Incoming Books: October 5

I took a break in my usual busy selling-books-to-accountants schedule -- something I keep to even when visiting interesting cities, as I am now in San Francisco -- yesterday to have dinner with Jacob and Rina Weisman (of Tachyon Publications) at a quiet Mexican restaurant that I'm sure I wouldn't be able to find again on a bet.

But the important thing now is that you ask me what kind of car I have [1]...oops, the important thing now is that afterward they took me to Borderlands, one of the great SFF bookstores of this world. I'd bought from them at conventions before, but I'd never made it to the mothership before. So I met the hairless store cat, browsed for a while, and walked out with two shiny new books from two fine smaller presses:

This is Me, Jack Vance! is by, as you might have guessed, Jack Vance. It looks like a short memoir of his whole life, but even a short non-SF book from Vance is bound to be interesting, and I certainly didn't expect any more books from Vance at this point. (He's ninety years old and has been legally blind for a long time -- and I believe it's well beyond "legally" at this point.) This one was published by Subterranean Press just a few months ago.

Template is a novel by Matthew Hughes that PS Publishing brought out last summer. Somehow I hadn't managed to get it until now -- probably because I prefer to buy small-press books like this in person, rather than ordering them from massive online bookstores like the one I linked to from the title just a few lines ago. (Hey, I never claimed to be consistent.) I think this is related to his previous far-future novels, though it seems to have a space-faring element to it as well.

[1] Funny you should ask; I've got a Bitchin' Camaro!