Subterranean Press has finalized their plans (announced earlier in this article for their edition of Philip José Farmer’s Venus on the Half-Shell and Others (with a cover by Bob Eggleton). It will be the first collection of “the best of the best from Philip José Farmer’s scintillating ‘fictional-author period.’
“In the mid-1970s a fever-pitched furor was created when an actual novel purported to be by Kilgore Trout—the sadsack science fiction writer who appears as a character in the works of Kurt Vonnegut—materialized on the bookracks, complete with a mysterious back cover photo of the author looking like a bearded vagabond sage. Debate raged as to who had truly written Venus on the Half-Shell. Was it Vonnegut himself, or perhaps Theodore Sturgeon, rumored to have been the inspiration for Trout? Or did Kilgore Trout really exist? Just as one respected newspaper published an article ‘proving’ that Vonnegut had written the book, the Hugo Award-winning science fiction author Philip José Farmer announced he was the true author. The controversial Kilgore Trout episode was neither the first nor the last time Farmer would impishly slip out of his own skin and assume the persona of another author.”
The complete table of contents is:
“Why and How I Became Kilgore Trout”
Venus on the Half-Shell by Kilgore Trout
“The Obscure Life and Hard Times of Kilgore Trout”
“The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod”
“The Problem of the Sore Bridge—Among Others” by Harry Manders
“The Volcano” by Paul Chapin
“Osiris on Crutches” by Leo Queequeg Tincrowder
“The Impotency of Bad Karma” by Cordwainer Bird
“The Phantom of the Sewers” by Rod Keen
“A Hole in Hell” by Dane Helstrom
“The Last Rise of Nick Adams” by Codwainer Bird
The Adventure of the Peerless Peer
Subterranean will publish the book in three editions: hardcover trade ($38); limited (125 signed, numbered, slipcased copies—$125); and lettered (26 signed, leatherbound, traycased copies—$300). The lettered edition will also include the original version of “The Impotency of Bad Karma” by Cordwainer Bird (which was later rewritten as “The Last Right of Nick Adams”).
They’re taking pre-orders now.