Editorials
A View From Corona #20 — John Berkey, a Remembrance
“The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of Downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in patient search of prey.”
- Fritz Leiber, Our Lady Of Darkness
One of the many pleasures I take from my duties at Night Shade is working with the artists who do our covers. I’ve worked with first time illustrators and industry masters who’s work I’ve been seeing and admiring for years. I’m not an artists, and I’ve never been to art school, but I’ve been forced to play at being at art director — Necessity is the mother of all bitches… More often then not, being the art director is an absolute joy. Sometimes, given my limited budgets, It can be quite embarrassing. I once received a response to a cover query that was positively vitriolic. It made clear to me in no uncertain terms that low offers like mine were part of the problem in the industry. That I was at once insulting him, and destroying the industry with low ball offers that make it impossible for working illustrators to make a living. I was part of the problem, and I should be ashamed of myself!!!
I thanked this artist for his quick response (He responded to my email query in less then 12 hours) and went about my day. Because what can I say? I know that while his response may have been bit overblown, there was a core truth to it… that artists are terribly underpaid. I didn’t disagree, but in this one case, and in too many others cases, there isn’t a lot I can do about it. I don’t have a German conglomerate backing me… I don’t have a cash-cow-title from a mega-author that pays for the rest of the year’s production schedule. What I do publish often has very tight margins, and I have real limitations as to what I can offer. I’m not trying to be cheap. I’m just trying to stay in business. But my tight margins are not a working illustrators problem. They need to make a living, and I don’t begrudge them when they can’t work for what I can pay.
A similar embarrassing moment happened when I approached John Berkey to do the cover for the Hammer’s Slammers omnibus series. John didn’t really do email, but I was able to get him on the phone, and I pitched him the project. John had a very sweet high pitched voice, with a slight crack in it. And he didn’t have a Minnesota accent per say, but as I grew up in Minnesota, the lilt and cadence of his voice seemed very familiar, and reassuring. He asked a couple questions about what I wanted, and when I told him what I could pay, he said to me in the kindest voice possible “Well, it should be more then that, shouldn’t it?” This response… the complete opposite of the above vitriolic response, was far more painful then the angry email. I’ve let down and insulted this very nice, grandfatherly figure who’s work is some of the most influential in the field.
I instantly agreed with him. I stammered out something to the effect of: “It IS to low, Mr. Berkey, and I do apologize for that. But this project is a relatively niche item (A hardcover omnibus of a series that is still in print in mass market paperback) and I just don’t have any more room in my budget. It’s the best I can do for this title.” He considered this briefly, and agreed to work on the project. He didn’t lord it over me, or rub my nose in it by telling me how much of a favor he was doing for me. He just did it. He was doing me a favor by agreeing to work on the Slammers projects, but he was a perfect gentleman about it. He turned in a cover on a very short deadline, and perfectly matched the visual models that I had provided. Working with him on the second Slammers cover was an even more rewarding experience, as we had a better time frame, and the nature of the first piece gave me the idea for the look and fell of the series — I knew exactly what I wanted, and John turned in a beautiful rendering of a scene from the book.
I got to work with John again, when we reprinted Glen Cook’s Passage at Arms. The original cover was a John Berkey painting, and I felt it would still work, with a new design, and John agreed to let us re-use it. Given the uniqueness of John’s work, I felt that his style was a great way to “brand” the Glen Cook science fiction novels we were publishing. There was an unpublished Berkey piece in Spectrum that just screamed “Space Opera” and John agreed to let us use it for Cook’s The Dragon Never Sleeps.
He also give me a selection of other pieces to choose from for The Years’ Best Fantasy Vol. 2. During his time, I started asking John about the Slammers Volume Three cover, and he very gamely agreed to another tight deadly. But as this deadline approached, I called his home and learned that he had suffered a fall and wouldn’t be able to finish the work. I assured his wife that this was no problem, and wished him a speedy recovery. His wife told me that the last few paintings he did caused him a great deal of physical pain to do, and that he just wouldn’t be up to doing any more, no matter how things went. John’s inability to continue painting, either commercially, or for his own pleasure was awful to contemplate, and the flurry of materials that John sent me in the preceding year took on a whole new layer of meaning.
I was sad about this turn of events, but felt very lucky to have had a chance to work with one of the most influential SF artists of all times. The fact that he was warm and friendly, and a wonderfully sweet man was an added bonus. Though I shouldn’t have been surprised by his death last week, the news did catch me off guard, and filled me with a great melancholy. The genre has lost one of its truly wonderful and unique imaginations. Though he lived a relatively long life, I can hear the words he spoke to me when we he first agreed to work on a Night Shade cover: “It should be more, shouldn’t it?” It absolutely should, John. It should. Death is always too soon.
It is my great blessing that I was able to work with him, and it is my duty to bear witness, and remember him. The cover of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Two features a previously unpublished work by John. Though the book is already printed and bound, and you won’t find it anywhere in the book, I’d like to dedicate the volume to John and his work. He was truly a giant who walked the earth - A giant who’s work casts a long shadow over the science fiction genre, and a giant-hearted man who will be missed.
2008 Publication Schedule
Now that our 2008 publication schedule is pretty much set, here it is broken down by month:
January
Adams, John Joseph - Wastelands (trade paperback original)
Williams, Liz - Snake Agent (mass market reprint)
February
Williams, Liz - The Demon and the City (mass market reprint)
Bacigalupi, Paolo - Pump Six and Other Stories (hardcover original)
Cook, Glen - The Dragon Never Sleeps (trade paperback reprint)
March
Strahan, Jonathan - The Best SF and Fantasy of the Year Vol. 2 (trade paperback original)
Asher, Neal - Prador Moon (mass market reprint)
Williams, Liz - Precious Dragon (mass market reprint)
April
Drake, David - Balefires (mass market reprint)
Williams, Walter Jon - Implied Spaces (hardcover original)
Smith, Clark Ashton - Collected Fantasies Vol 4 - The Maze of the Enchanter (hardcover)
May
Egan, Greg - Incandescence (hardcover original)
Williams, Liz - The Shadow Pavilion (hardcover original)
Asher, Neal - Shadow of the Scorpion (trade paperback original)
June
Turtledove, Harry - After the Downfall (hardcover original)
Cooper, Seamus - The Mall of Cthulhu (trade paperback original)
Cook, Glen - Passage at Arms (mass market reprint)
July
Lebbon, Tim - Bar None (trade paperback original)
Mallet, Nathalie - The King’s Daughters (mass market original)
Hughes, Matthew - The Spiral Labyrinth (trade paperback reprint)
August
Cook, Glen - A Fortress in Shadow (trade paperback reprint)
Hughes, Matthew - Hespira (hardcover original)
Moon, Elizabeth - Moon Flights (mass market reprint)
September
Teppo, Mark - Lightbreaker (mass market original)
Adams, John Joseph - The Living Dead (trade paperback original)
VanderMeer, Ann and Jeff - Fast Ships, Black Sails (trade paperback original)
October
Strahan, Jonathan - Eclipse 2 (trade paperback original)
Stirling, S. M. - Ice, Iron and Gold (mass market reprint)
November
Cook, Glen - An Empire Unacquainted with Defeat (hardcover)
Baxter, Stephen - The H-Bomb Girl (hardcover original)
Joyce, Graham - How to Make Friends with Demons (hardcover original)
December
Lake, Jay - Madness of Flowers (trade paperback original)
Smith, Clark Ashton - Collected Fantasies Vol 5 - The Last Hieroglyph (hardcover)
Erikson, Steven - The Lees of Laughter’s End (hardcover original)
A View From Corona #19: Breakfast for Barry
“The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of Downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in patient search of prey.”
- Fritz Leiber, Our Lady Of Darkness
In 1982 Barry Malzberg’s stunningly, bitterly insightful autobiographical and critical collection of essays, Engines of the Night was published. It was nominated for (but did not win) the Hugo Award. Engines of the Night was controversial… too bitter… too uncomfortable… too true…. Last year Baen Books repackaged Engines… along with almost 30 new pieces written subsequent to Engines…. This new book, Breakfast in the Ruins, is awe-inspiring. Barry’s bitterness may have mellowed some with time, but his deep and abiding love for a field (whose shortcomings inspired that bitterness) has not. This affection comes shining through, in every word… every detail… every anecdote… every fond (and furious) memory… every pointed and dead-on criticism….
Barry’s fingers have been leaving a bloody trail across typewriter and keyboard for over forty years… a bloody trail, of fiction and non-, that charts the trajectory of the 20th century’s most marginalized yet exciting body of literature. That bloody trail has earned him the right to be bitter, angry, critical, and unflinching. What Barry’s bloody trail has not earned him is a Hugo Award. One can love or hate his commentaries (or fiction), but one should never underestimate the importance of Barry Malzberg to the Science Fiction genre. And Breakfast…, an intimate, insider’s first-person account of the history of the genre, is one of the most important gifts Barry has bequeathed to us.
This year, Breakfast… has been nominated for a Hugo Award in the “related book” category. With respect to the other nominees in the category, I submit that Breakfast… is the kind of book that only comes around once or twice in a lifetime. The voters for this year’s Hugo Award have a chance to recognize Barry’s work… to recognize him, and his lifetime of care and attention to a genre that has mostly ignored (and sometimes actively despised) him. And most importantly, the voters have a chance to recognize and honor the (sometimes ugly) history of the field, as recounted by one who was a part of it. I humbly urge the Hugo voters to vote for Breakfast….
If you are not a voter, please pass on, post or forward this missive, along with any notes or thoughts you yourself might have, concerning Barry Malzberg and/or Breakfast in the Ruins. Every campaign needs a catchy slogan, and I suggest this one be dubbed the “Breakfast for Barry” campaign. Hopefully, on a sunny morning in Denver, after the Hugo Awards ceremony the night before, the entire genre can symbolically wake up and buy Barry breakfast - thanking him for his years of passionate contribution.
And most importantly, I exhort all of you who have not yet had the pleasure, to go out and read Barry Malzberg’s Breakfast in the Ruins.
-Jeremy Lassen
Founder of the “Breakfast for Barry” Campaign
Interview: Andy Duncan on "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse"
Andy Duncan, whose story “Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse” from Eclipse One is a finalist for this year’s Nebula Award, said in an interview that the story was inspired, in part, by one of his favorite fiction writers, who had a brief celebrity as a child when she taught a pet chicken to walk backward. "[That] feat that was captured by newsreel cameras," Duncan said. "After she achieved more lasting fame as an adult, she liked to joke that everything since the chicken had been downhill. (I think she was joking.)"
It was tough for Duncan to decide whether or not to reveal the child’s eventual celebrity identity. "In a historically inspired story such as ‘The Chief Designer’ or ‘The Pottawatomie Giant’ or ‘Zora and the Zombie,’ the celebrity of the title character is impossible to avoid; the character’s celebrity is, in part, what the story is about," Duncan said. "That’s not the case with this story. I seriously considered omitting the fast-forward final scene, for fear of reducing the whole thing to a Paul Harvey ‘Rest of the Story’ anecdote. I eventually decided I needed that final scene because I had no ending otherwise – or, more accurately, had no place to put the emotion that I wanted for an ending. But in my first draft, the final scene was much longer, and wrong."
Duncan’s wife, Sydney, told him that he had devoted too much space to the celebrity character and lost track of his protagonist. "Just as I had done in the first draft of ‘The Chief Designer,’ which every editor in the field rightly rejected before I rewrote it," he said. "This time I did the rewrite before sending the story out (Progress!) and much improved it, thanks to Sydney."
The idea to use that "unique chicken" in a story stayed with Duncan for a long time, but the premise didn’t occur to him until Michael Bishop was putting together A Cross of Centuries, a fiction anthology about alternate Jesuses. "Mike asked whether I had a Jesus story, and immediately into my head popped my old friend’s chicken, which I hadn’t thought about in years, and with it came the realization that the chicken was, of course, Jesus Christ – in some sense," Duncan said. "I didn’t get the story written in time to make Mike’s book (which was published in 2007 by Thunder’s Mouth Press, and is excellent), but I owe Mike for the existence of this story, nevertheless."
What happens to the priest at the climax of the story, in the chicken yard, happened to Duncan as a child. "[It was] on my last venture into my grandmother’s chicken yard in Batesburg, S.C.," Duncan said. "Writing that scene enabled me to relive that experience from the safe remove of 35 years."
Duncan purposely did next to no research, beyond what he already knew, which was both unusual and uncomfortable for him. "I wanted the story to be somewhat sparse, like a parable, a rabbinical tale, a story you’d be told from a pulpit, and I knew if I did my usual research I’d wedge it all in there and lose that loaves-and-fishes effect," he said. "(Richard Butner once wrote in the margin of one of my manuscripts, ‘Naked research!’ and he was right, of course, so I cut out, oh, maybe a third of it.) I do have a seminarian named Penny Crall to thank for Matthew 23:37, which she mentioned in passing one day during our book-discussion group at the Osborne Newman Center in Frostburg, MD, not realizing how badly I needed a poultry-related scripture at that point."
Much of the first draft of this story was written in longhand in Sydney’s rooms at Wadham College in Oxford, England, in summer 2005, Duncan said. "[I] then read from it a few days later at Interaction, the Worldcon in Glasgow, to an audience of about a half-dozen utterly silent and mystified people, and if you had told them this story would be a Nebula nominee one day, they’d have laughed you into the River Clyde," he said. "On the other hand, during that same convention, when I told Gwenda Bond, Gavin Grant, Kelly Link, and Christopher Rowe the title of the story, their response was so gratifying that I found the strength to go on."
For more information about Eclipse One, click here, and to download the entire text of "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse," visit our downloads page.
Paolo Bacigalupi: Science Fiction’s New Prophet
Paul Goat Allen recently interviewed Pump Six author Paolo Bacigalupi for Publishers Weekly. The original interview was edited down, but PW graciously allowed us to publish the entire unedited version here.
* * *
Science Fiction’s New Prophet:
An interview with Paolo Bacigalupi by Paul Goat Allen
Where many writers steer clear of weighty issues like the future of humankind, science fiction powerhouse Paolo Bacigalupi embraces them. His insights are on full display in his debut collection, Pump Six and Other Stories.
PW: Short-form SF has seen a renaissance of sorts in the last few years, specifically with the increase of strong anthologies like Fast Forward 1, which featured your story "Small Offerings." Editor Lou Anders described SF as "enlightenment packaged in narrative" in that collection’s introduction. It seems like enlightenment is a primary motivation behind many of your stories… (Why do you write what you write?)
PB: Enlightenment. I like that. Mostly, I write because I’ve got an axe to grind. I write because I’m worried about trendlines, articles I see in the science press, or telling events in my own life. I’ll see something, and think, huh, where are we going with that? With "Small Offerings" I was interested in endocrine disruptors and I wanted to explore what synthetic chemicals might mean for our most vulnerable populations–pregnant women and fetuses. The story was personal — an outgrowth of my concerns during my wife’s pregnancy — but I wanted to give readers a visceral experience of something that is otherwise pretty abstract. SF has tools for writing about the world around us that just aren’t available in other genres, that’s what Lou was getting at, and it’s why I write in the genre. Reading good speculative fiction is like wearing fun-house eyeglasses. It shifts the light spectrum and reveals other versions of the world, mapped right on top of the one you thought you knew.
PW: "The Tamarisk Hunter" is a chilling environmental cautionary tale. In your estimation, why haven’t there been more SF stories written on these obviously significant environmental issues (like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital trilogy)?
PB: I’ve got a two-part answer. First, when you say the word "environmental" and attach it to anything, it’s a red-flag. No one likes the idea of being force-fed brown rice and granola when they pick up a book, and that’s a legitimate concern when you pick up fiction that focuses on the environment. The preach-factor destroys the joy of story. This isn’t unique to environmental writing, it shows up in any literature where sincerely-held values are in play: Christian literature, women’s literature, what have you. The danger is always the same: that the writer’s values will show through so strongly that a reader tosses the book in the trash, saying "yeah, yeah, stop already, I know the answer." If the ideas are too pat, the story won’t take a reader on a real journey — and it’s boring. With my stories, I spend a lot of time trying to muddy the waters and avoid obvious solutions and value judgments. Story and characters have to be the primary concern; the politics always have to come second. Of course I want to have both, but the story has to swim successfully as a story before I drag it down to play in the deep end of the pool.
I think the second part of the issue is that environmental questions are inherently uncomfortable. They’re the fart at the party. We live in a consumer society, surrounded by marketing and products that are designed to make us feel more cool, more smart, more sexy, more active, more successful, more, more, more! If you go to the magazine stand, there are almost no stories telling us how our behaviors are destructive or short-sighted. Those are downer messages, and make for a very small market niche. Even now that global warming is on the cover of every magazine and newspaper, you see that the stories are almost all caste as "What you can do to save the planet!" or how "Ten cool new technologies will make you green!" These are optimistic messages, sales messages that make you feel better, and also help sell the magazines. This works on me, too. I hate bad news stories. I avoid them as much as I can. It’s human nature. But the real environmental stories — the ones we need to know about — are the ones that are about to bite us, whether it’s hormone mimics or ecosystem collapse or massive drought, and in all those cases we face hard, muddy, complex choices, rather than shopping solutions. So I think the other reason we don’t see many environmental fiction stories is that they’re a hard sell, because they won’t
necessarily make readers feel good or comfortable in their own skins.
PW: A few years back, astrophysicist Martin Rees postulated in his book Our Final Century that humankind only had a 50/50 chance of surviving into the 22nd century. Where do you see us in 100 years?
PB: I don’t think we’ll be wiped out. We’ll survive. I don’t have any question about that. The devil is in the details, though. Will we be living happy lives that guarantee better futures for our offspring? Or will we be living ugly desperate ones? Will there be a lot of us, or only a few? Who will hold power in the future? Who will control basic things we take for granted like food and water? How healthy will we be? How pleasant will our environment be? At this point, we’ve still got choices. We’re building versions of our future every day. But my gut tells me that we should be worried. We’re very good at having fun now, and putting off hard choices until later, and that doesn’t work to our advantage with environmental issues.
PW: On a tangential note, I thought I saw a group of trogs a few days ago hanging out in a local shopping mall. (Those lazy, sex-obsessed monkey people that inhabited the future New York City of "Pump Six.") They were dueling with beef jerky strips.
PB: My working theory is that we’re all trogs and we just haven’t realized it. When I duel though, I prefer to use bacon.
PW: Ideally, how do you hope this collection will affect its readers?
PB: Bottom line, I hope they’re entertained. Beyond that, I hope the stories will provide interesting lenses for viewing the present. I’m hoping that
after someone reads "The Calorie Man" that the next time a GMO news story comes across their plate that they’ll think to themselves, "Does this news story mean we’re going toward that weird future Bacigalupi described, or does it mean we’re avoiding it?" (Of course, they’ll have no idea how to pronounce my name, so that part is obviously fantasy, but you get the idea) Ultimately, I’d like it if these stories got people thinking about where we’re headed next, and imagining the different future possibles that lie in wait. I’d like to see people extrapolating like mad, all the time. They’ll have different opinions and ideas than I have, but at least we’d be looking forward. I’d like that a lot. At least there would be a conversation.
PW: What’s on your writing agenda for 2008? (More short-form speculative fiction?)
PB: Short stories are my playground, where I work out new ideas, so I’m doing more of them. But I’m also finishing up a novel set in the same world as "The Calorie Man" and "Yellow Card Man." It focuses on the political machinations of four characters in a future Bangkok, and plays with ideas of international trade, peak oil, global warming, bio-engineering, and the nature of ecological niches and how human actions affect them. You know, simple and to-the-point.
Nominate Night Shade Titles for Prestigious Awards
The 2008 Hugo Awards nomination ballot is now online. You must be an attending or supporting member of this year’s Worldcon, or have been an attending or supporting member of last year’s, to nominate. Deadline for voting is March 1.
The 38th annual Locus Awards ballot is also online. Voting is open to all. Deadline for is April 15.
Go and vote for your favorite Night Shade titles!
Here’s a list of our titles that are eligible. The list is divided by type of book (novel, collection, or anthology), and following each title are the categories it’s eligible for. We’ve also included a list of original short fiction that appeared first in Night Shade books, as well as a list of our cover artists.
Novels
Grey by Jon Armstrong (novel, SF novel, first novel)
Softspoken by Lucius Shepard (novel, fantasy novel)
Precious Dragon by Liz Williams (novel, fantasy novel)
Butcher Bird by Richard Kadrey (novel, fantasy novel)
The Princes of the Golden Cage by Nathalie Mallet (novel, fantasy novel, first novel)
The Spiral Labyrinth by Matthew Hughes (novel, fantasy novel)
The Sword-Edged Blonde by Alex Bledsoe (novel, fantasy novel, first novel)
Collections
Hart & Boot & Other Stories by Tim Pratt (single-author collection)
Balefires by David Drake (single-author collection)
The Imago Sequence by Laird Barron (single-author collection)
Moon Flights by Elizabeth Moon (single-author collection)
Ice, Iron and Gold by S.M. Stirling (single-author collection)
Anthologies
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Vol. 1 edited by Jonathan Strahan (anthology)
Eclipse One edited by Jonathan Strahan (anthology)
Short Fiction
"Dream Engines" by Tim Pratt (short story)
"Procession of the Black Sloth" by Laird Barron (novella)
"Say Cheese" by Elizabeth Moon (short story)
"Something For Yew" by S. M. Stirling (novella)
"The Last and Only, or Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French" by Peter S. Beagle (short story)
"The Transformation of Targ" by Jack Dann & Paul Brandon (short story)
"Toother" by Terry Dowling (short story)
"Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse" by Andy Duncan (short story)
"The Drowned Life" by Jeffrey Ford (novelette)
"Electric Rains" by Kathleen Ann Goonan (short story)
"Off the Fire Road" by Eileen Gunn (novelette)
"In The Forest Of The Queen" by Gwyneth Jones (short story)
"Mrs. Zeno’s Paradox" by Ellen Klages (short story)
"She-Creatures" by Margo Lanagan (short story)
"The Lost Boy: A Reporter At Large" by Maureen F. McHugh (short story)
"Bad Luck, Trouble, Death and Vampire Sex" by Garth Nix (short story)
"Larissa Miusov" by Lucius Shepard (novelette)
"The Lustration" by Bruce Sterling (short story)
"Quartermaster Returns" by Ysabeau Wilce (short story)
Artists
Jeremy Geddes, Grey
JK Potter, Softspoken
Jon Foster, Precious Dragon
Dan Dos Santos, Butcher Bird
Paul Youll, The Princes of the Golden Cage
Tom Kidd, The Spiral Labyrinth
Justin Sweet, The Sword-Edged Blonde
Richard Marchand, Hart & Boot & Other Stories
Richard Pellegrino, Balefires
Eleni Tsami, The Imago Sequence
Dave Seeley, Moon Flights
Vincent Chong, Ice, Iron and Gold
Stephan Martiniere, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Vol. 1
Michael Whelan, Eclipse One
John Berkey, The Complete Hammer’s Slammers, Vol. 2
Vince Evans, Imaro 2: The Quest for Cush
Jason Van Hollander, The Collected Fantasies Of Clark Ashton Smith Volume 1: The End Of The Story
Caniglia, London Revenant
Raymond Swanland, A Cruel Wind
David Martin, Voice of the Whirlwind
Edward Miller, Bronze
And, of course, we’re eligible in the "Best Book Publisher" category, and our esteemed editor-in-chief, Jeremy Lassen, is eligible in the "Best Editor" and "Best Editor, Long Form" categories, while Jonathan Strahan is eligible for "Best Editor" and "Best Editor, Short Form."
Additionally, Nathalie Mallet, Alex Bledsoe, and Jon Armstrong are eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
A View From Corona #18
“The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of Downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in patient search of prey.”
- Fritz Leiber, Our Lady Of Darkness
Dan Simmons has an interesting “story” up on his web site. It uses a lot of imagery from the Internet Time-Traveller myth of John Titor, and overtly refers to Ken Grimwood’s Replay.
In this story, the time traveler from the future spouts a lot of “Islamo-fascist vs the west” propaganda, discounts contemporary worries about Bush’s encroachments upon the constitution, and uses Ancient Greek history as moral justification for the showing ones “enemies” no mercy and no quarter. Basically, it presents a world-view that embraces a world wide cultural conflict between Islam and the West. The same world-view that, incidentally, is embraced by whack-jobs like Osama Bin Ladden
I’ve been a fan of Dan Simmon’s fiction for some time. I know virtually nothing about the man or his politics, and I won’t judge him on the basis of this little “morality tale” or “warning” or “satire”, or whatever his intended meaning might be. But reading it has compelled me to tease out some interesting ideas that have been rolling around in my head for some time: ideas of empire, of fear, and of generational and cultural conflict.
“The End of American Empire,” as a concept, has been on my mind for the last few weeks, every since a dinner conversation with Cheryl Morgan of Emerald City fame. We were talking about the state of British, versus American science fiction, and she commented in passing that Britain (within, and without its SF community) has been coming to terms with its post-empire status for some time, and that the emergence of New British Space Opera suggests a “post” post-empire phase, and that America will soon have to wrestle with it’s own post-empire demons. I’ve long held the belief that the American Empire is in the decline, and the fiscal and foreign policies of the current mis-administration are accelerating this decline to free-fall levels. It seems that Cheryl Morgan, to one degree or another, shares this feeling.
One of the boogey men from Dan Simmons’ “Scary Islamic Futre(tm)” is a Chinese empire, and a resurgent Russian Empire. I’m not entirely sure why these postulations have to be scary… A Russian or Chinese empire is only scary of one believes in American Exceptionalism. Empires do bad stuff to their own people, and even worse stuff to people not of their empire. That’s been true for all of recorded history, and is certainly true of the American Empire. What would be so terribly different about a world dominated by a new “empire.” Science fiction writers have been writing post cold war, and post US dominated futures for years. Hasn’t Simmons been paying attention? There have even been novels detailing futures in which Muslim, and/or Arab cultures become global force — works by John Courtney Grimwood, and George Alec Effinger come to mind. This shit (the end of American Empire, and raise of “Other”) has been in the cultural, and SF mix for over 20 years now. Why are people just now discovering this concept, and what are they so scared of? It seems to me Spain, Britain, Italy, Germany, Japan, and many others have survived the disappearance of their empires.
Whether Dan Simmons really is terrified, or whether he is he engaging in some brutally cynical satire is irrelevant; the fears that his story articulates are the very real fears of his generation, and expressed every day, if not so blatantly, by mainstream media outlets. So why exactly does Dan Simmons’ generation seem so terrified of the end of empire? It seems, that from a Baby Boomer perspective, the end of the American Empire is The Worst Thing That Could Possibly Happen(tm). Even while that generation has pursued and enthusiastically supported short-sited economic and social policies that can only hasten the end of empire, they are terrified of that end. Empire is all they know. And no matter what their political stripe, they believe, in their heart of hearts, in American Exceptionalism.
For myself, I don’t buy it. During my lifetime, I’m seen a powerful country so controlled by greed and corruption, and fear that it can’t even manage to provide basic levels of health care for its citizens. I’ve seen a nation that excels in imprisoning it’s own people. I’ve seen a populace lulled into a blood thirsty haze by demagogs, and bread-and-circus. There is nothing exceptional about the country I have grown up in, other then it happened to be at the right place, at the right time. By tying its currency to the value of the most important commodity in the world, it has managed to artificially maintain its dominance over said world. This fiscal dominance — this tax of every oil transaction (by way of being the default global currency), is what pays for the U.S.’s hugely inflated “defense” budget, and is what bought the Western cold war “victory” over the Soviet empire.
The first step in the overthrow of American Empire was the formation of the EU. It took 20 years, but those European bankers managed to throw off the chains of American domination, by creating a stable currency by which goods and services, in particular, oil, can be traded internationally. Without a monopoly as the sole global currency to prop up its value, the dollar’s value drops to more accurately reflect the fiscal stability and purchasing power of its issuing country. As the U.S. economy falters, as a result of short sited fiscal policy, it loses its ability to pay for its globally dominant military. When that happens, that military exists solely at the discretion of foreign financiers. China never has to fire a shot. The simple threat of selling off its treasury bonds, which would be catastrophic to the US economy and value of the U.S. dollar, ensures that the U.S. government is subservient to Chinese interests.
Right now, that emerging Chinese empire needs the US Middle class to consume its goods and drive its economy, but global shifts in wealth and purchasing power ensures that this symbiosis is only temporary. The real money is in the emerging middle class of India, and China, which, in a few short years, will have a purchasing power that dwarfs that of US consumers. This demographic and economic shift spells doom for the U.S. fiscal empire. Transnational corporate interests have seen this coming, and have been preparing to abandon ship for some time. They’ve got a soft landing for their corporate reserves, and that soft landing is the EU, and its currency. It’s not for nothing that EU membership requires balanced budgets. Those balanced budgets ensure that the Euro will be inherently more stable then the dollar, and this inherent stability is drawing converts by the day. Iraq was the first to threaten to sell it’s oil in Euros, and Iran is poised to do the same. Anybody see an emerging trend here?
The next blow to American empire was a purely symbolic one. 9/11 was a horrible tragedy, but it was hardly the Pearl Harbor that fear-mongers would have us believe. Half of the American Military might was not destroyed on that day. There is was no empire with the ability to invade our shores. There was only 12 guys with box cutters, and a willingness to murder innocent people. But these men’s horrible success shattered the illusion that America was invulnerable. It was the Tet Offensive, writ large. In military terms, in meant nothing. But as PR, it was a terrible success. It was a text book case of terrorism, and it did exactly what Al Queda hoped it would do.
9/11 allowed a band of radicals and religious fundamentalists to seize control of the U.S., and hasten the empire’s decline. It has encouraged the belief that there is a growing, unavoidable clash of civilizations. Which is bullshit. There can only be a fight if two or more parties show up in the ring. Osama Bin Ladden and his band of whack-jobs have shown up for that fight. The Neocon’s, with their misguided dreams of Pax Americana have shown up. Christian fundamentalists, dreaming of God’s rapturous vacuum cleaner have all shown up. And now, the middle class Baby Boomer of Dan Simmon’s story is exhorting us to show up for this fight, and give no quarter to our “enemies.”
For myself… I don’t buy it. The Perpetrators of 9/11 are criminals who should be pursued and prosecuted like the murderers they are. World courts and international co-operation are the key to minimizing, and preventing terrorist actions. We don’t need to occupy foreign countries to defeat terrorism. We need to address that basic issues that radicalize people. We need to understand Why people are willing to kill and die for symbolic victories. No amount of smart bombs and M-16’s will prevent the radicalization of marginalized, hopeless people. Bombs and guns inevitably make more martyrs, and more hopeless people with nothing to lose.
I think the recent trend of fantasy fiction outselling science fiction reflects a basic anxiety about this End of Empire… about the end of a western dominated world. If Tolkien’s middle earth was a reflection of British Anxiety over its receding and dissappearing empire, then what does America’s mainstream/pop culture internalization of the Middle Earth cycle suggest about it’s own anxieties? When America was fighting and winning the cold war, the future was an exciting thing, filled with possibilities, and Sci-fi was king. The decline of empire has people looking back on the good old days, which in actuality are “the days that never were.”
So… what do YOU fear? Who’s YOUR favorite boogey man? And what does science fiction have to say about the nature of empires in decline? What does history teach us about the lives of people who, through no fault of their own, are born into the end of an empire, instead of its beginning?
I’m looking at Dan Simmons from the other side of the generational gap, and frankly, I’m not too impressed with how his generation has handled the reigns of empire. His “story” speaks about the lives of his grandchildren, and the threats they face, but I’ve got news for Baby Boomers; The lives of your Grandchildren are far more threatened by your own generations actions then they are by “Islamo-fascist.” Baby-boomer monetary debts… The baby-boomer poisons that will be eaten, breathed and drunk for generations to come… Baby boomer’s continued courting of hateful and divisive social policies for short term financial gain… World-wide ill-will that baby boomer foreign policy has engendered: These are the gifts that Baby Boomers have left for their grand children. The baby-boomers gift to its grandchildren is the Bush Administration, which is the culmination, and distillation of the baby-boomer generation’s core values.
I’m certainly not inclined to pay much credence to Boomer-boogey men. Baby Boomers have traded a swarthy Communist for a swarthy Muslim, but they don’t seem to be paying attention to the right group of religious fundamentalists. If the American empire, at the height of its military power, can’t successfully occupy Iraq, why would I believe that an (at this point entirely theoretical and non-existent) emerging Islamic empire can occupy America, and enforce Islamic law upon this country?
I’ve read enough science fiction to be more wary of home grown fundamentalists. The American Taliban, with their perversions of Christ’s teachings… with their hubris… their hate… their repressed sexualities… and their fervent belief in American Exceptionalism… those religious whackos are the ones that scare me most. And, like Al Quiada, they are the ones that have the most to gain from a “global clash of civilizations.” I believe there is a different path into the future, and I hope that America takes it’s collective head out of its collective ass soon, so that this pathway isn’t missed.
A View From Corona #17
“The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of Downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in patient search of prey.”
- Fritz Leiber, Our Lady Of Darkness
So I was working in the bookstore yesterday, and a customer comes in to return a copy of a book he bought 3 days ago… the recently published Hippocampus Press collection, The House of Sounds and Others by M. P. Sheil. No big deal, the customer indicated that he already had most of these stories in the Sheil’s Arkham House collection, and that he wanted to exchange it. I assented to this request, and the customer began looking for a different book.
The customer goes into the rare books section and pulls out the Tarturus Press edition of Sheil’s novel The Purple Cloud and asks if we have any more copies. I do a quick search, and turn up two(!) other editions of this novel… A new Bison trade paperback, and a used Warner mass market paperback. In addition, the collection that he just returned includes the full text of the novel! Thats kind of odd… having three copies of a relativly obscure novel in stock at any given time. But then the coincidence meter goes off the scale: As I start in on the stack of collectible books that need to be graded and entered into the store inventory, I come across a 1930 U.S. edition of this same title from Vanguard Press!!
Suddenly, it’s a Sheil-palluza. So now I realize I’ve got 4 different editions of this seemingly rare and hard to find book (5 if you include the Hippocampus collection, which contains the novel). This calls for a picture:
Details of the different editions:
- The Tarturus edition reprints the original unrevised text of the 1901 first edition, and reproduces J.J. Cameron’s twenty-four illustrations from the magazine serialization of the same year. Brian Stableford provides a introductory essay, “The Black-and-White Mystery of The Purple Cloud”.
- The House of Sounds and Others is edited by S. T. Joshi. Contains nine essential stories and the novel The Purple Cloud (1901 text).
- The Bison Books edition reprints the author’s own final expanded 1929 version, and features and introduction by John Clute
- I failed to note what edition the Vanguard 1930 edition reprints, but I’d guess it reprints the 1929 text.
If you want to read this novel, the The 1901(I think… It’s not entirely clear… You know how Project Guttenberg is about sources…) text can be found online here:
Further information about Sheil and the Purple Cloud can be found at this site maintained by Alan Gullette.
I think the gods are trying to tell me I should read some Shiel, whom I’ve never read. I know, I know… A giant, and very influential weird fiction writer, and I’ve never read him! Shock! Horrors! And I claim to be some kind of authority on weird/fantastic fiction?! Let me let you in on a secret… I’m not nearly as well read as I pretend to be. But at least I know I’m not well read, and try to make up for it as best I can. The hippocampus collection is going on my hold pile at the bookstore, and the etext of The Purple cloud is getting shunted off to my smart phone/ebook reader.
I’d appreciate any feedback you might have on what your favorite Shiel piece is, and why.
Until Next time…estai kai Samos ammos, eseitai Daelos adaelos
A View From Corona #16
“The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of Downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in patient search of prey.”
- Fritz Leiber, Our Lady Of Darkness
Previously only hinted at (by a foul mouthed Jason Williams, in an interview in Flesh and Blood), the true scope and scale of Night Shade’s ambitions are just now coming to light. Clandestine operatives of Bertelsmann, and The Holtzbrinck Group, and well as Perason’s Group, Viacom, and News Corporation have all managed to infiltrate the inner circle of the Night Shade Cabal… They have discovered Night Shade’s plans for literary and media domination in the 21st century. They have begun leaking this information to the public and are currently formulating their responses to the threat represented by Night Shade Media & Entertainment Ltd.
It has henceforth been decided by the Board of Elder Directors that the previously secret plans for world domination should be made public… that the goodwill and positive image that the Elders have worked so hard to ferment over the last 5 years must not be squandered. It is believed that by being open and honest with the writers, editors, readers, and general consumers of fiction and culture, that The Shade will gain more converts to it’s cause.
Let it be noted publicly, from this moment forth, that The Shade shall actively seek the down fall and displacement of media conglomerates, and their control over the literary culture of the western world. Herein forthwith, this conglomeration of power shall be referred to as The Machine.
Let it be understood that that The Shade does not bear ill will towards the parts that make up The Machine. The writers and editors and artists who have been forced to work inside The Machine are not part of the problem… they are part of the solution. The gears and critical components that make up The Machine have been neglected… they are rusty, and are being used in ways that they were not meant to be used. The most important parts of The Machine have been marginalized and discarded. Only the massive quantities of cash, and obscenely large profit margins allow the machine to continue stumbling forward. Eventually, as more and more parts atrophy, or are discarded, the machine will slow. The machine will grind to a halt. The machine will begin to die.
Every time a brilliant first novel is allowed to wither and die in the commercial marketplace… Every time a new writer that shows promise is not encouraged and developed… every time an influential or important writer of a previous generation is allowed to fade away…. Every time enthusiastic and talented new editors are chewed up and spit out by the low wages and marginalization of The Machine… Every time an experienced, seasoned editor’s judgment is questioned by a 24 year old MBA… The machine loses momentum.
As The Machine slows, The Shade grows! Let it be known that The Shade shall spread. As The Machine gives up ground, and The Shade takes it. The Shade will spread its arms wide… The Shade has, and will continue to embrace the discarded and unappreciated parts of The Machine. The Machine may occasionally try to reclaim the pieces that it has lost… it may occasionally succeed. But in the end, it is The Same Machine. It has no memory. It has no vision for the future. It is barren, and hungry. It eats its remaining children and spits out their bones. The Machine props up the corpses of its dead, and calls them Life. The Machine is an abomination.
The Shade will collect up the bones of the slain… The Shade shall make a memorial to them. Exploitation shall give way to reverence. The Shade will plant the bones of the dead into the ground so that they may be reborn. Chronos was destroyed by his children. So to The Machine, and The Shade.
The Board of Elder Directors invites all to share the vision of The Shade – to move forward – to believe that things can change for the better. The Elders recognize that it is the parts that matter…. The tail should no longer wag the dog. Five years have passed. The Dog is larger, and the tail smaller. With your help, The Machine can be toppled by a great Shadow Hound… the dark, hungry, marginalized pieces that made up the whole can overthrow the machine, and bring about a new age. An age of Shade!
It is the small choices that we make everyday that will determine our futures. We are at a crossroads. The secret war of the last five years is past. The overt conflict for the future has begun. The Elder Directors of The Shade are grateful for the support you have shown in the past, and are hopeful that the future will bring us all closer together… and closer to a glorious future.
Yours in Night and Shadow,
Jeremy Lassen,
Spokesman for the Board of Elder Directors,
Night Shade Media & Entertainment Ltd.
A View From Corona #15
“The solitary, steep hill called Corona Heights was black as pitch and very silent, like the heart of the unknown. It looked steadily downward and northeast away at the nervous, bright lights of Downtown San Francisco as if it were a great predatory beast of night surveying its territory in patient search of prey.”
- Fritz Leiber, Our Lady Of Darkness
Okay… For this Installment of A View From Corona I will present a get rich quick scheme for everyone still smarting from the stock market scandals and the “dot-bomb” debacle. Where can the middle class safely invest its money and get a reasonable rate of return?
I’ll tell you where – Books! Modern first editions to be precise. Invest your money in collectible first editions. What? Madness? Yes, possibly, but no more mad then day trading or over-inflated dot-com IPO’s. Am I kidding? Only partially. The collectible book market is relatively stable compared to the stock market, and it is far harder to game it (not impossible, but harder). Books that were worth a lot of money before the dot-com boom are STILL worth a lot of money. If, like any other form of investing, you consistently buy low and sell high, you can turn a profit, or at the very least, help support a book collecting habit. This is a quick start guide to investing in books, which is significantly different from collecting books.
First – the obvious – buy low, sell high. Always. 4 years ago was a horrible time to buy a Neuromancer, or Dune or other high priced item. Why? The market was high. A lot of people had a lot of discretionary income, and a small but significant portion of them dumped a lot of money into the collectible book market. Prices went up, and bargains for known quantities like a Dune or Neuromancer were hard to find. Bargains were still around, you just had to work harder to find them.
With the economy now in the toilet, bargains are easier to find… often it is simply a matter of figuring out which is the best bargain to go with. The advent of the Internet also makes finding those bargains much easier then it was even 10 years ago. The tools have matured such that even novices and computer unfriendly people are able to buy, sell, and browse books on http://www.ebay.com, or http://www.abe.com
Knowing the market is key to making money, and one way to know the market is to know the tools. Ebay and ABE are perfect tools for price tracking… you can see what prices dealers are ASKING for books on ABE, and you can see what individuals are actually GETTING for their books, by watching auctions on ebay. Since you can’t know everything about everything, always specialize…. In a specific author, or publisher, or in a specific genre or sub genre. Make a list of authors, and create your own price guides, based on sales histories from the above two sources. What exactly constitutes a good price for a Fritz Lieber book or a signed Roger Zelazny book? You can’t spot a bargain if you don’t know what the market price is. Right now there are a lot of bargains to be had out there, if you know what you are looking for. And with the Internet, its never been easier to find them. (For just $59.99 you can buy Jeremy Lassen’s BUILD A PRICE GUIDE[tm] tracking software for just this purpose… take all the grunt work out of the process described above, and put your specialized knowledge of your favorite authors to work, and MAKE MONEY! BUY NOW!*)
Another way to make money is by predicting the market. You still need to buy low and sell high, but instead of waiting for massive economic cycles to come and go, you can ride the waves of author and genre popularity. All you need to do is pick which books are going to be really popular with readers. This is not easy, but it’s not hard either. Publishers do it all the time, and they don’t have the benefit of reviews and awards lists to help them make their decision. Predicting popular/collectible authors is far less difficult then predicting which companies are going to go bankrupt because of CEO corruption, and which ones are going to reap obscene profits by lobbying senators and presidents.
Here’s how it works. A first time author puts out a novel. Usually, said novel has a relatively low print run because nobody has ever heard of the author. Eventually the first time author puts out a really popular novel. Hundreds of thousands of people are suddenly interested in reading this author. That means that tens of thousands of people are suddenly interested in collecting this author. So the demand suddenly exceeds the supply. You have an instant collectible hyper modern first edition. And it doesn’t actually have to be a first novel – it can be the first book in a series, or a break out novel that redefines that author.
There is an entire subclass of books in the above category that are easy to predict and offer a pretty quick return on investment – British hardcovers. Prior to the advent of the Internet and the global book collecting market place, it used to be that collectors simply followed the flag – if you lived in the United states, a US first edition was good enough, and if you lived in England, a British first edition was good enough. But now, collectors can buy from dealers all over the planet. And they can get rare and exotic editions of books that other collectors might not have… Always keep in mind that the most collectible edition of a book is the first trade hardcover edition of a book. This is the key to understanding why British hardcovers are a good investment.
The market for British hardcovers is MUCH smaller then it is in the US — print runs for are smaller, and first time/unknown authors, if they get hard covers at all, usually get significantly fewer then 5000 copies… Just enough to cover the library market in the UK. And if a book comes out first in the UK, the collectors market salivates over it because it represents the “true first” hardcover. There may be a US hardcover, but it isn’t the “true first”.
To make this category even juicier, there are many authors who’s books have UK hardcover editions, but have paperback editions in the US. THIS is where the real sweet spot is. What are some REALLY expensive British first edition hardcovers? Lets see. William Gibson’s Neromancer was a PBO in the United States, but the first trade hardcover edition was the British edition. This hardcover is now a very pricey little book. The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamiltion. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. Ash, by Mary Gentle. Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan. The list could go on and on — Books that never had trade hardcover editions in the US but had relatively small hardcover print runs in the UK. The prices on these shot up very quickly once the US editions came out. In addition, ALL of these books were easy to spot, if you knew what to look for, and here’s why.
In addition to meeting the above criteria (UK hardcover, US paperback), they all had been receiving excellent reviews and award nominations, often times even before the US edition came out. If you can find a good British dealer, or reliable source in the US that stocks imports, you can do pretty well. At the very least, true first editions that are UK editions will hold their value BETTER then equivalent true firsts that are US editions, simply because the print runs are inevitably smaller. Speculate like mad with little to no risk!
Another good thing to keep an eye out for is remaindered copies of books that received excellent reviews, and awards/nominations, particularly if they are first novels. If the print runs were high, generally, remaindered items will NOT end up being worth cover price. But if print runs were low, you might end up with a good investment. Crossover authors that end up on the remainder table are also worth picking up. By this, I mean authors who have a significant following from another medium. Early Neil Gaiman books were remaindered often, and had small print runs. Subsequently, prices shot up, because his cross over audience began collecting his fiction.
Another oddball category of books to watch out for is “split run” hardcover and trade paperbacks in the US. It’s not very common for US publishers to do this, but it does indicate there is enough buzz and critical attention given to the book that it MIGHT take off and become popular. Two examples of hyper moderns that meet this description are Snowcrash by Neil Stephenson, and House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. Because of the split run, the hardcover portion of the run was much lower then it would have been if it were a hardcover only title.
Essentially, in order to make money investing in books, you need to predict what goes up in price. You need to understand the mechanics of print runs, and promotion. You need to know how and why authors become popular, and when they decline in popularity. An author may not be a flavor of the month, but collectors are a fickle lot, and their attention and money often go elsewhere quickly.
Knowing the mechanics of this fickleness is just as important as knowing the how an author becomes popular. Peter F. Hamilton’s Reality Dysfunction, and Robert Jordan’s first editions are good examples. Five years ago, you couldn’t get into the first two books of his Wheel of Time series for less then your first born. Today, they are popping up all over the place, at much lower prices. His popularity has waned due to “never-ending-sequal-itis”. Peter F. Hamiliton’s Reality Dysfunction was through the roof three years ago (mainly while the series was ongoing.) The inevitable decline in interest when a series finishes, or stagnates should not be underestimated. If you have bought books solely for the purpose of investment, it is good to be realistic about when a book has reached its peak value – the quicker it goes up in price, the more likely it is to go down. If the book that is less then five years old is going for more then $800, sell it. It probably won’t go up much more then that, and may in fact go down. A $775 return on a $25 investment is a great and should not be ignored because you might make a couple hundred bucks if you hang on to it another 3-5 years.
Of course, the opposite is often true. As you can tell from the above statement, investing in books is an investment for the long term. Expect many of our your investments to not fully appreciate for at least 5 years. You might hit a quickie during that time, but give your investments time to age. If you don’t, you may end up kicking yourself. For example: One of the hottest fantasy series right now is George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. When the first book came out in hardcover, it had a very non-traditional cover for a fantasy book and did not sell well. It was heavily remaindered. The second book came out and the series began attracting a bit more attention. But the series exploded when the first book came out in paperback (with a different cover, I might add). I picked up about 20-30 copies of A Game of Thrones from various remainder tables, and sold most of them for 4-5 times what I paid for them – an okay return on investment. And I turned this profit in less then 2 years, so what the hell. It was money in my pocket. BUT, I did hang on to a couple of them. They now go for 20 times what I paid for them on the remainder table. I wish I had kept a few more.
A note on “signed limited editions” and other “instant collectibles”. There is significant market for pre-signed limited editions… that is, books that have the print run specified, and kept artificially low. They price is can be anywhere between $40 and $400, depending on the book. These are often very good books to collect, but are rarely good editions to invest in. The reason is that the price, and supply (print run) is already set to match the sweet spot in the collectors market. The supply and demand estimations have already been made by someone who is looking at the collectors market specifically. Unless the demand for the author increases dramatically, these editions usually appreciate slowly, or not at all.
Books are not very liquid forms of investment. Often you have to wait for the right collector to stumble on your Ebay or ABE listing. Because that is where you are going to make most of your money. Selling books to used book stores, or dealers is not a very good way to get a return on a high value investment. It’s a good way to jettison investments that aren’t going to ever pay off, but if you really want the best rate, you have to figure out how to sell it yourself, and ebay is the easiest way to do this.
A dealer or used bookstore will generally give you 50% of the expected resale value, and that dealer may be planning on selling it for less then you think it is worth. A dealer pays a lot of overhead to keep regular customers coming in looking for bargains, and that 50% is barely enough to cover that overhead. Don’t begrudge a dealer for taking their percentage – they are the ones taking the risk, with their money – they are buying a high dollar item, paying for it up front, and hoping it sells before the value of the damn thing goes down, or someone steals it from their shelf, or it gets damaged, or any other number of things. If a dealer offers you a better rate, or is willing to take a book on consignment, treat that dealer with the kind of respect and awe you normally reserve for tribal elders, because they are doing you a HUGE favor.
Okay. That’s the mechanics of it, and some general strategies. But where do you find all this information that allows you to choose the right books? Online sources are good. Genre magazines that run reviews and industry news are great, Particularly British ones that can help get you a line on the above sweet spots. Award lists – not the winners, but the short lists, can often help you spot things.
OR, you can subscribe to any number of “hot tip” services that are wiling to pass on information to you for a low monthly fee. I myself offer an email list – Jeremy’s Hot Picks For The Book Investor*. My standard monthly subscription fee is $19.95 but I give pre-payment discounts if you are willing to by a year in advance. You can get rich off my 10+ yeas in the industry… I have the knowledge and you have the capital that needs a safe investment.
As a bonus to the regular readers of A View From Corona, I will share with you my three picks from my February 2004 news letter: Each month I provide 3 picks… a low-risk sure thing, a medium-risk book with a better possible rate of return, and a high risk long shot that could pay out very handsomely. I offer these different risk assessments so that you, the book speculator, can determine the amount of risk you want to expose yourself to:
[Excerpted from “Jeremy’s Hot Picks For The Book Investor”*, February 2004]
The “Low Risk” pick this month is the British edition of Alastair Reynolds’ new novel, Absolution Gap. You probably won’t see the skyrocketing value of his first novel, as his British print runs continue to rise, but he has demonstrated that he is no flavor of the month. Reynolds will be popular in the field for some time, and since this is a series title, there will always be collectors trying to put a full set of his books together. As per his other titles, the British hardcover precedes the US hardcover.
The “Medium Risk” pick this month is Mary Gentle’s 1610: A Sundial in a Grave. This book is bound to hold its value (even with the dollar doing really poorly against the pound right now), but whether it will rise as rapidly or as high as her previous book, Ash, is a good question. No US edition has been announced – a US harcover would hurt the value of the British edition in the long run, as would poor sales of any US edition. But a few good reviews, and it could reach an even bigger fan base then did her previous book Ash, providing a substantial return on investment.
The “High Risk” book this month is a “re-pick”. I suggested this book over a year ago, but its prospects have improved dramatically enough that you should pick it up any and all copies that you can find. Here’s why: Over a year ago, the Forth Book of Steven Erickson’s Malazan Series, House of Chains came out in England as a split run hard cover and trade paperback. It was the first book of the series to have a hardcover, but because it was a split run, and British, the total numbers were low. Since this time, word of mouth of this series has been growing. In addition, Tor bought the rights to print the series in the US. Tor will most likely do hardcovers of this, and the true first edition hardcover the first three books in the series will be the Tor editions. However, the British edition of House of Chains will be the true first, and demand for this incredible series is bound to exceed the print run of the British hardcovers, once the Tor marketing machine gets behind the it. This book will become the most expensive (four digits, most likely) book from this series, IMO. Currently there are no copies available on ABE. Dealers are already hoarding it. If you see a copy of this hardcover at any price under $150, buy it. It’s a big risk but the payoff could be extraordinary.
*Please note that any offers for products or services in this column are purely satirical and imaginary, as is the newsletter Jeremy’s Hot Picks For The Book Investor. If you really want to get inside information, become a regular reader of the many fine genre periodicals that are available, such as Locus, Interzone, The Third Alternative, and SF Chronicle. The other source of priceless information is a genre specialty dealer. Go to any of the dealers on the Night Shade links page, and strike up a relationship with the one you like the most — they take care of loyal customers, know the industry well, and are eager to share their expertise.
