New Arrivals, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, aging

  A few posts back, I spoke of the death of Peter Nicholls the editor of the 1979, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. As I was preparing for that post, I took out my tattered edition and leafed through looking at the pictures. Which meant looking for my favourite, a 1937 edition of Argosy with an enchanting Burroughs cover by Emmett Watson. I then decided to see if there was a decent/affordable copy on ABE. I found one and since one of the main drawbacks of ABE is the initial shipping costs, I looked to see if the vendor has other items I could add. I knew from previous purchases that this vendor, Leonard Shoup, tends to carry Weird Tales related material so I did a quick search on Lovecraft. And there they were. I could not resist adding The Lurking Fear and Other Stories and The Shuttered Room and Other Tales of Horror to the Argosy and now all I had to do was wait until the frantic barking of the dogs signaled the arrival of our letter carrier

When I first began collecting, rather than simply buying books randomly, I focused initially on two areas. Lovecraft with the obvious (to me) addition of Arkham House and other Weird Tales authors, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. I chose Lovecraft because I was introduced to his work by a school chum at 15 and enjoyed it.

These two Lovecraft titles would be considered minor collections at best. The stories in the The Shuttered Room are pastiches or stories based on Lovecraft's notes by August Derleth. The Lurking Fear contains what I think I can safely describe as lesser tales, although I have a certain fondness for the wildly illogical The Lurking Fear, with it's warning against the dangers of inbreeding, cannibalism and a subterranean existence. I purchased them for the John Holmes covers, these were among the first editions (now lost) that I owned.

(Both author's works can be considered problematic in their treatment of women and minorities, I posted my thoughts on Lovecraft here

http://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-real-shadow-over-innsmouth-odd.html )

I chose Burroughs because his books filled the used bookstores of my youth and I loved the covers. James Blaylock in his wonderful Burroughs themed novel The Digging Leviathan expressed this beautifully. 

" Edward St. Ives was a collector of books, especially of fantasy and science fiction, the older and tawdrier the better. Plots and cover illustrations that smacked of authenticity didn't interest him. It was sea monsters; cigar-shaped, crenelated rockets; and unmistakable flying saucers that attracted him. There was something in the appearance of such things that appealed to the part of him that appreciated the old Hudson Wasp …,.  Once a month or so, after a particularly satisfactory trip to Acres of Books, he'd drag out the lot of his paperback Burroughs novels, lining up the Tarzan books here and the Martian books there and the Pellucidar books somewhere else. The Roy Krenkel covers were the most amazing, with their startling slashes and dabs of impressionist color and their distant spired cities half in ruin and shadow beneath a purple sky." (17)

Cover by Timothy McNamara (as by Ferret)

Roy Krenkel below

I have to admit this purchase was rooted very much in nostalgia or perhaps immaturity if you like. I have lately found the rise of irrationalism worldwide troubling and some days the world seems unrecognizable. As I get older my reading and collecting helps keep me mentally active, engaged and grounded. The process of aging has been beautifully described by Wendell Berry in his novel (a favourite of mine) Jayber Crow.

 "Back there at the beginning, as I see it now, my life was all time and almost no memory. Though I knew early of death, it still seemed to be something that happened only to other people, and I stood in an unending river of time that would go on making the same changes and the same returns forever.
     And now, nearing the end, I see that my life is almost entirely memory and very little time." (24)

I try very hard to avoid wallowing in memories of the past, and make sure that I read new and diverse works and authors, but I, like Edward St. Ives, cannot resist the occasional winged T-Rex. 

MICHAEL MOORCOCK: WHY FAHRENHEIT 451 ENDURES

This article (link below) by Moorcock from Literary Hub puts Bradbury and his works wonderfully in context, not only looking at his influences, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett, among others but also mentioning the works of his contemporaries like Frederik Pohl, C.M. Kornbluth and Philip K. Dick. I love this type of overview and it also acts as an excuse to look over my own shelves. This one was right in my wheel house. 

The Truth of Ray Bradbury’s
Prophetic Vision

MICHAEL MOORCOCK: WHY FAHRENHEIT 451 ENDURES

"For all his nostalgia, Bradbury was perfectly positioned to experience what to most of us was still the future. In the 1940s and 50s Southern California boomed. People from all over the USA were attracted there by jobs in agriculture, engineering and the non-print media. Hollywood dream factories expanded to include television. Fantasy and reality found a perfect blend. Bradbury’s visual imagination, his lyrical style and experience of a changing world were ideally suited to suggest what the future might hold for us."

https://lithub.com/the-truth-of-ray-bradburys-prophetic-vision/

"Bradbury might be the first author to offer “market forces” as the base of a dystopia. In that sense he could be said to share ties with those East Coast writers who provided Galaxy with some of its best work. Marxist critics would have no difficulty in analyzing the book as a description of a certain kind of doctrinaire capitalism, where the middle class is reduced to nothing more than so many consumer units, where entertainment has become a never-ending reality show and literacy is not only marginalized but actively discouraged. On rereading this wonderfully spare moral tale others have also been struck by its parallels in present-day society."

Cover credits

Pleasure to Burn cover by Joseph Mugnaini

Amazing Stories, Tarzan and the Ant Men, At The Earth's Core covers by J. Allen St. John

The Book of Skaith cover by Don Maitz

Startling Stories cover by Alex Schomburg

Planet Stories cover by Allen Anderson

Michael Chabon Attacks Prejudice Against Science Fiction from Wired 03.07.12

  This week my wife and I attended a talk at the university by author Michael Chabon. My wife is a fan of Chabon's writing and has read a number of his novels. I have to admit that despite his reputation, among many other awards he has won a Hugo, a Nebula and something called Pulitzer Prize, I had not read anything by him. The talk was very good, Chabon skillfully weaved his experience and influences from age five onward into a very engaging narrative explaining his world view, which of course is reflected in his writing, (as I understood him) he is a rationalist and a sceptic, wary of anything that smacks of mysticism and personal exceptionalism. He is also interested in both mainstream and genre literature something I am also quite interested in. I guess I should not be surprised that a man who has been a professional story teller in multiple genres and mediums for so long, should be so engaging and eloquent but I was, very pleasantly surprised. His ability to organize and delivery his thoughts impressed me. He has obviously given his experiences and personal world view a lot of thought. It was also nice to hear from someone who obviously looks at the world rationally and critically. Having since read three of his short stories, the steam punk flavoured "The Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance" and two Lovecraft inspired tales "The God of Dark Laughter" and “In the Black Mill,” I am impressed with his writing, and will move on to his novels once I clean up the basement and find them.

I also never realized that he had been involved in the screenplay for the movie John Carter one of several movies, Van Helsing, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen among others etc. etc. that my wife and I apparently alone enjoyed based on the critical response. Okay it started with way too much earthly backstory, but I always hate back story. I was very happy to find out he was a huge fan of Burroughs Mars books, as am I, so overall I really enjoyed the talk. I have included a link to a interview he gave to Wired which I found quite interesting should anyone care to read more about Chabon's career.

 "I never abandoned genre fiction as a reader at all, and what happened, you know, after The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys, the book you mentioned, and the short stories that I wrote at the beginning of my career as a published writer, is it presented me eventually with this puzzle to myself of, “What happened to that idea of writing the kinds of books that you love to read?” And yes, the books that I was writing were modelled to some degree or another on other books that I loved, but my diet as a reader had never abandoned things that my output as a writer was just clearly not reflecting, and I wondered about that, like, “Why? Why does my backlist look so monochromatic, when the spectrum of my reading is so multicolored?” And I didn’t really have a good answer."

Michael Chabon Attacks Prejudice Against Science Fiction

from Wired 03.07.12

https://www.wired.com/2012/03/michael-chabon-geeks-guide-galaxy/all/

And I finish with a quote I loved from his (excellent ) HPL inspired New Yorker story, (which I will discuss on my HPL site) that I felt captured some of the skeptical and rational aspects of his world view as expressed in his talk. It is also, in my mind beautifully written.

"Here I conclude my report, and with it my tenure as district attorney for this blighted and unfortunate county. I have staked my career—my life itself—on the things I could see, on the stories I could credit, and on the eventual vindication, when the book was closed, of the reasonable and skeptical approach. In the face of twenty-five years of bloodshed, mayhem, criminality, and the universal human pastime of ruination, I have clung fiercely to Occam's razor, seeking always to keep my solutions unadorned and free of conjecture, and never to resort to conspiracy or any kind of prosecutorial woolgathering. My mother, whenever she was confronted by calamity or personal sorrow, invoked cosmic emanations, invisible empires, ancient prophecies, and intrigues; it has been the business of my life to reject such folderol and seek the simpler explanation. But we were fools, she and I, arrant blockheads, each of us blind to or heedless of the readiest explanation: that the world is an ungettable joke, and our human need to explain its wonders and horrors, our appalling genius for devising such explanations, is nothing more than the rim shot that accompanies the punch line."

from "The God of Dark Laughter"
New Yorker April 9, 2001 by Michael Chabon