Philip José Farmer International Bibliography: News

HOME


	News & What's New - October 2013

	Some Fabulous Yonder
	31 Oct 2013 The novelette "Some Fabulous Yonder" was first published in 1963 in the magazine Fantastic. But its editor, Cele Goldsmith, had ruined the story according to Phil Farmer himself. She had "...cut out phrases, sentences, and paragraphs throughout the novelette, probably for the sake of space in the magazine. However, the most egregious editing of the manuscript occurred at the story's climax, where almost an entire page was excised. This considerably lessened the impact of the story's conclusion..." (Paul Spiteri in his foreword to the story). The complete and restored text of the original manuscript has been used with the publication in the collection Pearls from Peoria. An early, but uncompleted, draft of the same story, "Planet Pickers" is also included in this collection.		Frank Bruno

	Tales of the Wold Newton Universe
	28 Oct 2013 Last week I received a book with nearly 500 pages, filled with interesting stories. It was the collection Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, edited by Win Scott Eckert and Christopher Paul Carey. This collection contains six stories by Philip José Farmer, one story by him and his co-author Christopher Paul Carey, and three stories by others: John Allen Small, Octavio Aragão & Carlos Orsi, and by Win Scott Eckert. All stories are part of the Wold Newton Universe (WNU).

	Strange Compulsion
	19 Oct 2013 Philip José Farmer had his science fiction novella "Strange Compulsion" published in October 1953, exact 60 years ago, in the Hugo Gernsback magazine Science-Fiction Plus. It was later reprinted in the collection The Alley God (1962) with the title "The Captain's Daughter". This was the only other US publication of the story. It was never reprinted after that. Till now. Cover: Emsh Armchair Fiction published it last month in an omnibus with two short novels. The other is The Time Projector by David H. Keller & David Lasser. It is a Double Novel, something like but not the same as the old Ace Doubles. The cover art is not credited, but it is by Emsh (= Ed Emswiller) and was used before for the cover of Science Fiction Stories, July 1956.

	Rare and expensive chapbook!
	19 Oct 2013 Amazon.com is still selling the 2009 Farmer Press chapbook of They Twinkled Like Jewels. You can by it new for only $3.99. But there are also used copies for sale, see the picture. So if think $3.99 is much to expensive to buy it, than you can get a used copy for only $5,678.00... Take your pick!		Innovar

	Danish Tuesday-world
	17 Oct 2013 Thanks to some nice people of the Danish Science Fiction Cirklen I got a copy of their magazine Nye Verdener (New Worlds) Nr. 8 of May 1983. It was nowhere to be found on the internet, so I asked them if maybe they still had a copy. Lucky me, they had and they sent it to me. The magazine contains stories by Bob Shaw, Walter M. Miller and of course Philip José Farmer. Reason why I was searching for a copy. It has Farmer's short story "The Sliced-Crosswise Only-on-Tuesday World" (as "Tirsdagsverdenen").		Per Sanderhage

	Love story in an overpopulated world
	14 Oct 2013 This story is called by many, and by me too, as one of Philip José Farmer's best stories. It was several times selected by Robert Silverberg for his anthologies, and also by Terry Carr and Lester del Rey for both their Best Science Fiction (Stories) of the Year anthologies. It is one of the most published and translated PJF stories, with 63 publications worldwide. But is didn't win, nor was it even nominated for any award after its first publication in 1971. We are talking here about "The Sliced-Crosswise Only-on-Tuesday World", first published in New Dimensions 1, edited by Robert Silverberg. Illustration: Alex Nino The story was reprinted for instance in The Grand Adventure, and in The Best of Philip José Farmer. Farmer wrote in his foreword that the story was based on a dream of his: «...I wish I could explain how the dream metamorphosed from something meaningless to me into something meaningful ... But I still do not know how the brief bizarre scene became a story which describes, among other things, how to solve overpopulation and the problems attendant thereto...»		Chris Foss

	Mother in Denmark
	10 Oct 2013 Philip José Farmer's novelette "Mother" (1953) has been translated into Danish as "...Mor". It was published by Dansklærerforeningen (Danish Teachers Association) in 1984 in a textbook, the anthology Faseskrift, edited by Palle Juul Holm. This publication was only just now discovered. I have added the new information on the story page.		Kitte Fennestad

	Gas, a social satire with sex and violence
	9 Oct 2013 Charles Platt wrote the highly erotic, say highly pornographic, novel The Gas. It was published in 1970 in the US by Ophelia Press. It seems several copies of this publication were burned. People found the novel very shocking. A very strong aphrodisiac was released by accident in England. It turned men, women and children to perversion, violence and insanity. British publisher Savoy Books reissued the novel in 1980, for which Philip José Farmer wrote the foreword. About 3000 copies were seized by the UK's Director of Public Prosecutions. Recently I discovered that The Gas was translated and published in Germany, as Gas, in 1986 by Edition Phantasia. The book includes the foreword by Phil. It was published in a very limited hardcover edition of only 250 numbered copies. As far as I know the reissue of the novel in 1995 from Loompanics Unlimited (US) does not include Farmer's foreword.		Johann Peterha

	Super Heroes
	8 Oct 2013 Win Scott Eckert wrote the Foreword in the Bison Books' edition of Philip José Farmer's Tarzan Alive (2006). Since then Win's essay was published again in the Burroughs Bulletin no. 81 (Winter 2010), and in a French translation in La Tribune des amis d'Edgar Rice Burroughs No. 64 (March 2007). Now we have yet another publication of it in the anthology Super Stories of Heroes & Villains, edited by Claude Lalumière, and published by Tachyon Publications (2013) in a very nice trade paperback with lots of interesting stories.		-

	More Hugo Winners
	4 Oct 2013 A printing I have never seen before and didn't know existed with this cover design was found by Fred Fischer (Houston, TX, USA). He sent the book to me as a donation. More Stories From The Hugo Winners, Volume 2, or according to the cover and the spine of the book only The Hugo Winners, Volume 2, had a third printing from publisher Fawcett Crest in 1979. There had to be a third printing, because we already had the second and the fourth, but I thought that the third printing would look like either one of the two. Farmer's novella "Riders of the Purple Wage" is included in this anthology. The missing third printing is now added on the story page. Many thanks Fred!		-

	Great Book of Magic
	1 Oct 2013 A "Book of Magic" calls Win Scott Eckert this book, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, in his foreword. It had a great impact on his life and, as he later discovered, on the lives of many others. Win was intrigued by Farmer's Wold Newton Family (WNF) as described in the book. So intrigued that he started to expand the WNF into the Wold Newton Universe (WNU). The "Book of Magic" has been reissued. In July 2013 came the limited hardcover edition from Meteor House ($ 35.00), with lots of extra material written especially for that edition. In September 2013 published Altus Press the trade paperback edition ($ 24.95). Both editions are still available, with the publishers or the online book shops. I wouldn't wait buying a copy if I were you! I already have mine.		Joe DeVito