WISH LIST

Ten books I want to read:

• Nightmare Need by Joseph Payne Brennan.  A poetry collection published by Arkham House.  I enjoy Brennan's poetry almost as much as I do his fiction.  Someday I'll get my hands on this one.
• White Fire by John Ravenor Bullen.  Supposedly this book was one of three edited by H. P. Lovecraft, although I suspect Lovecraft did more selecting than editing.  This one was published by Paul Cook's Recluse Press in 1927.  (The other two books that HPL edited were The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hogg [available online] and Eugene B. Kuntz's Thoughts and Pieces, published in Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1932.)
• The Great Mirror by Arthur J. Burks.  An SF novel published as a Swan paperback in London in 1952.  It originally appeared in a 1942 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly.  Some of Burks's pulp work is currently being reprinted; a lot more should be.
• The Mystery Scene Reader edited by Ed Gorman.  This one's a tribute to John D. MacDonald.  I tried to get a copy about ten years ago and failed.  Ed's recent mention of this one in his blog has put it back near the top of my list.
• The Television Detective by David H. Keller.  I don't think I'll ever get to this one.  It was a 16 page mimeo edition put out by the Los Angeles Science Fiction League in 1938 and was issued as Volume One, Number 1 of the fan magazine MIKROS.  Keller was a very uneven writer, but I'd really like to check this out.
• The Year of the Sex Olympics and Other TV Plays by Nigel Kneale.  Kneale was a respected writer of television and screen plays best known for the Quatermass series and for his collection of short stories Tomato Cane and Other Stories.  TOTSO  contains the title play (1967), The Road (1963), and The Stone Tape (1972), all written for British television.
• Consider Your Verdict:  Ten Coroner's Cases for You to Solve by "Tally Mason" (August Derleth).  An early and gimmicky book by Derleth.  I wouldn't care if the "sealed" section had been opened or not.
• Sex Gang by "Paul Merchant" (Harlan Ellison).  The legendary collection from a soft-core publisher Nightstand Books.  Bill Crider in his blog today noted that Ellison has (at last!) authorized a new edition.  It is to be retitled Pulling a Train and will include additional stories.  The publisher will be Kicks Books, an outfit co-run by Miriam Linna.  Frabjous day!
• Absolute Power by Ray Russell.  A horror novel from an underappreciated master.  John Maclay put this one out almost 20 years ago in a very limited printing.  Another gottahave.
• A Double Life by Manly Wade Wellman.  Novelization of the 1947 Ronald Coleman/Shelley Winters movie written by Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon.  The film, a riff on Othello, won a best actor Oscar for Coleman and a best music Oscar; director George Cukor and writers Kanin and Gordon also got Oscars nods but didn't take home the bacon.  Wellman's novelization was published as a digest-sized paperback by Falcon.  One of the very few books by Wellman that I have not already read.

     So that's ten books.  I could add a zillion more.  Two that didn't make it were The Complete Adventures of Jules de Grandin by Seabury Quinn (a three-volume, 93-story collection concerning the popular psychic detective fron Weird Tales) and The Complete Adventures of the Park Avenue Hunt Club by Judson P. Philips (a two-volume compilation of the 36 stories from the detective pulps; Philips is also well-known by his pseudonym "Hugh Pentecost"), both published by the brilliant Battered Silicon Dispatch Box.

     I can dream, can't I?