|
Post by andydecker on Aug 23, 2018 18:51:42 GMT
I stumbled upon the genre hardcovers of W. H. Allan while looking something up. According to the ISFDB W.H.Allan begann publishing horror and science fiction hardcovers in 1963. With Kurt Singer's Ghost Book.
I browsed a bit in the lists and discovered that they published later such diverse books as Martin Caidin's Cyborg long before it became a tv series or a lot of anthologies by Haining, Lamb, Campbell. In later years they did a lot of Dr.Who and Moorcock. The program seems to be a bit all over the place. Graham Masterton vs Terrance Dicks?
I wondered. Did these hardcovers always were published before the paperback edition? In the case of Dr.Who which was strictly YA it seems a bit expensive for the audience.
Were these HC successful? Nice and special editions? Did they have a visible presence in the bookstores? Or something for the collectors crowd? (If back then there was a collectors crowd?)
I ask because in Germany the idea of Masterton's Djinn as a hardcover was unthinkable at the time. Like sf this was paperback only.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Aug 23, 2018 20:06:51 GMT
To best of my knowledge, in the cases of the supernatural/ horror titles by Hugh Lamb, Kurt Singer, Ramsey Campbell and Peter Haining, the W. H. Allen hard-cover edition preceded the paperback equivalent. Lovely books, often with striking dust-jacket imagery. None of that elitist "special limited numbered edition" nonsense about them, either. Have no idea of the print runs, but like William Kimber, Souvenir Press, Severn House & Co., they were a fixture in public libraries, which probably explains why they'd publish Masterton and or Dr. Who novels in hard cover.
|
|
|
Post by Michael Connolly on Aug 24, 2018 13:01:59 GMT
W.H. Allen also published the British hardback edition of The Giant Rat of Sumatra by Richard L. Boyer in 1977. I got it out of the library about 1981 and managed to buy a mint copy soon after. I still recommend it as the best Holmes pastiche. It's a revised version of the US paperback published by Warner Books in 1976.
|
|
|
Post by ramseycampbell on Aug 24, 2018 13:11:43 GMT
The hardcover of Superhorror did indeed precede the paperback (which we retitled).
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Aug 25, 2018 19:21:32 GMT
The hardcover of Superhorror did indeed precede the paperback (which we retitled). The W.H. Allen hardover was the first book of yours I every bought, via - where else? - the Fantasy Centre. Had previously loaned it from Cubitt Town Library and thought "maybe there's something to this contemporary stuff after all ..."
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Aug 25, 2018 21:24:04 GMT
Thanks for the infos!
The libraries I of course forgot. Its been years I had a library card or had to visit one for research.
I browsed the covers of WHA. They were of a high quality.
I never read the Boyer. Wasn't this one of the first Holmes pastiches?
|
|
|
Post by Michael Connolly on Aug 28, 2018 12:24:26 GMT
Thanks for the infos! The libraries I of course forgot. Its been years I had a library card or had to visit one for research. I browsed the covers of WHA. They were of a high quality.
I never read the Boyer. Wasn't this one of the first Holmes pastiches?
Given the huge number of novel-length Holmes pastiches that appeared since Nicholas Meyer's (very dull) The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974), Boyer's novel does count as one of the first. It is one of the best and, given the low quality control over most of the current Holmes pastiches that are currently being churned out, I doubt it will be surpassed. It's been reprinted a lot so is easy to find.
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Aug 28, 2018 17:35:58 GMT
Given the huge number of novel-length Holmes pastiches that appeared since Nicholas Meyer's (very dull) The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974), Boyer's novel does count as one of the first. It is one of the best and, given the low quality control over most of the current Holmes pastiches that are currently being churned out, I doubt it will be surpassed. It's been reprinted a lot so is easy to find. I know what you mean. Here in Germany Holmes pastiches have become something of a cottage industry, a lot on the Ebook pulp circuit. A lot - or most? - of it in novella length. I don't have anything against pastiches, I used to read them. But nowadays, when they have become a veritable torrent, which made them mindnumbingly unoriginal, not to mention mostly horrible where the historical details are concerned, I don't care any longer. I prefer to re-read the original now and then. I even passed the Horowitz. Too many mediocre to bad reviews.
But I will put the Boyer on the list. I knew it existed, but somehow never came to read it.
|
|
|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 28, 2018 18:45:43 GMT
I even passed the Horowitz. There are two . . .
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Aug 28, 2018 19:19:10 GMT
I even passed the Horowitz. There are two . . . The first one.
The second one I thought even less interesting. I don't share the fascination most people seem to have with Moriarty. The only Moriarty version I ever liked was the one they did on Elementary.
|
|
|
Post by jamesdoig on Aug 28, 2018 21:06:08 GMT
Given the huge number of novel-length Holmes pastiches that appeared since Nicholas Meyer's (very dull) The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974), Boyer's novel does count as one of the first. It is one of the best and, given the low quality control over most of the current Holmes pastiches that are currently being churned out, I doubt it will be surpassed. It's been reprinted a lot so is easy to find. I know what you mean. Here in Germany Holmes pastiches have become something of a cottage industry They have been around a long time. Ferret published this lot collected by editors - I've never actually got around to reading it:
|
|
|
Post by Michael Connolly on Aug 31, 2018 12:24:08 GMT
I even passed the Horowitz. There are two . . . The first by Anthony Horowitz, The House of Silk, was so dull it was an effort to finish it. His second, Moriarty, was so bad I couldn't finish it at all. Holmes only appears in the last chapter, in an adventure that is very silly indeed. Horowitz is a hack who has hit lucky. Quite incredibly, in a later paperback of edition of The House of Silk, he lists ten do's and don'ts of how to write a Holmes pastiche.
|
|
|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 31, 2018 15:22:56 GMT
Horowitz is a hack who has hit lucky. MAGPIE MURDERS is not bad.
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Aug 31, 2018 18:19:05 GMT
Horowitz is a hack who has hit lucky. Quite incredibly, in a later paperback of edition of The House of Silk, he lists ten do's and don'ts of how to write a Holmes pastiche. One German review, whose reader was very lukewarm about the novel, listed 15 elements which lesser writers of Holmes pastiches include in their stories. From a walk on (or more) of Mycroft, references of Irene Adler and old cases, to the usual catch phrases. Horowitz included 14
Personally I thought the list a bit too narrow. Doyle adhered to a formula, especially in the domestic scenes of Holmes' and Watson's shared flat. I guess true Holmes fans have written books about this, but some elements have to be included.
I like a lot of Hororwitz' tv work. His screenplays for Midsumer Murders or Foyle's War. But I draw a line at books like his latest, where he is own hero.
|
|
|
Post by cromagnonman on Aug 31, 2018 20:11:56 GMT
Horowitz a hack!?!
A little harsh - in my opinion at least. But then I can be very forgiving of anyone who started their career as a protege of the great Richard Carpenter on Robin of Sherwood. I seem to remember Horowitz contributing two outstanding episodes to the final series. One with the lovely Cathryn Harrison as a feisty last defender of Camelot, and another where the bog monster Cromm Cruac turned up. Each an attribute guaranteed to score bonus points in this corner of the Neolithic.
|
|