The Best of Farmerphile - from Meteor House

This post is long overdue, but as the cliche goes, better late...

From 2005 to 2009 I was honored to be a regular contributor to Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip José Farmer, a quarterly fanzine that ran for fifteen issues. For the last five issues, numbers 11 to 15, I also served as coeditor.

I produced some of my best (if I do say so) Farmerian speculation--"Creative Mythography"--during this period, and also launched my fiction-writing career in this time frame. 

I'm honored that these essays are once again available, this time to a wider reading public, and to those who missed them the first time around, in The Best of Farmerphile from Meteor House.

• The Farmerian Holmes
• Excessively Diverted, Or, Coming to Pemberley House
• Only a Coincidence: Phileas Fogg, Philip José Farmer, and the Wold Newton Family
• Gribardsun through the Ages by Win Scott Eckert & Dennis E. Power

In fairness of disclosure, some of these essays were slightly revised for inclusion as front or back matter in Titan Books' recent reissues of some of Farmer's classic novels, and the versions that appear in The Best of Farmerphile are the revised ones rather than the original versions. But the revisions, while important to me in the matter of some details and accuracy, still have the essence of the originals and new readers should not feel shortchanged by this.

Other regular contributors were Bette Farmer, Dennis E. Power, Danny Adams (Phil's nephew), artist Keith Howell (who did the covers for the new book), coeditor Paul Spiteri, and coeditor Christopher Paul Carey... as well as Philip José Farmer himself. For, you see, Farmerphile also brought to light never-before-published short fiction (and nonfiction) from Phil's files!

It is fair to say that none of this would have happened without the dedicated effort of publisher Michael Croteau, who was (and is) the webmaster of Phil's site, The Official Philip José Farmer Web Page, and is now the publisher of Meteor House.

Many others contributed over the fanzine fifteen issues. The full table of contents for The Best of Farmerphile, and ordering information (for the hardcover, the softcover, or both) is here.

NOTE: due to the complexities of publishing rights, no ebook edition will be produced!