Book Haul Volume I
Hello, and welcome back to The Hinterlands! I've been busy, so I haven't posted in like three weeks but the last blog post was enormous so it all balances out probably. I'm still theoretically working on a huge piece about Damon Knight's Orbit series, but that probably won't be ready till November - I have some other stuff cooking in the meantime, including the digital release of Zine #2 (Summer 2026, going up in October - woops!) Anyway, here's a quick blog post about some highlights from the mass of books I've hauled in over the last few weeks. I don't plan to do a lot of these because I do find it a little embarrassing how many books I collect, but here's the thing: I like 'em.
These two represent the most and least recent books I bought that I'll be talking about in this post. I found Tanith Lee's The Birthgrave at a local used bookstore a little over two weeks ago and was absolutely delighted because the only one I'd seen in the wild before had a price tag of $50 which I found a little steep for a paperback. There are two different yellow spine DAW covers of The Birthgrave, and this is the earlier one. I prefer the art on the second more, but there's something special about the really early DAW editions that have the art in a little inset box - I dig it. Very excited to dig into these early Tanith Lee books, she's someone where I had to look for a long time before I found any of her stuff, but I've gathered a pretty decent cross-section of her most famous work at this point, and it's time to dig in. I know a lot of the dedicated vintage SF&F fans have been singing her praises for a few years now as someone who's largely forgotten by the general readership, but with her pedigree as a fantasy and horror writer as much as an SF writer she seems like a natural fit for rediscovery and some classy new editions of her work (mind you, I will always prefer the vintage art to the boring re-release art, but as long as it's on bookstore shelves I guess...)
The second book, Wandering Stars, was part of an online order I made the other day from an Ontario based SF bookseller with a pretty incredible selection and good shipping rates within Canada. As I've mentioned on this blog several times now I am a fiend for vintage short fiction anthologies, and this collection of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction was something I'd been keeping an eye out for as its a little hard to find and very interesting - just take a look at the lineup of writers on the cover, quite the who's-who of 20th century SF. I'm excited to dig into it.
I picked up both of these last week at a little bookshop in Brighton Ontario, just off the 401. To discuss first The Best of L. Sprague de Camp, I have to say I am obsessed with these Del Rey Best Of books. It is an absolute mission of mine to collect every single one of them. They all have incredible cover art, and the typography in terms of the font and colour and canted angle of the text is so cool. Of L. Sprague de Camp himself I am also interested quite a bit - he's a controversial figure today because of the damage he did to Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, asserting ownership of them, revising some of them, and writing his own original stories which he would intermix with Howard's originals in collections. All of this obviously sucks, and it wasn't until after his passing that Howard's stories were able to be published in their original form - a lot of dedicated Conan fans hold him in contempt as a result. But as discussed by Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian vein on bluesky, de Camp and his wife also did a lot of work to preserve Howard's work and legacy, personally touring around texas interviewing people who knew him and tracking down lost papers - without his effort, much that we take for granted might have been lost. But besides all the Conan stuff, de Camp was a very successful writer in the pulp era in his own right, and was the 4th recipient of what is now known as the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. He's best known for his fantasy work, but in this era a lot of fantasy had to be gussied up in a science fiction framing to be accepted commercially, which gives everything an interesting feel thats very different from what we're used to today. I'm looking forward to diving into his work and seeing how it holds up.
Nightwings by Silverberg was on my list because I believe the original novella (expanded into this novel) won the Nebula award. I bought it because of that, but also because that cover is so sick. I'm not sure how much I've discussed Silverberg on the blog thus far because I really haven't read much of his work yet (only a few short stories) - I feel like I've talked about him more as an editor than as a writer, although he was extremely prolific in both modes. Excited to crack this bad boy sometime between now and 2030 judging by my to read list.
I picked up Callahan's Crosstime Saloon in Trenton while investigating bookshops easily accessible off the 401 last week, and what a sweet cover. When I think of Spider Robinson I mostly think about how when I was a less experienced book hunter I left behind a copy of his short story collection, Melancholy Elephants, at one of my regular haunts because I wasn't sure if it was up my alley. Today I would pull the trigger on it in a second if I came across it, but I've never seen it again. Anyway - this is the first entry in a long running series by Robinson, probably his most popular. I've really only encountered his writing as a reviewer in one of the SF magazines in the mid to late 70s (maybe Galaxy?) - as a reviewer he's entertaining but one of many critics I encountered complaining about the doom and gloom 70's, as well as these writers nowadays who make their prose hard to understand for no good reason. Despite that making me very skeptical of him I am willing to give him a chance, and I'm interested to see what his fiction is like.
Came across Saint Leibowitz in Belleville for a reasonable price, because you occasionally see this go for well above $20, too rich for my blood, especially since I don't think the book is supposed to be especially good. However I finished my first re-read of Canticle in close to 15 years last month, and I think I'll take the opportunity to read this as well since fortune has brought it conveniently into my hands at the proper time. I intend to have a long (ish) form review of Canticle up on the blog in the next few weeks, but in short, I loved it. I also have a copy of The Best of Walter M. Miller, Jr. hanging around here somewhere so I think I'll read that as well. I recommend the Shelved by Genre episodes covering Canticle if you end up reading it - really productive and interesting discussions that gave me a lot to think about while digesting the book.
I picked up both of these books at the used book store I frequent once a week during my lunch break at work. The amount of books I've carted out of that place in the last calendar year...it's a lot. I was delighted to come across a copy of Little Fuzzy there this Wednesday on my lunch break, particularly with this cover which is, to me at least, iconic. I've read no H. Beam Piper whatsoever, I know only that he was a very popular author in the 50s who faded out of memory to the point that he is very little discussed today. I have a few of his other books on my radar in case I come across them at a store, but I think the Fuzzy books, about a species of small furry alien humanoids, are his best and most remembered works. Excited to check them out.
The Garrett Files were a bit of a wild card pickup for me, because they weren't on my list of stuff to look for (in fact I'd never heard of them before I saw this on the shelf a month back and did a little research before buying this week) and I'm not a big Glen Cook head (I haven't read The Black Company yet - it's a high priority, I swear), but the timing was just too good to pass up because I am deep into my research for Zine #3: Supernatural Detectives (or possibly Occult Detectives - tbd). This volume collects the first three novels in a series about a hard boiled Raymond Chandler style detective in a fantasy world full of Elves, goblins, etc. Seems like the kind of thing I could easily incorporate into the zine in some capacity, and none of the books I'm reading for research were really in that Hardboiled mode, so it felt like a gap that needed to be filled (realistically I should be reading Jim Butcher to fill that gap, and hey - maybe I'll read some of that too).
Okay thanks for reading - I'm posting this late on a Friday night because I need to feel like I accomplished something creative this week so I can sleep with a clean conscience. Have you bought any cool books lately, speculative fiction or otherwise? Are you reading any cool books, speculative fiction or otherwise? Post about it in the comments below, or send me an email at thehinterlandsblog@gmail.com!
Links and Recommendations:
- Critical Friends Podcast Episode 28: On Literary SFF Enjoyed this discussion of Literary SFF as a category and especially the discussion of M. John Harrison's Booker Prize nominated The End of Everything which I will be asking Santa for come Christmastime (along with China Mieville's The Rouse)
- Marginal Reads new video Recently discovered this youtube channel and there happens to be a brand new video up just as I was working on this blog. I've watched a chunk of it so far and it seems quite interesting, discussing small press SF which I'm increasingly interested in myself as I'm beginning to despair of finding any modern genre fiction that interests me.
I'm hoping that this time next week Hinterlands #2 will be available online, but for now Hinterlands Annual #1 is available. here.
Similarly I'm optimistic that the next blog post up will be linking to a brand new youtube video, but in the meantime watch this old one again.
Okay bye!