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So in an online conversation I got into a dispute with someone over my assertion that James Blish's books were unjustly obscure. He asked me what authors of Blish's vintage weren't obscure, if we go by availability of books in new-book-stores. I'm a bit hesitant, because I suspect I'm chatting with one of those people who believes the Market is All-Wise, All-Knowing, Infallible, and Perfectly Represented by the Actions of Corporations, but it did prompt me to count books available.
The authors were chosen by me based on remembering them as important names, who'd been dead since about 1990. The count is what I could find on the mass-market and the trade paperback shelves without intense digging; a novel, or a short-story collection, or a collection of short novels I counted as one, and I tried not to count multiple editions as different books. The bookstore was the Borders, on Orchard Road. Books are those same old papery things.
- Alfred Bester: 5 books.
- James Blish: 1 (Cities in Flight, justifiably four books, but sold as one for about 35 years now).
- Philip K Dick: 24 (why is he so outrageously popular? Not saying he doesn't deserve it, but why?), plus Michael Bishop's Philp K Dick Is Dead, Alas, which under these circumstances must be regarded as irony.
- Jack Finney: 1.
- Fritz Leiber: 3.
- Murray Leinster: 1 (I think this is one of those Baen short story editions were things are edited enough to irritate old fans, but not enough that new readers will think they're modern stories).
- Erik Frank Russell: 0.
- Clifford Simak: 1 (and it's Way Station -- I'd have bet on City).
- Cordwainder Smith: 1 (Norstrilia, fair encapsulation of what he wrote).
- EE Doc Smith: 1 (huh).
- Olaf Stapledon: 2.
What it all means? Nothing much, except that everybody's better off than Erik Frank Russell fans. And the occasional person who tries to insist that more proof of science fiction's superiority over all other genres is that old classics stay in print while nobody remembers who wrote any best-selling ordinary fiction book from the 30s is quite wrong, but we all knew that before getting here. I don't know why I forgot to look up Richard Matheson.
Also I discovered they do have copies of Diana Wynne Jones's Tough Guide to Fantasy Land, as well as a new Get Fuzzy book and Complete Peanuts, 1955-56. Cool.
Trivia: Among the mental mathematical feats of Zerah Colburn, 1804-1840, was to determine that 232+1 is divisible by 641. Source: Yankee Science in the Making, Dirk J Struik.
Currently Reading: World History, 1815-1920, Eduard Fueter.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-14 03:04 pm (UTC)As I recall, BAEN has two Leinster reprints: PLANET OF ADVENTURE and MEDSHIP.
Old Earth Books reprinted all the Lensman books, so they should be available.
John Pelan's Darkside Press is in the middle of a monumental project to bring Simak back into print, with a twelve volume comprehensive collection of Simak short stories.
NESFA has two volumes of Smith (HC, so outside what you were looking for) and I think between them they collect all of his SF.
NESFA also has a very nice EFR collection.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-14 03:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-14 03:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-14 04:31 pm (UTC)Dick has become a sort of 'new age / paranormal' fixture. That's where my local Borders shelves him. If you check the titles, you'll see that it's his later, more insane stuff that's selling.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-15 01:43 am (UTC)Well, yeah, I know he's a new age/paranormal fixture; my question is just why he did get that position. I agree he's a great choice, but how did it come about that a guy who's been dead nearly a quarter-century is maybe more popular now that a couple of his books have been so loosely adapted into movies that you need careful genetic analysis to find the resemblance?
At least around here the earlier and more generally linear stuff seems to sell as well, even drifting stuff like We Can Build You.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-15 03:32 am (UTC)"how did it come about that a guy [...] is maybe more popular now that a couple of his books have been [...] adapted into movies [...]?"
Loose adaptations are still adaptations, and as long as his name is on it, at some point.. it will boost his sales. In the same way that I, Robot will help Asimov sell more, without mattering how closely it hews to the original story.
--G.R.R.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-15 10:22 am (UTC)Ah, but there are plenty of authors who get books adapted into movies -- Asimov and Heinlein, in particular, probably more frequently than Dick if you count since 1990 -- and I don't see any signs they get a similar ``halo effect.'' Yeah, Paycheck the movie should get sales of books that contain Paycheck, but why would that have any effect on getting people to read Martian Time-Slip, when the movie I, Robot won't get copies of Robots and Empire in bigger stocks?
Since 1990?
Date: 2005-06-15 02:14 pm (UTC)Asimov got NIGHTFALL, I ROBOT and nothing else I can recall. Pity, because the Wendell Urth series would make a great doomed A&E production
(Shame Maury Chaykin couldn't be cast as Urth).
Re: Since 1990?
Date: 2005-06-15 04:05 pm (UTC)Cordwainer Smith's book on the shelf was Norstrilia, right? It'd have to be that or Rediscovery of Man. The former I just introduced Drake to, and he seems to be most appreciative.
--Chiaroscuro
Re: Since 1990?
Date: 2005-06-15 05:03 pm (UTC)Yeah, it was Norstrilia the representative of Cordwainer Smith. Kinokuniya has, or at least often has, The Rediscovery of Man (though as it happens I've got all that through used books).
Re: Since 1990?
Date: 2005-06-15 05:46 pm (UTC)Please, may I? Please please please?
Perhaps his estate is easier to deal with than either the Asimov or the Heinlein Estate? The Heinlein Estate is pretty determined to protect the best interests of its trust and as far as I can tell, they don't think nightmarishly awful films by hostile directors really serve the books well.
Re: Since 1990?
Date: 2005-06-16 10:20 am (UTC)I think Bicentennial Man has a certain charm, although I'm not spending my money to buy it.
I'd sworn there was some other recent Asimov movie project, but IMDB seems to indicate I'm imagining things. I have a faint recollection of a supposed adaptation of The Caves of Steel which would move the time from the far-future to the present day, and the location from super-urban New York City to the jungles of a generic Central American country, and the plot from a locked-room murder mystery to hunting down killer robots, but that doesn't seem to have much documentary evidence unless it was ideas briefly considered and rejected for the I, Robot movie.
Rumors of how easy or hard the various author estates are to get along with I've missed, but I'm in a position where it's easier than ever to ignore movie-making news.
Re: Since 1990?
Date: 2005-06-17 06:43 am (UTC)--Chiaroscuro
Re: Since 1990?
Date: 2005-06-17 10:01 am (UTC)Say what you will for the Asimov adaptations, at least the robots look good. There's very little to gripe about on that score.
Re: Since 1990?
Date: 2005-06-15 05:01 pm (UTC)Besides Bicentennial Man I just know there's something else, although I can't put my name on it right now. The Probe TV series is a bit before this time, although as an obscure and short-lived series it's probably out on DVD in Europe or something by now.
I do think Wendell Urth series would be perfect for A&E, although I missed their Nero Wolfe series. I only discovered Nero through old-time radio recently.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-15 01:40 am (UTC)Yes, I do mean before 1990. I just needed some date that was convenient or I'd go off looking up Damon Knight and Jack Williamson and Fred Pohl and probably never stop.
I wasn't specifically rejecting hardcovers; the Borders here just doesn't stock so many of them. I think it may be a space or storage issue (though nonfiction and bestsellers will get hardcovers).
Kinokuniya, a Japanese chain bookstore, seems to have a wider range (at least, I've found more obscure books there), but it's more scattershot (probably a space issue; they try to give fair shelving to Japanese and other non-English books). And none of this tests the ability to order stuff; I'm afraid of what experimenting with the ordering of a book might get me into, and I was curious what someone who didn't know he liked a particular author might find.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-17 01:23 pm (UTC)Of course, Fred's Pohl and Williamson are still with us. Pohl has a collection coming out in the reasonably near future (six months or so).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-18 03:25 am (UTC)I'd heard the rumors (actually, I think your posts in rec.arts.sf.written) about a Fred Pohl collection and I'm glad for it. I haven't actually read Pohl, apart from The Space Merchants, (though one or two of his stories I've heard in old-time radio adaptation) in perhaps a decade or so and wanted to see if I was likely to appreciate him more nowadays.
Jack Finney
Date: 2005-06-14 06:19 pm (UTC)Re: Jack Finney
Date: 2005-06-15 01:44 am (UTC)And, you know, I don't think that was the book. (Well, a collection with that story.) I forget which it was, though. I'll have to check next time I'm there and report back.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-21 12:45 am (UTC)Seriously? Last time I went looking for that it was way out of print. Quick - grab a copy before they disappear again!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-21 10:18 am (UTC)Oh, will do. I didn't buy it last weekend because I'm trying to build up my cash reserves just a little bit ... it's hard, when you get things like a new Mutts book out at the same time a new Get Fuzzy is, you know.