Another signed Ray Bradbury first, one I’ve been patiently stalking for quite some time.
Bradbury, Ray. Death is a Lonely Business. Franklin Library, 1985. First edition hardback (precedes the Knopf trade edition, per the Locus database), a Fine copy in decorated leather boards, sans dust jacket, as issued. Signed by Bradbury. Mystery novel, the first of many, and his first new novel since The Halloween Tree. Bought for $34.95 off eBay.
I didn’t pick this up in the signed edition when it first came out, but I found it online cheap enough to be worth picking up.
Farmer, Philip Jose. The Other in the Mirror. Subterranean Press, 2009. First edition hardback, with a signed (but unnumbered) limitation page, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket and Fine slipcase. Omnibus edition of three novels (Fire in the Night, Jesus on Mars, and Night of Light), the first two of which were only published as paperback originals. Original price for the signed/numbered edition was $125. This supplements my trade edition, and all editions are now out of print from the publisher. Bought off eBay for $24.95 plus shipping.
PS Publishing had a sale, and I picked up three limited editions of things I already had the trade editions of.
This is one of the many things on my want list, since I always thought it was a neat little book, and I finally found a copy I could afford.
Asimov, Isaac. Three By Asimov. Targ Editions, 1981. First edition hardback, one of 250 signed copies, a Fine copy in a Near Fine- tissue paper dust jacket with a 7/8″ semi-closed tear on the top right front cover, with associated wrinkles (the white streaks at left and top are reflection glare from the dust jacket protector). All the pages seem to be made of hand-made paper with ragged edges. Bought for $107.79 off eBay.
William Targ was a former editor at Putnam who ran a one-man small press in his retirement. This and the Ray Bradbury book Beyond 1984 were, as far as I know, the only SF Targ Editions published.
When this cool novel/art assemblage was announced in 2007 at a price of $50 (I think it was listed at $65 on publication), I thought two things about it:
They were even offered at a slightly short discount for dealers, which is why I passed on it. When it came out in late 2008, neither I (nor anyone else) was buying much of anything, and I’m sure the lavish nature of the production helped contribute to Payseur & Schmidt’s demise.
Di Filippo, Paul (illustrated by Jim Woodrung). Cosmocopia. Payseur & Schmidt, 2008. First edition hardback, one of 500 copies with a band signed by Di Filippo and Jim Woodrung around the box, in a decorated cardboard box with a cardstock illustration and a Jigsaw puzzle, in the case as well as the book, sans dust jacket, as issued. Paul Di Filippo alerted me to the fact that Fantagraphics bookstore had copies on hand for Jim Woodrung’s signing there at $30 a pop and I managed to call and snag the last copy.
This is another book I bought in the Cold Tonnage 40% off sale.
Jones, Stephen and Newman, Kim. Horror: 100 Best Books. Xanadu Publications, Ltd., 1988. First edition hardback, #214 of 300 numbered copies signed by both the editors and almost every living one of the 100 (!) contributors, including Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison, Basil Copper, Karl Edward Wagner, Jack Williamson, etc. etc etc. (though not by Stephen King), a Fine copy in decorated boards, sans dust jacket, as issued. Bought for £30 off Cold Tonnage, marked down from £50.
I tried to take pictures of the signatures on the endpapers, with varying results. Click to embiggen:
I already had the trade edition, but the limited’s binding is quite different from the trade edition, as the picture below illustrates:
(Ignore the grid lines, which are a scanner artifact.)
Take a moment to pity the people who ran Hill House Publishers, as they had more good taste than business sense. They were publishing the right authors (they did several Gaiman limiteds), but usually at the wrong print runs and price points to make it a reliably profitable enterprise.
Take this nifty Ray Brabdury production, for instance:
Bradbury, Ray. The Cat’s Pajamas: Stories +5. Hill House Publishers, 2004. First limited edition and first edition thus (containing five stories not in the trade edition), #352 of 1,000 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine die-cut cloth slipcase with an extraction ribbon to pull out the book. Contains 5 stories not found in the William Morrow trade edition. Bought for $35 off eBay.
Given that it’s an attractive production by a legendary author, what’s the problem? Well, namely the fact that they did 1,000 copies at $150 a copy. The price point was simply too high for a limitation run that large. Also, the book wasn’t the true first, as the Morrow trade edition precedes. So no wonder Hill House (which is now out of business) had enough copies left over that someone would buy them at clearance and blow them out cheap on eBay…
Here’s a moderately important literary first that also happens to be on the Pringle Modern Fantasy 100 list.
Updike, John. The Witches of Eastwick. Franklin Press, 1984. First edition hardback, a limited edition signed by Updike (which precedes the trade edition), a Fine copy in decorated leather boards, sans dust jacket, as issued. Pringle, Modern Fantasy 100 91. Bought off eBay for $19.99.
The day Updike died, at lunch I spotted the cheapest Fine copy online (which I think was something like $40) and got the dealer to agree to hold it. By the time I got home from work (this being back before I owned an iPhone, and thus no access to my home email), the dealer had already sold it to someone else. So I bided my time until an even cheaper copy presented itself, which it finally did.
I suspect the fact I got this so cheaply is a sign of the general price decline of hypermodern literary firsts in general and Updike in particular. A few months ago, Heritage Auctions sold off someone’s Updike collection, and I don’t think the prices most things went for were particularly high.
Some people seem to think I collect every damn SF/F/H book that comes down the pike, but this simply isn’t true. There are large swathes of horror I don’t read or collect and I’ve skipped the vast majority of bug-crushing high fantasy.
Finally, there are books that are just too ridiculously expensive for me to pick up.
The Martian Legion is one of those books.
The Martian Legion is a Tarzan/John Carter crossover book authorized by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate created, backed and penned by longtime Texas SF writer and comic books dealer Jake “Buddy” Saunders. It’s a very elaborate, lavishly illustrated production, with five different states, the most expensive of which comes in an edition of three, with a commemorative platinum coin, for a cool $15,000. (The cheapest is $200, and the only edition without a presentation box.)
Will they sell? Dunno. The Burroughs collector market is a world unto itself. They may fly off the shelves at the next Dum Dum…
(Hat tip: Howard Waldrop.)
I had a family Christmas event at my aunt’s house in Dallas over the weekend, so I hit a few bookstores on my way up I-35, buying a smattering of things.
Then I went to Recycled Books in Denton and dropped $1,100. (This is not an uncommon occurrence.) This post just covers the things I found in their locked rare books section; the rest will be covered in posts over the next few days. (I’m running out of year!))
