Saturday, July 16, 2011

Park Your Carcass, Pick Your Carcossa


For the Science Fiction fans, Arkam House is a Holy Grail. So is Carcosa, but which one ? The text below is derived from the famous Wikipedia, the commentary and valuations are mine, and my thanks go to Zac Carter for the inspiration to do this research.
Carcosa House was a science fiction specialty publishing firm formed by Frederick B. Shroyer, a boyhood friend of T. E. Dikty, and two Los Angeles science fiction fans, Russell Hodgkins and Paul Skeeters in 1947. Shroyer had secured a copy of the original newspaper appearance of the novel Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett P. Serviss which he wished to publish.
(Phil’s Note: it was supposed to be a sequel to The War of the Worlds.)
Shroyer talked Hodgkins and Skeeters into going in on shares to form the publisher which issued the Serviss book in 1947. Dikty offered advice, and William L. Crawford of F.P.C.I. helped with production and distribution. Carcosa House announced one other book, Enter Ghost: A Study in Weird Fiction, by Sam Russell, but due to slow sales of the Serviss book, it was never published.
 
Conquest of Mars  1/1500 Near Fine in a Very Good Dustjacket: $500.00

Carcosa was a specialty publishing firm formed by David Drake, Karl Edward Wagner, and Jim Groce who were concerned that Arkham House would cease publication after the death of its founder, August Derleth. Carcosa was founded in North Carolina in 1973 and put out four collections of pulp horror stories, all edited by Wagner. A fifth collection was planned, Death Stalks the Night, by Hugh B. Cave; Lee Brown Coye was working on illustrating it when he died, causing Carcosa to abandon the project. The book was eventually published by Fedogan & Bremer. The Carcosa colophon depicts the silhouette of a towered city in front of three moons.

All this Carcosa books are in the $ 60.00 - $100.00 price range

Another interesting thing is the large number of q.v. possibilities above. I know most of them, do you ?





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