What's New archive for December 24, 2013 – November 14, 2014

Please note, some of the links below are broken. This is due to the the transitory nature of the web, where sites change, pages get moved, even whole domains disappear, and so it's beyond our control!

November 14, 2014

Holy cow, how did we manage to go over six months between updates? That's a really good question. Well, first, from the last update on April 30th through August 4th, we were working night and day getting ready for FarmerCon IX. Then, on August 5th we experienced a catastrophic computer crash, the day before we left for Columbus OH for FarmerCon IX (which was a great success, thanks for asking, hopefully more details on that soon). After returning home the computer stuggles continued for several weeks putting us behind in everything. We are now finally, more or less, caught up from that nightmare, and are ready to start updating the website regularly. The plan is to have more frequent, but shorter, updates. That seems to be the way the world works these days.

So, let's conclude this short update with this bit of news: Meteor House's latest Signed Limited Edition Novella (available in both hardcover and paperback editions), PHILEAS FOGG AND THE WAR OF SHADOWS by Josh Reynolds, is pretty close to selling out. You might want to grab yourself a copy while you can.

April 30, 2014

The first bit of big news this month (although rather late here on the website) is: Meteor House has a brand-new Signed Limited Edition Novella coming out! As with their previous two novellas, EXILES OF KHO and THE SCARLET JAGUAR, this third volume, PHILEAS FOGG AND THE WAR OF SHADOWS by Josh Reynolds, is directly connected to Philip José Farmer's work (we're going to assume you can figure out which Farmer novel to which this is a sequel). You can read all about the new novella on the forthcoming books page, and for even more information about the book and it's author, you can read a very interesting interview with Josh Reynolds on the Interviews with Writers Influenced by Philip José Farmer page.

Speaking of those two earlier novellas, here is our second big news item: while the Signed Limited Editions are out of print, both EXILES OF KHO and THE SCARLET JAGUAR are now available as ebooks for only $3.99 each. Just follow those links and you can be reading them on your Kindle in a just a few moments (Nook version coming soon). Now, if you have already purchased and read the novellas, and have no desire to buy the ebooks, please do us a small favor and click on the links anyway. Then do us HUGE favor and leave a review of each book. The more reviews a book has, the more likely it is to come up as a recommendation when readers are searching for similar titles.

While ebook editions of out of print books are exciting news around here, we have a third announcement from Meteor House that is even more exciting to us book collectors: Meteor House is publishing the first trade paperback edition of THE EVIL IN PEMBERLEY HOUSE. The book will be released at FarmerCon IX. While this trade edition is NOT a signed limited edition (as most of their books are), if you preorder by June 30th, your copy will be signed by co-author Win Scott Eckert!

Ok, enough about Meteor House already! (Just kidding, we appreciate all they do to keep Phil's name out there and keep bringing us new books to read.) Here is something really cool, the type of thing we don't see too much of anymore: an in-depth article about some of Farmer's work. The entire two-page issue of the Gridley Wave #370 is an article by Henry G. Franke III about the Khokarsa series.

Speaking of the Gridley Wave, Christopher Paul Carey alerted us to an online archive of the ERB fanzine which contains a slew of Farmer related material: from advertising items for HADON OF ANCIENT OPAR, TARZAN ALIVE, and MOTHER WAS A LOVELY BEAST, to notes that Farmer was a guest at a Dum-Dum we didn't know about, to links to reviews of LORD OF THE TREES, THE ADVENTURE OF THE PEERLESS PEER, HADON OF ANCIENT OPAR. Chris also managed to find two letters Phil wrote that appeared in Erbania 79, and Erbania 83.

To keep up with all this news, in addition following us on Facebook, you can bookmark the Pemberley House website, and follow Meteor House on Twitter.

January 26, 2014

Today would have been Philip José Farmer's 96th birthday! To celebrate, we have added some new content to the website:

Thanks to the googlefu of Christopher Paul Carey we have added some new information to the Conventions & Events page. Phil and Frederick Pohl were guests at The Science Fiction Space Happenings II in Springfield, MA March 5 1978. At that convention they were both interviewed for a Space:1999 fanzine called Alphalog 6. (The International Bibliography posted this a few years ago but we somehow missed it). The interview is pretty interesting, but you don't have to take our word for it, you can read it for yourself.

Chris also discovered that Phil was the guest of honor at Icon (Iowa) 15, Coralville, Iowa, September 28-30 1990. We don't have lot of information about this convention other than they performed the following short play: Who Fragged Phil Farmer -- Philip Jose Farmer, ICON 15 writer guest of honor, has been murdered. Deckard must find the killer. Could it be Jessica Rabbit? Spamajello? Tarzan? Or someone else? You never know what you're going to see at a science fiction convention... We haven't done any plays at a FarmerCon to date, but who knows. We've had some pretty awesome dramatic readings by Chuck Loridans. We're not sure if he can top last year's reading of The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod.

Long time Farmer fan and collector Mitch West also sent us a few goodies that we've added to the site. We've long known that Phil was the Guest of Honor at Baycon 1968, in San Francisco when he won his second Hugo Award for Riders of the Purple Wage but we didn't know of this neat little bio that was written for progress report 2. Mitch also sent us an item for one of our favorite pages, our collection of uncorrected proof images. He was kind enough to send us a scan of THE LAVALITE WORLD the fifth oldest known proof.

And finally some news big enough to for Phil's birthday: THE WORLDS OF PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER 4: Voyages to Strange Days will be out in the spring and is now available for preorder!

While the first three volumes in the series have focused on unique aspects of Farmer's career, such as, his disregard for literary boundaries, his penchant for the softer sciences, and his trickster nature, volume 4 focuses on his more "traditional" science fiction - the science fiction of the future (occasionally the really distant future) featuring interstellar travel, aliens, war, scientists, the usual suspects in Golden Age science fiction.

And though the full table of contents is not ready to be announced, Meteor House is proud to announce that the foreword is by science fiction Grand Master Robert Silverberg and is in fact, a much longer version of his Reflections column from the February 2014 issue of Asimov's.

Go check it out!

As Meteor House has done in the past, the first 100 readers to preorder the book will receive a limited edition bookmark with their purchase! As of today there about forty left. So you might want to order yours quick.

December 24, 2013

Happy belated Wold Newton Day, and any other holidays you happen to celebrate around this time of the year! This update should have been posted on December 13th, but was delayed due to circumstances outside our control - computer crashes and human illness.

Let's take a quick moment to appreciate what a good year 2013 was for Farmer fans...

Titan Books finished their run of twelve Farmer reprints with HADON OF ANCIENT OPAR, THE WIND WHALES OF ISHMAEL, THE MAD GOBLIN, LORD TYGER, FLESH, TALES OF THE WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE, and VENUS ON THE HALF-SHELL.

Meteor House published their second signed limited edition Farmer-related novella THE SCARLET JAGUAR (now sold out) and their first hardcover, a reprint of DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE, featuring bonus material by Farmer and others. While they did not print the next volume in THE WORLDS OF PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER series, they assure us that announcement about Volume 4 is imminent.

FarmerCon VIII was a great success and plans are already in the works to make FarmerCon IX the best yet.

In addition to another great FarmerCon, 2014 will include some important reprints, new Farmer-related fiction and other books of interest. Stay tuned! Or better yet, follow us on facebook to never miss an announcement.