, , Alec Nevada-Lee, Caitlin R. Kieran, The Dinosaur Tourist

 Yesterday was a great reading day. I had finally began to read Astounding, Alec Nevada-Lee's book on John W. Campbell and some of the writers most associated with Astounding, Isaac Asimov,  Robert A, Heinlein, and L. Ron. Hubbard.  As I read, the dogs let me know that our postal worker had dropped by and I  got up hoping that "it" had finally come. And it had.

I am a huge Caitlin R. Kieran fan. Her work effortlessly inhabits the intersection of so many genre, horror, fantasy, mystery and science fiction that I am always interested go see where she will take me next. I also have a life long love of palaeontology especially dinosaurs so the minute I saw the Subterranean Press announcement of the collection The Dinosaur Tourist with a stunning cover by Ray Troll,  I had to order it. Then a long wait occurred. Then the announcement came, copies, including mine were shipping. Oh no, a job action by Canada Post. Mail from outside Canada has piled up to the extent that international partners are asked to hold items. The Dinosaur Tourist (trade edition) is sold out. Will my copy appear or be lost to some inter-dimensional gateway to be lovingly perused by the shades of the Whateley brothers, or shelved among the tomes at the Misatonic University Library. No, there it was right in front of me, I hugged the box.

from Subterranean Press

"Almost nothing is only what it seems to be at first glance. Appearances can be deceiving and first impressions often lead us disastrously astray. If we're not careful, assumption and expectation can betray us all the way to madness and death and damnation. In The Dinosaur Tourist, Caitlín R. Kiernan's fifteenth collection of short fiction, nineteen tales of the unexpected and the uncanny explore that treacherous gulf between what we suppose the world to be and what might actually be waiting out beyond the edges of our day-to-day experience. A mirror may be a window into another time. A cat may be our salvation. Your lover may be a fabulous being. And a hitchhiker may turn out to be anyone at all."

https://subterraneanpress.com/dinosaur-tourist

I am including this post on my Jagged Orbit blog because, while Kiernan is associated with horror, she does write very good science fiction. PS Publishing in the UK is distributing the collection A is for Alien, containing many of her science fiction stories as part of a four volume set of her work. As I mentioned in an earlier post I was also really impressed by another Subterranean Press offering, her (2004) novella entitled The Dry Salvages.

"A SF work rather than a typical mythos tale, it combines her love of palaeontology with the rather enigmatic tale of a doomed expedition investigating the remains of an extraterrestrial mining colony on the moon of the gas giant Cecrops. It has a subtle, haunting flavour I often associate with European SF and I recommend it. "

http://dunwichhorrors.blogspot.com/search/label/Caitlin%20R.%20Kieran

Cover art Richard Kirk 

https://www.pspublishing.co.uk/a-is-for-alien-trade-paperback-by-caitlin-r-kiernan-2623-p.asp

New Eldritch Tomes - Saskatoon 2018 Westgate Books/McNally Robinson

   I have several depictions of Cthulhu (doesn't everyone) but this statuette produced by Chronicle Books and purchased at McNally Robinson seems the most accurate.

"Inspector Legrasse was scarcely prepared for the sensation which his offering created. One sight of the thing had been enough to throw the assembled men of science into a state of tense excitement, and they lost no time in crowding around him to gaze at the diminutive figure whose utter strangeness and air of genuinely abysmal antiquity hinted so potently at unopened and archaic vistas. No recognised school of sculpture had animated this terrible object, yet centuries and even thousands of years seemed recorded in its dim and greenish surface of unplaceable stone. 

 The figure, which was finally passed slowly from man to man for close and careful study, was between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the centre, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge fore paws which clasped the croucher's elevated knees. The aspect of the whole was abnormally life-like, and the more subtly fearful because its source was so totally unknown. Its vast, awesome, and incalculable age was unmistakable; yet not one link did it shew with any known type of art belonging to civilisation's youth - or indeed to any other time. Totally separate and apart, its very material was a mystery; for the soapy, greenish-black stone with its golden or iridescent flecks and striations resembled nothing familiar to geology or mineralogy. The characters along the base were equally baffling; and no member present, despite a representation of half the world's expert learning in this field, "

from "The Call of Cthulhu"
by H. P. Lovecraft

We have just returned from two weeks in Saskatoon. Helen's family lived near Westgate Books. so I visited it several times. And there on the shelf were more of the Ballantine editions with the John Holmes covers I collected as a teenager.

Westgate has an interesting history which is related here.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/westgate-books-owner-donates-entire-collection-to-employee-1.3046878

If this is Wilbur, it does not seem to be a terribly 

accurate depiction, but a striking cover none the less, 

by Victor Valla for Lancer Books.