Bollocks, I've been getting so many of these is was only a matter of time before I fucked up. These are of course Alexander Kruel's books. He is from Gütersloh, Nordrhein-Westfalen, DE.
Apologies all round.
And higher resolution shots are here, here and here.
17 comments:
Martin, give back my books! And my screen and... ;-)
ooooooh. very nice set-up. 8)
That bookcase is all self-made, just some brackets and shelves. The glass table is from Ikea ;-)
I think some of Stanislaw Lem' books I got there have never been translated into English. The same is true for neuroscience books by Gerhard Roth and a few other nonfiction I got there.
the singularity is near.
.......is it now.
i get the impression all you folks build these fancy shelves and then never read the books. no spines broken and if you bought it with a dog ear, or crease from someone checking the book out at the bookstore, cracking the spine accidentally, and you buying it...well...ya. what?
you take a pic, open up photoshop and then airbrush it back to its original beauty?
do you sit in airtight quiet rooms, free of dust and finger grease with thin white cloth gloves on turning each page before covering your mouth? you're reading these with single thread bookmarks holding the place and dental mirrors btw the pages so you dont crack the spines?
you people make me sick. with envy.
waiting to see someone with a Linda Nagata (modern) or an (older) Ellison.
are you on drugs or something?
Great Babylon 5 boxset goodness there; I sense a spin-off thread's a-coming...
You paid attention vaudeviewgalor raandisisraisins! I have indeed not read the book yet, for that I have probably read it in extract, being quoted in a thousand places, but I'm planning on reading it.
I've read about 80% of the books you can see in the photos above. Yes, I handle them with care.
It won't look any different after I read it tho. Kurzweil's book for example is hardcover and the envelope removeable. But take Iain M. Banks' books, which I've read completely, no blemish, except for one that was only available second-hand, which looks horrible.
It would be interesting to know how everyone started reading science fiction. For me it was in 2004 thru http://orionsarm.com/ and their book recommendations:
http://www.orionsarm.com/books/index.html
That site really fascinated me more than anything ever before and is still my favorite SF universe. I just wanted more of it, so I bought those books.
Of course I was a science fiction fan before, just not SF books. Being 24 years old I basically grew up with Star Trek Next Generation in the 90's and later Babylon 5. Now most of picture SF looks crude to me, aside from a few exceptions like Contact, Children of Men, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Matrix, AI etc. (I recommend this list http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2009/01/10-science-fiction-films-for-thinking.html).
We now seem to live in an age where science fiction is reality, where reality often seems even more fanciful than fiction. I really enjoy it.
Reading alot of science news these days is like a never ending stream of hard science fiction.
Some of the bookcases are really nice, but I have yet to see someone with a collection of SF books that rivals mine.
.and that makes me so proud.
At the moment my shelves are untidy with books piled in heaps and out of order, but I plan to change all that, when I update my excel SF book collection database later this year.
Thank you Neal, posting these pics was a great idea, what a joy !
I'll stick some shots of my collection up soon -- hundreds of books all thoroughly loved to the point of destruction.
'But take Iain M. Banks' books, which I've read completely, no blemish, except for one that was only available second-hand, which looks horrible.'
you are superhuman or me. i have a 'Servants of the Wankh' paperback i'm looking at, Daw books, spine, pages, smell intact. got it when it came out. i can't believe in school all the stuff around this time is in MINT condition. special bag to carry it around in with the reciept as a bookmark. nerd in merde. its some ocd insanity or knowing the value of the Verne mint books at the used bookstore downtown?
i have loose paperbacks and hardbacks in semi-order in crates. whole Brunner/PKDick/Moorcock/Sheckley/Poul A/Vance semi complete book collections in boxes. you wanna see some box photos? i can throw glitter and confetti when i snap em.
'It would be interesting to know how everyone started reading science fiction.'
duBois to Norton to Greek/Norse myths to Verne to R.E. Howard to Cordwainer Smith to Simak to Dickson to Bester to Burroughs to Vance to PKDick (high school days) starting age 7 picking up a library book with a cool cover after exhausting a comic rack down the street. the consuming color picture hungry minor. ongoing addiction. all of my Burroughs were bought in the 70s after flipping out over the covers with shoveling horseshit and cutting weeds money. some of the books printed in England were put together so badly they fell apart by the middle of the book. i've hated the English ever since vowing to expose Churchill. maybe.
It would be interesting to know how everyone started reading science fiction.
I can't for the life of me remember the name of the first SF book or its author that hooked me into the genre but here's a précis of it in the hope someone out there recognizes it.
On Earth a guy gets found guilty of nasty crimes and gets sentenced to be put into stasis as punishment (in the future there's no jail or capital punishment)
Meanwhile on a remote and backwards planet, inhabited by human-being types, an automated space craft from Earth arrives to collect some of the indigenous people to return them to Earth to help civilize them.
Back on Earth a global war happens and everything is more or less destroyed.
Time passes, the automatic space-craft continues its mission for generations (robots do it)
collecting people from the other planet. One of the more intelligent human-types on the other planet is miffed when his girlfriend is taken and swears vengeance but can't do much against the robots.
However, back on Earth all the resources have dried up and cannibalism rules. Therefore the space-craft is a welcome supply of fresh food...
Back to our stasis guy, his capsule is still viable and one day it opens, he gets out to a mutant, cannibal-ridden world. He stumbles across one of the returning space-crafts and low and behold falls in love with the girl who got taken from her boyfriend.
They fight off the zombies and because he is civilized he decides to fly the space-craft back to her planet and help the people there climb the ladder of progress.
They step off the space-craft and she takes him to her village and the boyfriend kills him...
Yeah I know a bit of a pulp story but it's always stuck with me and I'd love to know who wrote it and what it's called, any takers?
And of course the other story that blew my socks off was Bester's The Stars My Destination.
These were read by me in the mid 60s.
Apologies for the long post...
Got to say I has the same thought as Vaude, some of these books are so neat it's unreal. Most of my books are all yellowed with finger grease and age with broken spines and worn corners. My copy of Dune fell apart.
I've always watched Sci Fi, even teh cheesy stuff like the old Galactica and Buck Rogers (hey I was young but Erin Gray in spandex :0). I didn't start reading scifi until I found a copy of Arthur C Clarks 'Fountains of Paradise'. I read a bit more Clark, then had a dig about Amazons suggestions which threw up Alastair Reynolds, the Richard Morgan then Neal.
Coincidentally I just got my confirmation that my Babylon 5 box set is on route :)
Paul, have you checked the set includes all 5 seasons, 7 movies and the serial Crusade which takes place in the B5 universe? The latest movie (The Lost Tales, 2007) will probably only be available as single DVD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5
It's nice to know there are some Babylon 5 enthusiasts here. To me it is one of the few SF series' worth watching (and of course I've got all the box sets, and movies) because it is one of the few that has a complete and superb story arc. So many possible contenders keep extending the franchise and never complete, getting cancelled before they can either start or complete that arc.
What's your favourite episode? Mine has to be the one where the Earth warships attack Babylon 5 (Severed Dreams?). Damn, I think I'll go and watch it again!
XiXiDu, yes it's the full shabang - Babylon 5: The Complete Collection + The Lost Tales.
Amazon has it back in stock btw. I've been waiting a couple of years to get this. I can't afford it but Gorgon Brown says I must spend so I'm only obeying orders.
I really liked the future history episode that showed the humans a million years in to the future. That any anything with Molari and Vir. I've just finished "The Engineer" so I've future histories on the brain right now.
I don't know the name of the episodes but the one where they go to the homeplanet of the Shadows and a member of one of the Shadows agent species enters a Minbari ship and he moves so fast that his movements are all fuzzy and at the same time walks slowly. I really liked that when I saw it when I was younger. Thinking if even a young agent species is that powerful, how much greater must be the power of the Shadows. These different levels of power and knowledge always fascinated me, that there is always a bigger fish and the mysterie of ancient times. So much to see, so much to explore, so much to learn.
The other episode I liked is the one with Lorien. Lorien being not just one of the First Ones (the oldest races in the Universe), he was the first being to gain intelligence in the galaxy.
And the ones where the shadows go and destroy that one alien planet with massive strikes from orbit. That was just huge.
The best of all episodes must be the final of season 4 tho. In the season finale, the events of 100, 500, 1000, and one million years into the future are shown, depicting Babylon 5's lasting influence throughout history. The following evolution of mankind is shown until we completely abandon Earth after which the sun goes nova.
It's all years ago that I saw this so I don't remember the names of the episodes. I only bought the set last year and almost finished season 1 now.
Ah Babylon5, an old favourite despite some of the cheesiest dialogue this side of a cheddar advert. I used to follow it via the Hyperion website and get all the speculation for the coming episodes (Thank you channel4 for showing it, so that even I could watch it in ireland)
I'll have to agree with you on Severed Dreams too, it's such a great episode. Some of the later episodes that revolved around G'Kar and his road to enlightenment were great too.
And of course, Babylon Squared, and the 2 part follow up episode 2 seasons later, is one of the best time travel episodes done.
Have you read any of the novelisations? I read the technomage trilogy and I must say I loved it.
As for getting into Sci-Fi, for me it was reading the short story "Nightfall" by Isaac Asimov when i was around 9 years old. The thought of a planet where there was no night for 5000 years was such a mindblowing concept to me at that age. And then to read about how people might react to that change. I can honestly say it made me rethink the way i looked at the world, even at that age.
Anyway, impressive book collection. And thanks for your amazing Polity books. I'm a relatively recent convert and I'm hooked.
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