Amy's bookshelf :: Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

The featured book is Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock. This post is a tribute to Holdstock who died recently at the age of 61 after battling a severe E. coli infection.

Holdstock was a British fantasy writer. He is best known as the author of the Mythago Cycle or Ryhope Wood series, the first published book of which is Mythago Wood (1984).

Mythago Wood features an ancient Celtic wood in England where archetypal characters from myths and legends become flesh and blood. These denizens of the wood of called mythagos. Ryhope wood appears to cover only a small area, but is vast inside. Time runs slower in the wood as compared to the outside world.

Mythago Wood won the BSFA Award for Best Novel in 1984, and the World Fantasy Award for best novel in 1985.

Of Robert Holdstock's works, I've only read Mythago Wood and its indirect sequel, Lavondyss. I found both books, which are different in tone, to be memorable and impressive. Other books in Mythago Cycle, in order of publication but not necessarily in order of events, are The Bone Forest; The Hollowing; Merlin's Wood; Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn; and Avilion.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: West of Eden by Harry Harrison

The Book of the Week is West of Eden by Harry Harrison, in honor of Mr. Harrison, who this year was named Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Harry Harrison is equally at home writing serious science fiction, such as his famous cautionary tale of overpopulation and ecological decline Make Room! Make Room! (filmed as Soylent Green), and humorous tongue-in-cheek adventures like The Stainless Steel Rat and Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers.

The Book of the Week is a signed first edition of West of Eden, my personal favorite Harrison novel, published in 1984. It is an alternate history, the subgenre of science fiction that asks what if some historical event had happened differently. Typically the branching off point is in the recent past -- What if the Nazis has won World War II? What if the North and South had reconciled at the beginning of the Civil War and joined forces to fight against England (Harrison's Stars and Stripes Forever!) -- but in West of Eden history branches off 65 million years ago, the time when an asteroid or comet is believed to have hit the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs. West of Eden shows how the world might look today if that had not happened, with newly evolved human beings struggling against the intelligent descendents of the dinosaurs.

The Hugo Awards will be presented this weekend, so our next BOTW will pay tribute to one of the big winners.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Fire Watch by Connie Willis

The Book of the Week is the hardcover first edition of Fire Watch, signed and inscribed by Greeley, Colorado author Connie Willis (cover art by Tom Kidd). As nice as it was to find a 100-year-old first edition of The Jungle, this was my most exciting acquisition at the book sale mentioned last week. Connie Willis is an amazing author and one of the most decorated writers in the history of science fiction and fantasy -- she has won Hugo Awards in fiction categories eight times and Nebula Awards six times, both more than any other author ever (and she is a contender for a ninth Hugo Award this year for her excellent novella "Inside Job").

Fire Watch is a collection of short fiction, published in 1984. It was Willis's first solo book (she had previously coauthored Water Witch, a collaboration with Cynthia Felice). Two of the stories in Fire Watch had won the first of her many awards to come -- the title story, about a time traveler caught in the London Blitz of World War II, won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novelette of 1982 and the poignant "A Letter from the Clearys" won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story of 1982 -- yet Willis was still relatively unknown when the book was published. Because of this, and because collections of short fiction generally do not sell as well as novels, the initial print run for Fire Watch was quite small, which is why copies of the first edition (especially signed copies) are highly prized by collectors.

Connie Willis signed my copy of Fire Watch two weeks ago, when she was so amazingly kind as to come to Denver to meet with my son and a group of his 4th and 5th grade classmates, who had just finished reading her outstanding novel Doomsday Book, next week's Book of the Week.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: 1984 by George Orwell

The Book of the Week is the first American edition with red dust jacket of 1984 by George Orwell, pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair. A landmark work of science fiction (don't try to deny it) and perhaps the most important dystopia ever written, 1984 is far too famous to require any synopsis, but I will give you this note on the title: It is often said that Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948, and created the book's title by reversing the last two digits of the date. This is demonstrably false, since Orwell's original manuscript bore the title 1980, which he pushed back to 1982 and then to 1984 as completion of the novel was delayed. Orwell also considered the alternative title The Last Man in Europe.

1984 was first published in England on June 8, 1949 and in the United States on June 13, 1949. That five-day difference makes the British first edition the more valuable (even though there were more copies of the British edition printed), but the first American edition is also a prized collector's item, especially in the coveted red dust jacket. The 20,000 copies of the first American edition were printed in both red and blue dust jackets. Neither color has priority, i.e., neither one can fairly be said to have come "first," but the red dust jacket is much more valuable, because hundreds of thousands of copies of subsequent editions also had the blue cover. In explaining to a friend why your copy of a book is worth hundreds of dollars and theirs is worthless, flipping three pages and pointing to the small "first American edition" notation is much less satisfying than being able to say, "Well, this one's red, donchasee?"

Next week, we return to our history of the pulp magazines, with an early copy of the very first science fiction magazine ever published.