I had a pleasant surprise on the weekend, when I popped into one of the local independent bookstores to find all three volumes of Arkham House‘s collected Lovecraft, as well as the volume of “stuff Lovecraft ‘doctored'” sitting on the shelf.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen these books in stock at a general bookstore–in fact, I think the only time I’ve ever seen them in stock was at Dreamhaven, and I always had other things to spend my money on there.
I probably have all the stories in the three volumes in various paperbacks (mostly used, beat up, and multiply read copies) around the house, but I jumped at the chance to get everything in the four nice hardcover volumes. I’ve always known the Arkham House editions were out there, and that I could get them at some point, but having them on the shelf in front of me made it very easy for now to be the time.
I have no idea why this bookseller would stock these books now–they don’t have much in the way of horror or SF/F normally–but I’m glad they did. Comparison shopping on the net since I picked them up has also revealed that they were priced very well–I couldn’t find another way to buy new copies of the current printings (which these are) for less.
I’ll have to find someone to give the paperbacks to. Maybe someone from poker night who is wondering about my custom chips.
The only thing I’ll miss from the old editions is the Michael Whelan cover on one of the collections. Normally I don’t have much use for Whelan’s air-brushed style, but the images from the two paintings he did for the Lovecraft covers are inextricably linked to the Cthulhu mythos in my mind.
Here’s the two paintings. I believe the publisher used croppings of selected images from these pieces to make something like seven different covers. Note that while it may not be obvious in the images I’ve ganked off the internet to show here, the two images can be joined at either end to form a single continuous image:
