BIBLIOFANCY    Vol Three   Vol Four   Vol Five   Vol Six   Vol Seven   Volume Eight   Vol Nine   Vol Ten   Vol Eleven

Extras:

Vol 8 No 1: The clouds lowering behind Manhattan and above the bay really looked like that the day I took the original image; I only tweaked the color to appear more greenish--like you might see during a bad thunderstorm.

Vol 8 No 2: The idea for a military commander who makes life miserable for his enemies in the midst of winter came to me, oh, over 20 years ago, and the idea was simply entitled The Master of Winter.  The notion was, as with this version, that armies often settle uneasily into winter quarters when it gets really cold and snowy, so an opponent who actually thrives while others suffer would be formidable and terrifying.  

Vol 8 No 3: Quatermass and the Pit was a British sci-fi movie I saw on TV back in the 70s, and while much of the film has faded from memory, a few key scenes remain stuck in my head, especially the appearance over the London skyline of a tremendous manifestation of an alien (possibly Martian--yep, Martians again!) life force shimmering against the night-time sky.  The title was Americanized as Five Million Years to Earth, to appeal to a wider, non-U.K. audience, and many U.S. cinema-viewers would likely not have seen the previous two movies and/or the several TV series featuring the eponymous doctor.  It wasn't until I re-watched the movie that I noted my error: the character, and the movie series is QUATERmass, not QUARtermass.  Ooops.  My image was already "in the can," and so it stands, misspelling and all.

     In this case, the city in question is actually Pittsburgh: the view is along Liberty Ave. in the Strip District; the bridges overhead are part of the Crosstown/Veteran's Bridge/I-579 highway stretch.

Vol 8 No 5: The 20th Anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11th seemed like it deserved something, but what images could do it any justice?  And what about everything that happened afterward?  This cover is as good an answer as I could come up with.

Vol 8 No 7: I specifically purchased a model of the alien war machine featured in Steven Spielberg's version of War of the Worlds.  I refitted the legs to the body -- with magnets! -- so that they, at least, could be "posed."  It isn't really obvious in the image, but the legs aren't all in the same position.

Vol 8 No 10: the "Big Boy," the so-nicknamed steam engine seen here, is Union Pacific's No 4012 as displayed at Steamtown, the rail road museum operated by the National Park Service.  Images from my 2014 visit can be seen on Chasing Dreiser.  2014?!  Wow, that was a few years ago.