Retired writer Paul T. Riddell writes that, in addition to maintaining the Texas Triffid Ranch website (“Odd plants and oddities for odd people. Featuring carnivorous, prehistoric, and exotic plants; displays and arrangements; projects and observations; and an event calendar.”), he’s got two new reprint collections now available:
He describes Greasing the Pan: The “Best of Paul T. Riddell thusly: Science fiction essayist Paul T. Riddell isn’t the first to compare magazine writing to public masturbation, but he’s the first to practice what he preached and quit writing. Before he did, he and cohort Edgar Harris (former sports editor of Science Fiction Age) spent thirteen years covering such diverse subjects as assistance to beginning writers (“I want to hunt down the idiot who came up with that ‘writers make $37.50 an hour’ story and let Whitley Strieber’s aliens make him/her squeal like a pig”) to Harlan Ellison’s cybernetic history and how Canada formally apologized to the UN for the TV series Lexx. Put down the Edmond Scientific catalog, grab a UNIT recruiting flyer, and find out why Ellen Datlow referred to Riddell as “…unfailingly incendiary.”
Of The Savage Pen of Onan: The “Best” of the Hell’s Half-Acre Herald Volume 2 of the Proverbs 26:11 Papers, he says: Back during the heady days of the dotcom boom, struggling writer Paul T. Riddell, overdosed on reruns of Max Headroom and incredible hubris, decided to try his hand at Internet journalism. Between 1998 and 2002, he wrote for an audience of dozens on subjects ranging from bookstore management to the famous Mad Shitter of Texas Instruments, and the “best” appear here in dead-tree format for the first time. Feel free to descend into Riddell’s world, where Rant Makes Right, japery is the order of the day, and the pen is mightier than the sword only until you try to decapitate an editor with a laptop and a running start.
Both books are published by Fantastic Books, for which SFScope Editor Ian Randal Strock is an acquiring editor.