From the Lewes Book Fair (Slight Return): Gavin Lyall's The Secret Servant

I realise haven't done a Lewes Book Fair blog post in bloody ages – or indeed hardly any blogging at all – but I was just at the latest Lewes fair chatting to my friend, the book dealer Jamie Sturgeon, who asked me, as he usually does, whether I'll ever get back to blogging about books again. And having actually bought a book this time (not a guarantee these days), and taken a few pictures, I thought to myself, well, why the devil not? Hence this resurrection of the From the Lewes Book Fair format, which I have largely composed whilst sitting on the grass at Lewes Athletics track watching Edie (remember her...?) doing her pole vault training (don't ask).

The book wot I bought is in fact one I already own, in exactly the same edition (along with an uncorrected proof): a 1980 Hodder first of Gavin Lyall's excellent espionage novel The Secret Servant, the first in the author's short Harry Maxim spy thriller series:

I, ahem, spied it in amongst Mark Skipper of Cheltenham Rare Books' reduced-to-four-quid offerings and, as is my wont, and being a big fan of the book, decided to have a quick shufty inside, only to discover that, lo and behold, it was signed and inscribed, to a Tim Morris in thanks for "a marvellous lunch and occasion generally":

No idea who Tim Morris is or was – perhaps he's this one – but it was a nice find nonetheless. Also of interest at the fair, to me if nobody else, was this lovely signed photo I spotted hanging on the stand next to Jamie's table:

Yes, that's Ben Affleck in all his be-muscled glory (although not as buff as he would later be in 2016's Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice) as the eponymous lead of 2003's Daredevil film. I can't say I'm overly fond of the film (unlike the aforementioned Batman v. Superman, at least in its extended Ultimate Edition), but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted. And to answer Jamie's question about which Morgan Freeman film the signed photo above it is taken from:

I can confirm that it's another Ben Affleck flick from the year before, 2002's The Sum of All Fears, based of course on a book hailing from Tom Clancy's imperial doorstopper period.

2018: Science Fiction Odyssey, Too

Oh good grief would you look at the time. I mean date. I mean... whatever: Christmas and New Year's are fast approaching, and I am seized by an inexplicable urge to blog about the books I bought and read in 2018 – this despite having barely posted anything all year and consequently squandered whatever remaining sliver of readership Existential Ennui yet retained. Still, when have I ever let widespread disinterest stop me from wittering on at extreme length?

2018, then. A year that, much like 2017 – which, you'll recall (or at least you would if there were anyone left to read this rubbish in order to recall anything) was characterised by an extended science fiction book-collecting-and-reading odyssey – has been characterised by an extended science fiction book-collecting-and-reading odyssey... albeit arguably a less frenzied one. Even so, there have been sizeable scores this year, not least a haul of paperbacks (plus one hardback – a first of Larry Niven and Steven Barnes' Dream Park) I secured over successive visits to Lewes' own Bow Windows Bookshop, who had bought in a huge collection of softcover SF – piles and piles of the bloody stuff – towards the end of the year. (There's still a fair bit left if you're passing.) My spoils mostly comprised space opera by Stephen Baxter, Frederik Pohl (including a couple of entries in the Heechee Saga), Larry Niven, Elizabeth Moon, Charles Stross, Orson Scott Card and others, plus some Philip K. Dick, Terry Pratchett, Bruce Sterling, Joe Haldeman and so on.

Other notable SF scores this year included a stack of Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds and Peter F. Hamilton first editions (notably Reynolds' entire Poseidon's Children trilogy, and a signed first of Hamilton's Misspent Youth plus his ensuing Commonwealth Saga) from two of Brighton's charity bookshops on the same day:

A smaller pile of SF from one of the same shops (including Joe Haldeman's sequel to The Forever War, Forever Free, which I'd been wanting to read):

A return visit to Camilla's Bookshop in Eastbourne (which saw me completing my collection of firsts of Hamilton's Void Trilogy, the sequel to the aforementioned Commonwealth Saga):

And returns visits too to Leigh Gallery Books in Leigh-on-Sea (who had a half-price sale on) and the Stables Bookshop at Hylands House, plus closer to home a mooch round the charity shops of Uckfield:

There were also some (relatively slim) pickings from the Paperback & Pulp Book Fair:

And of course the Lewes Book Fair:

Then there was the stack of Analog science fiction magazines, secured in Brighton's Snooper's Paradise (including the first appearance of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game):

And a smaller selection of SF magazines, bought in London's Quinto Bookshop, and containing P. M. Hubbard's three earliest short stories, a Joe Haldeman Forever War novella (not included in the first edition I own), and Jerry Pournelle's three-part A Spaceship for the King, alias King David's Spaceship (there was also an epic Westlake/Stark score on the same visit, but that's a story for another time):

Lastly, there were the signed paperbacks I picked up online for a song:

Besides all those, there were other books acquired here and there, but I think I've given the general gist of the year's collecting. What was that about 2018's odyssey being less frenzied than 2017's...?

As for actually reading any of the bloody things... allow me to present my traditional big long list of the books I read this year, in the order in which I read them. In previous years I've also tended to detail the comics I read, and sometimes even offered some commentary on my reading, but it's been a long year and I really can't be arsed. I have, however, deigned to include links to whatever I've previously written about some of the books (however brief). You're welcome. Merry Christmas.

Raft by Stephen Baxter
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds
An Entity Observes All Things by Box Brown
Tales from the Hyperverse by William Cardini
Across the Sea of Suns by Gregory Benford
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
Forever Free by Joe Haldeman
The Forge of God by Greg Bear
Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear
A World Out of Time by Larry Niven
Tales of Known Space by Larry Niven
The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton by Larry Niven
Protector by Larry Niven
A Gift from Earth by Larry Niven
Neutron Star by Larry Niven
Spock Must Die! by James Blish (see Star Trek Magazine #69, out now, for my review)
Ringworld by Larry Niven
The Mercenary by Jerry Pournelle
He Fell into a Dark Hole (in Analog) by Jerry Pournelle
Planet of Judgment by Joe Haldeman (see Star Trek Magazine #70 for my review)
The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, plus prologue in A Step Farther Out, and and missing first chapter in Infinite Stars.
Timelike Infinity by Stephen Baxter
The five Shaper/Mechanist stories in Ascendancies by Bruce Sterling
Es*Ef by Phil Elliott, Darryl Cunningham, Glenn Dakin, Paul Duncan and David Thorpe
Kingdom by Jon McNaught
XTC69 by Jessica Campbell
DC Nuclear Winter Special by various
Gateway by Frederik Pohl (still reading)

Larry Niven's A World Out of Time, Greg Bear's Anvil of Stars, Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, et al: Recent Science Fiction Reading and Book Collecting

I'd like to blame the distinct lack of activity chez Existential Ennui so far this year on the demands of work, but that wouldn't be entirely accurate. It's true that I have been busy with work – primarily editing Star Trek Magazine and its various spin-offs – but I've also succumbed to a prolonged bout of blogging can't-be-arsed-itis. Other committed bloggers – which, after over a dozen years of blogging on one platform or another, I suppose is what I am, god help me – will surely recognise this malaise as something that just happens to us from time to time, and that there's nothing to be done: either the muse (pffft!) returns on its own, or it doesn't and the blogger shuts up shop. We can but fervently hope that in my case, it'll turn out to be the latter.

But while we await that happy day, I can report that my blogging absence hasn't been matched by a concurrent lack of book collecting and reading. The science fiction odyssey I embarked on last year has proceeded apace, with quite a lot of local charity shop and bookshop scores (plus some online purchases), some of which I've even found time to read. I finished off Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series – or at least the three novels that comprise the main part of it, plus Chasm City, plus the various short stories and novellas – which I thoroughly enjoyed, especially Redemption Ark – with its brilliant relativistic interstellar pursuit sequence – and the memorably nasty novella Diamond Dogs. I made a start on Stephen Baxter's Xeelee Sequence, and got a little further along in John Varley's Eight Worlds and Gregory Benford's Galactic Centre series. And I read Joe Haldeman's Forever Free, the belated and slightly bewildering sequel to The Forever War; Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, which I picked up in a 1975 British NEL hardback first edition at the Lewes Book Fair (jacket by Gordon C. Davies), and which was much more about the training of the troopers than I was expecting; and Greg Bear's The Forge of God and its sequel, Anvil of Stars, the latter of which I really liked – a smart, sombre take on interstellar vengeance and warfare.

I read Anvil of Stars in a signed 1992 Century first edition (jacket illustration by Nick Rodgers), one of numerous signed SF books I've bought over the past few months, many of them novels and short story collections by Larry Niven, who I've got bang into. I've started working my way through his Known Space stories, and I read and loved the first in his The State series, A World Out of Time, a signed copy of the very scarce 1977 Macdonald edition of which – with its fine Tony Roberts wrapper – I found online for a very reasonable price. The story of a modern-day terminal cancer case who's frozen, reawakened in the late 22nd century, then dispatched on a mission to the galactic centre before returning to Earth three million years later, it's stuffed full of mind-bending ideas imparted in Niven's winningly freewheeling manner. If my blogging mojo makes a more sustained return, I expect I'll write some more about Niven – and the other signed SF books I've acquired – in due course.

Linked in Friday's Forgotten Books, 25/3/18.

Science Fiction Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s

Ever since I established Existential Ennui's first permanent page, Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s, five years ago, the bulk of the dust jackets I've added to the gallery have wrapped books of a crime or spy fiction bent – those being the genres I've been most interested in, and accordingly have collected the most of, for most of those five years (and even before that). But right from the get-go I've included dust jackets from books from other genres (and indeed no genre at all) besides, notably science fiction. Among my earliest additions to the page was Roy Sanford's wrapper for the 1951 Rupert Hart-Davis first edition of Ray Bradbury's The Silver Locusts (alias The Martian Chronicles) – one of my most prized books – alongside John Rowland's jacket for the 1957 Heinemann edition of Nevil Shute's On the Beach and Donald Green's one for the 1959 Constable edition of Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon.

With my recently reignited fervour for SF, I thought it high time I added some more science fiction jackets to the gallery. Most of the SF I've been picking up over the past eight months or so has either hailed from the 1970s onwards or been paperbacks – or both – but I have acquired a handful of hardback firsts from the '50s and '60s as well, plus there are one or two other books I've had in my possession for longer than that which, for whatever reason, I haven't got round to adding to the page. Such as this one:

A British first edition of Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, published by Heinemann in 1955. This was one of the first books I bought when I moved down to Lewes from London nine years ago and got seriously into book collecting, acquired from Lewes' Bow Windows Bookshop for a tenner – on reflection something of a bargain, even given its damaged – but still complete – dust jacket; the cheapest comparable copy I can see online at present is listed for over £100. That jacket is by Eric Mudge-Marriott, whose work also appears on, among others, the 1954 Cassell edition of (John) Ross Macdonald's Experience with Evil (alias Meet Me at the Morgue), the 1955 Heinemann edition of David Duncan's Dark Dominion, and the 1965 Cassell edition of William Haggard's The Hard Sell (a copy of which I have in the loft somewhere).

A more recent acquisition from Bow Windows is this British first edition/second impression of Ray Bradbury's early short story collection The Golden Apples of the Sun, published by Rupert Hart-Davis in 1953. Boasting among its tales an all-time Bradbury classic, "The Sound of Thunder", the book's dust jacket is by Bradbury's longtime artistic collaborator, American designer Joe Mugnaini, who also designed the differing jacket of the 1953 US Doubleday edition, as well as this:

The 1959 Hart-Davis edition of The Day It Rained Forever, a 1962 second impression/ex-library copy of which I acquired for a couple of quid from Jamie Sturgeon at the last but one Lewes Book Fair. I bought a bunch of SF off Jamie at the most recent Lewes Book Fair in October too, including this:

A first edition of Jonathan Burke's intriguing Pursuit Through Time, published by Ward, Lock in 1956. Sadly there's no art credit for the dust jacket (the style looks very familiar to me but I can't place it) so I've added it to Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s under 'Designer Unknown'.

Also from the most recent Lewes Book Fair, from a different dealer, came this British first of Andre Norton's Catseye, published by Gollancz in 1962 (and once owned by a Prof. Spratt, according to the ex libris stamp on its endpaper). The wrapper is by Alan Breese, who created jackets for over a dozen Gollancz editions of Andre Norton books throughout the 1960s.

Lastly, from where I'm not quite sure – it's a recent-ish acquisition but I can't recall where from – a first edition/second impression of James Blish's A Life for the Stars, published by Faber in 1966 (originally 1964), dust jacket by Robert MacLean, who I believe was an American artist and children's book illustrator. Bizarrely, this is actually the second copy of the Faber edition I've owned; I did have a third impression but I've no idea what I did with it, hence why I bought this second impression from... somewhere... that and the fact that I also own Faber first/seconds of the other three novels in Blish's Cities in Flight sequence (which have rather different dust jacket designs). Anyway, I've added this and all the other SF wrappers in this post to Beautiful British Book Jacket Design of the 1950s and 1960s under their relevant designers (where known), all of whom are new to the gallery.

Science Fiction from the Lewes Book Fair: Poul Anderson, Keith Laumer, Ursula Le Guin et al

It was back in March at the Lewes Book Fair, where I bought a first edition of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, that I embarked on the science fiction book collecting odyssey which has proved such an enjoyable diversion over the past six months – for me if not for my illusory readership – and the Lewes Book Fair has continued to provide, with a bunch of cheap SF paperbacks at the May fair and a haul of cheap SF hardbacks – plus a couple more paperbacks – at the most recent one at the start of August.

Those hardbacks came courtesy of that book dealer's book dealer Jamie Sturgeon, who, knowing that I was on a science fiction kick, brought along what little SF he could find in his stock (he largely deals in crime fiction) – much of it space opera of one sort or another, which was just what I was looking for. He'd actually brought some SF to the previous Lewes Book Fair too, but that was for another collector – I know nothing about this person; for the sake of argument let's call them The Adversary – who was also keen on SF. On that occasion, by the time I got to Jamie's table whatever SF he'd had was gone – to be fair, he'd brought it along especially for The Adversary – but this time I was there early doors. I left one or two things for The Adversary, but I must admit I took the lion's share. Sorry, The Adversary, but as I'm sure you understand, when it comes to book collecting, you win some, you lose some.

And what I won – or rather purchased, for around a couple of quid each – on this occasion were: a first edition (ex-library but complete, with no pages removed) of Louis Charbonneau's Antic Earth (alias Down to Earth) (Herbert Jenkins, 1967), which I quite like the sound of despite its terrible online reviews; first editions of Ray Bradbury's short story collections The Day It Rained Forever (an ex-library – but again complete – 1962 second impression of the 1959 Hart-Davis edition), jacket by Joe Mugnaini, and Long After Midnight (1976 US Knopf), jacket typography by Ray Cruz, painting by Fuseli; a first hardback edition of Damon Knight's 1959 second novel A for Anything (alias The People Maker) (White Lion, 1974); a first of Hal Clement's second short story collection Small Changes (Robert Hale, 1969), jacket by Brian Netscher; a first of Robert Silverberg's short story collection Sundance and Other Science Fiction Stories (Abelard-Schuman, 1975); a first of Poul Anderson's Trader to the Stars (Gollancz, 1965); and a first of Keith Laumer's Bolo: The Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade (Millington, 1977), jacket by Lorie Epstein, photography by Graham Tucker.

I think I'm most pleased with the Anderson, which collects three of the author's Nicholas van Rijn stories – part of Anderson's wider Technic Civilisation future history – and which isn't terribly common in its Gollancz edition, and certainly not in this nice a condition; the Laumer, which is the first collection of the author's Bolo (futuristic tanks) military SF stories – the first of which, "The Night of the Trolls", I've read and rather enjoyed – and which is extremely scarce in this, its only British edition; and the Clement, which is another of those curious Hale SF books I've been picking up here and there.

The two paperbacks came from another dealer at the Lewes Book Fair (possibly the guy who runs Ubu Books in Brighton's Open Market) and are the British first editions of Ursula Le Guin's first and second novels, Rocannon's World and Planet of Exile, both published in the UK by Tandem in 1972 (both originally published in the US by Ace in 1966). I'd planned on reading some of Le Guin's science fiction at some point, so coming across these editions of the first two novels in her Hainish Cycle, with their fantastically gothic Peter Goodfellow covers, was serendipitous. For me, anyway; less so for The Adversary.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman: A First Edition from the Lewes Book Fair

Last Saturday's Lewes Book Fair proved something of a books bonanza, both for me and for my three- (nearly four- by gum) year-old daughter. For Edie I bought a stack of vintage 1970s/80s/90s picture books by, among others, Brian Wildsmith, Shirley Hughes, Spike Milligan and W. Somerset Maugham (I might do a separate post on those at some point), while I came away with a signed first of Posy Simmonds' Gemma Bovery (Cape, 1999), a Ron Goulart-edited anthology of pulp crime fiction, The Hardboiled Dicks (Boardman, 1967) and paperback firsts of Peter George's Dr. Strangelove novelisation (Corgi, 1963) and Samuel R. Delany's The Einstein Intersection (Ace, 1967, with terrific cover art by Jack Gaugham). Best of all, just as I was leaving after a couple of hours browsing I spied this on the shelves belonging to the fair's organiser John Beck (himself a book dealer):

A British first edition of Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, published in hardback by Weidenfeld & Nicholson in 1975 (the year after the US St. Martin's first) with a spectacular dust jacket design by Nick Sutton (much better, I reckon, than the American one). It's a book I've wanted to get my hands on for a while – indeed I saw this very copy on John's shelves at the Lewes Book Fair a good four or five years ago. At the time it was priced a little too prohibitively for me, but for this return outing John had reduced the price to a fraction of what a British first in this condition (near-fine) usually fetches (at least £100), and since it's my birthday this coming Saturday I figured fuck it, I'm gonna treat myself.

I'm halfway through reading it and thus far I love it. Originally serialised in Analog and widely acclaimed as the best science fiction war novel ever written, it's narrated by William Mandella, a conscript in the United Nations Exploratory Force who undergoes military training and conditioning before being dispatched to deep space to fight the alien Taurans from the distant Aldebaran system. The human characters are barely sketched in – still less the aliens, although in their case its obviously intentional, their obfuscation serving the narrative – but that doesn't matter: where the novel comes into its own is in its depiction of the methods and tactics of space warfare, and how relativity plays havoc with the combatants. For example, in their second encounter with the Taurans, Mandella and his compatriots learn that while for them only eight months have passed since the first battle, for the Taurans, almost a decade has elapsed – the effect of time dilation, the humans having lost nine years manoeuvring between collapsars (black holes) in their ship, the Anniversary. As a consequence, Tauran weapons systems have advanced dramatically, putting the humans at a distinct tactical disadvantage. In effect, the Tauran vessel the crew of the Anniversary encounters comes from their future.

This "future shock" becomes more pronounced when Mandella returns to Earth, where twenty-six years have passed to his two and society has changed beyond recognition – even more so seeing as the Earth he started out on was already markedly different to our own. I've peeked ahead in the book and the years stated at the start of each section advance from 2024 to 2389 to 2458 to 3143, so I suspect there's wilder stuff to come. If the second half of the novel lives up to the first, I may well investigate the sequel, Forever Free (1999), and maybe some of the other thematically linked novels and stories in the Forever War series, or perhaps later editions of the original novel, which apparently include material that was left out of the first edition. Either way, it's reignited a long-dormant desire for some more science fiction, a hankering that could perhaps be sated by some of the other SF books on my shelves (which I recently rearranged slightly following an office move... from the front of the house to the back).

Linked in Friday's Forgotten Books, 24/3/17.

Ian Fleming, Casino Royale (Signet, 1960)

No. 7 in a series of posts on books I've bought but haven't got round to blogging about properly – indeed may never get round to blogging about properly – so this will have to do.

What is it?
The first American paperback edition – at least under its original title – of Ian Fleming's debut James Bond novel, Casino Royale, published by Signet/New American Library in 1960.

Who illustrated the cover?
Barye Phillips, whose extensive cover credits include novels by Peter Rabe, Edward S. Aarons and Donald Hamilton.

Where and when did I buy it?
At the Lewes Book Fair, last year.

Why did I buy it?
I spotted it on the table of a dealer who was new to the Lewes Book Fair and couldn't resist it, despite already owning British Pan and Panther paperbacks of the novel. In my experience it's unusual to come across vintage US paperbacks at British book fairs, so that was one reason for picking it up; plus there's that great Barye Phillips cover. Furthermore, this 1960 Signet printing represents the first time Casino Royale appeared in paperback in the US under that title; previously it had been published in paperback under the title You Asked for It by Popular Library in 1955.

Have I read it yet?
Of course.

Manning Coles, Let the Tiger Die (Hodder, 1948)

No. 1 in a series of posts on books I've bought but haven't got round to blogging about properly – indeed may never get round to blogging about properly – so this will have to do.

What is it?
A British first edition of Let the Tiger Die by Manning Coles, published in hardback by Hodder & Stoughton in 1948 – the eighth in Coles' twenty-six-book series of novels starring British Intelligence agent Tommy Hambledon.

Who designed the dust jacket?
Ethel "Bip" Pares.

Where and when did I buy it?
At the Lewes Book Fair, a couple of years ago.

Why did I buy it?
Manning Coles is – or rather are; 'Manning Coles' is the nom de plume of two writers, Adelaide Frances Oke Manning and Cyril Henry Coles – one of a number of classic spy fiction authors whose work I'm interested in and intend to try at some point, so when I spotted this first edition on a dealer's table and then looked it up on my phone and discovered that it's rather scarce in first, and especially so in its wrapper (and still is today; I can only see a couple of – quite pricey – jacketed firsts available online at present), I couldn't resist, especially when the dealer knocked a few quid off the already-reasonable asking price.

Have I read it yet?
No.