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Post by robertmammone on Nov 5, 2010 11:00:14 GMT
Still struggling to get hold of a copy of this. If Smiths don't have one when I call in at lunchtime I'll have to resort to Amazon. I really fancy the Mark Samuels' story. Zombies in Mexico City and the worshippers of Santa Muerte sounds doubly gruesome. That and the Tanith Lee story are the best in the book. All round, it's really quite good, though the 'comedy' ending lets the side down.
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Post by robertmammone on Oct 29, 2010 5:39:47 GMT
Those scans of paperwork from the early 70s just reinforces how quick everything is today. Imagine typing (I used to!) on a typewriter, then mailing the letter, then waiting for the typed response, or even (gasp!) a telephone call!
I think i need a lie down.
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Post by robertmammone on Oct 19, 2010 2:31:33 GMT
The Machen letters came from Flinders Books for $12. Nicolson's Fingers of Fear came from the Kill City crime bookshop. While in Melbourne I took the opportunity to visit John Loder, the guy who wrote the Australian Crime Fiction Fiction Bibliography. He has quite an astonishing collection of crime - so I was able to handle first editions of books like The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and the colonial edition of Dracula (which he bought at Grants bookshop for $600). His collection of Australian crime must be second to none with a complete set of Guy Boothby, Paul McGuire, rare B.L. Farjeon, Arthur Upfield etc etc. Quite something to behold. Aah, Flinders Books. Haven't been in either of the city stores for a while nor the one down the peninsula. Overpriced, I've always thought, and as for the attitude of some of the staff... Still, they do get good stuff in, may have to pay them a visit.
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Post by robertmammone on Oct 18, 2010 10:46:52 GMT
Thanks Robert, Melbourne sounds wonderful, like London ten years ago before the bulk of the remaindered bookstores and second hand shops mutated into mobile phone outlets and bargain DVD stores. i don't think any of us realised how spoilt rotten we were at the time. My girlfriend (now wife) and I were in London in 2003 and I was really eager to check the London 2nd hand bookstores out - Oxford St was where I headed. Imagine my dismay at discovering that they were basically stocked with books I could just as easily have got at home! Sigh.
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Post by robertmammone on Oct 18, 2010 10:44:14 GMT
Yeah, that green guy is pretty cool, though I'm not sure what relationship he has with the actual book. As Rob says, Melbourne is great for bookshops, and always has been - whereas in Sydney most of the CBD secondhand bookshops have gone the way of the dodo. Though I did hear that City Basement Books in Melbourne recently shut its doors, which is a shame. It's probably true to say that things have dried up over the years - it's harder to find vintage paperbacks from the 50s and 60s, let alone desirable hard backs. Still, you can still jag nice things from time to time. Charity book stores and fairs and the Sunday markets are still going strong, but again things are slowly drying up. City Basement Books - that's the one. Their end of lease sale quickly turned into $1 per book - ended up buying about 60 by the last day. You're right about older books drying up - apart from a heap of Agatha Christie books in one shop where I catch the train, there isn't a lot about. James - where did you get the Machen letters book?
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Post by robertmammone on Oct 17, 2010 8:24:11 GMT
Just got back from melbourne, which must be one of the best cities for bookshops. Pickings include: i particularly like the look of him! that's something i've been meaning to ask you, James. what's the general situation with second hand bookshops in Australia? are they relatively plentiful or, as seems to be the case in Britain, disappearing at an alarming rate? * relax, i'm not planning on emigrating * I'm not James, but as someone who lives in Melbourne, the second hand bookshop situation is pretty good. One big one closed down (end of lease) recently right in the heart of the city, but there are two other decent sized (if over priced) stores in the Melbourne CBD, and if you venture out into the suburbs, there's probably close to another two dozen of varying size/quality that I could think of. Coupled with heaps of charity shops, and you've got some decent cheap sources of books.
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Post by robertmammone on Oct 3, 2010 11:31:41 GMT
Has issue 16 sold out?
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Post by robertmammone on Oct 3, 2010 11:20:37 GMT
Chainsaw Terror is an absolute riot I love it. When I met Shaun I got him to sign my copy. Never read Come the Night so it would be great to see the differences. Could someone clear this up for me - Chainsaw Terror was released (I have a dim recollection of a reddish cover with a man wielding a chainsaw), then it was withdrawn, re-edited and released with that blackish cover with a face under Nick Blake?
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Post by robertmammone on Oct 2, 2010 21:15:38 GMT
hi robert. after the mild kicking PS Publications took on here yesterday, you would have to revive this thread ! personally, much as i like Basil Copper and his horror stories, i never felt the least inclined to go for the collected stories no matter that PS have made them so "affordable" at £100. i like them in the original collections where the nine or ten stories are given room to shine. Not After Nightfall, From Evil's Pillow, Here Be Daemons and When Footsteps Echo are four i can think of that are well worth tracking down. i was in the local library earlier and noticed that at least some of Basil Copper's crime fiction has been reissued as large print titles in the Linford Mystery series. maybe they'll eventually get around to the horrors? Thanks for the recommendations. I'll have a hunt around and see what I can find.
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Post by robertmammone on Oct 2, 2010 12:11:46 GMT
I've seen reference to other collections of Coopers writing around the traps - does anyone know anything about them? The titles appear to be Whispers in the Night and The House of the Wolf.
A real pity the PS volumes are at such a high price point because I can't ever justify buying them at that cost - esp. now with the large number of typos people have commented on.
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Post by robertmammone on Oct 2, 2010 10:49:43 GMT
By rights that should of been a picture of Rupert Murdoch but what is really freaky is that the normal black rat skull could feasibly fit into the eye socket of the gigantic rat. I really HATE rats to the point of phobia, even mice and to think in the article they don't rule out the idea of finding something like it in the unexplored Timor Jungle, well it sets my teeth on edge. I killed a rat once - little bastard was nosing around the backyard so I gave it a whack with the business end of a large broom. And that was that.
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Post by robertmammone on Oct 2, 2010 10:48:31 GMT
Martin Cruz Smith - Nightwing (Futura, 1978) Blurb `A whirlwind of swooping, hungry, sharp‑fanged creatures comes pulsatingly alive...' — KIRKUS REVIEWS An ancient Indian medicine man utters a curse against the world. His flesh is stripped by NIGHTWING And he is just the first... In the festering caverns of the desert waste they breed, and multiply... Now, driven by hunger, ravenous for blood, the hideous plague of vampire bats sweeps across the American Southwest. The night is rent by the whisper of wings — and the sounds of screaming death ...
Ninety year old Hopi witchdoctor Abner Tampi is so sick of the exploitation of the Native American that he decides to bring on the end of the world. His one friend, Youngman Duran, an ex-convict who now acts as a deputy on the reservation, is amused at the old man's antics - until suddenly the biggest, meanest army of rabid vampire bats abandon their Arizona desert roosts en masse .... After a warm up versus the local sheep community, the bats take to attacking man and Abner is the first of their several human victims (it's what he wanted). As if trying to stop the vicious bloodsuckers weren't impossible enough, Youngman learns that their fleas carry bubonic plague, something the Najavo's Capitalist-minded leader is keen to cover up to keep his million dollar projects on line. Complicating matters yet further is the arrival of mad vampire bat obsessed immunologist Hayden Paine who has a grudge against the creatures (his brilliant father, Joe, was eaten alive by tarantulas while exploring a bat cave). i'm up to the halfway mark and to date the novel has as much to do with the appalling treatment of Native Americans as no nonsense bat attacks though the latter, when they come, are magnificently bloody, notably the massacre of a bunch of do-gooder whites (with hidden agenda's). Also, Abner's corpse has vanished. Has it been stolen by fellow Fire Clan or has he, as Youngman's superior Selwyn suspects, truly risen from the grave? Brilliant stuff. This was filmed as Bats, yes?
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Post by robertmammone on Jul 24, 2010 7:35:14 GMT
I re-read this over the last couple of weeks - in the bus, at the doctor, etc -, but finished the rest in one sitting. What a dense read. And still, compared to your serial-killer-of-the-month book this is so good. The details, which are often as obsessive as the killer´s fantasys, the rotten characters, the gore, the fun the writers have with the overblown gothic setpieces. I don´t care if the plot doesn´t make a bit of sense. To combine Lovecraft with Horror Rock, what a novel idea at the time. In which novel to do you have a starved hog killing a punk and a poisongas attack at the Royal Albert Hall by a psycho? I was especially intrigued by the rambling about the supposedly small boundaries between fantasy and reality. And how things changed but remained the same in the 25 odd years since publication. Today you got the vampire craze of young girls which seems to be okay for parents and mediahounds, but on another level this is just the same as the teenage enthusiasm for Death Metal or Rock which was back then seen as the devil´s tool. This novel is the counterpart of today´s slickly produced thriller fare, where every backtext reads the boring same. It is clunky and in parts overwritten, I know. And it is still better and more original then most of today´s output. I began reading the Slade books in the early 90s - had seen the books during the 80s but didn't have the inclination too buy them. I recall Headhunter being my first, it kept me sane during a particularly dicey plane flight, for which I'll be forever grateful! I think those early books are the best of the lot - I believe the original writers under the Slade name has changed in recent years and it shows in the latter books.
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Post by robertmammone on Jul 24, 2010 7:30:33 GMT
Thanks for that, Ramsey. It's appreciated. And Steve. Craig, honestly, I don't want anything for them, other than the postage at most. Just send me your address and we'll work out that when I post them to you. David, if you have any issues left, I wouldn't mind purchasing them, and paying for the postage to Australia. Drop me a line (I think my e-mail address is visible under my name). Interested in reading the Gemmell interview - his death was a great loss.
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Post by robertmammone on Feb 13, 2010 1:55:30 GMT
Yeah, this one was an original, in as much as you can say such a thing. in the great Robinson scheme of things, it's a sequel to Jones' The Mammoth Book of Terror from 1991. Thanks for your help - just bought a copy from ebay and wanted to be sure what I was buying.
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