{"id":147,"date":"2009-11-25T18:55:19","date_gmt":"2009-11-26T00:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=147"},"modified":"2025-09-05T15:23:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T20:23:06","slug":"the-top-ten-books-on-my-books-wanted-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=147","title":{"rendered":"The Top Ten Books on my “Books Wanted” List"},"content":{"rendered":"

I may have mentioned that I have a large library<\/a>. I started out collecting “hypermodern” (which in my case meant “post-Neuromancer<\/a>“) science fiction (with some fantasy and horror works and authors thrown in for good measure), and once I had collected everything I wanted there, I started going after every important post-World War II SF work. That<\/i> collection is by no means complete, but I’ve made considerable progress toward it. <\/p>\n

With that in mind, I recently compiled a list of the top ten hardback first editions on my (considerably larger) want list that I was most interested in picking up. Here it is:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. James Blish\u2019s A Case of Conscience<\/b> (Faber & Faber)<\/del>\n
  2. Robert E. Howard\u2019s The Sword of Conan<\/b> (Gnome Press)<\/del>\n
  3. Robert E. Howard\u2019s The Coming of Conan<\/b> (Gnome Press)<\/del>\n
  4. Alfred Bester\u2019s Tiger! Tiger!<\/b> (Sidgwick & Jackson)<\/del>\n
  5. Philip K. Dick\u2019s Dr. Bloodmoney<\/b> (Gregg Press)\n
  6. R. A. Lafferty\u2019s With Horns on Their Head<\/b> (Pendragon Press HB)<\/del>\n
  7. R. A. Lafferty\u2019s Funnyfingers & Cabrito<\/b> (Pendragon Press HB)<\/del>\n
  8. Jack Vance\u2019s Book of Dreams<\/b> (Underwood\/Miller)<\/del>\n
  9. Manly Wade Wellman\u2019s Giants from Eternity<\/b> (Avalon)<\/del>\n
  10. Richard Matheson\u2019s Born of Man and Woman<\/b> (Chamberline Press)<\/ol>\n

    <\/del><\/p>\n

    These are all books that I not only want, but think I have a reasonable shot at picking up at a price I can afford. There are lots of first editions priced like Unobtanium (Stanley G. Weinbaum’s Dawn of Flame<\/b><\/del>, H. P. Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Others<\/b>, the Unwin-Hyman true firsts of all three books in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings<\/b>, etc.) that i would pick up if I saw cheap, but don’t expect to come across.<\/p>\n

    Anyway, if you have nice copies any of the above, and if you’re willing to sell it to me considerably cheaper than can be found on Bookfinder.com<\/a>, drop me an email at lawrenceperson@gmail.com<\/a> and I’ll consider it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I may have mentioned that I have a large library. I started out collecting “hypermodern” (which in my case meant “post-Neuromancer“) science fiction (with some fantasy and horror works and authors thrown in for good measure), and once I had collected everything I wanted there, I started going after every important post-World War II SF […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":5,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5],"tags":[85,82,1973,80,48,87,83,88,86,84,89,44,1970],"class_list":["post-147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-science-fiction","tag-alfred-bester","tag-book","tag-books","tag-first","tag-first-editions","tag-jack-vance","tag-james-blish","tag-manly-wade-wellman","tag-philip-k-dick","tag-r-a-lafferty","tag-richard-matheson","tag-robert-e-howard","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25399,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/25399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}