For some years now I'm adding information of the books and stories in my collection to The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). The submissions happen when my time permits.
Of course I'm also adding the information on works by Philip José Farmer.

But once in a while the ISFDB has information for me about Phil that is not in my Bibliography yet. This time I found the information of three more letters in fanzines by Farmer. They were unknown to me till now.


The letters appeared in:

• SF Commentary #25, December 1971
• SF Commentary #41-42, February 1975
• Speculation #26, May 1970

The page with PJF's letters has been changed.
Farmer's letter in SF Commentary #25 is in fact an eight pages long essay, called "A Letter to Lem". Maybe in response to the essay by Stanislaw Lem in SF Commentary #22, July 1971: "Sex in Science Fiction".

Lem and Farmer were not the best of friends. Farmer had been upset about some highly critical things Lem had said about American sf in general and Farmer’s books in particular: "the neanderthalish views" in Farmer's work with sexual themes.

Stanislaw Lem responded on Farmer's essay with "A Letter to Mr. Farmer". This was published in SF Commentary #29, August 1972. On the cover of this 'Special Violence Issue' it says: "LEM battles with FARMER".

Sometimes it takes an awfully long time to find an item I am looking for. That also happened with a copy of the French literary magazine La revue des lettres modernes.

Issue 456-461 of July 1976 is completely devoted to Jules Verne's Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days).
In this paperback is also an essay by Jean Chesneaux: "Une lecture extra-terrestre du Tour du Monde: The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, de P.J. Farmer".

This is about Farmer's sequel, The Other Log of Phileas Fogg,  to the above mentioned novel. And about the relation of Fogg with the two alien races in this novel.

The editor, Chuck Welch, already promised it earlier, that the fanzine The Bronze Gazette would offer more essays about Farmer this year, the year of his 100th Birthday.

Included in this issue is "Sons of Savage: Doc Caliban", written by Arthur C. Sippo.
This is a reprint of Sippo's very interesting "Afterword" for the 2012 Titan Books edition of A Feast Unknown.

Sippo: «Feast is not an aberration in his oeuvre, but rather typically Farmerian. There are several things in Feast that remain somewhat shocking even today.»