Preview: SF First Editions in Heritage Auctions’ April 10th Offering

April 8th, 2013

Heritage Auctions has another signature book auction coming up on April 10, and there are several interesting SF/F/H first editions up for offer. Here’s a preview of a few:

  • Robert E. Howard’s original typewritten manuscript for the Conan story “A Witch Shall Be Born”, signed by Howard.
  • Yet another first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Heritage has auctioned off a number of these in the past, and they all seemed to go for over $20,000. This is a particularly nice copy.
  • A slightly tattered copy of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Others.
  • Speaking of Lovecraft, there’s also a Visionary publication The Shadow Over Innsmouth. (Actually, there are two in this auction; that link goes to the nicer copy.)
  • Also from Lovecraft: Unbound signatures of the Recluse Press edition of The Shunned House. Making it even rarer is the fact that the copyright page remains uncanceled.
  • 26 letters by H. G. Wells.
  • Speaking of Wells, here’s a signed first of The War of the Worlds. (Related: The signed H. G. Wells book I own.)
  • A nice copy of Alfred Bester’s Tiger Tiger.
  • A nice copy of Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light, with a signature plate laid in.
  • Plus a few other miscellaneous SF items. However, the main strength of the auction overall is a number important scientific first editions, a signed first of ian Fleming’s Moonraker, etc.

    Shoegazer Sunday: Clams’ “Sundae Bird”

    April 7th, 2013

    From Japan comes Clams with “Sundae Bird.” The first 48 seconds are space music drone, but after that the catchy dreampop tune kicks in.

    More Roger Ebert Tidbits

    April 5th, 2013

    A few more interesting pieces of writing from him:

  • How he quit drinking.
  • An oral history of Siskel and Ebert.
  • So I don’t just show them giving pans, here’s a young Ebert and porn-stached Gene Siskel splitting on Taxi Driver:

    Reviewing one of my favorite films, This Is Spinal Tap:

    And here’s them loving Ed Wood:

    Siskel & Ebert Review North

    April 5th, 2013

    I’m sure you’ve read about Roger Ebert’s death from cancer. I don’t have much to add to the many tributes being offered (though I do want to note that he was a science fiction fan before a movie critic), so instead here’s Ebert and Gene Siskel eviscerating Rob Reiner’s North.

    Technology Marches On!

    April 4th, 2013

    Is your retroincabulator up to snuff?

    Getting drunk with Upstream Color director Shane Carruth

    April 3rd, 2013

    An interesting interview at Grantland which is just that.

    Still not sure I want to see Upstream Color.

    If You’re Wondering Where my Locus April Fool’s Piece Is…

    April 1st, 2013

    …read this.

    XKCD’s Time

    March 31st, 2013

    It’s easy to assume that everyone in the world follows Randall Munroe’s geeky online stickman webcomic XKCD, since it seems all my friends do. For those that don’t, last Monday he put up a strip called “Time.” This strip, like his uber-large “Click-and-Drag”, plays with the conventions of the form. “Time” started out with a static, non-gag image with the hover-over label “wait for it.” Since then, he’s updated the image every half-hour to an hour, even though he’s done new strips on the usual M-W-F schedule. If you follow the images in order, “Time” shows two people (which XKCD devotees have dubbed “Cueball” and “Megan”) building a sand castle.

    Here’s an animated gif of the images so far:

    Here’s a quicker version, which you can also step through, speed up, slow down, etc.

    Here’s the explanation page for it, as well as its own Wikia. We now have a real-life version of those people obsessively tracking online image snippets from Pattern Recognition, except we actually know who they’re from.

    The obvious metaphor is how time continues to flow and things change when you’re not watching.

    As of this writing, the images are still being updated. Munroe could keep updating that one comic for a long, long, er, time, especially if he decreases the update rate.

    Conceivably, “Time” could be a long-running conceptual art project and keep updating for the rest of our lives, and beyond, like that German church playing John Cage’s “As Slowly as Possibly” for 629 years…

    Shoegazer Sunday: Pastel Blue’s “Ariel”

    March 31st, 2013

    Another Sunday, another obscure Japanese Shoegaze band. This time it’s Pastel Blue with “Ariel.”

    A lot of people compare them to Slowdive, and this songs tells you way.

    Shatner vs. Gorn II

    March 28th, 2013

    Brilliant on a whole lot of levels:

    One funny thing: The video game obviously has Kirk 2.0 rather than the Shatner version.

    I suspect that someday Shatner’s later commercials may come to be seen as one of his most substantial bodies of work…