There are lots of places online where you can find rare and secondhand books — but one place you should check out if you’re looking for a Harry Harrison book is Fantastic Literature Ltd. 

What’s so special about them? They are currently listing hardcovers and paperbacks of many of Harry’s titles, all in fine or very good condition – i.e. never been read – and these books were obtained directly from Mr. Harrison himself. And some of the more interesting items have been signed by the author.

And if you have all of Harry’s books, they also have stuff from a bunch of other authors…

Simon and Laraine at Fantastic Literature provide great service – highly recommended.

The official website for artist Peter Elson is now online at www.peterelson.co.uk — a huge amount of effort has gone into the site, as the images in the galleries have – where possible – been taken from the original paintings. As well as book covers there is fair amount of previously unseen artwork.

Apart from a brief biography of the artist, the site consists entirely of images, which can be viewed in medium and high resolution. There is some really gorgeous stuff there. As well as the Stainless Steel Rat and Deathworld covers, I always loved Peter Elson’s vehicle designs and the painting of the shuttlecraft from 2001.

There are covers here I recognise that I never realised were Elson’s work. And there are images which make me want to go out and get hold of the books and read them – which probably the highest compliment you can pay a cover design.

The images are arranged in broad categories, and the Harry Harrison covers are in a number of different ones – I’m not going to post direct links to them: this is a gallery website that you should spend some time browsing – I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. Start with the ‘People’ section and then just wander through the galleries…

Looking at the high-resolution images reminded me of one of the great things about Elson’s paintings, which was that everything was handpainted – all of the textures and the lettering and logos have a handcrafted quality: no Letraset and no computers, and this gives the images a lovely organic feel that is missing from many images we see today.

If you have a favourite Peter Elson painting, prints should be available shortly — there’s a ‘contact’ link on the site for making enquiries about prints.

The site is the work of Peter’s sister, Pam, and web designer Martin Lucas, who have made a wonderful job of it.

I’m off now to compile a list of the prints that I’d like to have – starting with the Stainless Steel Rat cover…

I received a ‘now playing’ e-mail from Amazon.com today about a new TV series which airs in the USA from tomorrow — here’s the blurb:

“White Collar” is about the unlikely partnership between a con artist and an FBI agent who have been playing cat and mouse for years. Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer), a charming criminal mastermind, is finally caught by his nemesis, FBI Agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay).

When Neal escapes from a maximum-security prison to find his lost love, Peter nabs him once again. Rather than returning to jail, Neal suggests an alternate plan: He’ll provide his criminal expertise to help the Feds catch other notorious and elusive criminals in exchange for his freedom. Initially wary, Peter quickly finds that Neal provides insight and intuition that can’t be found on the right side of the law.

“White Collar” New Original Series Premieres October 23, Fridays 10/9c on USA Network.

White Collar

Might be worth a look… though we won’t see it in the UK for ages, I suppose…

If you watch it, leave a comment and let us know if it’s any good…

There was good news and bad news about the convention at the weekend – the bad news was that due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances, Harry wasn’t able to make it to the convention; the good news was that, although everyone missed Harry, we had a great time anyway…

Highlights of the weekend for me — apart from the obvious good food, good whiskey and good company — were:

Having the opportunity to talk with Guest of Honour Mike Carey, writer of comics, novels and films. I read the first of his Felix Castor novels a few weeks ago — highly recommended.

Meeting up with Dave Lally, rightfully honoured as a guest of honour — though it was weird being at a con where he wasn’t running the video room. Stranger still that he turns sixty this year — surely not?

John Vaughan — writer, director, and possibly not quite human — was behind the Video Vault of Horror, which this year was a presentation of that 1978 classic Starcrash featuring Caroline Monroe, David Hasselhoff and Christopher Plummer. It’s one of those great Italian-produced SF movies with bad script, bad acting, bad sets, bad special effects, bad costumes, and bad hair. And a John Barry soundtrack. If you ever get chance to see it, then do — but don’t pay money for the privilege.

John Vaughan was first up on Sunday morning, placing Jean Luc Picard on trial — a treat for conspiracy theorists. You didn’t know the captain was the villain of the whole Next Generation / Deep Space 9 arcs did you? With impeccable logic (?) John proved that he was in fact… well, you had to be there.

Bill McGrath and Danielle Lavigne hosted a fascinating discussion on whether you could tell a science fiction story through music without accompanying lyrics or narrative. I think the conclusion was that it might be possible, but it is bloody difficult…

John Vaughan — yes him again — was also the mastermind behind the new Golden Blasters award, which celebrate and recognise the achievements being made in short films in our genre. SF-Fantasy-Horror films are often overlooked by other film awards, so this is a fantastic idea. John presented some of the best short films from around the world from the last couple of years. The judges award (the Silver Blaster) went to the Hungarian film Elobb Utobb (Sooner Or Later), written and directed by Istvan Madarasz, and the audience vote (the Golden Blaster) went to the Irish film The Silent City, directed by Ruairí Robinson.

I saw all of the films and took part in the audience voting — all of the films were great, and it was really tough choosing between them.

Keep an eye open for further news about the Golden Blasters, because next year the competition will be open to new films from across the world, and there’ll be a short screenplay competition too.

In the meantime, you can check out John Vaughan’s most recent short film My Dad and excerpts from his film Valour. I couldn’t locate any video of his lovely creepy film The Boogieman.

I’ll post more on the convention shortly — though I have no intention of mentioning the karaoke…

– Paul

Here is the ‘How to’ guide Harry and I put together for a workshop which was conducted at the ALTfiction event in Derby in April 2007.

Writing SF

A few days ago I posted the cover from the French version of The Stainless Steel Rat, Ratinox. The publisher, J.-C. Lattes followed that with a translation of The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge, Ratinox se Venge. Again, the cover art appears to be credited to Keleck.

Art: Keleck

Presumably that’s Angelina, and she looks pretty cool with that huge cigar. Jim has an odd expression — he looks like a crazed Ade Edmondson (Vivian in the Young Ones ). If I remember correctly, the red teeth are featured in the first bank robbery of the book, but I don’t remember the Rat having red eyes too…

Octocon, the Irish National Science Fiction convention, will begin on Saturday morning — there’s lots of cool stuff going on, but this is a HH blog, so we’ll concentrate on what Harry will be doing this weekend. 

The official programme of events hasn’t been released yet but… Harry will, I believe, be taking part in three panels during the course of the weekend: a discussion about collaboration with other authors; a question and answer session; and a session which I think we’re giving the modest title of  ’How to Write a Science Fiction Bestseller’! This will be a discussion of the creation of a major SF work, with some in-depth insights into the writing of the West of Eden trilogy, including such topics as creating an alien race, language and culture, creating an alien world, and getting from orginal idea to final plot. All in the space of an hour.

I’m flying out to Dublin tomorrow at ridiculously-early o’clock, back in the UK late Monday, and will post a full report when I get back.

If you are at Octocon this weekend, come and say hi and have a chat with Harry — that’s what conventions are all about. That and sitting in the bar drinking.

This one is from the first Spanish edition of The Stainless Steel Rat, published by Editorial Ferma in 1967. There’s no artist credit for this one, as far as I remember — if you know who the artist is, please leave a comment.

Presumably the groovy chick in the background is Angelina, and the guy doing the Incredible-Hulk-about-to-change pose is Jim at the point where he’s taken the mind altering substance in order to be able to think like a psycho … or maybe I’m just trying to read too much into these images?

Published by Ferma, 1967

This is probably the scariest cover for The Stainless Steel Rat we’ve seen to date — is that a mummified corpse on the cover?

Cover Photo: Bob Wright

This is from the first UK edition, published in September 1966 by Four Square (New English Library)

Art: ?

From November 1962, and The Stainless Steel Rat’s first appearance in Italian. I can’t see an artist credit on the magazine – if you know who the artist is, please leave a comment. The spaceship here looks a bit like a paper aeroplane, but the face in the space helmet is great — the Rat (if it is he) seems to have a faraway look in his eyes…