Posted by Brian Bushe on March 18, 1998 at 05:30:00:
In Reply to: Re: Dark they were ... posted by Ron Keeley on February 18, 1998 at 02:42:06:
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: : Any of you guys old enough to remember "Dark they were and golden eyed", a marvelous S&F shop in London, not far from Liberty's ? I used to cross over from France to London over the weekend in the 70's, and flew back with a suitcase full of books... Those were the days ... I must have bought many JV books there. "Nostalgie, quand tu nous tiens !"
Sorry, I've only been in the UK for 6 years! Mind you I was still in my very formative years in the 70's. Read my first JV book about 1980, and also have reasonable collection in New Zealand. I have duplicated most of this in the UK, but find older stuff increasingly hard to find and expensive.
: : Forbidden Planet is great, but too crowdy, too noisy, too loud ... Murder One is superb, especially with the life-size Sherlock Holmes. It's a quiet place too, and the basment has a good SF stock, especially old "Ace doubles" for the collector.
Hardly any JV stuff though, except for expensive US omnibus editions (which of course I had to buy!). Someone must buy all the 2hand JV stuff...I wonder who?
: "Dark They Were and Golden Eyed" -- I think it was on an alley deep in the seedy heart of Soho. In those days, Forbidden Planet was a smaller shop in Denmark Street. Agreed, it's now crowded, noisy, loud ... and almost taken over by comics, Trekkies and X-Filers. Unfortunately it's almost unavoidable because it has the best selection in London ... but I didn't now about the basement at Murder One. Thanks for the tip.
Yes, I went there once when I first arrived, and while I quite like comics, trekkies, etc, I have better things to buy. I had quite forgotten about that place and now rememeber their sf model stock. Am quite into models and was intrigued by such items as 300 quid birds of prey. But not that intrigued...
There is a sf shop in reading that has a reasonable supply of books, and Virgin Megastores also seem to have developed a taste for books, though they seemed to have reverted to abit more mainstream. I go into WH Smiths every now and again to mourn the passing of sf into star wars/trek/x-file oblivion. I can't believe a shop will have a complete collection of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons novels, but no JV. The end of the world was quite awhile ago, it seems...
: Speaking of things unavoidable, perhaps Chun used to shop at "Dark they were and _Golden Eyed_"!
Now ge would be an interesting model!
I don't get into london that often, though I only out in Marlow. I'll revisit Forbidden Planet, but must make an effort to get out to the other shop mentioned earlier. Wrote it down somewhere.