Erik Mona is the publisher of Paizo Publishing, LLC, creators of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the Planet Stories line of pulp fantasy novels. Mona has won more than a dozen major game industry awards and his writing has been published by Paizo, Wizards of the Coast, Green Ronin Publishing, and The MIT Press.
An avid collector of pulp magazines and old science fiction paperbacks, Mona spends most of his scant free time reading old fiction and posting about it online.
He lives in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.
Great blog!
I love reading the old stories as well, and I even collected my share of old sword & sorcery (and sci-fi) paperbacks back in the day. I read most of them, but there was lots of really bad reading experiences hidden between the good, and now most of the books are hidden in the basement. If you need a particular book, there is a small chance that I have it, so just ask… I love to trade books.
Will you cover any books from Theodore Stugeon at some point, or is he too sci-fi for your liking? I’m a great Sturgeon fan… lots of mad stories to be read there!
By: cityofmages on March 8, 2009
at 5:23 am
I will probably get to Sturgeon eventually, but right now he is not one of the authors I actively collect. Off the top of my head, that list incluides:
Leigh Brackett
John Brunner
Lin Carter
Ray Cummings
L. Sprague de Camp
Homer Eon Flint
Gardner F. Fox
Robert E. Howard
John Jakes
Henry Kuttner
A. Merritt
Michael Moorcock
C. L. Moore
Robert Silverberg
Beyond that list, I tend to snag the trashiest stuff I can find, barbarian or series sword & sorcery characters I’ve never before heard of, lurid covers in general, some sexy stuff, and random books that make me laugh for one reason or another.
I tend not to buy much of any modern fantasy or science fiction. I probably will get to it eventually, but as I have not yet read even a single book by writers like Ted Sturgeon, Arthur C. Clarke, C.M. Kornbluth, and others of their ilk, it’ll be a good long while.
Thanks for your kind offer to trade books. I am not on the hunt for a specific book at the moment, but rather pick them up as they come to me. I’ll keep your offer in mind, though, should a given volume prove very difficult to obtain.
Thanks for reading the blog!
By: erikmona on March 8, 2009
at 12:15 pm
Recently I came across this site, http://www.isfdb.org, which is a very good source of information!
Like when you have a cover with no name… or when you want to find all the shortstories relating to a certain series.
By: cityofmages on March 24, 2009
at 12:44 pm
Oh, I’m very familiar with the isfdb. It’s one of my bookmark bar links, and I’d guess I visit several times a week, if not every single day.
By: erikmona on March 30, 2009
at 1:50 pm