While there were many exciting conversations here at Casa McLaren tonight about things that are not yet blog-announcement-ready, as far as actual action goes things were pretty sedate. Mostly it was me assembling some hardware store purchases, and then spending a few hours doing some sorting and organizing of the library.
So, since I spent all my time doing that, and none of my usual time reading the web or thinking about how to sound deep on the blog, let me present instead one of the things that I was organizing tonight: the set of limited edition Philip Jose Farmer books I’ve assembled from the offerings of Subterranean Press. I have a lot of less fancy Farmer books, including SFBC omnibus volumes, trade paper reprints, and lots and lots of mass market books, but these are the fancy parts of the collection.
The last of these volumes arrived this week–the first one since Farmer died–and it seems very strange somehow to look at his signature in this newly issued book and realize that he’s now gone. It hit me with another wave of the same frankly self-centered melancholy I felt when hearing of his death.
I say the last, but actually there’s one more pending, but it’s one of those collaborative works–written by junior author from the outline prepared by “name author”–where the more cynical among us can kind of discount the involvement of the “name” partner. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve already ordered my copy, but I don’t think of it as a “Farmer book” per se. I’m a sucker for the Wold Newton stuff, though so of course I’d be in for this. (Also, few novels have their own blogs.)
If you know Farmer and his work, but not these books, you can read some details about them at Subterranean. If you don’t know Farmer you might start here or here. (Or even with this, since it was Farmer that put me onto Burton.)
