The following posts include (1) "footnotes" for The Doris Piserchia Website (link at left), (2) texts-in-process that will eventually appear there, (3) texts from other websites, and (we hope) (4) stimulating discussion threads. The picture to the left is the back cover of The Spinner (book club edition), depicting a citizen of Eastland "hanging out" while Ekler the cop and Rune the idiot-superman look on.
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Very excited to see that Doris Piserchia's novels are being published as e-books by Orion Publishing's Gateway imprint, out of the UK. Congratulations to the author for this wonderful development. (Half the essays on this site lament her being out of print -- now we can just lament that she was out of print for 30 years.)
Published so far: Doomtime, Earthchild, Earth in Twilight, The Dimensioneers, Spaceling, and The Spinner. More titles are coming.
I like the sparse cover designs and the retro "Gateway" logo. What, no bug eyed monsters?
Update: Evidently sparse covers are a trend in print as well as e-books, for literary classics as well as genre reprints. Likely the main reason is cost, because you don't have to pay an artist to make an original cover illustration. With "back catalog" materials you aren't so worried about attracting an initial readership with an exciting cover. Still it will be harder for them to build a new audience for Piserchia that way. I first read her because of an intriguing cover in a supermarket (Doomtime's as a matter of fact.)
Update 2: Piserchia's author page at Gateway. Am reading the Doomtime e-book now; the page design is clean and am not finding typos, except for: (i) an unfortunate "Peserchia" in the bio at the end of the book and (ii) misspelling of Blood County as Blood Country in the author book list, also at the end (the latter error is also in John Clute's sf encyclopedia entry on Piserchia). These goofs appear to have occurred in all the books. The Peserchia typo may have originated with Amazon, which uses her Wikipedia entry verbatim, adding that nit.
Update 3: Minor typos: a couple of stray apostrophes, "wag" instead of "way" (the same error appears on p. 40 of the DAW paperback); "Galley" for "valley" (correct in the DAW edition, p. 79).
An even clearer version of the Earthchild cover--thanks, twice, AR.
A British edition of Earthchild to add to the cover gallery. Thanks to AR.
Eric Walker at SF Site includes A Billion Days of Earth in his list of "Ten Overlooked Odd Speculative Fiction Classics":
Doris Piserchia urgently needs and much deserves a revival. In this dry, wry tale of the far future, humanity has become "the Gods," and the role of humans is played -- very well -- by evolved rats. When the mysterious and unstoppable Sheen arrives on Earth, only Rik cares enough to resist his dominion. Witty, amusing, thought-provoking, and ultimately quite moving -- this is a book to savor.
Thanks to the folks who did the Wikipedia page on Doris Piserchia. (T. Anthony and Erechtheus if I'm reading the contribs page correctly.)