A Terrible Novel

I've just Dealt With another book-from-the-box so bad that even after ten years for the scars to heal I'm not willing to waste several hours of my time giving it another chance. However, *this* one's just gone on Amazon, because the print run wasn't that large, it's one of the few tie-in books for a cult show that had remarkably little merchandising, and thus a hardback in almost-mint condition goes for 35 quid. I feel vaguely guilty about this, because I think a fair price for the actual contents is about 35 farthings (even if there are some fanboys, and I do mean boys, not girls, who think it's a smashing five star book). However, if I put it up for 35 farthings or the decimal version thereof, it would only get bought by someone who'd promptly put it back up for 35 quid.

If, god forbid, anyone who understands the "A Terrible Novel" joke actually wants a copy of their very own, it is also available direct for a price minus Amazon's cut.

I don't suppose I should let a little thing like not having read it for ten years stop me from *reviewing* it, should I? The memories, they burn...

methinks he has an axe to grind

Quote from the back cover blurb of Desmond Morris's "The Human Zoo":

"Under natural conditions, wild animals do not mutilate themselves, masturbate, attack their offspring, develop stomach ulcers, become fetishists, suffer from obesity, form homosexual pair-bonds."

"Yet confined in the unnatural conditions of captivity, they exhibit just such neurotic behaviour patterns common to urban man caged in his crowded cities.

Granted, this book was first published in 1969. But even then, it required a certain level of wilful ignorance to think that some of the behaviours cited do not occur in wild animals. This strikes me as being very carefully pitched to push certain buttons guaranteed to ensure brisk sales. The contents are probably much less idiotic, but my impression of Morris has long been that his science is heavily coloured by his personal views on such things as the moral value of various sexual acts, and that he is not aware of this. This is always a hazard for writers of popular anthropology and related subjects, of course, but I think my tolerance for it has dropped sharply over the years. This one's going on the "who wants it?" shelf.

books I am pleased to see again

Just so that today is not non-stop ranting about the books I have stopped liking in the ten years since I last saw them, let me mention how very, very pleased I am to have reached the box with a) a lot more Andre Norton books than I'd realised I actually owned, b) Naomi Mitcheson's "Memoirs of a Spacewoman" and "Solution Three".

You can probably apportion some blame to (b) for some of the things in my own work that have... caused comment... :->

which copies of the Blake's 7 novels to ditch?

I have Too Many copies of the Blake's 7 novelisations, in part because of my habit of picking up cheap copies of certain books to pass on to other fen. Some of them now appear to be worth more than my lower limit for "give it a couple of months on Amazon before putting it in the Waveney box". I *was* going to sell the Citadel versions, because they have the gloriously bad cover art by someone who clearly had *no* *idea* what he was copying by rote (Liberator with only 2 engine pods?).

Except they appear to be the copies that Gareth Thomas signed for me. It's not as if I'm short of Things Wot Gareth Signed For Me (and some of them have some very rude comments to prove they were signed specifically for me). But...

Shall have to think about this a bit longer.