To kick off the Halloween season, here’s Kevin Pollack on the Rich Eisen show talking about greeting Trick-or-Treaters as Christopher Walken:
“Which one of you little freaks can guess what I’ve buried under the house?”
Good times, good times…
Library Addition: Signed, Limited Edition of Larry Niven’s Time of the Warlock
September 30th, 2025Another signed/limited edition bought at a bargain price.
Niven, Larry. The Time of the Warlock. SteelDragon Press, 1984. First edition hardback, #185 of 200 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine, Mylar-protected dust jacket. Includes all of The Magic Goes Away and additional stories set in the same universe. Supplements an unsigned copy. Chalker/Owings, page 418. Bought off eBay for $23.50, less than the original limited edition list price of $30.
Library Addition: Signed, Limited Edition of Jack Vance’s Bad Ronald
September 29th, 2025I manage to fill one of the few gaps left in my Jack Vance collection.
Vance, Jack. Bad Ronald. Underwood Miller, 1982. First hardback edition, #63 of 200 signed, numbered copies, a Fine- copy with a very small bump to top rear boards, in a Near Fine dust jacket with slight age darkening to top of spine, and a trace of same along edges. Suspense novel originally published as a paperback original under his legal name of John Holbrook Vance, and the basis of a well-regarded 1974 TV movie of the same name. Hewett, A.43.c. Cunningham, 5.b. Chalker/Owings, page 434. Hubin, page 404. Supplements copies of the text in Volume 12 of the Vance Integral Edition and the Subterranean Dangerous Ways omnibus (which I have both lettered and trade states of), but I still lack the 1973 Ballantine PBO. Though overgraded as Fine/Fine, I can’t really complain since I bought this at a bargain $35 price.
50th Anniversary Edition Of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway Just Dropped
September 24th, 2025The 50th Anniversary edition of the Genesis prog rock masterpiece The Lamb lies Down on Broadway just dropped. Were I not between jobs for an unreasonably long period of time, I would no doubt plop down my $120 or so bucks.
Here’s the remastered title track.
And here’s Classic Album Review for What It All Means:
The usual metaphoric analysis caveats apply…
Library Addition: Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life
September 24th, 2025Here’s a new Ted Chiang limited edition from Subterranean:
Chiang, Ted. Story of Your Life. Subterranean Press, 2025. First edition hardback, #212 of 500 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine slipcase, sans dust jacket, as issued, in publisher’s resealable bag. Chiang’s Nebula-winning novella about attempts to communicate with aliens who don’t perceive time as linear, and the basis of the 2016 movie Arrival. The number matches the number of my Subterranean edition of Exhalation. I also own an inscribed first of Stories of Your Life, his first short story collection, which contains this. Lots of people love this novella, but I don’t like it nearly as much as “Understand” or “Hell is the Absence of God” (also contained there). Bought from the publisher at the usual discount.
I will have cone copy of this available for sale in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog, which will probably be out late November.
Library Addition: Michael Swanwick’s Life: A User’s Manual
September 22nd, 2025This was sent to me as a friend of the press:
Swanwick, Michael. Life: A User’s Manual. Dragonstairs Press, 2025. First edition chapbook original, #6 of 40 signed, numbered copies produced for Confluence 2025, a Fine copy, with tiny additional chapbook inscribed “for a friend of the Press” laid in. Vignettes on the stages of life.
The First Appearance of Spinal Tap?
September 19th, 2025This sketch comedy TV show from 1979 features what is probably the first ever TV appearance of Spinal Tap. I was planning to post this right before Spinal Tap II: The End Continues came out, but I got distracted by shiny objects and the movie came out last week.
Alas, the sequel seems to have done very poorly at the box office, so I might just have to wait for it on DVD…
Library Addition: R. A. Lafferty’s The Man Who Lost His Magic
September 17th, 2025It’s been two years since the last volume, but the latest Centipede Press Lafferty volume finally showed up.
Lafferty, R.A. The Man Who Lost His Magic: The Collected Short Fiction Volume 8. First edition hardback, #40 of 300 numbered copies signed by introduction author Gary K. Wolfe.
Unlike previous volumes, this one came shipped in a plastic bag much larger than the book rather than being shrinkwrapped. It means that I need to carefully tape everything up before I can even get it on my shelf next to the other volumes.
Library Additions: Six Joe R. Lansdale Items
September 9th, 2025Six Joe R. Lansdale-related items bought from three different sources.
Note: The white streak at upper right is dust jacket glare.
Library Addition: Joshi’s Lovecraft Primal Sources
September 4th, 2025Another purchase from that Facebook seller.
(Lovecraft, H. P.) S. T. Joshi, editor. Primal Sources: Essays on Lovecraft. Hippocampus Press, 2003. First edition trade paperback original (stated, though I think all Hippocampus Press trade paperbacks are POD books now), a Fine- copy with first page slightly dog-eared at bottom. Joshi essays on various Lovecraftian topics. Joshi, H.P. Lovecraft: A Comprehensive Bibliography III-C-65. Joshi, 200 Books by S. T. Joshi, I.23. Bought for $10.
