A look at the history of human-whale conflict

Journey to the Orient by Gérard de Nerval
First US edition, New York University Press, 1972

I've been spending way too much time rooting around for books online. I can't vouch for all of these, but maybe you can.

This list comes from an Amazon customer review. Each bullet describes a story from an anthology of Australian science-fiction:

• VR sex suit rpg game action AI autonomy.
• Vegetable methuselah's Kal-Elesque odyssey, and brief Phoenix rising.
• Researching anonymous fax.
• An enhanced policeman gets entangled in a billionaire's bizarre Dr Moreau creations as art and save the child schemes.
• A look at the history of human-whale conflict, interesting background to Greatwinter.
• Starship reality tv first contact special episode.
• Australia decides it has had enough of how it has been treated, and decides to slough off the rubbish it is coated with.
• Blasted corpse is a memory problem.
• Microchip's messianic murder complex.
• Historical invention history work.
• Long space exploration voyages and religion don't mix.
• Escort is diversion from ecology horrors.
• Time diving topology.
• Author's spectral nazi confab.
• Bomber's babe diversion causes nuclear truck turnaround.
• Schizoid dream delving blind fighter breakthrough.
• Buggered robot's Lagrangian manoeuvre.
• Kleptochick's Melbourne.
• Seduced by stiff with fangs.
• Dimorphic dinodancers.
• Terminal type's star turn.
• AI Space Odyssey gets an extra.
• Generation ship group dysfunction.
• Suprise revival's stringent society shock.
• Numerology nutcase.
• Arty androids are revolution cover.
• Psycholobot's a bit we
• Pilot handling starflight stressful to the subconscious helps hunted mutant's sentient spacecraft.
• Crash Jordan belched. First line. That sets the tone. A Flash Gordon spoof. Sixty years after being a 'planet-saving superhero' he has to attend a function with his now equally-aged and no longer super-babe wife, and to cap it off, his arch-enemy Thing the Fiendish is being release.

Mission in Guemo by S. B. Hough
???!!!


The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras
(with Jeanne Moreau, a still from the movie version)
just reprinted by Open Letter


The Knacker's ABC by Boris Vian, Evergreen/Grove
to supplement my previous Vian cover roundup

Norwegian edition of Heartsnatcher by Boris Vian
courtesy of Gojia2012


Anna Kavan, A Scarcity of Love
I find this image heartbreaking


A Change of Heart by Michel Butor, Paul Bacon cover


phil parks cover for lucius shepard, the last time
(I have no idea what this is)


Octave Mirbeau, Torture Garden
insane 1955 pulp edition


Henri Michaux by Malcolm Bowie
Michaux's art on the jacket


The Voice - Selected Poems of Robert Desnos


Fernando Arrabal, The Burial of the Sardine
early work of fiction, around the time of Baal Babylon

French Science Fiction

After posting the cover images from the Presence du Futur series, I went on a hunt for actual French science fiction in English translation. I was not surprised to find only a couple collections, though perhaps I didn't search hard enough (ie, I didn't yet buy the 800-page book French Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Pulp Fiction from McFarland Press).*** [Before I continue, I should plug University of Nebraska Press's reprints of early SF titles (disclaimer: I do not know enough about science fiction to correctly use the apparently different terms "SF" and "sci-fi"), including their Jules Verne books. Check out their blog. I also stumbled upon (if you can call searching Amazon for "Jordan Stump" stumbling) Jordan Stump's new-ish translation of Verne's The Mysterious Island.]

My most "bizarre, uproarious" discovery was Damon Knight's 1965 anthology 13 French Science-Fiction Stories. Copies can be found in abundance on the internet.

The uncredited cover reminds me of the Saragossa Manuscript paperback cover featured in this post. Let me blow-up the cat woman's face for you:


I'm very fond of the back cover of this book, which answers the question of how you could possibly market French science fiction to America:


Best of all is the text that appears on the first half-title page (ie, the very first page of the book) under the title "Gift-Wrapped Amour":

"Vanas come gift-wrapped in plastic bags. They are perfect semblances of human females and just made for love. You can train them just as easily as you would a dog to obey even your slightest whim. Their skin is glossy like the pelt of an animal, pale saffron in color, with reddish-brown highlights. They have the faint odor of musk. Their breasts are high and firm, their nipples tawny-colored. They have two great eyes of melting turquoise.

"They were the answer to everyman's dream. But, Slovic made the mistake of falling in love with one!"

Let me rewrite that for you: Everyman Slovic falls in love with the tawny-colored nipples of his pale-saffron robot woman.

Here are the Contents:

--"Juliette" by Claude F. Cheinisse
--"Blind Pilot," "Non Humans," and "Moon Fishers" by Charles Henneberg
--"Olivia" and "Notary and the Conspiracy" by Henri Damonti
--"The Vana" by Alain Doremieux
--"The Devil's Goddaughter" by Suzanne Malaval
--"After Three Hundred Years" by Pierre Mille
--"The Monster" by Gerard Klein
--"A Little More Caviar" by Claude Veillot
--"Chain of Love" by Catherine Cliff

AND THE KICKER:

"Dead Fish" by Boris Vian!

Yes, this book actually concludes with a 12-page story by "a Satrap of the College of 'Pataphysics." Knight thanks Queneau-translator Barbara Wright in his short list of acknowledgments, so perhaps that's how Vian wound up here.

Alternate cover (I guess for the 1972 edition), which includes a hilarious subtitle (this is not my scan):


Here's the other volume I found: Travelling towards Epsilon: An Anthology of French Science Fiction, edited by Maxim Jakubowski and published in 1976 by New English Library. There are various editions available, which I'll probably wind up buying sight unseen for the covers (none of the editions available on Amazon include cover images).


The cover art by Christos Kondeatis reminds me of album covers by Italian prog bands!

More on this book later. I'm running out of steam.

***McFarland Press has a bunch of interesting titles, but because they're geared toward the library market, their books are expensive. Still, these look great:

-- Early German and Austrian Detective Fiction (the description mentions Adolph Müllner’s 1828 novella The Caliber -- published 13 years before Edgar Allan Poe's "Murders of the Rue Morgue" -- I'll have to research that).

-- An entire book about my hero Lee Van Cleef.

-- Czech New Wave Filmmakers in Interviews

-- The Mexican Cinema of Darkness

Another side note: I keep winding up at the website for Black Coat Press, mainly because of recent searches for Villiers de l'Isle Adam (subject of future posts on this site). I found myself there again today because the editors of that French Sci-fi encyclopedia, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, have done some things for them.

What is 'Pataphysics?

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

Boris Vian

A photo of Boris Vian for my author photo archive. This image comes from the back cover of the Rapp & Whiting edition of Vian's Heartsnatcher (1968; French title: L'arrrache-coeur).

Dalkey Archive recently published an edition of Heartsnatcher.

Jacket design by Lawrence Edwards. Here's the front cover:

Boris Vian, Foam of the Daze

Brad, the editor of the great Neglected Books site [neglectedbooks.com], posted an annotated list of 20 out-of-print books I made in June of 2000. He added links to all the book titles. I'm going to post images of the books discussed (if I still have them). The permanent link for the list is here.

4. L'Ecume des Jours by Boris Vian (1920 - 1959). English translations:

-- Mood Indigo (Grove 1968, tran. John Sturrock)
-- Froth on the Daydream (Quartet 1967, trans. Stanley Chapman)
-- Foam of the Daze (Tam Tam Books 2004, trans. Brian Harper)

Tosh Berman of Tam Tam Books is publishing new translations of Vian's books. Here's a link to Foam of the Daze.

Two covers of Froth on the Daydream from Wikipedia (I don't own these editions):


Grove's edition (Front photo credited to Shaumiane Production -- get in touch if you know what that means, because Google isn't helping):




While I'm at it, here are scans of more of Vian's books in English translation.

Tom Recchion (who has a new album out on Birdman) designs Tam Tam's covers:




No designer or illustrator listed for this cover:

Two plays published by Grove:



Illustration by Peter Miles on the below book from Quartet: