While I have time and enthusiasm, let me launch into part 2 of my autographed books collection.

In my opinion, there is a hierarchy of book quality.  Hardback books from quality publishers like Donald M. Gramt are near the top of the list, while cheap paperbacks you can buy at the supermarket are near the bottom.  Really old books from previous eras of publishing rank even higher, but I don’t really own any of those, and certainly not autographed copies.

I just pulled 18 autographed books off the shelf.  3 of them don’t have cover images on the internet.  Even if I leave those off, 15 books is a lot to hit you with, so I’ll do half of them this time, and half next time.

In no particular order:

This one has a great autograph, and I suspect it was his trademark. Written in red magic marker on the faux title page (the page with the title on it that comes just before the true title page): Wolfishly, Gene!

Editors deserve some appreciation too. I got this as a free handout at an American Booksellers Association convention in Washington D.C.--the only time I've ever been to our nation's capitol. It was a giveaway, and I went through a long line to get Gardner Dozois's signature. And that's all I got: Gardner R. Dozois.

I was very fortunate. Because I wrote to him once when I created the Amber diceless pbm roleplaying game, which obsessed our Phoenix group of friends and some others from around the country for about a year to get a map of Amber--he created that first map at my request--some of us Phoenicians became his friends. When that happened I got several Zelazny signatures. He was surprisingly modest and simply wrote: Roger Zelazny.

I don't remember where, but it must have been 1989 because it was brand new at the time--probably that same trip to Washington D.C. I got a lot of free books, and got them signed on that trip. The signature says: Punch. Dave "Iron Man" Barry.

Adam Niswandir is a friend of mine. I first met him when he opened a used and rare books bookstore half a mile from my home in east Phoenix. He had wonderful stuff in that bookstore, and too expensive for me to buy. Later he closed the bookstore and started writing his own fantasy books. I see him once or twice a year at Phoenix SF conventions. The signature says: Of 750 special WHC copies, this is #8. Adam Niswandir. The year was 1994.

Donald M. Grant is a publisher of high quality small press books. He got his start publishing special editions of Robert E. Howard stories, and branched out into Steven King and other authors of "pulp" entertainment. This novel by Gilmour is in the H. Rider Haggard tradition. The signature on the flyleaf simply says William Gilmour.

This is a small press book from Carcosa Press. At the very end of Wellman's life, some of us in Phoenix got to correspond with him a bit. I had read him and liked his stuff in some pulp sf mags that I got when I was a teenager, and I told my younger friends, Mike Stackpole and Liz Danforth about him. We had a mini Wellman fanclub in Phoenix back around 1980. This book has a bookplate on the flyleaf signed: Manly Wade Wellman George Evans. Evans is the illustrator. Wellman was born in 1903 and died in 1986.

That’s all I have time for right now, but I’m enjoying telling these stories about the books I own, and the people, all more famous than I will ever be, that I met or knew back in the day.  I will continue this series tomorrow.  🙂

If you ever got an autograph from, or knew any of these people, why not leave a comment?

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