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Post by dem bones on Oct 24, 2017 17:11:52 GMT
Justin Marriott [ed.] - Paperback Fanatic #37 (Oct. 2017) Fanatical Thoughts Fanatical Mails : Adam Collins, Andy Boot, Tom Tesarek, Andreas Decker, Rik Rawling, Nigel Taylor. Peter Wrobel - Los Angeles Paperback Fair 2017 Justin Marriott - Artists Assemble #6: Jean Michel Nicollet & Philippe Cazaumayou Ray Steptoe & Justin Marriott - A Visual Guide To Digit Books84 pages, vast bulk devoted to the two lead features. Editorial suggests #38 will be following very shortly! Available via Am*x*n UKThanks Justin.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 26, 2017 17:50:13 GMT
Told you he never sleeps. Hot on the heels of #37 Justin Marriott [ed] - Paperback Fanatic #38 (October, 2017) PF 38: Ama*on UKPF #38: Amaz*nJustin Marriott Ama*on page: Amaz*nAma*zon UKFrom the Press release: TOC etc, as and when .... "A history of Odhams Book Club"? Think I can guess one of the contributors. Well done, Crom!
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 26, 2017 18:00:09 GMT
I only wish he had mentioned #38 before I had ordered #37; it would have saved on postage. But who knows, maybe #39 will be announced tomorrow.
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Post by cromagnonman on Oct 28, 2017 13:07:53 GMT
Told you he never sleeps. Hot on the heels of #37 Justin Marriott [ed] - Paperback Fanatic #38 (October, 2017) PF 38: Ama*on UKPF #38: Amaz*nJustin Marriott Ama*on page: Amaz*nAma*zon UKFrom the Press release: TOC etc, as and when .... "A history of Odhams Book Club"? Think I can guess one of the contributors. Well done, Crom! Thanks Dem. The piece is only there at all because you yourself were kind enough to alert me to Justin's interest in it in the first place. And because of the heartening and continuing interest in the subject demonstrated by many denizens here at the Vault. My thanks go out to each and every one of you. Justin's exercised his usual designing flair on the piece. I think we've crammed in enough new illustrations to make it worth a second look however familiar anyone is with the original posts. I'm well pleased with it myself. Just one cautionary note; A*a*on has somehow contrived to transpose the two columns of text on page 15. They need to be read in reverse to make much sense. But nothing's been omitted insofar as I can see. No one should let my stuff delay them from getting to the real meaty stuff elsewhere in the issue though.
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Post by cromagnonman on Nov 3, 2017 12:51:25 GMT
This one is for Andy principally but everyone is free to join in naturally.
Andy: have just emerged from a highly enjoyable half hour absorbed in your article on Sea Wolves - Corsairs of the Sea. This is a series quite outside my experience, as you'd expect, but sounds precisely the sort of thing I would have been captivated by back in the day had it been available in translation. (Just as I was by the dubbed version of the 60s French serial The Flashing Blade which used to be a mainstay of the mid morning tv schedules during the school holidays when I was a kid).
It may seem strange, on the face of it, that a popular piece of Napoleonic Wars fiction like Bulmer's Fox should engender not a clone but instead initiate a series set several centuries in the past. But that would be to overlook the natural association that the two periods have long shared on account of their personalities and defining events.
It was the pirate flotillas of Drake and Grenville and Hawkins that were the genesis of the nascent Royal Navy: the Napoleonic Wars that established its dominance of the oceans. Historians as much as fictioneers have found it convenient to draw parallels and make associations. And of course both periods have always exerted the same attraction for storytellers and readers alike. I don't think its any coincidence that Nicholas Monsarrat's nautical epic The Master Mariner is bookended at one end by the Spanish Armada and by Trafalgar at the other.
I was particularly struck by the point you made about the heroes of the series harbouring contemporary mores. It made me wonder whether Charles Kingsley's WESTWARD HO! might have served as an inspiration for the series. Kingsley's was the first book to romanticize the Elizabethan pirates and privateers, and part and parcel of that process was the endowing of them with Kingsley's own Victorian do-gooding ethos and ethics. Kingsley would doubtless have been appalled and horrified by the cesspit vocabulary and manners of a real Elizabethan buccaneer had he ever had the chance to meet one. In this he was following in the footsteps of Harrison Ainsworth who had done a similar sanitizing job on that pirate of the turnpikes, Dick Turpin; in real life the worst kind of brutal thug.
Many years ago I published an article in which I speculated that Kingsley's book was a major influence on Robert E Howard's Solomon Kane stories. Kane likewise consorts and fraternises with real life privateers like Drake and Grenville and similarly makes improbable forays into foreign climes all but unknown to Europeans at that time. Food for thought at any rate.
Thanks again for a fascinating insight into a series hitherto unknown to me.
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Post by andydecker on Nov 5, 2017 19:34:20 GMT
Thanks for the nice word, cromagnonman! Glad you liked it.
Now and then I still have a soft spot for these adventures, be it Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe or the already mentioned Reman/Kent.
There is this strange gap between reality and romanticism. As a young lad I visited The German Museum in Munich which has a large exhibtion of planes – a Messerschmidt ME 109 hangs from the celing, there is a Juncker passenger plane you can walk through. But what impressed me most was the (life-sized) replica battery deck of a warship with its canons and a real U-Boat from 1906. The U-Boat gave me nightmares. The thought that lads not much older than me had to die in these tin-cans a few years later was chiling. Maybe reading the history of the Battle of Skagerak before wasn't helping.
I was young and impressionable, so even if this dose of reality was healthy, it fed my interest for all swashbuckling things. I also loved the novel Mr.Midshipman Easy. Back then. I don't know if I could stomach it now.
Horror fiction came later.
I never read Westward Ho!, but I looked it up and it has been translated. It is possible that these old seaman read this.
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Post by Dr Strange on Nov 6, 2017 9:39:42 GMT
The Flashing Blade - god, that brings back memories. I loved that show. Did you ever see the redubbed comedy versions on some Saturday morning kids show in the late 1980s?
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Post by dem bones on Nov 10, 2017 11:44:20 GMT
So sorry for the delay! Here's the Paperback Fanatic #38 toc. Copy on its way so will attempt to review both issues together as they seem very much a whole. Something of a dream line up - again. Very well done to all the contributors. James Doig - Larry Kent: Rival of Carter Brown Richard Toogood - Soldiers, Spies & Smut By Subscription Grady Hendrix - "But Mr. Tanner, Isn't That A Bit Close To The Rats?": A correspondence with Nick Sharman Jim O'Brien - Just Do It! An interview with Gordon Williams Andreas Decker - Sea Wolves: Corsairs Of The Sea Justin Marriott - Mad Scientists & Peeping Toms: Harry Adam Knight Tom Tesarek - The Whole World Is A Garden Graham Andrews - The Furious Futurologist: Algis Budrys
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Post by dem bones on Nov 14, 2017 8:35:49 GMT
Paperback Fanatic #37Jean-Michel Nicollet (Clark Ashton Smith, La Gorgone, Neo, 1986) As mentioned numbers #37 and #38 were conceived as a bumper issue but Amaz*n's software couldn't cope, necessitating a reformat. Consequently, #37 is Paperback Fanatic as unashamed visual experience over weighty read, an art book combining the self-explanatory A Visual Guide To Digit with a showcase devoted to the respectively, macabre-erotic and surreal futuristic creations of Jean-Michel Nicollet and Phillipe Caza. Have no idea if their work is as unfamiliar to other readers as it was me (very much doubt that to be the case), but am particularly taken by Nicollet's cover art for the Neo editions of Graham Masterton's The Djinn, Le Fanu's Madam Crowl's Ghost and Clark Ashton Smith compilation The Gorgon. The Digit content is plain gorgeous. Thanks to friend Junkmonkey we've a near comprehensive listing of titles, but this Ray Steptoe-Fanatic collaboration brings plenty to the party by way of an unfussy commentary, tantalising one-line micro-reviews and, of course, 100+ cover reproductions. Am particularly pleased to have a few more names to run alongside the lurid cover paintings. If your wants list is even vaguely realistic you're not doing it properly so adding another sixty odd titles won't do any harm. Up next Ain't no such thing as a typical issue of Mr. Marriott's publication, but if you've resisted until now and are keen to put that right Paperback Fanatic #38 makes for an ideal entry point. Back when I've deciphered three sides of spidery scrawl ....
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Post by helrunar on Nov 14, 2017 15:43:58 GMT
Those are some gorgeous covers. Thanks, Dem! I think my favorite is The Macabre Reader. Such a cozy little thing.
I am not at all familiar with Digit. Will have to see if there's a thread here about the press. Initially I thought these were some more of James's rarities from Down Under.
cheers, H.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 14, 2017 17:16:10 GMT
Those are some gorgeous covers. Thanks, Dem! I think my favorite is The Macabre Reader. Such a cozy little thing. I am not at all familiar with Digit. Will have to see if there's a thread here about the press. Initially I thought these were some more of James's rarities from Down Under. cheers, H. Arthur Holmes, More Terror In A Modern Vein: Robert Osbourne, The Pit And The Pendulum Tiny selection on this thread is very much the tip of the iceberg, Steve. The Visual Guide To Digit is among my very favourite PF galleries to date. According to the Visual Guide, the cover of The Macabre Reader was painted by Ed Emshwiller. Excellent Digit thread HEREJames, Crom, and Andy Decker are among #38's stellar line up!
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Post by helrunar on Nov 14, 2017 20:59:20 GMT
More exquisiteness! I wonder if that Pit and the Pendulum was a tie-in with the 1962 film version--seems likely.
H.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 15, 2017 6:54:29 GMT
More exquisiteness! I wonder if that Pit and the Pendulum was a tie-in with the 1962 film version--seems likely. H. It was, but sadly Digit marked the occasion with yet another Poe greatest hits package as opposed to a film novelisation. Details: The Pit And The Pendulum
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Post by severance on Mar 17, 2018 15:58:57 GMT
I'm way behind in reading the latest from the PF stable of goodies, too busy wrestling with my own piece for it - but now that it's out of the way I can catch up. Firstly PF37 which, as Dem has already mentioned, is more of a visual treat rather than a weighty read, but no less welcome for all that. Can't say I'm too familiar with Nicollet or Caza, but there's page after page of lovely art from the two of them - the REH, HPL and CAS covers especially are superb. The Digit guide is on another level, for me anyway. The covers by Michel Atkinson, who did some work on the Hank Jansons and, if I remember correctly, for some Erle Stanley Gardner at Pan, are sensational. The four James Howard novels he provided covers for and "Midnight Hazard" by Bruce Sanders* and "The Threat" by Richard MacGregor are now on my wants list, as is "Broken Doll" by Arthur Kent. The cover to William Ard's "The Naked and the Innocent" is by Victor Kalin but I can't locate where Digit swiped it from. The Sam Peffer covers on the Fredric Brown novels are stunning. Fantastic issue all round - now onto the next one. *Bruce Sanders only had two books published by Digit, the second one was "To Catch a Spy" with cover art by Sam Peffer - absolutely exquisite.
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Post by dem bones on Mar 20, 2018 5:32:23 GMT
I'm way behind in reading the latest from the PF stable of goodies, too busy wrestling with my own piece for it - but now that it's out of the way I can catch up. Firstly PF37 which, as Dem has already mentioned, is more of a visual treat rather than a weighty read, but no less welcome for all that. Can't say I'm too familiar with Nicollet or Caza, but there's page after page of lovely art from the two of them - the REH, HPL and CAS covers especially are superb. The Digit guide is on another level, for me anyway. The covers by Michel Atkinson, who did some work on the Hank Jansons and, if I remember correctly, for some Erle Stanley Gardner at Pan, are sensational. The four James Howard novels he provided covers for and "Midnight Hazard" by Bruce Sanders* and "The Threat" by Richard MacGregor are now on my wants list, as is "Broken Doll" by Arthur Kent. The cover to William Ard's "The Naked and the Innocent" is by Victor Kalin but I can't locate where Digit swiped it from. The Sam Peffer covers on the Fredric Brown novels are stunning. Fantastic issue all round - now onto the next one. About time I got around to tackling #38 and #39 too. Justin is so prolific these days it is hard to keep up! Agree that the Digit content steals issue #37.
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