Anders Monsen

Lost worlds and ports of call

Category: books (Page 5 of 25)

Lin Carter’s poetry

September 5, 2025 /

I mostly know of Lin Carter (1930-1988) as an editor of fantasy anthologies (such as the Years Best Fantasy books from DAW, as well as the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series), plus so-called pastiches of earlier tales (H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and other sword and sorcery writers).

Dreams from R’lyeh is a collection of some of Carter’s poems, published in 1975 by Arkham House. It’s a slim volume, originally priced at $5, with a fantastic cover by Tim Kirk. I recently obtained a copy, in my effort to try to broaden my Arkham House collection, an effort that remains ongoing, at least to some slight degree.

It’s strange—at least I think so—to read L. Sprague de Camp’s introduction and Lin Carter’s afterword in 2025, as these were written more than 50 years ago. Both de Camp and Carter are now long gone. I met de Camp many years ago (1989? 1990?) at a convention in Austin. I shook his hand, and he remarked that he had shaken the hand of someone who once had shaken the hand of Charles Darwin. It’s almost eerie, as I start to read Carter’s poems (at least those he wanted preserved), to think that by the time I shook de Camp’s hand, Carter was already dead, and yet at that time I was just starting to look for books written and edited by Carter.

There are less than 100 pages between the covers of Dreams from R’lyeh, and yet I sense a great deal of presence in this book.

The Jack Vance Lexicon

August 30, 2025 /

In 1992, while Jack Vance was still writing books (he died in 2013), Underwood-Miller published The Jack Vance Lexicon, compiled by Dan Temianka. Vance, a prolific creator of new words in his fiction, remains my favorite writer to this day. I still remember the first Jack Vance story I ever read. Norwegian SF writer Øyvind Myhre had recommended Vance in a speech that I attended in 1985, and when I came across a DAW edition of The Narrow Land, I bought it, not knowing that it would change my life.

From the moment of the title story, I was hooked. I immediately bought every Vance book I could find. In Bergen and Oslo, Norway in the mid-1980s, this amounted to a small handful of UK Grafton editions (to my great regret, I donated the three Lyonesse Grafton editions, as I’d upgrade to the Underwood-Miller hardcovers).

When I visited the US in 1987, I went to several bookstores, and there I had more luck than in Norway. My carry-on bag was stuffed to the brim with DAW editions of Vance’s books, as well as Vance paperbacks by other publishers. Due to a shuttle mishap, I almost lost that bag, which held other important things. Eventually, I was able to get it back, and returned to Norway with my precious cargo. Little did I know then that the next year I would return to the US, this time permanently. Upon my arrival back in the US, I scoured every bookstore for Vance’s books.

Eventually, I was able to afford hardback copies of Vance’s books, even the Underwood-Miller editions. However, I cared only about Vance’s fiction. In 1992, I saw something about Temianka’s book, but I ignored it, as back then I cared little for reference works. I also ignored the Vance Integral Edition, as the cost then was beyond my means (today a VIE complete set will cost 10 times the original price, or more). On a whim, I bought a copy of the trade edition of Underwood-Miller’s Lexicon today. A more recent edition has been published by Spatterlight Press, but the U-M edition looks better. Glancing through the book just makes me want to re-read several of Vance’s stories, though I’ve re-read most of them at least three to five times. Vance likes to say he only wrote for money, but based on some these words, I think he also wrote for fun. His sense of imagination remains nonpareil.

Owlswick Press: Two books

August 29, 2025 /

By chance I acquired a pair of books published by Owlswick Press. This was a small press than ran from 1973 through 1993, founded by George Scithers, who at one point also edited Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. These two books are Anita, by Keith Roberts, and The White Isle, by Darrell Schweitzer. I bought two the books from Schweitzer, along with another one of his books.

Anita collects 16 stories about a witch, written years before either Discworld (Terry Pratchett) or Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling). Published in 1990 and illustrated by noted fantasy artist Stephen Fabian (who illustrated many Jack Vance books, ad tons of other fantasy books), the production value of the book is quite stunning. I don’t know the production run, but apparently Schweitzer had a bunch of these books still in his garage and was selling some of them at quite cheap prices.

The White Isle is Schweitzer only debut novel. The Owlswick edition is from 1989, also illustrated by Fabian. The book was signed by Schweitzer, a nice addition, with a gorgeous wrap-around cover. I mainly wanted the Keith Roberts book, but I could not pass up a hardcover book at the price listed, and as the cover looks interesting I hope the book will match it.

A Fedogan & Bremer book, at last

August 26, 2025 /

For many, many years I’ve owned just three Fedogan & Bremer books, all of which I bought in an actual brick and mortar bookstore: Adventures in Crime and Space in Austin, Texas (RIP the book store and owner Willie Siros). This bookstore closed in 2002, so that means over two decades have passed since I last bought a book by this publisher. I don’t think the publisher still is in business, but I’ve not really looked for any of their books online. That may change.

This month I found one of their books listed at a decent price, and picked up Hugh B. Cave’s Death Stalks the Night. This book was meant to be published by Karl Edward Wagner’s Carcosa imprint, but that publishing venture collapsed after four books, and F&B picked up the book many years later. With 17 stories and nearly 600 pages, this book will take some time to read and digest. Published in 1995, I’m surprised I didn’t get this title from Adventures in Crime and Space, but the hesitation might have been due to budget reasons at the time, as I think I was hoping to get F&B Carl Jacobi title first and never found it. Anyway, now I have this one.

Jacobi’s Disclosures

August 26, 2025 /

It’s almost funny to see bid after bid that I make for Arkham House books on a noted auction internet site take hit after hit and fall by the wayside. Since I’ve imposed a hard limit on any book, once that limit is reached I bow out, and thus miss out on countless books that I want.

In this case, by some strange surprise, I managed to secure Carl Jacobi’s 1972 Arkham House book, Disclosures in Scarlett. Apparently the people I’m bidding against on a slew of other AH books already have this one. I think I’ve managed to get three out of 30+ books so far this way, which means that if I want any of those other titles I’ll need to go the set price route, and find dealers with acceptable prices, vs. going against ardent collectors.

Bond. Nelson Bond

August 24, 2025 /

Until recently I don’t think I’d heard of Nelson Bond. Last month I bid on a few Arkham House books. As I have a hard limit, I was outbid on around 20 or 30 of them, but, by some strange twist of fate I managed to secure two or three books at reasonable prices. One of the books that I acquired was Bond’s Nightmares and Daydreams, published in 1968 for the low price of $5 (though by 1968 standards, that may have seemed like a pretty penny), collecting within its pages 14 short stories and one poem. Apparently Bond was a major writer of fantastic tales from the late 1930s through the 1950s. He then took a long break before writing fiction once more.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I’m in Bookmans, a used bookstore (and exchange of all sorts of things, from ceramic figurines to guitars) in Phoenix, Arizona. The store is vast, with shelves of books in various genres, all used, but few that I wanted. By chance, question about collectible fiction resulted in a store clerk directing me to an area near the check-out counters. There, a handful of sad looking “collectible books” leaned against each other in a tiny glass bookshelf. And I mean tiny. But, tucked in between what appeared to be some book club editions (but probably weren’t), stood another Nelson Bond book: The Thirty-first of February. This Gnome Press edition was published in 1949, and for a book going on 76 years, it wasn’t in bad shape, and for $20 it seemed a steal.

Arkham House: Into the 40s

August 16, 2025 /

Perhaps it’s only fitting that the first Arkham House book from the 1940s that I own is called The Fourth Book of Jorkens. Despite being nearly 80 years old, this book, published in 1948, is in pretty decent shape. There are a few tiny bumps in the dust jacket, at the top and bottom, and the book has a dusty, antiquarian smell. Yet otherwise the pages are clean, and the binding tight.

Written by Lord Dunsany, heir to one of the oldest Irish peerages, and one of the greatest fantasy writers of the 20th century, The Fourth Book of Jorkens contains a slew of short (tall) tales. It was first published by Jarrolds in the UK in 1947, and by Arkham House the following year.

It’s amazing to see a publication price of only $3, and yet, on the back page there are advertised books from the publisher for $1.50 and $2.00, with most the others listed for $3. Today, a hardcover book, even as slim as this one, would not be listed for less than $25. And yet, there you have legends in the field with their books for sale at such a low price. At least, one thinks so, but $3 in 1948, right after WWII might have seemed like a fortune to many people.

Book added: K.W. Jeter

August 16, 2025 /

According to ISFDB, Morrigan Publications in the UK released 11 titles, most of them in both hardcover and trade paperback editions (plus one chapbook), between 1987 and 1991. I consider myself lucky enough to have the three James P. Blaylock books in hardcover editions; I believe these were published as trade and limited editions, with extra material in the latter, but I only have the trade editions.

One of the tiny minority of book auctions that I recently won included the trade hardcover edition of K.W. Jeter’s In the Land of the Dead. I have the paperback edition by Onyx from back in 1989, but the pages are yellowing in that copy, and a nice clean hardcover edition is always easier to read. It’s been several decades now since I read it for the first time, so I’m sure when I re-read it I won’t remember a single thing. But, that makes it all the more special, I think.

Cast a Cold Eye

August 14, 2025 /

Back in the 1980s and 1990, small press publisher Dark Harvest published a fair amount of horror fiction, from novels, to anthologies and collections. At the time I bought a handful of these, but back then hardcovers were a premium in my eyes. I’ve recently started to look for their books that I failed to get, with Alan Ryan’s novel, Cast a Cold Eye the latest find. Originally published in 1984, this is a horror novel set in western Ireland.

I don’t often bid for books on eBay, but recently I’d seen several books there listed a low starting prices, and tossed my hat in for a few of them. In most cases the subsequent bidding exceeded my budget for any book, and I bowed out when that limit was reached. Cast a Cold Eye, to my surprise, was one that I ended up winning (alas, I missed out on another Dark Harvest book, not to mention many, many Arkham House books…).

My copy arrived today, and to my second surprise, this copy was not the trade edition, but the signed/limited edition in a slipcase. My copy is #92 of 200, signed by Alan Ryan, as well as illustrator Jill Bauman. For $15 plus tax and shipping, that’s probably the third surprise. (I will note, to my annoyance, that the copy-reader missed Brain for Brian on the second page, which does not bode well.)

Another Little Book

August 14, 2025 /

I picked up the latest copy in the series of Little Books from Borderlands Press. A Little Gray Book of Gloom, by Sabine Baring-Gould. This was another unknown author, at least to me, and collects eight short stories, plus a brief introduction by editor John Maclay, who once authored his own little book in the series.

My copy is signed by Maclay, and there’s a statement inside the cover that it’s number 378, with this edition limited to 350 copies. Either the limitation is a mistake, or this is one of those “extras” that gives a lie to the limitation number. Regardless, it’s a collection of stories by a bygone writer of fantasy, and I look forward to see what he wrote.

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