I’m posting the Mieville List — the fifty-book list that I am planning to slowly work my way through over the next couple of years — mostly to note that some of these books are going to be pretty damned hard to get my hands on in Korea, seeing that they’re either out of print and the kind of thing you mostly only find in used book stores. Yes, this is a kind of appeal to the kindness of strangers, but not a loud one. After all, with the degree of traveling I’ve been doing, in some ways I have a feeling the 16-odd books on this list that I can’t get in Korea, I could probably pick up in one way or another, given enough patience. Still, since I have some friends who occasionally look around for books that might amuse me, I’m posting the list in the extended section of this post, with markings to indicate what I cannot get for myself, within the country, without a credit card.
I’m going to use several different markings. Bolded means I cannot get the book in Korea. Italicized means it’s possible to order the book, though only as a new book. Finally, strikethrough (like this) means that I already have the book in my possession, either here or in a box in my mother’s garage in Saskatoon, and that it’s therefore unnecessary for me to get any.
If anyone sees anything in bolded format, I’d love if you remembered me and nabbed it.
Iain M. Banks—Use of Weapons (1990)
Edward Bellamy—Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (1888)
Alexander Bogdanov—The Red Star: A Utopia (1908; trans. 1984)
Emma Bull & Steven Brust—Freedom & Necessity (1997)
Mikhail Bulgakov—The Master and Margarita (1938; trans. 1967)
Katherine Burdekin (aka “Murray Constantine�?)—Swastika Night (1937)
Octavia Butler—Survivor (1978)
Julio Cortázar—“House Taken Over�? (1963?)
Philip K. Dick—A Scanner Darkly (1977)
Thomas Disch—The Priest (1994)
Gordon Eklund—All Times Possible (1974)
Max Ernst—Une Semaine de Bonté (1934)
Claude Farrère—Useless Hands (1920; trans. 1926)
Anatole France—The White Stone (1905; trans. 1910)
Jane Gaskell—Strange Evil (1957)
Mary Gentle—Rats and Gargoyles (1990)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman—“The Yellow Wallpaper�? (1892)
Lisa Goldstein—The Dream Years (1985)
Stefan Grabiński—The Dark Domain (1918–22; trans. and collected 1993)
George Griffith—The Angel of Revolution (1893)
Imil Habibi—The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist (1974; trans. 1982)
M. John Harrison—Viriconium Nights (1984)
Ursula K. Le Guin—The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)
Jack London—Iron Heel (1907)
Ken MacLeod—The Star Fraction (1996)
Gregory Maguire—Wicked (1995)
J. Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon)—Gay Hunter (1934, reissued 1989)
Michael Moorcock—Hawkmoon (1967–77, reprinted in one edition 1992)
William Morris—News From Nowhere (1888)
Toni Morrison—Beloved (1987)
Mervyn Peake—The Gormenghast Novels (1946–59)
Marge Piercy—Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)
Philip Pullman—Northern Lights (1995)
Ayn Rand—Atlas Shrugged (1957)
Mack Reynolds—Lagrange Five (1979)
Keith Roberts—Pavane (1968)
Kim Stanley Robinson—The Mars Trilogy (1992–96)
Mary Shelley—Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818)
Lucius Shepard—Life During Wartime (1987)
Norman Spinrad—The Iron Dream (1972)
Eugene Sue—The Wandering Jew (1845)
Michael Swanwick—The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (1993)
Jonathan Swift—Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
Alexei Tolstoy—Aelita (1922; trans. 1957)
Ian Watson—Slow Birds (1985)
H.G. Wells—The Island of Dr Moreau (1896)
E. L. White—“Lukundoo�? (1927)
Oscar Wilde—The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888)
Gene Wolfe—The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972) (Picked up in Fukuoka, 1st of March 2006.)
Yevgeny Zamyatin—We (1920; trans. 1924)
(UPDATE: A lot of the books that are bolded and also have strikethrough were sent to me by Julia. Thanks, Julia!)
I don’t see any bold.
Ha, it was a post I accidentally posted in mid-draft, and then didn’t post again when I finished it. You caught it modway to being finished. :)
Did you try ebay?
I don’t have a credit card, so no… I’d probably try the Amazon used book suppliers before I would the ebay route. but that shall have to wait till I get me a credit card. I was told I’d been approved but on Wednesday discovered that it was a lie, a lie, a terrible terrible lie. Or something.
I have a bunch of them for you, will e-mail you details soon.
Whee! Wonderful, thank you Julia!
And, I am embarrassed to say I still have these books on my shelf, waiting for me to read them. I’ve picked up a few more, and I imagine it shouldn’t be hard to get the remaining ones… if I want to read them. That said, a friend of mine suggested he thought the list was in part designed to get a rise out of people… when he handed me Mary Gentle’s Rats and Gargoyles, he said, “There’s no reason you would want to read this, really…”
Perhaps his comments put me off the list. But I think I’ll try read a few of these this year… those I haven’t yet read, anyway.