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News
& What's New - April 2008 |
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The Gate
of Time & Two Hawks from Earth |
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21
April 2008
And
yet another book page has been restyled, the page with the publications
of the novel The Gate of Time, or with
Farmer's restored title Two Hawks from Earth. In
his foreword in the 1979 Ace edition Farmer explained why he restored
the original title, also restored a by the Belmont editors bowdlerized
scene, and that he had added about ten thousand words, including a new
ending.
There is no known review
or article comparing the old with the revised and expanded text. I have
read the book too long ago to remember the differences. Maybe an idea
for a next issue of Farmerphile?
The book page shows now twenty covers scans, seven more than with the
previous layout. Eleven pages to go, see the index.
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New
Italian edition of The Lovers |
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18
April 2008
Publisher
Mondadori started in 2003 with the series Urania
Collezione (or see here
for all the covers), classic
works by well known SF writers. Every month a new book.
In April 2008
the series reached number 063, with Gli
amanti di Siddo (The Lovers) by Philip
José Farmer. This is the fourth Farmer book in the series
till now, the others are no. 015, Venere
sulla conchiglia (Venus on the
Half-Shell), no. 047, Il
Fabbricante di universi (The Maker of Universes)
and no. 052, Notte di
Luce (Farther to the Stars).
The Urania Collezione books are sold as 'magazines' in newsstands
and kiosks. They do not have an ISBN but have an ISSN, just like a
magazine. The books are not for sale in the regular bookshops
and
also not available with the online bookshops. At least, not when they
are new.
I got my copy thanks to Ernesto Vegetti,
who sent me the book for free. He has compiled the Farmer bibliography
in this edition, for which he used my online bibliography. At
the
back of the book are some Farmer websites mentioned, and the
International Bibliography even receives some nice compliments with
this.
Grazie Ernesto!
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Farmerphile
No. 12 announced |
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14
April 2008
Issue
number 12 of the magazine Farmerphile
will be published this month, April. The contents has been made known
at the website, the Official
Philip José Farmer Home Page,
see here.
From the publisher: "This issue has a Sherlock Holmes theme and
includes a speech that Phil gave to a chapter of the Baker Street
Irregulars in 1975 called "Sherlock Holmes and Sufism." There is also a
long article by Farmerage
publisher George Scheetz, who was there with Phil when he created the
Peoria Scion Society, The Hansoms of John Clayton, among many other
articles which discuss Phil's Sherlockian writings."
You can order your copy for $11.00 at the website.
Speaking of Farmerphile,
the
publisher has put several issues of the magazine, signed by PJF, for
auction on eBay. Even a complete set of eleven signed issues is for
sale. Check the website for this.
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Farmerphile
No. 11 |
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10
April 2008
Finally
I had some time to read this issue completely and to add all the new
information on the pages of the website. Time flies when you are having
fun is a saying, but it also flies as fast and maybe even faster
otherwise, when you have lots to do.
For most part Issue number 11 of the magazine Farmerphile
is lots of fun, 56 pages of fun. With two completely new stories by
Farmer, wow! The before unpublished manuscripts were offered for
publication by an old time friend of Farmer, Robert R. Barrett.
"The
First Robot" is a
nice story, not a great one. I do not agree with the editor of Farmerphile that if
the story had been published in the 1950s when it was written "the
story probably would have been highly anthologized, and might have
reached the same critical acclaim as "Sail
On! Sail On!"" I do not believe that, the second story is far
better and more original. "The First Robot" is a very short
story, the title is a
little misleading, it has nothing to do with the time in which the
story plays.
The second story, "Duo
Miaule", is a mix of humorous fantasy and private eye
mystery. I like this one a lot, it reminded me somewhat of his much
later written private eye novel Nothing Burns in Hell. In
the story some people can transit into the body of a cat, which is what
the private eye, Dirk Cannon, also does. And when he meets the
woman/cat he is looking for, Dirk concludes after a short conversation:
"Fundamentally, Fleena, you're a real pussy—sleek and
beautiful and
selfish and sadistic-masochistic."
It is a small world sometimes, Fleena is also the name of the cat of
Tom Wode Bellman. We have written about Tom before, see here. The name of his cat
is mentioned in Tom's blog.
The rest of issue 11? It is a special 90th Birthday issue for Philip
José Farmer, with many birthday wishes. Bette Farmer writes
about earlier birthdays, funny stories from Spider Robinson and Howard
Waldrop, solved mysteries from Chris Carey, the rules to include
characters into the Wold Newton Family —and Farmer might be
one
of the next few to be included—
from Win Scott Eckert, a reprint of an article by Farmer plus his own
comment on this under a different name, another look at Farmer's Tarzan
and Doc Savage by Robert Barrett, and finally again an interesting
discussion by Paul Spiteri about one of Farmer's novels, A
Barnstormer in Oz this time.
Enough to read and enjoy!
You want a copy? Order it from the publisher, Mike Croteau, on the
website, The
Official
PJF Home Page.
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Contemporary
Literary Criticism, CLC-1 |
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10
April 2008
In February
I received a copy of another volume in this series, CLC-19 (see Sharon R. Gunton),
with excerpts of criticism about Farmer's work. That volume referred to
the first volume in the series and so for that reason I had to try to
get a copy of CLC-1.
Carolyn
Riley, editor of CLC-1,
gives in the entry about Farmer only one excerpt of a criticism on
Farmer's work, written by Donald
A. Wollheim in his study The
Universe Makers. Again and alas, like CLC-19 there is
nothing new, but then there were only a handful of known critical
essays about Farmer's work at the time of publication of CLC-1 in 1973. If
nothing new, we do know now what's in the book.
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| Added
Books |
Only 1 publication has been
added on the book pages in April 2008.
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 The
Lovers
The new Italian edition (Gli
amanti di Siddo) from Mondadori.
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| Statistics |
Due
to the restyling of the book pages I cannot give you exact numbers
right now. When all
is finished I will give these numbers again.
These are the about numbers, the last time - in November 2006 - they
were counted:
1275
publications
750 different covers
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 "-")
 "Franco Brambilla")
 "Keith Howell")
 "Joey Van Massenhoven")
 "click to enlarge")
