It has been a good week for second-hand bookshopping.

  • Not one but two James Tiptree, Jr collections, both from before Alice B. Sheldon was revealed as the woman behind the pseudonym. One has the famous Robert Silverberg introduction: “It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing.” (He later wrote that she had given his head “a great needed wrenching”.) The other has two pages by Harry Harrison: “There is a temptation in an introduction of this kind to be very biographical and spend a good deal of time on the author’s lovely dark hair or firm waistline despite his advancing years.” A bit thick for 1973 (she was outed in late 1976), but he uses the word “obviosity” so I’m prepared to forgive him much. (Update: even better than I thought, it seems these are the first two Tiptree anthologies ever published, although not in their first printings. Joy!)
  • A couple of M. John Harrisons; this is a dark addiction, I finish each of his books tasting ash and bone and immediately start reading the next.
  • An early Samuel R. Delany. I have an almost-complete run of his sf novels (missing two, according to wikipedia), but still none of his short stories.
  • A mathematics education book for Olga, Out of the Labyrinth, which looks interesting enough that I might have to steal it from her before she’s finished reading it.

That last one came from Het Martyrium, which seems to be criminally underappreciated in Amsterdam (possibly because it isn’t on or around Spui, and therefore cannot be a “real” bookstore). Their only drawback, as far as I’m concerned (apart from the lack of sf section) is that they have a nasty habit of stocking remaindered copies of titles I want at extremely low prices… in Dutch.1 Which probably is actually good for me, in the long run. But occasionally leads to double-ups, if the English edition also turns up second-hand at some later date.

Notes:

  1. That said, this is where I found The Naming of Names, in softcover and in English. So I shouldn’t complain I suppose. [↪]