science fiction/fantasy – TEMPORARY CULTURE

The Elfland Prepositions

The Elfland Prepositions is a collection of four previously unpublished short stories :
Cleaning up Elfland
The Barmaid from Elfland
John Z. Delorean, Dry Cleaner to the Queen of Elfland
A Detective in Elfland

Click on link or photo to order.

Elfland is not a nice place, but it’s important to know how it works.

— Henry Wessells. The Elfland Prepositions. Temporary Culture, 2025.
Printed on Mohawk superfine white eggshell.
First edition, 326 copies printed, signed by the author. (26 copies, lettered A to Z, were reserved for presentation ; there were also 100 copies numbered 1 to 100). Heavy card wrappers, front cover with a photograph of a border of Elfland.
ISBN13 978-0-9961359-0-0 ISBN 0-9961359-0-1

SPECIAL SALE PRICE $25 (postpaid in U.S.)
through 31 December 2025

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“elegant” — MICHAEL DIRDA, in the Washington Post

“Here is an Elfland as implacable as ever, but now ruthlessly enmeshed in contemporary mortal affairs.” — MARK VALENTINE

“very clever, beautifully dark in implication. [. . .] Wessells is not prolific at all (in fiction) but what he does is outstanding.” — RICH HORTON

”If you don’t believe in magic, read Henry Wessells and find out how wrong you are.” — GUY DAVENPORT

The Avram Davidson Centenary

This year marks the centenary of the birth of American science fiction writer and essayist Avram Davidson. Temporary Culture has been a champion of his work since the first iteration of the Avram Davidson website in 1995. The Nutmeg Point District Mail electronic newsletter, published for the Avram Davidson Society, began in 1996. Every dead author needs an advocate and the District Mail appeared regularly and often at first and served as herald and repository of activities on behalf of Davidson’s work. Something like a Davidson renaissance followed, with publication of The Avram Davidson Treasury and others. Many of these, including the Treasury, are in print now at avramdavidson.com, where there is also a monthly podcast available.

The first books published by Temporary Culture carry the imprint of The Nutmeg Point District Mail; and other titles followed. Three of the six publications of the Avram Davidson Society are in print: The Wailing of the Gaulish Dead, Chance Meeting, and Naples. In connection with the centenary, all three titles are available at special celebratory prices (through 23 April, 2023), here.

Temporary Culture sale list January 2023

happy new year 2023 from Temporary Culture which started out as a photocopy ’zine in 1988(!). The January sale list features more than 100 items in all areas (all at discounts of 20 percent or more). Buy a book or two or three . . .

https://temporary-culture.com/book-category/sale-list-january-2023/

[through 31 January, sale prices net to all (postpaid in U.S.A.). Institutions may request deferred payment terms.]

Naples by Avram Davidson

NAPLES by AVRAM DAVIDSON

Published in Napoli on 11 September 2022

NAPLES is a fine press edition of one of Avram Davidson’s darkest tales, originally published in the first Shadows anthology edited by Charles L. Grant. NAPLES won the World Fantasy award for short fiction in 1979, the same year Jorge Luis Borges was named the recipient of the World Fantasy Life Achievement award ; Davidson received that award in 1986.

Publications of the Avram Davidson Society, number six.
Edition of 160 copies, printed by hand at the Kelly-Winterton Press from Hermann Zapf’s Aldus type. Stitched in yellow Hahnemühle wrappers, title printed in terracotta on upper cover. [16] pp. 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 inches.

Ten copies, numbered i to x, were reserved for presentation ; 125 copies for distribution to members of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie (AIB), on the occasion of the congress in Napoli, September 2022.

~~Twenty-five~~ Ten copies are available for members and friends of the Avram Davidson Society.

Price : $200 (in U.S.A., overseas add $15 postage).

ORDER HERE.

The Nutmeg Point District Mail is an imprint of Temporary Culture.

Inquiries and institutional orders to :

books [at] temporary-culture [dot] com
Temporary Culture
P.O. Box 43072
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043
USA

About

List no. 3 : Women Authors

List no. 3 from Temporary Culture for March 2021 is a selection of 16 books by women authors, most with a connection to the fantastic, including a fine copy of Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night (1937) in original dust jacket, and a variety of other titles new and old. Perhaps there will be something of interest for you.

List no. 3 March 2021

All items are illustrated on the website :

https://temporary-culture.com/book-category/subject/women-authors/

‘A Full Moon in March’ : Special Sale on ‘A Conversation larger than the Universe’

“erudite and altogether fascinating” — Publishers Weekly”

an important book” — Foundation

A Conversation larger than the Universe was the first ever science fiction exhibition at the Grolier Club in New York City. The exhibition was held from 25 January to 10 March 2018, and an illustrated record can be seen here.

For the month of March, Temporary Culture announce a special sale on the book issued in connection with the exhibition, A Conversation larger than the Universe by Henry Wessells.
If you haven’t read it yet, buy yourself a copy now! If you have read it, send a copy to a friend.

The trade edition, regularly priced $35.00, is available for $25.00 (postpaid in U.S.A.).

The Subscriber edition, signed by Wessells and John Crowley, with Reading in Public, signed by Michael Swanwick, regularly priced $300.00, is available for $250.00 (postpaid in U.S.A.).

(sale price for all orders through 31 March 2021)

How Philip K. Dick Won a Hugo

In October 1962, Putnam published The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. This was his second novel to be published in hardcover, at a time when Dick was discouraged. His agents had returned the manuscripts of “mainstream novels” which no publisher had bought. Putnam also sold rights to The Man in the High Castle to the Science Fiction Book Club and that edition appeared a few weeks later.

When Avram Davidson, editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction reviewed The Man in the High Castle, in the issue for June 1963, he called it “a superior work of fiction” and concluded: “Don’t take it out of the library — buy it!”. Enough fans did, for the novel won the Hugo award at the September 1963 Worldcon. “Phil said he believed it was my review which won him the Hugo and gave his career a much-needed boost,” recalled Avram Davidson. The rest of Dick’s career is well known. He continued writing science fiction novels and gained a national and international audience after Paul Williams interviewed him for Rolling Stone in November 1975.

Chance Meeting publishes Avram Davidson’s 1963 review of The Man in the High Castle and his memoir of PKD from Locus 256, vol. 15, no. 5, for May 1982. It also includes a letter from Grania Davis from the same issue of Locus and a short essay by Henry Wessells.

Science fiction, rock ’n’ roll, & . . . bibliography

Timothy d’Arch Smith, portrait by Duncan Andrews

Alembic by Timothy d’Arch Smith is one of the great novels of rock ’n’ roll. The number of these is small and includes Don Delillo’s Great Jones Street, and High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, and a handful of other titles. The number of great science fiction rock ’n’ roll stories is even smaller, and includes Alembic, Bradley Denton’s Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede and Howard Waldrop’s “Flying Saucer Rock & Roll”.

The science in London antiquarian bookseller Timothy d’Arch Smith’s science fiction rock ’n’ roll novel Alembic (1992) is early modern alchemy in the service of a modern bureaucratic state, and the rock ’n’ roll is Celestial Praylin, a band on the scale of Led Zeppelin. The antics of Nicholas Sparks, depraved megastar frontman of Celestial Praylin, the crazed adoration of the fans, and the scary manipulations of the government office of experimental alchemy are reported through the eyes of Thomas Graves. Graves is an antiquarian bookman, and the sort of overly sensitive, self-centered post-adolescent person who is the ultimate novel protagonist — so long as he survives the events and grows up to tell the tale.

Timothy d’Arch Smith is also author of an excellent collection of essays, Peepin’ in a Seafood Store: Some Pleasures of Rock Music (1992), Love in Earnest (1970), and numerous other bibliographical works.

Timothy d’Arch Smith. *Alembic. A Novel*. Normal, Ill.: Dalkey Archive Press, 1992.

No. 57.

Nostalgia

We all get nostalgic at times.

Here’s a double dose, remembering a nice book from the Library of Janis Ian, now at the John Hay Library, Brown University: with the inscription above, George R. R. Martin presents a volume in his Game of Thrones series to Janis Ian and Pat Snyder, recalling their wedding at City Hall in Toronto on 27 August 2003, before same-sex marriage was legal in the United States. Martin was best man at the wedding, which was reported in the New York Times. It was Martin’s first appearance in the paper.

MARTIN, George R. R. A Dance with Dragons. Book Five of A Song of Ice and Fire. 8vo, New York: Bantam Books, [2011]. First edition. Boards. As new in dust jacket. Inscribed by the author on the half title. ¶¶ Inscribed by the author to Janis Ian: “To Janis & Pat who got me in The New York Times, Fly high, burn brightly, Love, George”.

A Conversation larger than the Universe

A Conversation larger than the Universe was an exhibition on view at The Grolier Club in New York City from 25 January through 10 March 2018. A Conversation larger than the Universe is a history of science fiction in seventy literary artefacts and a highly personal tour through the bookshelves of Henry Wessells. The books (many signed or inscribed by their authors), magazines, manuscripts, letters, and artwork date from the mid-eighteenth century to the present and explore the ideas and people that have defined the literatures of the fantastic, from Mary Shelley and H. G. Wells to Philip K. Dick, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree, Jr., and William Gibson, as well as works by W. H. Hudson, Richard Jefferies, and others not so widely known today. Beginning with the origins of science fiction in the Gothic, this ‘Conversation’ contemplates topics such as the End of the World (and After), Imaginary Voyages, Dystopia, Women Authors, Literary Innovation, Humor, the Sixties, Rock ’n’ Roll, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, and what’s happening in science fiction and the fantastic right now. The exhibition adopts a broad description of Science Fiction encompassing Fantasy and Horror as well as bibliography and scholarship in the field.

The EXHIBITION tab on this website presents a record of the books and other materials exhibited

The Grolier Club has posted photos of the exhibition installation here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/grolierclub/sets/72157668998324669

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A Conversation larger than the Universe. Readings in Science Fiction and the Fantastic 1762-2017 is an illustrated collection of essays to accompany the exhibition, including a descriptive checklist of the materials on view, published by The Grolier Club. The book includes ‘A Hatful of Adjectives’, an original Foreword by John Crowley. Book design by Jerry Kelly. Several sections of the book appeared in Wormwood, Foundation, and The New York Review of Science Fiction in advance of book publication.

Size : 6 x 9 inches, trade paperback, pictorial wrappers with french flaps. 288 pp. With more than 100 illustrations; index. ISBN 978-1-60583-074-2. Price: $35.00. ORDER A COPY.

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Subscriber Edition

A Conversation larger than the Universe. Readings in Science Fiction and the Fantastic 1762-2017
By Henry Wessells
Foreword by John Crowley
Issued with an original short short story, Reading in Public, by Michael Swanwick.

Published by Temporary Culture in an edition of 75 copies, signed by John Crowley and Henry Wessells.
6-1/8 x 9-1/2 inches, 288 pp. With more than 100 illustrations; index.
Hand bound in sand cloth with letterpress label.
With: Reading in Public (stitched in blue Hahnemühle wrappers with printed label, signed by Michael Swanwick).
Note: Reading in Public is original to this edition and does not form part of the trade edition.
ISBN 978-0-9961359-4-8. Price: $300.00. ORDER A COPY.

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Reviews & Related Publicity

“erudite and altogether fascinating . . . In the year of Frankenstein’s bicentennial, this is essential reading”
— Publishers Weekly

‘a stunning exhibition’
Gary Wolfe reviewed the book in the January issue of Locus magazine.

Michael Dirda reviewed the book in the Washington Post on publication day (25 January 2018).

Mark Valentine conducted a two-part interview in the week prior to publication for Wormwoodiana, part one on 17 January and part two on 18 January.

Gil Roth interviewed Henry Wessells for the Virtual Memories podcast (show 255, 5 February 2018).

A British publication, Tank Magazine, also reviewed the exhibition. The Library of America published a short illustrated interview on Friday 2 March.

The Book Collector (for Spring 2018) called the Conversation “much more than a catalogue; it is an engaging illustrated history of a sometimes undervalued genre . . . a most enlightening assemblage.”

Andy Sawyer reviewed the book for issue 131 of the U.K.-based Foundation: the international review of science fiction and observed “[d]isguised as a catalogue, this is an extremely valuable book about what we think of the fantastic and why.”

Locus magazine included the book on its Recommended Reading List.