Month: January 2023

Recently I bought a collection of stories, a set of collaborations between Gardner Dozois and other writers, called Slow Dancing Through Time. When I bought it I didn’t realize that I’d bought the special limited edition, and that it came in a slipcase. Published by Ursus/Ziesing back in 1990, this book is one of 374 numbered and lettered copies signed by all contributors, including Dozois, Pat Cadigan, Michael Swanwick, Jack Dann, Jack C. Haldeman II, Susan Casper, Michael Bishop, Tim Kirk, Vern Dufford, and Dick Ivan Punchatz (the latter three the illustrators). A trade edition also appeared, though in an unknown number.

It’s a beautiful book, with a wonderful illustration inside the front and back covers by Tim Kirk. It’s a book I’ve seen previously somewhere, but without remembering where. Possibly at some SF convention. Reading it now, more than 30 years later, with several of the contributors no longer alive, is a strange feeling. A book like this doesn’t feel 30 odd years old, or maybe I don’t feel that the passage of time has stretched so long from 1990 to the present.

Collections and anthologies are an interesting breed of book. Writers of short stories usually sell their stories to magazines, and they sell enough, and reach a certain degree of fame, sometimes succeed in getting several of their stories published in a collection, or an anthology of like-minded tales. When it comes to books, the novel market dominates. Short story collections usually only appear in smaller print runs, unless you’re someone like Stephen King. They thrive within the embrace of small press publishers, as these publishers generally have print runs of a few thousand copies. The great part about collections is reading short works of fiction, but what I find just as much fun is reading the intros. These may be in the form of the general introduction, usually where the author bemoans the lack of markets for short stories, and the limited press run of their collection, how they begged and pleaded for their publisher to cobble together this great volume. Or, they could be smaller intros to each story (or in some cases, afterwords, where the writer patiently asks the reader to make sure that the reader actual read the story before the afterword—sometimes unsuccessfully, I might note in my case).

Some writers seem to put as much work into their introductions, as their stories. Harlan Ellison is like that. Others try to let the stories speak for themselves, such as Jack Vance, who only wrote a few brief intros to his collections. Part of my fascination with the non-story pieces is because these often are insights into the mind of the author, who tries to recreate the genesis or meaning of the story. This isn’t something you can do we you write a story, but once written many writers seem to want to look backward and try to explain, to themselves as much as to the reader, how that story came about and what it means to them.

Perhaps, at least in my case, the juxtaposition of the story and the accompanying pieces are a reminder of the work that goes into any fiction, even quite short ones. Good short stories must have an impact, a short sharp shock. A simple joke told by a comedian has been honed and re-written multiple times, to reach the payoff. A short story has been conceived, written, stripped down to its essentials. After that effort, getting an insight into what brought that story to life adds to it, makes the writer seem human and not like some god.

The intro, afterword, or whatever one calls that accompanying text, provides not only insight into the genesis of a story, but the time and place around that story. Sometimes the writer will go into detail how they sold it to a book or magazine. Many of these no magazines no longer exist, or seem like strange choices. Some stories have a winding life until they finally find a home, or end up forgotten and alone until restored among its siblings in a volume of the author’s work.

Collections without such intros are often sad, sterile affairs. Sure, you can read the stories, but by themselves they feel, well, empty. That, of course, is the personal choice of the author who’s likely not getting paid by the word for writing those non-fictional pieces. It does seem a shame, in the age of the internet, but even prior, that many of the short story markets and publications no longer exist. From the pulps to the slick, to specialty magazines and fanzines, many now lie lost and forgotten. Such is it, I suppose, with some older writers, whose books no longer are in print. The genre market is a tough one, even for living authors. Dead ones for the most part now also live in the past. Rediscovering this volume maybe keeps their memory alive a little longer.

Recently I mused upon lazily collecting some of the chapbooks in the Little Books series from Borderlands Press. Having having owned one of the books for many years I happened to pick up a couple more. Perhaps that strange human characteristic of wanting to gather more of the same, I went ahead and looked for other books.

There are two limitations in this effort. First, my price threshold is fairly low; I don’t foresee spending more than $45 for a single book, especially given that these are small chapbooks. Sure, they’re limited to 500 (in most cases) copies, and are signed. But, is that such a big deal? Second, some are hard to find. I’ve checked the usual suspects like Bookfinder and eBay, and so far have been able to locate listings for all but 11 of the books.

What’s my ceiling here, I wonder? So far 53 books have been published. I now own 7, and possibly may pick up another 10-15 before I hit my price ceiling. At what point does it become an obsession? Probably never. To consider having less than half of the complete set is, to a completist, somewhat of a disappointment. The most expensive listing I’ve seen so far is $200 for (to me) an unknown author. There are two or three writers whose books in this series likely will never reach the market for less than $500. Is it then worth it owning a tiny piece of cardboard and paper?

As I’ve said before, I’m more of a haphazard collector when it comes to books. I want the ones that I can read, that fit my interests, and fall under a reasonable budget. My interests are narrow. Generally I’ll focus on authors I like, such as Jack Vance, James P. Blaylock, Tim Powers, Michael Shea, a few others. In a few small cases I’ve looked at publishers as an option. I own all but one of the Golden Gryphon hard covers. I considered trying to collect Arkham House or Dark Harvest, but many of the books from the former are beyond expensive. When it comes to the latter, I only really focused on their Night Visions series, where the only one I don’t have is impossible to find.

I read about other book collectors and marvel at their persistence and resourcefulness. To me there’s a certain joy in holding a rare book, but if there are multiple states, such as trade, limited, and deluxe limited, then I’ll happily own the trade edition. Slipcases, tray cases, these mean nothing to me if I can have the same book in a decent edition.

Many years ago, so far back I cannot remember when or when, I bought a copy of F. Paul Wilson’s chapbook, A Little Beige Book of Nondescript Stories. This apparently is a series of small chapbooks published over the years by Borderlands Press. I was, at that time, more interested in picking up books by Wilson than in collecting a series of small (and, to me at least, expensive) chapbooks, so I never looked at buying any of the other books. Wilson’s book was apparently the ninth (or thereabouts) published, and part of what was then called Series I. Each book is published in a limited edition of 500 (though I have seen reports of some up to 600).

Over the years Borderlands Press has continued to release new books in the series. There are now over 50 of these books. There are 15 books in each series, and it’s now up to series IV (4). In looking for other books—unrelated to this series—I’ve seen mention of these again and again, which piqued my curiosity. At this point, there are so many in the series, and most of the older ones are prohibitively expensive, or impossible to find, that joining the search for them seems insane. The rabid collector out there might be picking up and storing what they can find, as well as some dealers who bought a bunch of each title and have held onto them, listing them for sale at handsome (to them) prices. I can’t see spending some of the money being asked for a few of the rarer ones.

All that being said, I recently picked up a pair of other books in this series, almost by chance. I was amused to find that they are not a uniform size. With each series, the height of the books increases slightly. If someone were to display all books in a shelf, they would appear in various colors (fine), but not a uniform height (strange for a dedicated series like this). Whether this was a conscious decision, or an aesthetic one, I don’t know. As a matter of idle curiosity, I made a list of all the books, then did searches online to compare prices. Of the ones that I found, there are a few that approach or exceed $150, which seems a lot for such a little book. Most of the newer releases can be found for $30-40, and there are some older ones that simply do not show up in any searches.

This all goes to show that if you want to collect a series like this, and be able to find all of them at decent prices, you need to get in early, and stick with the program. Arriving to the scene years later, like myself, means that I will need to be content with owning maybe five to 15 of these books. Again, this goes to show that I’m among the lower left side of the curve of the collector bell curve.