Show us what's on your Bookshelf! 3 3

[Flex Mentallo]

What few I have of the rather challenging Gregg Press sci fi titles.

 

Each book in the series offered a facsimile of the first edition of the work with a new introduction written by a contemporary science fiction author. Ultimately 252 titles appeared in the Gregg Press Science Fiction Series between 1974 and 1985.

 

All titles were printed on acid-free paper, sewn and bound in library-grade cloth bindings stamped with a color panel and gold lettering. There were no book jackets, giving the series a permanent library look. Most print runs were under 500 copies.

 

In addition to the classic titles they also produced sets of titles in series with jackets. These included the Witch World novels of Andre Norton shown here.

 

They tend to be scarce and expensive, so I focused on 'must have' titles that I wanted in hardcover, mainly Samuel R Delany [The Jewels of Aptor, Babel 17, Nova, and Triton.

 

Others include Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys, The Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon, The Stars my Destination by Alfred Bester, Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny, and To the Ends of Time by Olaf Stapledon. The smaller book to the left is The Einstein Intersection by Delany published by Garland, which for some reason Gregg Press did not include in their line.

 

Edited September 8, 2021 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

So-called 'hard' SF - Alastair Reynolds, Ian M Banks, Gregory Benford, etc.

[Flex Mentallo]

I think the only notable book is a first print of Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang [on which the movie Arrival was based] - at left.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

I hope no-one minds if I keep posting. These are what remains of a once extensive paperback collection [since mostly converted to hardcover].

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Masterworks

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SF_Masterworks

 

Many of these I also have hardcover versions of, but I kept these sets intact, although I never completed them.

[Flex Mentallo]

I also just wanted to give a mention to the historical fantasies [although he prefers not to use this term] of Guy Gavriel Kay - a wonderful writer who is far less well known than he should be! His writing is lyrical and evocative, and his work is genuinely moving, as well as thrilling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Gavriel_Kay

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Another shelf. Highlights are the Wandering Star three volume set of Conan, Volume One illustrated by Mark Schultz, Volume Two by Gary Gianni. Volume Three by Gregory Manchess.

[Flex Mentallo]

Next to them is Kull, Exile of Atlantis, published by Subterranean Press

[Yorick]

On 9/11/2021 at 1:22 AM, Flex Mentallo said:

Wandering Star Conan, Volume One illustrated by Mark Schultz

 

 

 

If you ever hear that Mark Schultz will be attending a convention near you, he has said that he will remark any copy of this book.  I guess it was published in somewhat limited quantities.  He did a nice little Conan sketch in mine.

There is a Frazetta Conan edition that I'd like to get.  I thought it was part of this set, but I guess not.

[Flex Mentallo]

On 9/11/2021 at 10:04 PM, Yorick said:

There is a Frazetta Conan edition that I'd like to get.  I thought it was part of this set, but I guess not.

Perhaps its this one? There are also volumes of Bran Mak Morn and Solomon Kane in the series.

[Flex Mentallo]

[Flex Mentallo]

More Subterranean et al

[Flex Mentallo]

As well as excellent production values, small press editions often feature striking artwork. This is Piotr Jablonski's cover for Caitlin R Kiernan's Houses Under the Sea published by Centipede Press

 

[Flex Mentallo]

..and these covers for Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos published by Subterranean Press are by John Picacio...

[KirbyJack]

You can kinda see the comic-ey stuff in this one. Hard to find a fixture to accommodate really tall books.

When I see the shot below, what I think about is how I unintentionally stole these shelves from my mom. They’re solid walnut. They were just always in my room, so when I moved out, I took them. Only decades later did she mention that she wanted to keep them. I’m a bad son.

Edited September 12, 2021 by KirbyJack

[Flex Mentallo]

Yet to sort out a suitable shelf for my art editions, but useful to have a large Taschen lectern to display them on occasion. The EC editions are wonderful.

[Flex Mentallo]

On 9/4/2021 at 3:12 PM, Straw-Man said:

kinda partial to my ‘salem’s lot first...

Since you posted this I've read my [later] edition

“He brought the hammer down on the stake once more, and the blood that pulsed from Barlow's chest turned black.

Then, dissolution.

It came in the space of two seconds, too fast to ever be believed in the daylight of later years, yet slow enough to recur again and again in nightmares, with awful stopmotion slowness.

 

The skin yellowed, coarsened, blistered like old sheets of canvas. The eyes faded, filmed white, fell in. The hair went white and fell like a drift of feathers. The body inside the dark suit shriveled and retreated. The mouth widened gapingly as the lips drew back and drew back, meeting the nose and disappearing in an oral ring of jutting teeth. The fingernails went black and peeled off, and then there were only bones, still dressed with rings, clicking and clenching like castanets. Dust puffed through the fibers of the linen shirt. The bald and wrinkled head became a skull. The pants, with nothing to fill them out, fell away to broomsticks clad in black silk. For a moment, a hideously animated scarecrow writhed beneath him, and Ben lunged out of the coffin with a strangled cry of horror. But it was impossible to tear the gaze away from Barlow's last metamorphosis; it hypnotized. The fleshless skull whipped from side to side on the satin pillow. The nude jawbone opened in a soundless scream that had no vocal chords to power it. The skeletal fingers danced and clicked on the dark air like marionettes.

 

Smells struck his nose and then vanished, each in a tight little puff: gas; putrescence, horrid and fleshy; a moldy library smell; acrid dust; then nothing. The twisting, protesting finger bones shredded and flaked away like pencils. The nasal cavity of the skull widened and met the oral cavity. The empty eye sockets widened in a fleshless expression of surprise and horror, met, and were no more. The skull caved in like an ancient Ming vase. The clothes settled flat and became as neutral as dirty laundry.

 

And still there was no end to its tenacious hold on the world - even the dust billowed and writhed in tiny dust devils within the coffin. And then, suddenly, he felt the passage of something which buffeted past him like a strong wind, making him shudder. At the same instant, every window of Eva Miller's boardinghouse blew outward."

 

 

 

[Straw-Man]

it's a wonderful passage.   i also love when the holy water is being splashed on their tools; glorious language there.

another similarly sublime scene is from the stand, when the bomb is detonated in vegas.  "and it DID look like a hand."

[Flex Mentallo]

He said that when he wrote Salem's Lot that he wanted to write a great American [horror] novel, with Melville as his model. But I think the story took over and went its own way.

“Writing controlled fiction is called “plotting.” Buckling your seatbelt and letting the story take over, however…that is called “storytelling.” Storytelling is as natural as breathing; plotting is the literary version of artificial respiration.”

 

It's very much a young author's novel - there are lots of passages where the writing is fairly average - but then you get these other parts which are tremendous, not where his is trying to be self consciously lyrical, but often when the horror really bites, and he finds a sustained upward pitch that keeps on rising. In Salem's Lot it seems he is shifting the paradigm other writers have to follow. So many great horror books we might not have had without him raising the bar! So much so that it is quite hard now to imagine the impact it had at the time, because so much that comes after stands on its shoulders.

Edited September 25, 2021 by Flex Mentallo

[Pat Calhoun]

Ages ago I let myself be talked into going to see 'Carrie'. I detested it, and years later, after my brother died, I went down to San Diego to decide which books in his collection should be shipped up to me and which should be junked. I came upon his copy of Carrie (upper right) and thought 'toss this monstrosity', then I saw that it was a first edition and quietly slid it to the keep stack.

[OtherEric]

I remember having dismissed King as one of those popular but unreadable writers for a long time; when a friend finally convinced me to read The Dark Tower I was surprised by how good he actually is.  I'm not a fan of all his stuff by any means, but the man can write.