Ligotti, Thomas. The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein & Other Gothic Tales. Silver Salamander Press, 1994. First edition hardback, number 116 of 125 hardback copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, with small black and white art plate laid in. Bought for $200, marked down from $400, from the Half Price Books on 183 with their 50% off coupon (I showed up when the door opened). Probably the rarest Ligotti hardback. (Evidently the hardback state of The Silver Scarab Press edition of Songs From a Dead Dreameris spurious; proof yet again you can’t completely trust Chalker & Ownings.)
I was recently able to pick up two rare Jack Vance first editions, one of them one of his most difficulty hardbacks, the other a recent chapbook not even my hardcore Jack Vance collecting friends had heard of.
Vance, Jack (writing as Ellery Queen). Four Men Called John. Gollancz Detection, 1976. First hardback edition a Fine- copy in a Fine- dust jacket with a tiny bit of crimping at head, and a few faint invisible, non-breaking surface scratches. Hewett, A14j. Actually, Jerry Hewett was the one who picked this up for me, since he knew I was looking for it…
Vance, Jack. The Avatar’s Apprentice. Sadlark Press, 2011. First edition chapbook, number 18 of 30 copies printed from photopolymer plates, a Fine copy, new and unread. According to the publisher “I collected all the excerpts from the five Demon Princes novels that dealt with the Avatar’s Apprentice: Scroll from the Ninth Dimension, and put them into one book. I letterpress printed, illustrated, and hand bound an edition of thirty-five. I used photopolymer to print all the text and images in this book.” I’ve confirmed with the publisher via email that the edition is actually the 30 stated on the limitation page at back.
Not in any standard online reference sources. I found it via a Google image search for “Jack Vance chapbooks”. I can’t help thinking that this is going to drive some Jack Vance completists absolutely bonkers.
Belushi’s frothing editorials were always among the highlights of the original Saturday Night Live cast. I wish they’d put all of them on a single DVD, maybe paired with the Samurai skits, or else the Ackroyd/Curtain Point/Counterpoint bits.
Just as a blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn, so to does College Humor occasionally produce something that’s actually funny. “The Nightmare Before St. Patrick’s Day” is one of those time.
What is it with Shoegaze bands and surreal Communist-era Eastern European films? First No Joy used the Czech film Daisies. Now here’s Mirage in the Water’s “Chimera Panorama,” whose video features clips from the 1973 Polish film The Hour-Glass Sanatorium, which looks extremely weird and interesting.
Since this is the anniversary of H. P. Lovecraft’s death in 1937, here’s a short, well-done, Lovecraft/Cthulhu Mythos themed cgi short film called “Ryleh”. Enjoy!
