Ebay grumblings

I wish, I really bloody wish ebay sellers would not use stock pictures to show of their wares.
How hard can it be to take a picture of the book you're actually trying to sell?
It tells almost everything a buyer would actually want to know at a glance.
It saves you having to go through the trouble of copy-pasting another seller's book details that might not add up to the edition you're hawking, at the very least, you lazy cretin.

The reason for this annoyed little post is that amongst various other books, I've been trying to get Lud-in-the-Mist's Fantasy Masterworks edition for a while now and I've had no luck.

Every little bit of the information in the Lud-in-the-Mist listings is contradictory to what is advertised.

For example:

One listing has the book listed as the 2000-version but has the isbn-number and cover picture of the 2008 Ultimate Fantasy Sequence edition. To top it off it has a page count that doesn't match the UFS version.

They're all somewhat like that. It's seriously frustrating.
It also doesn't help that I once took a chance and ordered the book anyway...

Yeah... Not so happy with that.
This is not actually a new purchase, I've had these for a while.
But going through the listings now I'm reminded that nothing has changed and people still copy-paste away while using the most attractive cover available even if it doesn't match what they're selling.
Having a disclaimer AT THE BOTTOM that 'cover is intended for illustration purposes only' is a filthy and deliberately deceptive thing to do.
If you want my money, you work for it and you show me a picture of what I'm buying.

With the Ultimate Fantasy Sequence and Fantasy Masterworks editions it's actually extra hard to get what you want because people regularly mistake them for one another.

Now, the reason that these UFS editions and the FM editions are sometimes mistaken for one another is that the UFS edition (2008) is an actual literal copy of the FM edition (various, but all pre-2008). The 8 books are practically identical in contents, though the UFS has actually had most of its extras removed when the Ultimate Fantasy Sequence was released with its radically different cover.

I've ordered a few Fantasy Masterworks and am anxiously awaiting them. One of these is Lyonesse 1. You know, one of the 2 last books that are present in the Fantasy Masterworks that are also present in the UFS...

Meanwhile, the quest for Lud-in-the-Mist is halted due to temporary annoyance.
It's not that that great a book but I would like to have its Fantasy Masterwork version on my shelf anyway.

Very pretty cover as well. Shades of Rivendell.

The Ultimate Fantasies Sequence (2008), Gollancz

The Ultimate Fantasies Sequence was published in 2008 by the UK-based Orion Publishing Group under their Gollancz imprint, which, simply because it specialises in Science Fiction and Fantasy, is the best book publisher ever.

Collecting 8 Books from various sub-genres in the fantasy genre,

namely; 

Fairy tales (Lud-in-The-Mist),

Sword and Sorcery (The Conan Chronicles, Elric, Lankhmar),

mythology (The Broken Sword, Lyonesse),

Slipstream/ Science fantasy ( Chronicles of Amber)

and historical fantasy (the Dragon Waiting).

Given the variety and high quality of the books in its list I suppose the UFS is meant to give a taste of the wide-ranging flavours in the Fantasy genre, with an emphasis on Literary fantasy.

Arranged here by internal order The Ultimate Fantasies Sequence consists of;

-The Conan Chronicles by Robert E. Howard (ISBN: 978-0-575-08273-1)

Edited by Stephen Jones, collecting the short stories;
'The Hyborian Age' (1936)
'The Tower of the Elephant' (1933)
'The Hall of the Dead (synopsis)' (1976)
'The God in the Bowl' (1952,1975)
'Rogues in the House' (1934)

'The Hand of Nergal (fragment)' (1976)
'The Frost-Giant's Daughter' (1953,1976)
'Queen of the Black Coast' (1934)
'The Vale of Lost Women' (1967)
'The Snout in the Dark (draft)' (1969,1979)
'Black Colossus' (1933)
'Shadows in the Moonlight' (1934)
'A Witch shall be Born' (1934)
'Shadows in Zamboula' (1935)
'The Devil in Iron' (1934)
'The People of the Black Circle' (1934)
'The Slithering Shadow' (1933)
'Drums of Tombalku (Draft)' (1966,1986)
'The Pool of the Black One' (1933)
Map of the Hyborian Age (2000)

-Elric by Michael Moorcock (ISBN: 978-0-575-08270-0)

Collecting several stories and novels;
'The Dreaming City' (1961)
'While the Gods Laugh' (1962)
'The Stealer of Souls' (1962)
'Kings in Darkness' (1962)
'The Caravan of Forgotten Dreams' (1962)
'Stormbringer' (1965,1977)

-Lankhmar  by Fritz Leiber (ISBN: 978-0-575-08274-8)

Collecting the novels;
'Swords and Deviltry'
'Swords against Death'

'Swords in the Mist'
'Swords Against Wizardry'

Though the copyright states 2001, the individual novels were actually
collected from seperate short stories. The first 2 (chronological) novels were then published in 1970, the other two in 1968.
This complete gathering of the first 4 books in the canon takes it copyright date from the Fantasy masterwork edition of the First book of Lankhmar.

-Lyonesse  by Jack Vance (ISBN: 978-0-575-08271-7)

Consisting of
'Suldrun's Garden' (1983)

-Lud-In-The-Mist by Hope Mirlees (ISBN: 978-1-8579-8767-6)

Consists of
 'Lud-in-the Mist' (1926)

(has the honor of having the flat-out best cover in the UFS;
Sophie Toulouse's 'Fallen Angel Nation of Angela')

-The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson (ISBN: 978-0-575-08272-4)

Consists of
'The Broken Sword'  (1954)

-The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny (ISBN: 978-0-575-08269-4)

Collecting the novels;
'Nine Princes in Amber' (1970)
 'The Guns of Avalon' (1972)
 'Sign of the Unicorn (1975)
 'The Hand of Oberon' (1976)
 'The Courts of Chaos' (1978)

 These are the 5 first novels of the Chronicles of Amber series. The Chronicles of Amber can be divided into two parts; 1-5 (the Corwin Cycle) and 6-10 (The Merlin cycle).
So this book can stand on its own.

-The Dragon Waiting by John M. Ford (ISBN: 978-0-575-07378-4)

Consists of
'The Dragon Waiting' (1983)

Covers and artwork rundown

The beautiful Cover Illustrations are by parisian freelance artist Sophie Toulouse and the overall cover design is by UK-based independent designer Sue Michniewicz.

Credit where it is due; the covers are nicely uncluttered with only the artwork, the book's title and the author's name on a white background. On the back we have some short cover blurb, a title repetition, a short, simple postivive description of the book in general, some simple publishing details and a review quote by a famous author.

Working with only a few colours; grey, white and black for the artwork plus another single colour unique to each book which is also used for the book titles on front, back and spine.
This colour is also used for the Review quote's author name, the general description and the first letter of the Book Blurb.
The book author's name is in black on the front.

small note:
For several of my personal books this colour has been given a reflective finish which is super lovely, I assumed this depended on the printed edtition but my edition of Lankhmar kind of blows that out of the water, So I'll just give the facts rather than position a theory to this curious phenomenon;
 Elric (1st ed) blue, Lyonesse (1st ed) pink, Lud-in-the-Mist (3d ed) green, The Conan Chronicles (1st ed) silver, Lankhmar (4th ed) red, The Dragon Waiting (1st ed) cyan.  This reflective finish is present on cover and spine, but not on the back.
And I also have some books which do not have that same finish, just the same colour without reflective treament, which is just a bit sad; The Broken Sword (4th ed) orange, Chronicles of Amber (6th ed) purple.


Differences between the Fantasy Masterworks and the Ultimate Fantasy Sequence

The reason for this post is that in trying to collect these books, as usual several years too late, I had alot of trouble getting them (being not born in the UK and not having access to any good second hand english book shops), as online sellers are kind of slapdash with information.

There's not alot of information surrounding them so I looked around and from either the internet or my own finally complete set tried to compile as much information as possible.

Also, because people like to lump these books together with the Gollancz' Fantasy Masterworks series and that's obviously not actually accurate.

To that end I'll now list some differences:

In general:

Obviously the covers and ISBN numbers are different. but is there, besides the very pretty covers, any actually added value to the series?

On the whole, I'd say no, The Fantasy Masterworks actually contain some extra bit of stuff, even some things that I thought were integral to the novels.

The 'Also by the author' pages, dedications and author blurb are retained though they are always added at the back of the book.
There is a reduced number of review quotes
Index sections were left out completely.

Noteworthy differences

For The Conan Chronicles there is no afterword or index in the book that was present in the original Fantasy Masterworks edition, there are also no acknowledgements at the start of the Copyright Pages. The Map of the Hyborian Age can be found at the back.

For the Broken sword there is a notable difference in the newer U(nnumbered)FM edition, which comes with a new introduction by Michael Dirda. There is no introduction present in the original FM edition. The (unsigned) foreword by Poul Anderson is added to the back.

The Dragon Waiting has 'a historical note' and 'shadows as they pass' at the back. These are two sets of notes relating to history and characters.
There is no index and no attention is given to the FM edition's imposing typeset (used for the titles).
There really is no contest in which of the two is the superior version.

Lankhmar is another one with big differences. There's no index.
Normally every individual novel in the First book of Lankhmar (Fantasy Masterworks nr18) has a list of humorous contents and descriptions of the different acts in the book, which slyly alludes to Fritz Leiber's past on stage. In the UFS these have been left out completely.
(Also, the copyright page states that the copyright dates from 2001 which is obviously not the publication date of the original novels, but the date of publication of the Fantasy masterworks edition of the First Book of Lankhmar.)

Elric has no index. Map is at the back.

Chronicles of Amber has no index.

(I don't have any FM editions of Lud-in-the-Mist and Lyonesse so I can't really compare those)

I'll update this picture when I get the other two. Some time...

Also, feel free to point me to any new information regarding this series or correct erroneous information as I have tried to be as complete as possible, but it's easy to miss things or make errors.

Down the rabbithole; the search for Lyonesse

I've been looking to collect  a complete, matching set of Jack Vance's Lyonesse Trilogy.
I had a few options here.

As a compulsory collector and reader of the Fantasy Masterworks series (I came very late to the party though) I first looked if I might find the trilogy somewhere within its titles.
And yes they are; the three books are collected in 2 volumes:
Nr 27 Lyonesse 1 collects Suldrun's Garden and nr 35 comprising Lyonesse 2 and 3 collects The Green Pearl and Madouc. Because they've both been out of stock for a while, the second hand prices have become a prohibitively expensive. Lyonesse 1 seems pretty reasonable most of the time but Lyonesse 2 usually goes upwards of 60 dollars.
Yeah, hmm, I guess I'll just keep my eyes open for a good opportunity to collect these particular ones.

I also had already bought what I believe to be Suldrun's Garden under nothing but the name of "Lyonesse" as part of the Ultimate Fantasies Sequence published in 2008 by Gollancz.

Beautiful Artwork, Slight embossing and reflective lettering. 

It's an ex library copy and as such arrived in deplorable condition. I cleaned it up as best I could and bending it back in its original shape I wedged it for several months beneath some heavy objects and let it stay there. It turned out reasonably well but the entire book is still pretty yellow from exposure to sunlight. I'm pretty sure there's nothing to be done about that.
It's a start but as the Ultimate Fantasies Sequence is comprised of 8 books with only this one a jack Vance book I had to look elsewhere.

Very noticable discoloration on Lyonesse.
Also, 5 out of 8 books. I'm currently
tracking down the remaining 3.

Another option was to try and track down the Gollancz Big Black Books version, collecting all three books in a very handsome hardcover.

Pretty

Perfect for what I wanted but because I have the 2 books in the 6 book series that collect Lovecraft's work (Because the faux leather makes it seem like it's an occult work, what? shutup!) Buying Lyonesse in GBBB version would lead me to absolutely having to get the three remaining ones. Not a bad thing in itself as I've already read all of Conan and alot of Howard in general. That accounts for 2 more books in the Big Black Gollancz series but I'm not really keen to read Tarzan and the books in general are hard to track down and pretty expensive as a result.

Pay no attention to the dishevelled bookmarks,
been re-reading these
dipping in and out over the longest time.

I usually buy my books from the bookdepository and after fiddling with the advanced search button I got some interesting results.
There were some russian translations, some spanish versions with beautiful art but the odd purple text kind of put me off (not knowing any spanish might have something to do with it too, idem ditto russian). Some cd-audio versions and a whole host of out of stock notifications.
There were also versions without immediately visible cover art collecting each individual book in the trilogy. Pretty expensive at 19 euros per book. 150-230mm in paperback, a size I love. Great I thought, and delved a bit further.

Publisher was Spatterlight Press. Sounded kind of familiar but looking at their catalogue (we're still on the bookdepository site at this point) they hadn't published alot. In fact, all they seemed to have published was relative recent and all of it Jack Vance.

A slight tingle but I easily ignored it.

I then looked at google pictures at individual covers for the lyonesse trilogy as published by Spatterlight Press and something in my mind started to hum.
Overall pretty good-looking cover art but the bottom of the cover had a grey-white background with black lettering. I glanced at the rest of the visible pictures and there were a few similar ones, all by Jack Vance but not part of Lyonesse. All with that grey-white background with black lettering at the bottom. A theme...

At this point alarm bells were ringing.

Still in google Pictures I typed in Spatterlight Press and... my jaw dropped.

Nervous Excitement accompanied by a sinking feeling

62 Deluxe paperback volumes...
The Spatterlight Press signature series...

Jack Vance. Return of the Master.

Spatterlight Presents the collected body of work of Jack Vance-
An Integral edition in 62 deluxe paperbacks.

I went to their site and...

Spatterlight Press'- Jack Vance Signature Series

Turns out that Spatterlight Press was formed by friends and family of the late Jack Vance in order to publish, promote and preserve his entire written body of work, excluding a mystery crime trilogy he wrote for the Ellery Queen house name under the pseudonym of John Holbrook Vance.

A fucking titanic and dedicated undertaking of very high quality, still being published right now with a few evolving parameters (introductions by noteworthy authors, varied artists and such) and, for me, a chance to jump in early. Get the books as they come out. I'm not sure about the color pattern that a finished collection would have on shelves (see the picture of the hypothetical complete dutch version of the series above)  but regardless, it would be an absolute eye-drawing prestige piece worthy of any collector.

62 books though...

There's bound to be a few bad ones in there, right? I have a rule that whatever I buy has to be eventually read. It's an everlasting and ongoing process, but I haven't given up on it yet. There's a ridiculous amount on my To Be Read bookshelf though and I'm not sure if I'm willing to commit to anything of this magnitude. But on the other hand, it isn't as if they look like massive tomes.

I have already read The Dying Earth saga and after a wobbly start (mine) ended up liking it quite alot. I actually fell in love with the novella Dan Simmons did in homage to it, a very beautifully written little book. Also, I think the name Spatterlight came from somewhere in the Dying Earth Saga, but I'm not exactly sure from what. In this series The Dying Earth will take up 4 volumes.
The Lyonesse trilogy will take up 3 volumes.
Names that ring a bell are Emphyrio and Night Lamp which were both published under the SF Masterworks collection by Gollancz (which I will NEVER collect, there's simply too much in that collection for me to open that particular door).
The Blue World has an arresting cover that I doubt will hold up when I actually would have the thing in my hands.
The 5 volume Demon Princes has way better covers than whatever is out from other publishers right now.

Those are the ones that I had considered in the past and had thought about purchasing (barring Blue World). That's 14 out of 62, With 4 of those having been read already. And most of them don't really look that big...

I'm in trouble aren't I?