David Langford puts up the 300th Issue of Ansible.
Madness? No! THIS! IS! ANSIBLE!
July 2nd, 2012Shoegazer Sunday: Auburn Lull’s Arc of an Outsider
July 1st, 2012All of Auburn Lull‘s Begin Civil Twilight is worth listening to, but “Arc of an Outsider,” with it’s lovely, floating, wistful, waltz-time beauty, has always been my favorite.
Still More Poking Holes in Prometheus
June 26th, 2012Do we need really another go-round explaining all the problems with Prometheus?
Why, yes. Yes we do.
Which is why I’m linking to this Prometheus Captain’s Log, not least for this line: “Weyland Corporation must not give a crap about this mission since they hired Insane Clown Posse to be our science team.”
More Poking Holes in Prometheus
June 24th, 2012If the review Howard and I did of Prometheus wasn’t enough to warn you away, here’s a spoiler-filled and NSFW list of all the questions regarding various plot idiocies in the movie, some we covered, some we haven’t. Enjoy!
Shoegazer Sunday: Black Tamborine’s “By Tomorrow”
June 24th, 2012I see that some online sources are calling Maryland’s Black Tamborine (active during the first wave of Shoegaze in the 1990s) “Twee Pop.” Screw that. Sounds like Shoegazer to me.
Recent Library Acquisitions: 12 Volumes in the Stellar Publishing Science Fiction Series
June 20th, 2012I picked up an interesting lot in a recent Heritage auction: 12 of the 18 volumes in the Stellar Publishing Corporation Science Fiction Series. SF pioneer Hugo Gernsback formed Stellar Publishing Corporation in 1929, and I’m given to understand that many volumes were available for sale for decades in the back of various science fiction magazines.
Alas, there seems to be a dearth of information about Stellar Publishing itself out on the Internet. Fortunately, I have the very first science fiction bibliography ever published, Science Fiction Bibliography, VOL 1, NO 1 (and only), published by the “Science Fiction Syndicate” right here in Austin, Texas in 1935. Let’s see what it has to say about the series:
The titles and authors of these eighteen booklets are too well known to enumerate.
Well, thanks a lot, long-dead dumbasses!
All of these (except the Manly Wade Wellman volume) can only be considered VG (at best) because the previous owner punched a set of small binding holes near the spine, presumably to store them all in one binder. Still, I only paid $38 for the entire set.
All of these have browned pages due to the paper used, but the scanner slightly exaggerates the shading variation. List numbers are the number each volume comes in the series.
- Michelmore, Reg. An Adventure in Venus. Stellar Publishing Corporation, 1929. First edition chapbook original, VG, with punch holes and usual page browning.
- Stone, Leslie F. When the Sun Went Out. Stellar Publishing Corporation, 1929. First edition chapbook original, VG, with punch holes and usual page browning.
- Lorraine, Lilith. The Brain of the Planet. Stellar Publishing Corporation, 1929. First edition chapbook original, VG-, with punch holes and usual page browning, and a few stray black marks to cover.
- Colladay, Morrison. When the Moon Fell. Stellar Publishing Corporation, 1929. First edition chapbook original, VG, with punch holes and usual page browning.
- Bourne, Frank/Long, Amelia Reynolds. The Thought Stealer (Bourne) and The Mechanical Man (Long). Stellar Publishing Corporation, 1930. First edition chapbook original, VG, with punch holes and usual page browning.
- Bradley, Jack. The Torch of Ra. Stellar Publishing Corporation, no date (1930). First edition chapbook original, VG, with punch holes and usual page browning.
- Eberle, Merab/Mitchell, Milton. The Thought Translator (Eberle) and The Creation (Mitchell). Stellar Publishing Corporation, 1930. First edition chapbook original, VG, with punch holes and usual page browning.
- Higginson, H. W. The Elixir. Stellar Publishing Corporation, 1930. First edition chapbook original, VG, with punch holes and usual page browning.
- Black, Pansy E. The Valley of the Great Ray. Stellar Publishing Corporation, 1930. First edition chapbook original, VG, with punch holes and usual page browning.
- Farrar, Clyde/Sharp, D.D. The Life Vapor (Farrar) and Thirty Miles Down. Stellar Publishing Corporation, no date (1930). First edition chapbook original, VG-, with punch holes and usual page browning, slight staining to top back corner near spine, and initials to very bottom of cover.
- Wellman, Manly Wade. The Invading Asteroid. Stellar Publishing Corporation, 1932. First edition chapbook original, a Near Fine copy with usual page browning (and unlike the above, no side hole punching).
Generally, the Wellman is (along with Clark Ashton Smith’s The Immortals of Mercury and Jack Williamson and Dr. Miles J. Breuer’s The Girl From Mars, neither of which I’ve picked up yet) considered among the more desirable titles in the series. But the Lorraine and Bourne/Long titles are also getting somewhat hard to find as well.
Shoegazer Sunday: Curve’s “No Escape From Heaven”
June 17th, 2012The thing about Curve’s “No Escape From Heaven” that strikes me as I listen to it now is just how much it sounds like 1991. There was a huge amount of change going on that year, both grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam) and otherwise (Slowdive, Tori Amos), but there was a particular style of female lead vocals that featured bright, upbeat, autoharmonized choruses with a lush, vibrant, full sound, as though all the girl groups of the 1980s (Go Gos, Bananarama, etc.) were distilled into their essence, with an assist from the very latest recording technology. You could hear it everywhere, including bands people have completely forgotten about. (When is the last time you heard Voice of the Beehive on the radio?) Even though this is definitely Shoegaze, you can still hear the same tonalities to it.
Howard Waldrop and I Review Prometheus
June 11th, 2012Over at Locus Online. It wasn’t as good as we hoped it would be.
The Trailer for Django Unchained is Out
June 8th, 2012And it looks every bit as much fun as it sounded:
Library Acquisition: Philip K. Dick’s Counter Clock World
June 7th, 2012I’m in the process of acquiring a complete collection of Philip K. Dick’s first editions in hardback, including those books first published as paperback originals. Some of these are fairly hard to find, among them the UK White Lion edition of Counter Clock World. It came out in 1977, preceding the Gregg Press hardback by two years. I finally found an acceptable Ex-Library copy I could afford, thanks to a private seller who contacted me about after seeing it on my books wanted list.
Dick, Philip K. Counter Clock World. White Lion, 1977. First hardback edition, an Ex-Library copy with remnants of pocket removal on inside front cover, FFE excised, and small stamps on title and copyright pages, otherwise VG, with signatures slightly shaken, 1/4″ cloth wear-through on rear board edge at heel and general wear, in a VG dust jacket with extremely shallow chipping at head and heel, wrinkling to bottom edge of front flap, and haze rubbing to black back panel, but otherwise intact and not price-clipped. Currey, p. 156. Not in Levack, which is the only omission I’ve found in PKD.
Non Ex-Library copies tend to list around two grand.
That leaves three UK Dick hardback firsts I still need: