Hagerstown Book Run (20 Feb 2022)


 

Took advantage of a bright, blustery Sunday and motored out to Hagerstown, Maryland to troll the used bookstores. Picked up a bunch of history and biography at 2nd & Charles, but all the Sci-Fi at Wonder Books. The latter had a 2-for-1 deal on mass market paperbacks, which regular readers know would make me happy.

The Haul:
  -- The Tar-Aiym Krang -- Alan Dean Foster -- 1972
  -- Probability Moon -- Nancy Kress -- 2000
  -- Midnight at the Well of Souls -- Jack Chalker -- 1977
  -- Bloodhype -- Alan Dean Foster -- 1973
  -- Black Sun Rising -- C. S. Friedman -- 1991

Also picked up "King Jesus", by Robert Graves. Haven't read it yet, but I guess it's either an alternate history or an alternate myth, depending on your tribal allegiance. Genre-adjacent, at least.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

S.T.P -- Robert Greenfield -- 1974

Image
  A Journey Through America With the Rolling Stones   Robert Greenfield lived and traveled with the Rolling Stones as they prepared for and executed their 1972 tour of the U.S. and Canada. S.T.P. was an acronym for "Stones Touring Party", which consisted of the band, crew, handlers, PR flacks, security, photographers, film crew, celebrities, groupies, hangers-on ... and Greenfield, pet journalist. Considered to be the first in-depth account of the 1970's traveling circus Rock-and-Roll tour, it was well-regarded at the time, but fell flat with the public. Only 5000 copies were printed. The book is a product of an interesting moment in time. Rock and Roll had survived its teenage Fad period before morphing into a viable artistic vehicle for young adults by the mid-sixties. After that second, short-lived interval (certainly over by Altamont, if not already by 1968) Rock and Roll transformed into a mass-market commercial product performed in 10,000 seat arenas. There's no...
Read more

Astounding -- Alec Nevala-Lee -- 2018

Image
John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction   A history of the early days of modern Science Fiction, centered about the lives of John W. Campbell Jr. and three of his proteges: Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and Isaac Asimov. A sometimes interesting account of a crucial era in the history of Science Fiction, but mainly just biographies of the titular personalities. Most of the interactions among these characters occurred before World War II, long before the lifetimes of anyone likely to be reading. I'm a longtime SF reader who grew up reading Heinlein and Asimov, and started reading Analog intermittently from about the time of Campbell's death.  As invested as I am in the SF of the second half of the 20th Century, the history of the first half didn't interest me that much. Really, if you want to know what was happening in SF way back when, just read the stories! (SPOILER: It mostly sucked, especially Hubbard an...
Read more

The Tuloriad -- John Ringo and Tom Kratman -- 2009

Image
  Whence we learn the history of how the Posleen boiled forth to scourge the spaceways. A small surviving band of Posleen are whisked off Earth by the Indowy / Himmit, and sent off to discover the ancient and forgotten origin of their rampage across the galaxy. A team of human clerics chases them in the hope of converting the race, and leading them back to a peaceful existence in Galactic civilization. The designs of the Aldenata are revealed, and it seems that they themselves burst upon a galaxy already ravaged from a genocidal onslaught of unknown origin. This, and the John Ringo novel "Eye of the Storm", the last two published in the series, seem to be setting up a new existential threat to humanity, presumably those responsible for the pre-Aldenata catastrophe. Nothing has been published since 2009, though. This novel, like the rest of the series, is a well-written Space Opera romp -- leave your slide-rule at the door. I've greatly enjoyed this series, and have read a...
Read more