Wow!

That's right, the Library of America will publish a hardcover edition in June 2007 containing four of Philip K. Dick's novels from the 1960's: The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik.

I'll admit that the only one of these novels in this collection I've read is The Man in the High Castle, but I've read a few others, most recently A Scanner Darkly, which knocked me out. Not only was Dick an important genre writer -- and it's great to see more credibility given to a genre writer -- he was an important writer period. He and his readers certainly deserve this edition.

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I was at a library sale today and ran across a book I just had to have: Edison & The Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death by Mark Essig.

I've been fascinated with the concept of the electric chair since I was a kid. I remember hearing some of the old timers hanging around my dad's grocery store, telling tall tales, as old timers will do. One man told about the days when the State of Mississippi had a traveling electric chair, which of course enthralled young ears like mine. When I got older, I dismissed the story as pure bunk.

Years later a friend of mine told me he remembered actually seeing the traveling electric chair as a boy in Quitman, Mississippi. Then I read Andy Duncan's excellent story "The Executioners' Guild" and was once again fascinated. Andy, if you're out there, have you read the Essig book? I imagine any romanticism on the subject is greatly diminished in what I imagine are pretty grisly details, not for the faint of heart.

But I'm still going to read it. Hey, it was only 10 cents.