29 February 2008

Farmer had written a screen treatment for a Doc Savage movie, "Doc Savage and the Cult of the Blue God". The treatment has never been used and was stored in Farmer's archives, before it was rediscovered. It was published in 2006 in the new collection Pearls from Peoria by Subterranean Press. Two months after the book publication the story also appeared in the magazine Subterranean Issue #5, November 2006.
The special hardcover edition of the magazine has finally arrived in December 2007. It was promised with signatures from most or all contributors to the magazine. There are seven writers who signed the special edition, but none of them is Philip José Farmer, alas. He is the only author who did not sign, which is a bit disappointing.
 

29 February 2008

Issue number 10 is a Peoria themed issue. Peoria, IL. (US) has been the hometown of the Farmers for many years, still is today, and that shows in quite a lot of his stories.
In Bette Farmer's column are some Peoria tales and the reason why the Farmers choose Peoria to settle finally. Paul Spiteri discusses the 'pulp detective' novel Nothing Burns in Hell that is set in Peoria, "...a masterly book from a master story teller...". Win Scott Eckert makes an inventory of all the Peoria based or related stories—but misses here the latest one, in the novel The City Beyond Play, but that has been published at nearly the same time.
Danny Adams article describes an "other Peoria" based story Stations of the Nightmare, and what became of the protagonist of that story, Paul Eyre.
There are also two pages with photos of Farmercon II that was held in... Peoria.
And finally there is a very funny story by Farmer, "A Peoria Night", about two lonely men looking for some nice female companionship.

Non-Peoria based contributions are a tribute by Dr. Bennett L. Oppenheim, Ph.D., and an article by Dennis Power, about the discovered relations between the novel The Stone God Awakens and the Dayworld series, and some other stories as well.
And last but not least the 10th and final part of the novel Up From the Bottomless Pit.

You can buy the issue with an email to Mike Croteau of The Official PJF Home Page for $11 per issue.
 

29 February 2008

As you can see the redesign is still going on. The home page and this page have been changed. We will have updates more often, not every two or three months, but whenever there is some news or information to add to the site.
The book pages are still not finished yet, but there are now 87 of the 100 (one hundred!) pages restyled, that means that there are another three pages completely new. This comes from some discovered Russian omnibuses and the new collection Venus on the Half-Shell and Others.
 

29 February 2008

The novel To Your Scattered Bodies Go, first of Farmer's famous Riverworld series, has a new edition in Spain after nearly twenty years. Publisher La Factoria de Ideas came with a beautiful new edition in trade paperback of A vuestros cuerpos dispersos in September 2007, in their book series Solaris. But the publisher didn't know what number in the series to give to the book, because it gets three different numbers on three different places, #95 on the spine, #97 on the back cover flap, and #96 in a list of Solaris titles at the back of the book. The publisher's website gives the conclusive answer, it is number 95.
The cover illustration is by John Stevens, who also did the covers of the Riverworld books from Ballantine/Del Rey in the US in 1998.
I have no idea if the other books in the Riverworld series will be published again in Spain also, the publisher's site gives no clue about this.
 

29 February 2008

Justin Marriott has written an article with the above title in his magazine The Paperback Fanatic, Issue Four, Autumn 2007.
The article describes in short the 'rise and fall' of Essex House and mentions the four erotic novels that Farmer has written for this imprint. Marriott discusses one of these four, A Feast Unknown, "...One of those books that everyone seems to know about due to its reputation, but few have read...", and "...There is humour in the book, black-hole bleak most of the time, typically provided by Grandrith...".
Also mentioned are the other Tarzan books, Lord Tyger, Tarzan Alive, Lord of the Trees and The Mad Goblin. The article is illustrated with some of the British covers of these books.
 

29 February 2008

I finally did find a copy, an ex-library one, of the book with the above title. It contains an entry by the editor Sharon R. Gunton on Philip José Farmer, but until now it was unknown what kind of information would be in the book.
Well, it contains nothing new, that would hardly be possible with a book published in 1981, because the five pages long entry exist of excerpts from five critical essays and three reviews that were published before in other sources.
In the short introduction by Gunton is told that "...Farmer's most intriguing work, known as the Wold Newton series, plays with the concepts of time and reality, mingling fictional characters with real people..."
 

29 February 2008

John Lochhas (Germany) had visted this site - "...It's a great page and I thoroughly enjoyed it..." - for his own search after uncredited cover artists in his collection of books and magazines. He couldn't spot any new information he was looking for, but instead had some information for me.
The German cover of Cache from Outer Space (Vom Himmel fielen Teufel, Utopia #394) has been done by Rudolf Sieber-Lonati. He also did the covers for The Gates of Creation (Tor der Schöpfung, Utopia #587), and two collections with Farmer stories in it, Tyrannei der Uhren (Utopia #415) and Der Fall Sagginer (Utopia #499).
The cover of The Maker of Universes (Kampf der Weltenmacher, Utopia #541) has been painted by Hans Möller.
Thanks for the information John!