’m assuming these are first printings unless they state otherwise (the Silverberg states Second Printing). All are essentially Fine- copies with slight rubbing, sans dust jackets, as issued.
(Bester, Alfred) Wendell, Carolyn. Alfred Bester: Starmont Reader Guide 6. Starmont House, 1982. Signed by Wendell.
(Clement, Hal) Hassler, Donald M. Hal Clement: Starmont Reader Guide 11. Starmont House, 1982. Signed by Hassler.
(Delany, Samuel R.) Weedman, Jane Branham. Samuel R. Delany: Starmont Reader Guide 10. Starmont House, 1982. Signed by Delany: “Samuel R. Delany/Madison/2006”.
(Farmer, Philip Jose) Brizzi, Mary T. Philip Jose Farmer: Starmont Reader Guide 3. Starmont House, 1980.
(Haldeman, Joe) Gordon, Joan. Joe Haldeman: Starmont Reader Guide 4. Starmont House, 1980. Signed by Haldeman (and also an unreadable signature that I take to be either Gordon’s or the cover artist).
(Silverberg, Robert) Clareson, Thomas D. Robert Silverberg: Starmont Reader Guide 18. Starmont House, 1983. Signed by Silverberg. Second Printing.
(Pohl, Frederik) Clareson, Thomas D. Frederik Pohl: Starmont Reader Guide 39. Starmont House, 1987. Signed by Pohl. By this time the press had moved to what Chalker/Owings called the “Ditky-Newcomer” printing process (basically high quality Xerography) with the characteristic flocked edges that would appear on Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine a year later.
(Tiptree, Jr., James) Siegel, Mark. James Tiptree, Jr.: Starmont Reader Guide 22. Starmont House, 1986.
As the seller said: “They never bound any two books the same way.” As you can see from the picture, some have the trade paperback cover affixed to the front, while others are simply cloth with the title, author and series number printed on the spine.

Paid a total of $246.40, which went to SF writer Julian May, who is: A.) Still alive, and B.) The widow of Starmont House founder Ted Ditky.
Tags:Alfred Bester, Books, Fantasy, Frederik Pohl, Hal Clement, James Tiptree Jr., Joe Haldeman, Philip Jose Farmer, Robert Silverberg, Samuel R. Delany, Science Fiction, science fiction criticism
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Monday, 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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Thursday, 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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Monday, 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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Monday, May 19th, 2014
Slowly but surely I’m closing in on my complete Jack Vance hardback collection:
Vance, Jack. Son of the Tree. Underwood/Miller, 1983. First hardback edition, #183 of 200 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine- dust jacket with just a tiny bit of wrinkling at head and heel. Hewett, A13g.

Tags:Books, First Edition, Jack Vance, Science Fiction, signed
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Thursday, May 15th, 2014
Someone needs to do a reality TV show featuring all the people claiming their father was the Zodiac killer living together in the same house. It would be like The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, except, you know, sleazy.
For the season finale they could battle the people who claim their fathers were the Black Dahlia killer in some sort of trash sports obstacle course…
Tags:Books, crime, serial killers, TV
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Thursday, May 1st, 2014
Another weird library addition, not so much a book as a “book-like object.”
Le Guin, Ursula K. Four Different Poems. Longhouse, 2007. First edition chapbook original, a 3″x5″ card with an accordion foldout attached and a title band signed by Le Guin wrapped around, one of only 24 signed copies, a Fine copy.

An odd item with a very small limitation. Bought for $20 off the Internet.
Tags:Books, Science Fiction, signed, Ursula K. Le Guin
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Thursday, April 17th, 2014
Every now and then you see an item outside your sphere of collecting interests at a good price and go “I want that!” This is one of those times.
Radner, Gilda and Alan Zweibel. Roseanne Roseannadanna’s Hey, Get Back to Work! Book. Long Shadow Books, 1983. First edition trade paperback original, a Near Fine copy with a few small sports to page block edges. Inscribed by Radner and Zweibel: “Thanks/a lot to/Tim/Gilda Radner” and “”To Tim-/You just brought back/a million great/memories when you/handed me this book./Al”

Bought in a lot with:
Zweibel, Alan. Bunny Bunny: Gilda Radner: A Sort of Love Story. Villard Books, 1994. First edition hardback, a Near Fine copy with a clipped price. Early Saturday Night Live writer’s memoir of working with Radner.
Among the areas I occasionally contemplate starting book collections in are the early history of Apple Computer and the original cast of Saturday Night Live. (Warning: Get off my lawn ahead.) I know that Saturday Night Live is about as edgy as a bowling ball these days, but the original SNL was groundbreaking, daring and funny as hell. So when I saw this in that 70% off sale I bought so many SF books in, I snapped it up. Bought for $40.49.
Though Radner was the best female cast member in the original cast, the Roseanne Roseannadanna character was far from her best bit (see the Judy Miller Show, where she plays a hyperactive girl for that), but she died young enough that books signed by her are not particularly common.
Two tidbits on Alan Zweibel:
On Weekend Update, the Roseanne Roseannadanna character would often read letters written by “a Richard Feder of Fort Lee, New Jersey” In fact, there is a real Richard Feder of Fort Lee, New Jersey, who was Zweibel’s brother-in-law.
Zweibel wrote the young adult novel North, upon which Rob Reiner’s famously horrible movie of the same name was based.
Tags:Alan Zweibel, Books, Gilda Radner, signed, TV
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Tuesday, March 25th, 2014
Bookseller James Cummins is offering up Gardner Dozois’ personal archive for sale for a mere $150,00:
35 linear feet (17 standard archive boxes and 11 letter files). The Science Fiction Archive of Gardner Dozois. Generally very good to fine (some early note books and letters with toning or crumpling). References: Encyclopedia of Science Fiction http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/dozois_gardner. Item #262493
Papers and correspondence of science fiction author, editor, and anthologist Gardner Dozois, whose early stories established him as one of the most talented writers of the American New Wave (though at first perhaps better known to his fellow authors than to a wide readership) and whose subsequent work as editor and anthologist has shaped the field of science fiction more than anyone since John W. Campbell. His stories were collected in The Visible Man (1977), Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys with Gardner Dozois (2001) and When the Great Days Come (2011); many of his story collaborations (with Jack Dann, Michael Swanwick, and others) were collected in Slow Dancing through Time (1990) and The Fiction Factory (2005). Dozois twice won a Nebula Award, for his stories “The Peacemaker” (1983) and “Morning Child” (1984). “Counterfactual” (2006) won the Sideways award for works of alternate history. His first novel, Nightmare Blue (1975) was an adventure tale co-written with George Alec Effinger; his novel Strangers (1978), a love story between human and alien, like his fiction and the anthologies he produced, challenges many of the earlier notions of science fiction. Another novel, Nottamun Town remains unpublished; it is present in the archive in many draft forms and in a finished typescript.
Snip.
For nearly twenty years (from 1985 to 2004) Dozois was editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction, where he discovered and encouraged many new talents in the field. He won 15 Hugo Awards during this period. Dozois’ circle of personal and professional correspondence has been wide ranging and it documents the changes in the genre over more than four decades. He was an early and clear-headed reader of James Tiptree, Jr., and the introduction Dozois wrote for the Gregg Press edition of Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home (1976) presented an analysis that was psychologically acute and was in no way overturned by the revelation the next year that Tiptree was Alice Sheldon. Tiptree letters in the archive (12 T.L.s., 1974-1977, and 9 postcards) include Tiptree’s reponse to the introduction and the letter in which Alli Sheldon reveals her identity to Dozois in advance of the public acknowledgment.
Snip.
The correspondence also documents long friendships with Pat Cadigan, Eileen Gunn, Howard Waldrop, Mary Rosenblum, Joe Haldeman, Jack Haldeman; the long connection with agent Virginia Kidd; and working relationships with Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, Robert Silverberg, and almost every notable science fiction author and editor of the late twentieth century and into the new century. Since 2005, an increasing portion of Dozois’ correspondence has been electronic, and the archive includes a digital file of approximately 35,000 e-mails (sent & received) and 2,250 electronic documents.
$150,000 is:
A. Too rich for my blood.
B. Probably a comparative bargain for an institution or serious SF collector who has everything else (“Just put it over there between the first edition Alice in Wonderland and all those Lovecraft manuscripts.”)
Tags:Asimov's Science Fiction, Books, Gardner Dozois, Science Fiction, signatures
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Tuesday, March 25th, 2014
The most numerous books I bought from that 70% off sale were signed Jack Vance:
Vance Jack. Araminta Station. Tor, 1988. First U.S. trade hardback, a Fine- copy with pinhole cracks to front gutter in a Fine- dust jacket with slight dust soiling to rear cover. First book in the Caldwell Chronicles. Signed by Vance. Hewett, A79c.
Vance Jack. Ecce and Old Earth Tor, 1991. First trade hardback, a Fine copy in a Near Fine dust jacket with crinkling and wrinkles along extremities. Second book in the Caldwell Chronicles. Signed by Vance. Hewett, A84b.
Vance Jack. Throy. Tor, 1992. First trade hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. Third book in the Caldwell Chronicles. Signed by Vance. Hewett, A85b. Price for all three Caldwell volumes: $52.49.
Vance Jack. The Five Gold Bands. Underwood/Miller, 1993. First hardback edition and first edition thus, originally published in pulp paperback as The Space Pirate, a Near Fine copy with small orangeish spots to all three page block edges, in a Fine dust jacket. Signed by Vance. Hewett, A2k. Price: $37.49.
Vane, Jack. Galactic Effectuator. Underwood/Miller, 1980. First edition hardback, one of 800 trade copies, a Fine- copy with slight spotting at head in a Fine dust jacket. Signed by Vance. Hewett, A63. Chalker/Owings (1991), page 432. Price: $26.24.
Vance Jack. Vandals of the Void. John C. Winston, 1953. First edition hardback, Very Good- with a two inch split to outer back spine join and dust soiling to page edges, lacking the dust jacket. Signed by Vance. Hewett, A3. Currey (1979), page 501. Price: $29.99.
Vance, Jack, and Tony Russell Wayman. The Last Castle b/w World of the Sleeper. Ace Books, 1967. First edition paperback original (H-21 and 60¢ on cover, as per Currey and Hewett), a Very Good+ copy with long faint crease on the Russell side and slight overall wear. Signed by Vance. Hewett, A30. Currey (1979), page 499. Price: $8.99.
Vance, Jack (edited by Miguel Lugo). The Wit and Wisdom of Jack Vance. AuthorHouse, 2011. First edition trade paperback (POD) original, a Fine copy. Selection of excerpts from Vance’s works. Signed by Vance (though the signature (see below) is very shaky, as Vance was pretty much completely blind by the time this book came out). I was unaware of this before I saw the listing for it, and I can’t imagine that Vance signed terribly many. Price: $29.99.

Tags:Books, Jack Vance, Science Fiction, signatures, signed
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