The anthology The Worlds of Philip José Farmer (4): Voyages to Strange Days was received by me this week.
It is the fourth volume in the series of anthologies with essays by and about Phil Farmer, and with stories by him and by others as a kind of sequels to Phil's stories (Expanded Worlds). It looks again a great volume! Haven't had the time to read it all yet, but that certainly will be done the coming days.


I haven't yet indexed all the entries, but will do this the coming days after I read the pieces.

To order the book, go to the publisher's website. There are only five hundred numbered copies!

A few days ago Meteor House had a message on Facebook to let us know that the anthology The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 4: Voyages to Strange Days has shipped to all those who preordered the book.


Volume 4 focuses on Philip José Farmer the classic science fiction writer! Farmer grew up on the pulps; from the 1920s through the Golden Age, Farmer was an avid reader of many of the science fiction magazines. Although many were ground-breaking, his earliest stories used familiar tropes such as interstellar travel, alien races, parallel worlds, computers, war, scientists, etc.

If you haven't ordered the book yet, you should do it now! Go to the publisher's website.

Now I know why I didn't completely index the last few issues of Farmerphile at the time of publication: it takes a lot of time and work. Time that I didn't have at that moment.
Also, the fanzine started with "Unpolished Pearls from the Magic Filing Cabinet". Where to put the items that were published under this feature? Are they fiction or non-fiction? I had to read everything again to come to some conclusion.

I'm now finished indexing issue No. 12, of April 2008. One of the items under 'Pearls' is indexed as a story. This one, "Down to Earth's Centre", is an extract of an unpublished Doc Caliban novel. Much like "The Monster on Hold", but they are not the same.

Two months ago I received an email from Fred Fischer (USA) with information about a till then unknown German translation of one of Farmer's stories.
It took me these two months to get my copy of the ordered anthology from Germany. It seems that the first sent copy was lost in the mail, but I finally received the book.

It is the anthology Nebel aus dem Jenseits (1995), edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Robert Weinberg. This is a partial translation of The Mists From Beyond (1993). The third of the original editors, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, is not mentioned in the German book.


The anthology contains Farmer's story "Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Der Verfilmung erster Teil", a translation of "The Making of Revelation, Part I".

Many thanks Fred!

The last four published issues, 12-13-14-15, of the fanzine Farmerphile were not fully indexed by me in the bibliography at the time of publication, in 2008-2009. I didn't have (or make...) the time to do the job, and later forgot about it somewhat.

Till I started redoing the story page for the serial "Up from the Bottomless Pit", ten parts that were all published in the fanzine Farmerphile. This page is not yet ready, but I first started with completing the index of the above mentioned issues of Farmerphile.
For that I read again several pieces of the contents, and came across two articles written under pseudonym.

The first of these is "To Be, or Not to Be" by Tom Wode Bellman, in issue No. 13. The other is "A Whale of a Time" by Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor, in issue No. 14.
It is very unlikely that Philip José Farmer himself wrote these essays, for several reasons. He had stopped writing and his physical condition was far from ideal to write anything. So who wrote these pieces?

Tom Wode Bellman was first introduced, as a real person, with a foreword in the collection Venus on the Half-Shell and Others, in 2008.
I soon discovered Tome Wode Bellman to be another pseudonym, the name of a fictional author, see this page with many entries about the discovery and the investigation done by Ralph von Wau Wau.
I then still assumed that maybe Phil had written the introduction, using the byline of Bellman. But after reading both the essay "To Be, or Not to Be" and the introduction again, I came to no other conclusion than that Christopher Paul Carey had written both. I asked Christopher about this, but his answer is: "I deny everything!"

Expecting the same answer from the author hiding behind the pseudonym Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor, I did not write to him. But I'm pretty much convinced that Roger Crombie wrote the essay "A Whale of a Time".
I have no actual proof or confirmation that Roger and Christopher used these pseudonyms, but the signs and hints are clear and proof enough for me.

I'm not yet ready indexing Farmerphile, but will finish it a.s.a.p.