World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—SAT 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1998 / 2009, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 72 pages, 32 x 24.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Morpheus International / US
$150.00 - In stock -
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen"—H.R. Giger
Wonderful, scarce and collectible monograph capturing 30 years of the work of the great Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński, published by Galerie Morpheus in Las Vegas. First issued in 1998, this lavishly illustrated hardcover monograph reproduces Beksiński's surreal dystopian paintings spanning his entire career, alongside an introduction by James Cowen, texts by Tadeusz Nyczek, and great quotes and reflections throughout by Beksiński himself.
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
"In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust." — Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director
Very Good—Fine copy of the later expanded edition, now long out-of-print. With VG—Fine dust jacket.
1997, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket and obi), 104 pages, 29.7 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Treville / Tokyo
$150.00 - In stock -
"Beksinski's powerfully unique paintings are such as I have never before seen" — H.R. Giger
First Edition of the collected works of Zdzisław Beksiński, published originally in hardcover in 1997 by Editions Treville in Tokyo.
"Death, putrefaction, destruction. A time-space continuum that converts everything into eternal ruins
that are dominated by inexplicable loneliness and fear, causing the spirit of eroticism to echo hollowly across his canvases." This is an anthology of the Polish master of introvert fantasy. Chronology of paintings reproduced in colour with bio, exhibition history and essay (in Japanese).
Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) was a Polish painter, photographer and sculptor. Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. Born in Sanok, he studied architecture in Kraków and worked as a construction site supervisor before turning to his passion for art, sculpting with construction site materials for his medium. His early photography would be a precursor to his paintings, often referred to as dystopian surrealism. Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams". Beksiński undertook painting with a passion, working intensely whilst listening to classical music and quickly becoming a leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s, during which he created his famed images of desolate, surrealistic landscapes with intricate depictions of anxious, abstracted figures and architecture in states of decay, mutation and decomposition. Although Beksiński's art was often dark, he himself was known to be a pleasant person with a keen sense of humour. Modest and somewhat shy, he avoided public events such as the openings of his own exhibitions and almost never visited museums or exhibitions in general. He always credited music as his main source of inspiration. Beksiński avoided concrete analysis of the content of his work, saying "I cannot conceive of a sensible statement on painting". Beksiński was stabbed to death at his Warsaw apartment in February 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance from Wołomin, reportedly because he refused to lend the teenager money.
"In the medieval tradition, Beksinski seems to believe art to be a forewarning about the fragility of the flesh – whatever pleasures we know are doomed to perish – thus, his paintings manage to evoke at once the process of decay and the ongoing struggle for life. They hold within them a secret poetry, stained with blood and rust." — Guillermo del Toro, Mexican film director
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket and Obi, with only light age/wear.
1981, English
Softcover, 84 pages, 29.3 x 29.3 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Wild & Woolley / Sydney
$150.00 - In stock -
First 1981 edition of this large-format, full-colour monograph on the inimmitable American–Australian illustrator, artist and concept designer Ron Cobb (1937—2020), published by Wild & Woolley in Glebe, Sydney. Profusely illustrated, Colorvision is a chronological survey of the diverse artwork of Ron Cobb, from his early days in Los Angeles, where he was born, to Sydney, where he moved in 1972 and spent most of his life. With accompanying bio and texts and anecdotes from Cobb's collaborators, the book comprehensively surveys his earliest work in Hollywood, his Monsters covers, his radical political cartoon work for the 1960's Underground Press, through to the dominant focus of the book — his groundbreaking 1970's concept art for major films including Dark Star (1974), Star Wars (1977), Alien (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and Conan the Barbarian (1982).
By the age of 18, Cobb, with no formal training in graphic illustration, was working as an animation "inbetweener" artist for Disney Studios in Burbank, California. He progressed to becoming a breakdown artist on the animation feature Sleeping Beauty (1959), the last Disney film to have cels inked by hand. After Sleeping Beauty was completed in 1957, Cobb was laid off by Disney and worked assorted jobs, painted covers for the legendary Monsters magazine, before being drafted and sent to Vietnam. After his discharge, Cobb began contributing to one of the first underground newspapers of the 1960s, New Age esotericist and editor Art Kunkin's Los Angeles Free Press, noted for its radical politics, as well as the Mother Earth News and other counterculture magazines. Cobb became regarded as one of the finest political cartoonists of the mid-1960s—early 1970s, outspoken on topics of war, ecology, and injustice. Cobb also created a symbol which was later featured on the Ecology Flag. Disenfranchise, Cobb moved to Sydney in 1972, and began contributing to the Australian alternative press, magazines such as The Digger, and published art books with Wild & Woolley. Cobb returned to cinema work when he worked with Dan O'Bannon to design the eponymous spaceship for the 1973 cult film, Dark Star (he drew the original design for the exterior of the Dark Star spaceship on a Pancake House napkin). After contributing designs for Alejandro Jodorowsky's uncompleted film adaption of Frank Herbert's novel Dune, Cobb was engaged by Lucasfilm to produce conceptual artwork for the space fantasy film Star Wars (1977). Working alongside artists John Mollo and Ralph McQuarrie, he created the designs for a number of exotic alien creatures for the Mos Eisley cantina scene. His incredible concept work continued with Alien (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Back to the Future (1985), The Abyss (1989), Total Recall (1990), and Southland Tales (2006), and directed the Australian comedy film Garbo in 1992. During the 1990s, Cobb developed characters and designs for Rocket Science Games, becoming an influential figure in video game design just as he had become in film.
Very Good copy with light handling wear only, light tanning, edge wear to covers.
1977, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 27.5 x 18.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$90.00 - Out of stock
Cyber-communard and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, Stewart Brand's 1977 visionary compendium, "Space Colonies". A special book edition of Brand's legendary CoEvolution Quarterly, Space Colonies took up the question of whether space might be colonized by the year 2000, going to where no media on the subject of space travel has gone before. A visionary and controversial assemblage of articles, illustrations, information and opinions on space colonies, inspired by the culture of the Whole Earth Catalog, with contributions from Buckminster Fuller, Richard Brautigan, Ant Farm, Carl Sagan, Lynn Margulis, Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, David Browner, Paolo Soleri, Eric Drexler, Rusty Schweickart, and many more... interviews with Jacques Cousteau, Gerard O'Neill, Carl Sagan, Lynn Margulis, and many more, all organized into three sections - Vision, Debate and Space.
"This book is about how to take Space personally. Gerard O'Neill's vision of Space Colonies has turned the universe inside out for people. Instead of seeing the space program as a "boondoggle for scientists" (Herman Kahn), suddenly they can see Space as a path, or at least a metaphor, for their own liberation. And those who are critics of high technology — who abound in this book — can leverage their arguments from Space industrialization as the quintessence of what they are fighting. What's new is that people are extrapolating from the future and outside instead of just from the past and inside."
Very Good copy, with some light tanning/wear.
1993, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 220 pages, 13.6 cm x 19.4 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Seikyūsha / Tokyo
$110.00 - In stock -
New Tribalism In Sexual City, Prick Up, Rubbers, Gay Fetishism, Consensual SM, Modern Primitives, Pre-Tech Tattoo, Fakir Musafar, Ignore the White Culture, Body Manipulation, Hyper Pornography, Harrison Marks, Allen Jones, She-Male, Mannequin, Kinbaku, Seppuku, Kyoko Hamura, Rightbrain, Trevor Brown, Roman Slocombe, Medical Art, Forest Of Guts, Auto Erotic, J. P. Witkin, Anatomic Images, Discipline, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Otto Mühl, Hermann Nitsch, Rudolf Schwarzkoglar, Aktion, Meat Performance, Trans-Gender, Transmutation, John Gacy, Ed Gain, Death ...
First hardcover edition of "Terminal Body Play", written by Merzbow's Masami Akita and published only in Japan in 1993. Covering all the above subjects with b/w illustrations, "Terminal Body Play" explores a plethora of physical utopias, including a revived ancient culture of body decoration and manipulation, the pleasure of the body perverted by BDSM, the dematerialised body of performance art, the aesthetics of murder, medicine and anatomy, and so much more. Merzbow is a noise project created in Tokyo, Japan in 1979 under the direction of noise technician Masami Akita. As well as a legendary underground noise artist, Akita is a prolific writer in Japan and frequently writes on the arts, music, erotica, esoterica, modern architecture, and animal rights, with articles on emerging subcultures and underground extreme cultures appearing in publications like SM Sniper, Studio Voice and Fool's Mate. His development of the Merzbow aesthetic ran parallel with a series of investigative books in which he catalogued and introduced a vast amount of hermetic types of music, sexual practices and autonomous creativity to a fairly conservative (but not close-minded) Japanese audience. "Terminal Body Play" is one of these very books.
First edition, Japanese text, fine copy with fine "textured" and illustrated dust jacket.
2017, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 14 x 17.5 cm
Published by
Dorothy Project / St. Louis
$38.00 - In stock -
"Her delirious fantasy reveals to us a little of the secret magic of her paintings" - Luis Buñuel
Surrealist writer and painter Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was a master of the macabre, of gorgeous tableaus, biting satire, roguish comedy, and brilliant, effortless flights of the imagination. Nowhere are these qualities more ingeniously brought together than in the works of short fiction she wrote throughout her life.
Published to coincide with the centennial of her birth, THE COMPLETE STORIES OF LEONORA CARRINGTON collects for the first time all of her stories, including several never before seen in print. With a startling range of styles, subjects, and even languages (several of the stories are translated from French or Spanish), THE COMPLETE STORIES captures the genius and irrepressible spirit of an amazing artist's life.
1996, English
Softcover, 256 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$55.00 - In stock -
First 1996 edition.
Twins George and Mike Kuchar were born in the Bronx in 1942. As teenage cinephiles, both began producing films based on their own version of Hollywood movies, going on to produce a string of low budget classics such as: 1 Was A Teenage Rumpot, Pussy On A Hot Tin Roof, Mike's Sins Of The Fleshapoids and George's infamous Hold Me While I'm Naked.
Baltimore-born John Waters was profoundly and irreversibly affected by the visionary, trashy aesthetic of the '60s underground, especially the Kuchars, who Waters insists "...made me want to make films. THEY are the reason". His films were also influenced by the low budget exploitation pictures of directors like Russ Meyer and Herschell Gordon Lewis. Like his predecessors, Waters used a regular cast of friends, which included Divine, Edith Massey, Mary Vivian Pearce, Mink Stole and Cookie Mueller, all to become trash stars/icons. He is the director of such trash classics as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living; his more recent films have included Hairspray and Serial Mom.
Camp America includes interviews not only with John Waters, but also with members of his notorious entourage; plus extensive interviews with George & Mike Kuchar and a comprehensive assessment of their career and influence as well as a unique feature on underground actress Marion Eaton, star of Curt McDowell's Thundercrack! The book has many rare photographs, plus a filmography and index, and not only documents a fascinating period of extreme underground film-making, but contextualises it firmly within the social fabric of the times, bringing the New York, Baltimore and San Francisco underground/sleaze film scenes of the '60s and '70s vividly to life.
Good copy with crease to back cover, wear to corners, thumb marking to block edge.
1997 / 2001, English
Softcover, 246 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$80.00 - In stock -
2001 updated edition of Brottman's classic study of cannibalism in film, first issued in 1997.
Violent death, murder, mutilation, gluttony and defaecation, ritualism, bodily extremes; cannibalism combines these taboo themes to represent one of the most symbolically charged narratives in the human psychic repertoire. As a grotesque figure of power, threat, and primal appetites, the cannibal has played a formidable and enduring role in the tales told by members of all cultures - whether oral, written, or filmic - and embodies the ultimate extent of transgressive behaviour to which human beings can be driven.
Meat Is Murder! is a unique and explicit exploration of cannibal culture from classical myth to contemporary film and fiction. It features an in-depth illustrated critique of cannibalism as portrayed in the cinema, from mondo and exploitation films such as Cannibal Holocaust to arthouse classics and horror movies such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It also details the atrocious crimes of real-life cannibals such as Albert Fish, Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer and Andrei Chikatilo.
This improved, expanded edition includes a brand new chapter on cannibal zombie films such as Dawn Of The Dead, Zombie Flesh Eaters and Braindead, plus 8 color pages of cannibal carnage and screen gore, and is fully updated.
VG copy with some wear to covers/extremities.
1969, English
Softcover, 206 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Dover / New York
$24.00 - In stock -
Full, unabridged Dover 1969 English paperback edition of Huysmans' famous "A Rebours" from 1884, with Huysmans' original 1903 preface and introduction by Havelock Ellis.
"Because of his extreme sensitivity to the absurd and grotesque in human affairs, the protagonist of this masterpiece of decadence has estranged himself from society and savors the most bizarre aspects of human existence in his quest for novelty. This landmark novel is filled with weird images and biting wit."
Infamous as the inspiration for the novel which slowly corrupts Oscar Wilde's "Dorian Gray", Joris-Karl Huysmans' A Rebours ("Against The Grain" or "Against Nature") is the original handbook of decadence. A wildly original fin-de-siecle novel, Against Nature contains only one character. Des Esseintes is a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where he indulges his taste for luxury and excess. Veering between nervous excitability and debilitating ennui, he gluts his aesthetic appetites with classical literature and art, exotic jewels (with which he fatally encrusts the shell of his tortoise), rich perfumes and a kaleidoscope of sensual experiences. Against Nature, in the words of the author, exploded 'like a grenade' and has enjoyed a cult following to this day.
Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) is now recognized as one of the most challenging and innovative figures in European literature and an acknowledged principal architect of the fin-de-siecle imagination. He was a career civil servant who wrote ten novels, most notably "A Rebours and La-Bas". Huysmans died in 1907.
Good copy, light wear.
1974, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 18 x 11 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$25.00 - In stock -
Originally titled "The Burning World" (1964), an expanded version, retitled "The Drought", was first published in 1965 by Jonathan Cape. In contrast to Ballard's earlier novel "The Drowned World", "The Drought" describes a world in which water is scarce. "Rain is a thing of the past. Radio-active waste has stopped the sea evaporating. The sun beats down on the parching earth, and on the parching spirit of man. A warped new humankind is bred out of the dead land - bitter, murderous, its values turned upside down. Idiots reign. Water replaces currency and becomes the source of a bleak new evil. If it ever happened, it could be very like this". "The Drought" is one of a series of classic early Ballard novels dealing with scenarios of natural disaster. This is the 1974 paperback edition with David Pelham cover art.
James Graham Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, and essayist who first became associated with the New Wave of science fiction for his post-apocalyptic novels such as The Wind from Nowhere (1961) and The Drowned World (1962). In the late 1960s, he produced a variety of experimental short stories (or "condensed novels"), such as those collected in the controversial The Atrocity Exhibition (1970). In the mid 1970s, Ballard published several novels, among them the highly controversial Crash (1973), a story about symphorophilia and car crash fetishism, and High-Rise (1975), a depiction of a luxury apartment building's descent into violent chaos.
Good copy, tanning and light wear, ex-owner name to inside f. cover.
1992, English
Softcover, 280 pages, 20.5 x 15 cm
Published by
Exact Change / Boston
$38.00 - In stock -
The artist Giorgio de Chirico's novel, Hebdomeros is a dream-like book of situations and landscapes reminiscent of his paintings. In his introduction John Ashbery calls the book "the finest work of Surrealist fiction", noting that de Chirico "invented for the occasion a new style and a new kind of novel... his long run-on sentences, stitched together with semi-colons, allow a cinematic freedom of narration... his language, like his painting, is invisible: a transparent but dense medium containing objects that are more real than reality." Hebdomeros is accompanied by an appendix of previously untranslated or uncollected writings, including M. Dudron's Adventure, a second, fragmentary novel translated by John Ashbery.
1982, English
Softcover, 406 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Del Rey / New York
$20.00 - In stock -
“H.P. Lovecraft has yet to be surpassed as the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of the classic horror tale.”—Stephen King
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”—H.P. Lovecraft
This is the collection that true fans of horror fiction must have: sixteen of H.P. Lovecraft’s most horrifying visions, including: The Call of Cthulu: The first story in the infamous Cthulhu mythos—a creature spawned in the stars brings a menace of unimaginable evil to threaten all mankind. The Dunwich Horror: An evil man’s desire to perform an unspeakable ritual leads him in search of the fabled text of The Necronomicon. The Colour Out of Space: A horror from the skies—far worse than any nuclear fallout—transforms a man into a monster. The Shadow Over Innsmouth: Rising from the depths of the sea, an unspeakable horror engulfs a quiet New England town. Plus twelve more terrifying tales! Introduction by Robert Bloch.
VG 1982
1981, English
Softcover, 126 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Penguin Books / London
$15.00 - In stock -
1981 Penguin paperback edition of Angela Carter's 1979 classic The Bloody Chamber, a feminist retelling of favourite fairy tales interwoven by a master of seductive, luminous storytelling.
From the lairs of the fantastical and fabular and from the domains of the unconscious's mysteries...
Lie the brides in the Bloody Chamber — Hunts unwillingly the Queen of the Vampires — Slips Red Riding Hood into the arms of the Wolf — Pimps our Puss-in-Boots for his lustful master...
In tales that glitter and haunt – strange nuggets from a writer whose wayward pen spills forth stylish, erotic, nightmarish jewels of prose – the old fairy stories live and breathe again, subtly altered, subtly changed.
"She writes a prose that lends itself to magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality...dreams, myths, fairy tales, metamorphoses, the unruly unconscious, epic journeys and a highly sensual celebration of sexuality in both its most joyous and darkest manifestations"—Ian McEwan, author of The Child in Time
"The boldest of English women writers"—Lorna Sage
"The most stylish English prose writer of her generation"—John Mortimer
Angela Olive Pearce (formerly Carter, 1940—1992), who published under the name Angela Carter, was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works. She is mainly known for her book The Bloody Chamber (1979). In 1984, her short story "The Company of Wolves" was adapted into a film of the same name. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"
Very Good copy.
2008, English
Softcover, 368 pages, 20 x 13 cm
Published by
Oxford University Press / New York
$20.00 - In stock -
Since their first publication in the 1830s and 1840s, Edgar Allan Poe's extraordinary Gothic tales have established themselves as classics of horror fiction and have also created many of the conventions which still dominate the genre of detective fiction. Yet, as well as being highly enjoyable, Poe's tales are works of very real intellectual exploration. Abandoning the criteria of characterization and plotting in favour of blurred boundaries between self and other, will and morality, identity and memory, Poe uses the Gothic to question the integrity of human existence. Indeed, Poe is less interested in solving puzzles or in moral retribution than in exposing the misconceptions that make things seem mysterious' in the first place. Attentive to the historical and political dimensions of these very American tales, this new critical edition selects twenty-four tales and places the most popular -The Fall of the House of Usher', The Masque of the Red Death',The Murders in the Rue Morgue; and `The Purloined Letter' - alongside less well-known travel narratives, metaphysical essays and political satires.
1973, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 208 pages, 20 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Jonathan Cape / London
$400.00 - In stock -
Rare elusive first 1973 hardcover edition of the Jonathan Cape edition of Ballard's Vermilion Sands, which is considered the complete collection, adding an additional story, "The Singing Statues", to the original Berkley paperback edition from 1971, and a preface, both only available in the British edition.
Vermilion Sands is a collection of surreal science fiction short stories by Ballard, one of his finest, all set in an imaginary vacation resort called Vermilion Sands which suggests, among other places, a latter-day Palm Springs. Vermillion Sands is a fully automated desert resort designed to fulfil the most exotic whims of the idle rich. But now it languishes in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie stars, solitary impresarios, parasites, and artistic and literary failures, a place where love and lust pall before the stronger pull of evil. It is a lair for malice and hate and envy — and the more cancerous forms of madness; a place where sensitive pigments paint portraits for their masters in a grotesque parody of art; where poets press the buttons of mechanical versifiers; where sculptures grow like funguses, and plants respond to music; where psychosensitive houses are driven mad by their owners' neuroses; where love and affection, and even lust, are effete madrigals played in a minor and discordant key.
From the dark recesses of a superb imagination, J. G. Ballard has conjured up an elegant nightmare of decadence, a portrait of a future Gomorrah where a Nero might play an automated violin.
"Ballard is one of the brightest stars in post-war science fiction."—Kingsley Amis
"Collection of stories first published in magazines between 1956 and 1970 "about a decaying artists' colony in the near future, set against surrealistic desert landscapes. With their motifs of singing flowers and statues, living clothes, cloud-sculpting and psychotropic houses, the tale are not conventionally linked, and have differing characters. All marvelously original, with unforgettable imagery. One of Ballard's most brilliant books ..." —Pringle, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, second edition (1995), p. 401.
Good ex-libris copy in Very Good dust jacket (well preserved but for but for small internal price-clipping). Book has some light general aging/light spotting to block edges. Paste-in to first blank page from "South Australian Railways Institute Library", otherwise only very mild marking to blanks.
1995, English
Softcover, 276 pages, 24.5 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Creation Books / London
$70.00 - In stock -
From Peeping Tom to Videodrome, Mondo Cane to "shockumentaries", Faces of Death to live TV suicides.
The 1994 cult classic, in the updated and revised 1995 edition, Killing for Culture: Death Film from Mondo to Snuff by David Kerekes & David Slater, the definitive investigation into that controversial and inflammatory of all urban myths: the "snuff" movie. Including: Feature film, Mondo film, Death film, and a comprehensive filmography and index. Illustrated by rare and stunning photographs from cinema, documentary and real life, Killing for Culture is a vital book which examines and questions the human obsession with images of violence, dismemberment and death, and the way our society is coping with an increased profusion of these disturbing yet compelling images from all quarters.
Very Good copy, light wear to covers.
2022, English
Softcover, 294 pages, 21 x 14 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$55.00 - In stock -
A forensic survey embracing the cinematic delirium of Tobe Hooper. A heady and queer collation of confession, ultraviolence and countless paraphilias. Radical in every way.
2022, English
Softcover, 190 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
Published by
Amphetamine Sulphate / Austin
$52.00 - In stock -
An hallucinatory SF novel painted in overloaded electronic prose and absolute poetic mayhem. Imagine William S. Burroughs and the Marquis de Sade contemplating the end of the world from a flophouse on 42nd Street. A bruising love letter to language and lysergic lycanthropy. AS SF is here.
Seismic shocks throughout the bigger cities of Earth. A plane crash in San Francisco. Sexology as detailed by American nymphomaniacs. Drugs manufactured from Hindu guidelines. Outdoor furniture burning on the lawns of Indianapolis. I take a deep breath. My filthy hand full of numerous ideas. They administer the medical treatments to Madhab. His skin smells burnt ... he is stabbed by unknown substances ... all rubber shuffling upon him. Tropical fruit eaten around campfires. Coyotes constructed from human bones. Carnal worlds involving shampoo and soiled beds. We strangle in the stairwells at night. We strangle in hotel rooms and on patios ... beneath bed sheets or brown paper. We invite the hotel staff to join us. The brutal lunge of a foam head. Soda bubbles as the blood drools. Index finger in the red mist. Dark-haired soldier with an unidentifiable accent. Madhab wears dark glasses and hangs out with big drug users. Madhab thinks that obedience is an adrenaline rush. He likes tugging off relief workers and U.N. peacekeepers in the toilet facilities. When I was fifteen I use to give back massages on East 14th Street. I’d lick the oil smells from Madhab’s underarms. Memories of the cool night air at the open swimming pavilion. The red lacquer corner pillars by the change rooms. Madhab gets me back to the hotel room. White shirt tight against his chest. I burn up. He opens his mouth. Moss and plaque. Dry toothpaste on lip. Dangerous gang members flood tribal areas. SWAT team in Kandahar. The gorgeous mountains of Afghanistan. Toadlike fingers over the strategic footholds. Negative forces infiltrate Madhab’s psychic energy. Machine guns against the dark blue sky. White stabs of lightning. The electrical world. Kidnappings and suicide bombings. Super-computers cancelling gene therapy programs. It is an early morning in Manhattan ...
Illustrated by Steven Purtill.
2025, English
Softcover, 172 pages, 17.8 x 11.4 cm
Published by
Wakefield Press / Cambridge
$33.00 - In stock -
An unnamed adolescent drifter wanders through an unnamed country at an unspecified point in time in search of warmth and comfort. He finds it at a farm engaged in festivities but is immediately forced to flee the next morning after coveting the mysterious lady of the estate. Now a fugitive, the vagabond encounters and joins with another, a wry middle-aged man tasked with delivering a message sealed in a tube. The two pursue a dreamlike chain of clues and horror in their mission, encountering—as well as perpetrating—crime and cruelty, until the boy’s former aimlessness develops into an unexpected destiny.
An at times unsettling narrative of initiation, the torments of desire, and the death of youth, The Messengers is an oneiric exploration of a realm that embodies the parables of Kafka and the atmosphere of Alain-Fournier.
Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud (1947– ) is a French novelist and short-story author whose poetic universe is infused with a dream logic and an exploration of the fantastic. He has been the recipient of the Prix Renaudot, Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle, Prix Giono, Prix Valéry Larbaud, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire.
“He is an original, and though his vision is highly personal, it is also highly attuned to the way the real seeps into the surreal, the way the everyday, given just the right push, can collapse into the extraordinary.”—Brian Evenson
Translated, with an introduction, by Edward Gauvin.
1974, Japanese
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 127 pages, 29 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Bijutsu Shuppansha / Japan
Rippu Shobo / Japan
$200.00 - Out of stock
Rare copy of the best book on award-winning Japanese illustrator Shiro Tatsumi (1938—2003). From the legendary Illustration NOW series published by Rippu Shobo in 1974, this lavishly produced book collects the best of Tatsumi's radical graphic phantasmagoria, showcasing his unique work from the Tokyo underground to his award-winning commercial illustration, his never published private drawings and his illustrations of Hell. Fiercely independent and challenging, Tatsumi started his design career with Daido Moriyama’s first photobook, A Photo Theater, then worked on theater posters for the avant-garde performances of Shuji Terayama, and as a commercial illustrator and designer. Designed by Seiichi Horiuchi in the 1970s and presented by Keiichi Tanaami, Yoshitara Isaka, Yosuke Inoue and others, The World of Shiro Tatsumi includes 207 works, with fold-out panels. Highly recommended volume on an artist seldom spoken of outside Japan.
Very Good copy with VG dust jacket. Lacks pull-out poster.
2025, English
Softcover, 448 pages, 22.5 x 19.2 cm
Published by
FAB Press / UK
$79.00 - In stock -
In 2012, a book debuted that would go on to canonical status and usher in a new way of writing about film. Kier-La Janisse's HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN is an autobiographical exploration of female neurosis in horror and exploitation films that examines hundreds of films through a daringly personal lens. In this pioneering work, anecdotes and memories interweave with film history, criticism, trivia and confrontational imagery to create a reflective personal history and a consideration of female madness, both onscreen and off.
To mark its 10th anniversary, Kier-La Janisse and FAB Press have reteamed to produce an expanded edition the book, featuring new writing on 100 more films - many of which were inspired in part by the book itself - and hundreds of new images. This hardcover expanded edition is now available in softcover.
Cinema is full of neurotic personalities, but few things are more transfixing than a woman losing her mind onscreen. Horror as a genre provides the most welcoming platform for these histrionics: crippling paranoia, desperate loneliness, masochistic death-wishes, dangerous obsessiveness, apocalyptic hysteria. Unlike her male counterpart - 'the eccentric' - the female neurotic lives a shamed existence, making these films those rare places where her destructive emotions get to play.
This sharply-designed book, including a 48-page full-colour section, is packed with 680 rare stills, posters, pressbooks and artwork throughout, that combine with family photos and artifacts to form a titillating sensory overload, with a filmography that traverses the acclaimed and the obscure in equal measure. Films covered include The Entity, The Corruption of Chris Miller, Singapore Sling, 3 Women, Toys Are Not for Children, Repulsion, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, The Haunting of Julia, Secret Ceremony, Cutting Moments, Out of the Blue, Mademoiselle, The Piano Teacher, Possession, Antichrist and hundreds more!
Compendium of Female Neurosis. A cross-section of horror and violent exploitation films that feature disturbed or neurotic women as primary or pivotal characters.
Alice, Sweet Alice; All the Colors of the Dark; Alucarda; Anima persa; Antichrist; Asylum; The Attic; Audition; Autopsy; The Baby; Bad Dreams; Bad Guy; Bas-fonds; Bedevilled; The Beguiled; La Belle Bête; The Bird with the Crystal Plumage; Black Narcissus; Black Swan; The Blood Spattered Bride; The Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll; Born Innocent; Boy Meets Girl; The Brave One; The Bride; The Brood; Burnt Offerings; Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker; Can Go Through Skin; A Candle for the Devil; Carrie; La casa muda; Cat People; La cérémonie; Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things; Christiane F.; The Collector; The Corruption of Chris Miller; Les cousines; "Criminally Insane"; The Curse of the Cat People; Cutting Moments; Daddy; Dead Creatures; Defenceless: A Blood Symphony; Dementia; Descent; The Devil's Widow; The Devils; Diabel; Die! Die! My Darling!; The Dinner Party; Dirty Weekend; Dr. Jekyll and His Women; Don't Deliver Us from Evil; Don't Look Now; Don't Torture a Duckling; Doppelganger; Dracula's Daughter; Dream Home; The Entity; The Escapees; Eyes of a Stranger; Fatal Attraction; Feed; Five Across the Eyes; Footprints; Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion; Four Flies on Grey Velvet; Freeze Me; The Frightened Woman; Frightmare; Funeral Home; Gently Before She Dies; The Geography of Fear; The Girl Next Door; The Glass Ceiling; Goodbye Gemini; A Gun for Jennifer; Handgun; Happy Birthday to Me; Hard Candy; The Haunting (1963); The Haunting (2009); The Haunting of Julia; Haute tension; Heavenly Creatures; The Honeymoon Killers; A Horrible Way to Die; I Never Promised You a Rose Garden; Images; In My Skin; The Innocents; Inside; The Isle; Julie Darling; Kichiku; The Killer Nun; Kissed; Knife of Ice; The Ladies Club; The Last Exorcism; The Legend of Lylah Clare; The Legend of the Wolf Woman; Let's Scare Jessica to Death; A Lizard in a Woman's Skin; Love Me Deadly; The Loved Ones; Macabre; The Mad Room; Mademoiselle; Madhouse (1974); Madhouse (1981); Madness; The Mafu Cage; Man, Woman and Beast; Marnie; Martyrs; Masks; May; Misery; Morris County; Morvern Callar; Mother's Day; Ms.45; Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly; Nabi: The Butterfly; Neighbor; Neither the Sea Nor the Sand; Nekromantik; Nekromantik 2; Next of Kin; The Night Porter; A Night to Dismember; Nightbirds; Nightmares; La nuit des traquées; The Other Hell; The Other Side of the Underneath; Out of the Blue; Paranoia; Paranormal Activity; The Perfume of the Lady in Black; Persona; Phenomena; The Piano Teacher; Pigs; Play Misty for Me; Possession; Pretty Poison; Prey; Psycho Girls; The Rapture; The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!; Rebecca; Red Desert; Red Sun; Red White & Blue; The Reincarnation of Peter Proud; Repulsion; Road to Salina; Roman's Bride; Santa Sangre; Schizo; Scissors; Scream 4; Séance on a Wet Afternoon; Secret Ceremony; The Secret Life of Sarah Sheldon; Shock; Singapore Sling; Sinner; Sisters (1973); Sisters (2006); Slaughter Hotel; The Snake Pit; Sombre; Spider Baby; The Stendhal Syndrome; Straight On Till Morning; Strait-Jacket; The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver; The Strange Vengeance of Rosalie; Symptoms; Szamanka; That Cold Day in the Park; They Call Her One Eye; 3 Women; To Let; Toys Are Not for Children; Trance; Trilogy of Terror; Trouble Every Day; Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me; The Uninvited; Venom; Venus Drowning; The Washing Machine; What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; The Whip and the Body; Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?; Windows; The Witch Who Came from the Sea; The Woman; Woman Transformation; Wound PLUS MORE THAN 100 EXTRA FILM REVIEWS EXCLUSIVE TO THIS NEW EDITION
Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, programmer, producer and founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies. She is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007) and has been an editor on numerous books including Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021), Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television (2017) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015). She was a producer on David Gregory’s Tales of the Uncanny (2020) and wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021) for Severin Films, where she is a producer and editor of supplemental features. She is currently at work on several books including a monograph about Monte Hellman’s Cockfighter.
1997, English / Japanese
Softcover, 100 pages, 37 x 26 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Sakuhinsha / Tokyo
$190.00 - In stock -
First Japanese edition of Japanese master of erotic fantasy illustration Hajime Sorayama's classic NAGA, published in 1997. The long awaited arrival of the latest collection Sorayama's erotic illustrations, NAGA, which was completed after his previous best-seller, GYNOIDS. This lavish over-sized volume is illustrated cover-to-cover with 65 of Sorayama's works gathered on the central mythological theme of NAGA — the serpent gods. A celebration of feminine beauty, presented in dramatic, glossy full-colour throughout. This edition with beautiful production, including textured, patterned Japanese paper-stocks and incredible reproductions.
Hajime Sorayama is revered for his erotic airbrushed illustrations of humanoid robots that explore ideals of femininity and beauty. Drawing on pinup pictures, Sorayama published the first book of his signature “Sexy Robot” series of chromium-plated figures in 1983. Decades later, these striking works have sold for more than $500,000. Sorayama started his career in advertising before freelancing in Hollywood, where he helped to produce visuals for sci-fi films. His illustrations gained widespread attention in 1995, when Penthouse began featuring them in a monthly column. While Sorayama has enjoyed a particular cult status for his sensual cyborgs —who appear empowered rather than objectified —he has also received mainstream commercial attention. Sony enlisted him to produce the first designs for its robotic dog AIBO, which won the grand prize for Japan’s Good Design Award in 1999. Sorayama has also worked with fashion titans such as Thierry Mugler and Dior on projects that have extended his illustrations into the realm of wearables, sculpture, and performance.
Very Good copy.
2024, English
Softcover, 228 pages, 19.8 x 12.9 cm
Published by
Muswell Press / UK
$36.00 - Out of stock
The '90s New York cult classic!
A Queer Classic re-published for the first time in 27 years, by the author of The Romanian, winner of the Prix de France. A New York City hustler with a special gift for reeling in customers, Apollo, "a pale skinned mulatto with a mournful mouth" strips at a gay sex theater in Times Square. He is one of the most seductive and disturbing creations in recent American fiction.
Unflinchingly describing the lives of hustlers, pimps, drug-addicts and transsexuals in 1990s Times Square, User speaks with the authentic voice of characters from the edge. This is a world filled with stark, hypnotic eroticism and mined with terrors peculiar to the subterranean city in the hours after midnight.
1994, English
Softcover, 192 pages, 21.5 x 14 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Permeable Press / San Fransisco
$12.00 - In stock -
"Lance Olsen's Tonguing The Zeitgeist is pure dope - some of the wildest, darkest and hippest head candy you could ever imagine tasting! His addictive prose style is like taking a hit of ecstasy and entering a futureworld that rivals Gibson's Neuromancer. I dare you to read it!"—Mark Amerika, author of The Kafka Chronicles
"Lance Olsen writes as if he were Lucifer taking the long plummet to Hell. His prose lights the sky with mocking laughter and burning conviction."—Lewis Shiner, author of Slam and Deserted Cities of the Heart
"Avant-Pop Prof Lance Olsen's Tonguing The Zeitgeist is one of the new breed of savvy, post-cyberpunk SF novels that should alert all those grunge-weary members of the underground that there's weird, wired, and wild quality stuff coming from the Pacific Northwest these days other than remastered Hendrix or Nirvana's latest. Two thumbs up!"—Larry MaCaffery, editor of Storming The Reality Studio: A Cyberpunk Casebook
"So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star? In a future that isn't distant enough, you'll have to sell your soul to MTV just to pick up a guitar. And then they start carving you up, making you over in the mega-media image of glitter and bone.
Poor Ben Tendo, he just wanted to play music and make love to Jessika. . . Tonguing the Zeitgeist, finalist for the 1995 Philip K. Dick Award for best science fiction novel, is a social satire in the tradition of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange about the music industry and the commercialisation of the arts."
LANCE OLSEN's many books include the novel Live From Earth, the short story collections My Dates With Franz and Scherzi, I Believe, and the first full-length study of the godfather of cyberpunk, William Gibson. His prose and poetry have appeared in about two hundred magazines and anthologies, among them Fiction International, Mondo 2000, and VZS. Born in New Jersey and raised in Venezuela, he has sampled Wisconsin, Iowa, Virginia, Kentucky, London, and Oxford, but now lives on a farm in northern Idaho with his wife, Andi Olsen, and their modem.
Very Good copy, some light wear/marking to block edges.