Another Swanwick Dragonstairs Press chapbook, and I picked up one copy in each state:
I will have copies of each state for sale in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog, probably around November.
Posts Tagged ‘Fantasy’
Library Addition: Two States of Michael Swanwick’s Dragonskin
Tuesday, July 9th, 2019Library Additions: Four Subterranean Press Firsts
Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019Got all of these through their most recent 50% off sale:
Library Additions: Half Price Books Finds
Tuesday, June 18th, 2019No particular theme, just various books I picked up at Half Price Books over the last few months that I didn’t feel like breaking out into separate posts.
Library Additions: Seven Signed PBOs (Allston, Harrison, Hawke, Powers)
Saturday, June 15th, 2019Five of these came from a friend who was culling his library of books signed to his late wife for $1-2 each, while two were Half Price Books buys. All but one of these are PBO firsts of one stripe or another:
I enjoyed the Nicholas Yermakov books I read, but never picked up any of his series work once he changed his name for Simon Hawke, so why not pick up some signed PBOs cheap?
Library Addition: Association Copy of Avram Davidson’s Redward Edward Papers Inscribed to Randall Garrett
Tuesday, May 28th, 2019This is something I located at a Half Price Books here in Austin:
Davidson, Avram. The Redward Edward Papers. Doubleday, 1978. First edition hardback, a Fine- copy with slight bend at head and heel in a Near Fine dust jacket with very faint spotting, fading the red lettering on spine, slight age darkening to the white cover, and a few tiny specks of dust soiling. Inscribed to fellow science fiction and fantasy writer Randall Garrett on the front free endpaper: “June 25/78 Pacific Grove/Califo./For an old, good and helpful/friend,/Randall Garrett/with the Compliments/of the Author,/Avram Davidson.” Additionally signed by Davidson on the title page. Bought from Half Price Books for $45.
Garrett was author of the popular Lord Darcy series of fantasy detective novels, basically Sherlock Holmes with magic. He spent the last years of his life in Austin in what we would now call a “memory care facility” after a bout of viral meningitis.
Library Addition: Signed First of Gene Wolfe’s Innocents Aboard
Thursday, May 23rd, 2019Checking eBay after Gene Wolfe died, I came across a listing for a signed copy of Innocents Aboard, and wondered to myself “Is my copy signed?”
That’s when I found out that, much to my chagrin, I did not own a copy of Innocents Aboard at all.
Hence this:
Wolfe, Gene. Innocents Abroad. Tor, 2004. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, signed by Wolfe. Bought off eBay for $14.99 plus shipping.
Library Addition: Signed/Limited Ray Bradbury Chronicles Volume 6
Wednesday, May 15th, 2019Another signed Bradbury, and another volume in this series.
Bradbury, Ray, et. al. Ray Bradbury Chronicles Volume 6. Nantier Beall Minoustchine/Byron Preiss, no date (but 1994). First edition hardback, #828 of 1000 signed, numbered copies signed by Bradbury and the illustrators, a Fine- copy with a bit of spine lean (only noticeable because the book is so thin), in a Fine dust jacket. Bought for $26.10 plus shipping off eBay. Original published price was $45.
I now have Volumes 2, 6 and 7 of this series, but am still looking for the others…
Library Addition: R. A. Lafferty’s The Man Who Walked Through Cracks
Wednesday, May 8th, 2019The latest volume of the Centipede Press Collected Lafferty series came in:
Lafferty, R. A. The Man Who Walked Through the Cracks: The Collected Short Fiction Volume Five. Centipede Press, 2019. First edition hardback, #40 of 300 signed, numbered copies, new and unread, still in publisher’s polybag. I have matching numbers of all five books in the series.
I will have precisely one copy of this (along with a matching copy of Volume 4) in the forthcoming Lame Excuse Books catalog.
Library Addition: Signed/Limited Edition of Tim Powers’ Alternate Routes
Thursday, April 25th, 2019The latest elaborate Tim Powers edition from Charnel House:
Powers, Tim. Alternate Routes. Charnel House, 2018 (though not received until 2019). First edition hardback, #54 of 150 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy, sans dust jacket, in boards embossed with a large capital “L” gold stamped onto the cover, in polybag, with a sheet of instructions to leave it in the poly bag (due to possible rubbing off of the gold foil) laid in, sans dust jacket, as issued. Already out of print from the publisher, with at least one companion volume forthcoming.
I will have precisely one copy available for sale in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog, currently in progress.
Gene Wolfe, RIP
Tuesday, April 16th, 2019Science fiction writer Gene Wolfe died on Sunday. If you know who Gene Wolfe was no explanation is necessary, and if you don’t no explanation is possible.
He was the best of us all: the cleverest, trickiest science fiction writer alive, capable of carrying off narrative gambits the rest of us could barely conceive of. And this was not just my opinion: it’s all but universally held in the field, from Neil Gaiman to Howard Waldrop.
In The Book of the Short Sun, protagonist Horn sets off to retrieve Patera Silk, the protagonist of The Book of the Long Sun. He comes back thinking he’s failed. The great tragedy of the work is that he hasn’t. In Return to the Whorl, there comes a line of just two words: “Silk nodded.”
And it’s absolutely heartbreaking.
Gene Wolfe was a Korean War veteran, a fact that greatly shaped The Book of the New Sun, whose last volume features protagonist Severian gradually being drawn into a distant war. He was also a working engineer, and helped develop the cooking portion of the machine that makes Pringles potato chips. He was also an editor on Plant Engineering magazine, where he handled (among other things) robotics and cartoons.
Gene was a friend, albeit one I saw only every half a decade or so. I interviewed him for Nova Express at the 1998 Worldcon, bringing a box of his books with me to sign. (Since then, of course, I’ve picked up many more.) We had lunch together at the 2012 Chicago Worldcon, by which time his beloved wife Rosemary was dying of Alzheimer’s.
Here’s a scanned picture of Gene and Rosemary on their wedding day from A Wolfe Family Album:
And here’s a picture of Gene and Rosemary (with Elizabeth Hand in-between) at the 2009 Readercon:
And here are some pictures of Gene’s books from my library:
He will be deeply missed.