KEROSINA: Keith Roberts, Philip K Dick, Gene Wolfe...The Definitive Science Fiction Small Press
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- A fifty minute special detailing the history of the iconic British late 1980s SF & Fantasy small press that galvanised the collecting scene in the UK. Steve talks through his Kerosina collection, looking at books by Dick, Roberts, Aldiss, Brunner, Richard Cowper, Michael Bishop ...a real treat for serious SF bibliophiles everywhere!
#sciencefictionbooks
theoccupier.ba...
A truly fascinating tale. Inspiring. Thanks.
Excellent
Thanks! Check out my Morrigan video to see what Les Escott, one of the original Kerosina team, produced himself...I'll pop a link in the description...
@@outlawbookselleroriginal will do
This was great.
I always wanted to know more about small independent presses. MY experience was pretty Limited; mostly predatory booksellers in small specialty shops before the age of the internet.
How was I supposed to gain insight into what the publisher was actually doing when there was no way to look up their info?
I remember staring wide-eyed at a special edition small-press Charles Beaumont collection for several conventions in a row. Do you remember when $50 was an unassailable amount for a new book?
Thank you for giving us such a careful in-depth review, from the inside.
My view from the outside is below:
I remember certain editions I would see at every sci-fi specialty store, the Bookseller would say how rare they were, how special they were, but the stock never moved. You would trip over them at used bookstores too but they were always expensive and the stock never moved. So you always wondered if people were having you on!
as always, steve, thank you very much. i'd never heard of kerosina and you've definitely put them on my radar now. what beautiful books! the gene wolfe one made me salivate as i'm a big wolfe fan and am trying to get a complete collection of his stuff which is slowly but steadily getting there. fingers crossed!
Kerosina rebooted the small press for the UK and documented writers whose careers were coming to a close due to changes in the market and reading (I blame 'Star Wars' for raising generations of SF readers who wanted to return to the 1930s) and issued groundbreaking material by the likes of Wolfe and Shepard, while allowing Keith Roberts to reveal some of his most original work. They never disappointed me.
Wow, Keith Roberts was an extremely talented man. The artwork is gorgeous. Those books are lovely and I can see why you’re not blown away by Folio Society.
P.S. say what you like about astrology but I knew Keith Roberts would be a Virgo.
There will be a couple more videos about Keith's work, including his art, later this year.
Another brilliant video
That's very kind. Watch the one about Morrigan books, which I did a while earlier. There will be more limited edition focuses coming up, with some Underwood-Miller stuff in this weekend's video.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal slowly making my way through them! Wondering if you will look at any other media, comics, magazines, vinyl or obscure vhs/dvd ?
@@namelesswon - Yes, I will. I've done a few film things, want to do more, but am trying to work out how some youtubers are getting around copyright issues, as I've found some of my experiments I had to delete for copyright reasons, while others have been ok - but being a total culture freak I will do other stuff and I hope the non-sf playlists on the channel give you a flavour of future potential breadth of content...
Great video. I've got a few of the trade hardback editions of Roberts and Cowper.
You are clearly a man of taste!
Utterly fascinating! I published a book review fanzine in the 1990s, and friends had their own adventures in small-press publishing, mainly in the horror and weird tale sector. I was also going to mount a horror anthology called FRESH DECAY. Ah...dreams are free...
Yes, I'd like to get back into this stuff, publish an anthology etc. I am planning to get back into writing when UA-cam allows me time, but this probably won't be until January next year, so don't expect anything until late 2024. I have a publisher who is ready and willing, but what I need is the time. As for Kerosina, it was the greatest- look further back on the channel and there's a feature about Morrigan, run by my mate Les Escott, who was involved with Kerosina- he did some interesting books. The picture quality is ropey, so I must reshoot it one day...
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I would love to read some Outlaw fiction. Let's hope your UA-cam channel funds some quality writing time for you. 9-to-5 work and 'the arts' don't mix. One crushes the other. I'll deep-dive for that other small press video...thanks.
@@RodneyAllanPoe -Absolutely, that's why I'm not an artist- plus the Protestant work ethic and guilt/responsibility to others holds the would-be artist back. I do have one published story ( "Saucer Occupant" from 'Deep Ends 2019') but that was written as a homage to Ballard's "The Venus Hunters" and not typical of what I would write if I could find the time.
@@outlawbookselleroriginal Haha! I had ambitions of being an illustrator, but I.T. is actually easier and pays better. I might have turned into another Keith Roberts, too. 😄
Great . My only exprience of Roberts a few stories from the mag of science fiction and fantasy . I do have ' A Gollancz VGSF ' paperback of ' Pavane ' . Have some of Bishops paperbacks and hard covers . His take on a super hero ' Count Geiger Blues ' is no marvel . John Brunner , my first and still my fave is ' Squres of the City '. Strangely relevent for today , with social media what it is . Wolfe ' The Devil in a Forest ' a fantasy ? . Nuff Said . Thank you.
I've never liked the look of 'Count Geiger's Blues', but I like most of MBs stuff. 'Pavane' is a masterpiece. 'Devil in a Forest' is very uncommon these days. The Brunner is good, read it decades ago..
To see the books Les Escott produced for Morrigan, check this out: ua-cam.com/video/0tRC2pz5fKQ/v-deo.html
Well Steven, you are becoming very prolific. I go away for four days and there are hours of listening to do . It's something of a record for me. I went to London and didn't buy a single book. The few remaining second-hand shops seem to have caught on to the fact that vintage paperbacks are valuable, but not that condition is important. I refuse to pay £6 for a tatty John Brunner book with the cover falling off. I did feel for people in the book trade. One of the staff in Foyles was trying to help a girl to choose a book. He asked her what she read. She gave him a list of books hat she had hated, then said that she wanted something lke Harry Potter but without the magic. The poor guy was struggling!
I own all of Keith Roberts' Kerosina and Morrigan books and still love his writing but don't read him as much as I did. Many of his books feature in unavoidable descent into tragedy and disaster that I sometimes don't want to share. Have you read Lemady? It does go some way to explaining his difficult character. He does come across as pretty arrogant and opinionated.
I do own the Gene Wolfe book but am full of envy for that edition of UBIK. That must be worth quite a lot.
The only other small press publisher that I collect is Golden Gryphon. Do you have any experience of them? They mostly specialise in short story collections by what I think of as he last great literary generation of American SF writers, people like Andy Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, Michael Bishop, Lucius Shepard etc, and are nicely presented books. They are numbered, which is tempting, but I only buy writers that I like.
Keep posting, and I hope your dental work is on the way to recovery.
I'm finding that it's getting harder to recommend books to people in my work- so many come ill-prepared, not understanding that there is no such thing as a 'good book' and that subjective taste is everything- Harry potter without magic...wow, glad I didn't get that one! I have read 'Lemady', bought it when it came out. I've heard many anecdotes about Keith that I won't repeat here. Priest said when he died he (CP) felt that quite a few people came out with unpleasant stories about him and that he (CP) felt it was all a bit unbecoming - I don't think KR had a lot of luck in his personal life, which embittered him, no doubt. He was a brilliant writer, though and that's what I care about- would love to have met him. I've always suspected that he probably would have reacted differently in some situations if some people had stood up to him more, but that's just a theory. I don't think I own any Golden Gryphon books, but know of them. I tend to prefer standard firsts to limited with a few exceptions- and there's a budgetary condition, of course. Prolific? Yes, I've postd over 200 videos in 9 months, but I'm aiming for a twice weekly schedule now and will be focusing on quality of production increasingly as time goes on, but it's content that counts, right? Thanks for your comments!
@@outlawbookselleroriginal I know some of the stories you mention and I won't repeat them either. I think that Mike Moorcock said that he just got more difficult and more right-wing as he got older. What really affected me was hearing that when he was ill at the end of his life, having had a leg amputated, one of his nurses suggested that it might relieve his depression by doing a creative writing course. What a blow to the ego of one of the true greats in 20th century fiction.
@@allanlloyd3676 -That's irony of the heaviest kind. I know MM felt that way. Allegedly Aldiss wasn't too keen either eventually, as I'm sure you heard. Les Escott at Morrigan of course knew Keith very well and...well, let's leave it at that, apart from a nod to the famous almost-coming-to-blows incident between Ballard and Roberts (this was related to 'Impulse' magazine) which either MM or Kyril Bonfiglioli broke up or so the legend goes...
Harry Potter W/o magic?
The Little Peppers Abroad?
An adaptation of a CW show?
Yu-Gi Oh!
FFS.