After a five dry-spell, the volumes originally slated for publication by the now defunct Wandering Star publishing venture will appear as Subterranean Press editions; this according to their website. With a lower price and reduced print runs, these volumes promise to be as good or better than their Wandering Star counterparts. Of course, everyone who wants one has already picked these books up as Del Rey editions, so these will be just for those who want to complete their sets of the luxury hardcovers. I can see a demand for Kull and the final Conan book, but as for the “Best of” books, a lot of that material appears in other Del Rey volumes and the Bisons. At any rate, this is good news for Howard’s collectors, especially if they do a volume of the El Borak/Kirby O’Donnell stories.
And this is bit of news is from Bill Schafer over at Subterranean Press:
Our limiteds will indeed be pretty straight reprints of the Del Rey editions, with the exceptions that we’ll be doing high end hardcovers, printed on a premium paper and with sewn bindings, and illustrated slipcases in the Wandering Star mode. Our editions will also, of course, feature better reproductions of the interior b&w illustrations, and the appropriate plates rendered in full color. I’ve heard from a few of the artists, so our editions may well feature some touched up illos, and a color plate or two that won’t have appeared in b&w in the Del Rey editions.
As to future volumes, we will be doing Conan 3 after Kull, then The Best of, Vols. 1 & 2, Best of REH’s Horror Stories. Beyond that, we have options on two volumes not yet named. We aim to release a book roughly every six months — we could do these more quickly as the design files are all ready in most cases — but we don’t want to stress folks’ wallets too badly.
