Belloq was Right

Different people recall different portions of favorite films. I tend to remember snippets of dialogue. This actually evolved into something of a game with the Kidette, then a shorthand way of speaking, relating films to daily life. So, if someone tries to do the same old thing, but differently: "He's just changing the dog's name." Or if someone claims to be a good guy: "There are no good guys, there are no bad guys; there's just a bunch of guys." So, while some might take away from Raiders of the Lost Ark the image of the adroit swordsman being shot or an inattentive Nazi being sliced and diced by a flying wing's propeller, I tend to remember what Belloq, the evil French archaeologist, said about his pocket watch:

 "You know it's worthless. Ten dollars from a vendor in the street. But I take it, I bury it in the sand for a thousand years, it becomes priceless... like the Ark. Men will kill for it. Men like you and me."

Belloq was right, you know. Let anything acquire a patina of age and it becomes valuable. I often wonder what future archaeologists, whether evolved Cockroaches or visiting scientists from Altair IV, will make of the room where I do all my writing. A book shrine? An ancient library? A temple dedicated to the triune god Asimov-Bradbury-Clarke? And what if my remains are there, my skeleton sitting at a typewriter or laptop? The last Archivist? The Priest of Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler? Divine Being? Maybe I'll end up in an alien museum. I do like museums.

However, we need not wait so long to see our things become valuable. Recently, I was book-searching on the internet, curious about some of the Lovecraftian publications from Necronomicon Press. The results were quite startling.

The three booklets pictured contain prose and poetry written by HP Lovecraft that had not been previously collected for publication. Mostly, they consist of amateur writings from HPL's Amateur Press Association days; poetry and essays from what we would now call "fanzines;" poems, essays and vignettes culled from his corpus of letters; and discarded drafts of later stories. When published, they each cost $4.95 in the late 70s, early 80s, so I spent about $15 for all three, plus a modicum of postage. I figured they had probably increased a bit in value over the years, driven by collector demand and the increasing worthlessness of the US dollar. However, I was not prepared to find a listing offering the three booklets for $224.95+$8.95 s&h. I also found six reproductions of Lovecraft's articles from The Californian offered for $350 and a two-volume set of HPL's letters to Robert Bloch for $225. The HPL Christmas Book sold for $1.50, but I found listings of it for $41.25+s&h. The History of the Necronomicon (1992 @  $1.50) is available for $84. Even Lovecraft Studies #7, Necronomicon Press' scholarly periodical which contained my article "The Old Man and the Sea," is available on Amazon for $35, quite a bit more than the original.

I don't plan on getting rid of those booklets anytime soon, but it did set me wondering about some of my own Small Press efforts, both the Sherlock Holmes stories published by Gryphon Publications and my own modest chapbooks that I published under the imprint of Running Dinosaur Press. Was it possible that either had gathered enough of a time-worn patina to become valuable or (dare I suggest?) respectable? Well, as it turned out, they had acquired much more value than I suspected.

The first book I looked at was Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Ancient Gods. The story was first published in the Trek fanzine "Holmesian Federation." I've already written about the genesis of the story, so won't go into it here, except to say that it does have some significance amongst Holmes/Lovecraft pastiches because it was the very first story to combine the two literary universes, beating the excellent Pulptime by a few years. When Gary Lovisi republished the story as a chapbook, the price was $5. I thought it a little steep at the time, but I knew that specialty publications were often priced in advance of trade-published books. In a recent listing, I found it priced at $45+$4.95 s&h. Of course, I have in the past seen it listed at $60 or so, and, once, for $112 on Amazon by a rare books dealer. 

The sort-of sequel to the book, Sherlock Holmes in The Dreaming Detective, also published by Gary Lovisi's Gryphon Books was listed recently for $25+$5 s&h. That is more in line with what I would expect for a specialty book now out of print (for the time being), but I have seen other listings in the past asking upwards of $100 for a "Fine to Very Fine" reading copy.

I have to admit that neither listing (Necronomicon Press nor Gryphon Books) really shocked me all that much. After all, the quality was very high, the books were unique and not available elsewhere, and both presses were (and are) highly regarded by scholars, fans and collectors. The shock came when I looked up some of my own Running Dinosaur Press publications.

I have to admit that Running Dinosaur Press was never more than a hobby for me, a creative outlet for myself and others. Despite being a paying market for stories, poems and illustrations, I never made a penny on any booklet. Press runs were meager. When I was invited to sit on a Small Press panel at the 1991 World Fantasy Convention, I represented more the Micro Press than Small Press. And I purposely kept prices at a minimum, just enough to cover production and postage. I truly thought that the chapbooks would never be of interest to anyone but those whose names appeared within.

A Walk in the Dark had a horror/dark fantasy theme. I asked for poems about what scared people and received several hundred submissions, out of which I chose 49. It included such notables as Janet Fox, Steve Rasnic Tem, Duane Rimel, t. Winter-Damon, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Scott Green, and a contribution from Randall Jarrell (posthumously) via his publisher. The cover was light blue, as were all RDP covers, and the price was just $2.35, which included mailing. So I was more than a little surprised when I found a listing offering it for $26.25+$4 s&h.

In Alternate Lives, I gave authors the difficult task of exploring alternate histories, timelines and universes via poems and fiction of 100-200 words. There are a few anthologies that explore the theme, my favorite being Worlds of Maybe, but, let's face it, it's a daunting task to create a new history or timeline, put some characters in it and tell a story in anything shorter than a novel. And, yet, about thirty people accepted the challenge and did a very good job. The price on this booklet was only $1.25 (again, including postage), but I found a listing that offered a copy for $30+$5 s&h.

The last publication I want to look at is HP Lovecraft's Fungi from Yuggoth, his famous sonnet sequence, permission for which I obtained from Arkham House. I wanted to publish this for a hew reasons. I believe there is a story told in the course of the sonnets, and argued that in an issue of Robert Price's Crypt of Cthulhu, and continued that argument in this booklet.  Though a few Lovecraftian scholars agree, most do not, so over the years it has become a bit of a tempest in a Lovecraftian teacup. The second reason is that I wanted to illustrate the sonnets, in which I was joined by my good friend Nick Petrosino, who is an accomplished artist and designed much of the armor used in the film Army of Darkness. The third reason...well, what HPL fan does not want to become part of the author's mythos? Anyway, again I charged the minimum I could to cover expenses (yes, Nick was paid, I insisted) and postage, only $2.50. I found several listings in my search, but they were all around $50+s&h. I have to admit this surprised the least, as I know first hand how popular anything connected with HPL is.

So, yes, Belloq was indeed correct. Let enough time pass and almost anything, even me, can become respectable and valued. Who knows? Maybe I will end up in that alien museum after all. As a bonus, let me leave you with one of Nick's illustrations, the one he did for "Antarktos," one of the sonnets.

Deep in my dream the great bird whispered queerly

Of the black cone amid the polar waste;

Pushing above the ice-sheet lone and drearly,

By storm-crazed aeons battered and defaced.

Hither no living earth-shapes take their courses,

And only pale auroras and faint suns

Glow on that pitted rock, whose primal sources

Are guessed at dimly by the Elder Ones.

If men should glimpse it, they would merely wonder

What tricky mound of Nature’s build they spied;

But the bird told of vaster parts, that under

The mile-deep ice-shroud crouch and brood and bide.

God help the dreamer whose mad visions shew

Those dead eyes set in crystal gulfs below!

--H.P. Lovecraft 

Shedding Books...Reluctantly

For everyone who collects, accumulates or hoards books, there eventually comes a point where you have to shed books. No doubt, if you fall into one of those three categories, you have changed residences at least once in your life, meaning you already know what it's like to lose friends and/or family. The last time I moved (which was the last time I moved), my father was one of the people who foolishly volunteered to help. After about the twentieth, maybe it was the twenty-fifth, box of books, he looked at me and said: "If you move again, Chula Vista is going to see its biggest bonfire...ever." Maybe he was just kidding, or maybe his back was hurting and he was feeling a little cranky--well, he is slightly older than I am, or used to be before my last birthday--but I decided not to take a chance, and have not moved since. Of course, losing friends and family is one thing, but losing books is another.

Arimintha's Complaint

Regular readers of this blog (I'm sure there must be a couple) will remember a similar complaint from Arimintha, our favorite playwright and game designer. Her reasons were valid and her solution very much a product of 21st Century technology (Kindle), but she did have to shed some real books, a process repeated very recently when she moved yet again, this time to beautiful and quiet Panorama City. The upside to all her moves is that with each relocation I receive books she previously "borrowed," and some new ones as well. I figure, two or three more changes of address and I might actually get back almost all the "borrowed" books. And, then, there's that whole Man, Myth & Magic set that takes up so much room...hint.

There have been two times in my life in which books have flowed out of my library rather than in, both a long time ago, the first time involuntarily, the second...well, not exactly voluntarily, but I had no other choice. The first time was when I enlisted in the US Army. I stored all my books with my mother (books [bunches], sci-fi & mystery magazines [lots], and comic books [lots more!]) and thought they were safe. Little did I know then, but not long after I boarded the bus for Los Angeles, Chula Vista was the site of an epic yard sale. Yes, painful when I found out, but you can't hold a grudge, not against your mother...well, not for more than two or three years.

The second time was in the 1980s, and was actually more painful than the first because I had to do it myself. I suppose if I had to describe it, it would be, maybe, self-surgery, like hacking off a limb or plucking out an eye, no anesthesia. If you've had to get rid of books, you already know what it's like, so there's no point in rehashing it. How did it happen? Hired away from a book company by firm of naval architects, only to be laid off six months later, and there you go. You think another job is around the corner, then the next corner, and the next, and the next...well, as it turns out, it's just corners, no jobs, and then you're standing on a corner with a tin cup. Nope, didn't do that...too much pride, same as what keeps a person from tying his life to the government dole (once they have you, they don't let go). Times were tough, I didn't have any prospects, but I did have books, lots of them (I restocked after that whole mother-yard-sale thing) and some were collectible.

By the time I finished going through my shelves, I had two paper bags full of books that I could lose without pain...well, not unbearable pain. All I had to do to follow through with my plan was to think of my family. Despite my rampant bibliomania (a "gentle madness" it's called) I really do value my family more. With my two bags of books in arm, I took the bus downtown and made my rounds of the bookstores. My first jaunt to downtown San Diego had been more than twenty years earlier to find several dozen bookstores, from vast emporiums to tiny hole-in-the-wall places sandwiched between sleazy bars and gritty tattoo parlors. This time, however, I found only a handful of survivors of those halcyon days, most being kept afloat, not by the reading public but by the collecting elite. Somewhere along the way, reading had become a lost art, a trivial and foolish waste of time.

Since reading was no longer a recreation of the masses, a few "common" books went back home with me. The others were collectible enough to warrant offers from booksellers, some of them at least. Most sellers were no longer buying because the marketplace was dying, but a few stores justified my long and depressing trip downtown. By the time I finished, I had three checks in my pocket and a half-dozen books I was glad to take home. I cashed the checks at a bank downtown, took the thirty pieces of silver, and waited for the bus home. Of course, things have changed downtown over the ensuing three decades, most notably in number of bookstores. Now, there are none; they have all gone under, though one did go up in smoke. And to make the transformation of downtown complete, the bank where I cashed the checks (showing my library card as a second ID) is now a hotel and most of the bars and tattoo parlors have been replaced by parking lots and empty government-subsidized buildings.

But, as I wrote earlier, if you yourself are a collector, accumulator or hoarder, you already know what this is like, the pain of shedding books, the depression as you look at the small stack of bills in your hand. No matter what you received, it isn't enough, and will be gone far too soon. Personally, I try not to think about how much money I did or didn't receive. Instead, I choose to console myself with the knowledge that two bags of books (minus a half-dozen) bought eight bags of groceries...but I still do miss the books.

Look it up!

"Look it up!"

I am sure, were you to ask either the Kid or the Kidette what phrase they heard thrown at them most often while growing up, I think "Look it up!" would top the list, even more than "Do your homework," "Clean your room" or "Eat your vegetables" -- I don't think we ever (or if we did it was rarely) used the phrase "What do you think you're doing?" because we just didn't want to hear an answer that was simultaneously silly and logical. 

We would use an unfamiliar word, and they wanted to know whether or not they had been insulted -- look it up. We would mention an unfamiliar country -- look it up. A new writer -- look it up. Some ancient long-dead tribe -- look it up. Some archaic or foreign phrase -- look it up. Misspelled words in their English assignments -- look it up. The reason, of course, was because, if you look it up, you're much more likely to remember it; just giving an answer to a child instills laziness and a contempt for learning. The result is that we have two industrious, well-educated, smart aleck children with large vocabularies.

My favorite reference books are still books, you know the kind made with paper, and I use them all the time in my writing. My first go-to book is the dictionary, in my case the Funk & Wagnalls College Standard Dictionary, copyrighted 1943. In this world of spell-checks and digital illiteracy, you probably wonder why use a dictionary at all, much less one seventy years old: it comes from a time when accuracy mattered.

Part of the reason is to look up the spelling, and while we're on the subject, I should mention that nothing beats proofing your own work by reading it aloud -- a spell-checker won't help you if you've spelled "bog" as "boy" or "lost" as "lust," but you can surely hear the difference, and will save yourself much embarrassment. The main reason I use the dictionary is the obvious one, to look up the definition, to see if that word that popped so quickly into my mind is really the best one to carry the load I'm giving it. While the F&W is my workhorse lexicon, I have a few other dictionaries that I turn to from time to time. First, is the Britannica World Language Edition of Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary (1959) in two volumes, mainly because of its seven-language dictionary. Another two-volume dictionary I use is The American College Encyclopedic Dictionary (1952), which I like because of the language commentaries in the first volume and the supplements in the second, as well as the clarity of the definitions throughout. Two other dictionaries used less often but still valuable are Webster's Third New International Dictionary and The Readers' Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary, which accompanied me when I left home long ago.

Another must-have book for any writer is a thesaurus, and I have two. My most used edition is Pocket Book's Roget's Pocket Thesaurus, which has been helping me to find the right word since the late 60s (and looks it). When I need a thesaurus with a wider range of selections I turn to Roget's International Thesaurus published by Crowell in 1962. Both of these books use the system developed by Dr Peter Mark Roget for his first thesaurus in 1852, that is words arranged by classification, then by divisions and sections, each step narrowing down groups of related words. I've tried using thesauri arranged alphabetically, but they just don't work for me. A thesaurus can be a very dangerous book in the wrong hands, as I found out when I was a newspaper editor in the 70s and encountered a young journalist who had been told in school not to use the word "said." Interviewees would shout, harangue, stump, blurt, exclaim, call, yell, whisper, murmur, repeat, state, aver...anything but "said." I could not get her to understand that words have shades of meaning, that words were generally not interchangeable, and everything depended upon context and connotation...so I locked her thesaurus in my desk drawer.

Another valuable book for a writer is neither dictionary nor thesaurus, but the Word Menu, created by the late Stephen Glazier. Its concept is stunningly simple -- divide the language into subjects, such as "Science and Technology" or "Institutions." Then break those subjects into smaller divisions, such as Mathematics or Politics. Then break them into even more specific lists. So, under "Part Three- Domestic Life" we have "The Home," under which have "Exterior Structure," a category of which is "Window, Walls & Facades," where we find short definitions for anta, bailey, bay window, bondstone, bull's-eye window (one of my favorite words), casement, Catherine wheel window...and on through wall, window and windowpane. To find the right word, you don't have to necessarily know what it means, just what, or where, it is. Stephen lived to see the completion of his monumental work but not to see it published. He died 20 January 1992, eight months before publication; he was 44.

What books you need as a writer, other than a good dictionary, a traditional thesaurus and a Word Menu, depends on what you write. I use an atlas quite often, but because most of my writing is historical I usually use atlases other people would consider outdated. Beside period atlases, I use several historical ones, particularly The Penguin Atlas of World History, as well as guidebooks from Baedeker and Muirhead. And because I also write of imaginary places I find that atlases of "maybe lands" are also handy. If you write suspense or spy novels, you might find The Ultimate Spy Book of use, and I find the Combat & Survival series in 28 volumes nifty as well. Fantasy writers might need books about dragons or the Middle Ages, or maybe A Field Guide to the Little People ("Marissa, do you still have my copy?"). Anyway, the kind of writer you are, the sort fiction or non-fiction you write, and your own curiosity level will determine which reference books you need to have at hand while you create...and you really do need books, especially in this digital age.