Well, they are priced in dollars, and at the rate we are printing and issuing them, these books may soon be in your range if you can reserve them at current prices.
Then you’ve missed out on some truly wonderful books, Donald. The Diamond Age is amazing, as is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The fact that both could win the same award shows the breadth and depth of the genre.
To be fair, I haven’t completely stopped. I’ve read most of William Gibson’s work (and Bruce Sterling’s.) I’ve read Jonathan Strange. I’ve read The Yiddish Policeman. But it’s not like half of my fiction-reading-for-pleasure (more like 1%), as it used to be.
6:Around 1983, I made a point of tracking down all the Hugo & Nebula (and BFA)nominees, including novellas and the short stories to date just to read, just to own a reading copy. The Clifton was one of the hardest to find, and Delany’s Star Pit for some reason. All just paperbacks few VG but a lot of original pb’s, Orbits, Quarks, Novas…not Holbo’s acquistive capitalist bushwa thrill of competitive accumulation.
For me, it was the fun of searching the used bookstores.
I don’t know, I need this explained to me. The collection itself is admirable as an achievement, but it can never really be my collection, and coveting it seem to almost define “crass.”
An awful lot of these “novels” started out as novellas – about 30 pages – in the not-quite-pulps and were ruined as they became novels. Can’t begrudge the authors a few royalties, though.
{ 11 comments }
kid bitzer 03.13.09 at 2:53 pm
great cover pic on the ‘amazing stories’. no title, though.
“who you calling ‘shrimp’?”
or perhaps
“view to a krill”
or perhaps
“arthropod-racers”
Donald A. Coffin 03.13.09 at 3:56 pm
Based on those lists, I can now say about when I stopped reading science fiction…1975…
Eric H 03.13.09 at 4:03 pm
Well, they are priced in dollars, and at the rate we are printing and issuing them, these books may soon be in your range if you can reserve them at current prices.
Keith 03.13.09 at 4:43 pm
Then you’ve missed out on some truly wonderful books, Donald. The Diamond Age is amazing, as is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The fact that both could win the same award shows the breadth and depth of the genre.
Donald A. Coffin 03.13.09 at 5:54 pm
To be fair, I haven’t completely stopped. I’ve read most of William Gibson’s work (and Bruce Sterling’s.) I’ve read Jonathan Strange. I’ve read The Yiddish Policeman. But it’s not like half of my fiction-reading-for-pleasure (more like 1%), as it used to be.
Xanthippas 03.13.09 at 9:38 pm
Wow…what an amazing collection. I’d be pleased to own all of those books in whatever edition.
Russell Arben Fox 03.13.09 at 9:52 pm
Flowers for Algernon won a Nebula?!? Holy crap. Clearly, science fiction back in the 1960s was a different animal than it is today.
bob mcmanus 03.13.09 at 11:42 pm
6:Around 1983, I made a point of tracking down all the Hugo & Nebula (and BFA)nominees, including novellas and the short stories to date just to read, just to own a reading copy. The Clifton was one of the hardest to find, and Delany’s Star Pit for some reason. All just paperbacks few VG but a lot of original pb’s, Orbits, Quarks, Novas…not Holbo’s acquistive capitalist bushwa thrill of competitive accumulation.
For me, it was the fun of searching the used bookstores.
bob mcmanus 03.14.09 at 2:43 am
I don’t know, I need this explained to me. The collection itself is admirable as an achievement, but it can never really be my collection, and coveting it seem to almost define “crass.”
Collecting is something you do.
dave heasman 03.15.09 at 3:27 am
An awful lot of these “novels” started out as novellas – about 30 pages – in the not-quite-pulps and were ruined as they became novels. Can’t begrudge the authors a few royalties, though.
Oskar Shapley 03.16.09 at 6:11 pm
Strange stranger is strange, Mr. Heinlein.
Comments on this entry are closed.