#(amateur)

[lemoshima]

the veiled shadows of kyiv

[ciltilladeltilla]

A mystery I found on a $1 cart in a local used bookshop. This was printed in 1986, but signed on August 29th 1994.

At the time Ben Finney was a professor of anthropology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and it seems like he'd be teaching. This was a Monday, after all, and most universities start fall semesters before September.

It's also "for Catherine" - maybe a student who took the class just to meet the professor? Or worse, maybe he had a giant stack of these and taught out of them, and signed one for each student as a memento. But the upper-right corner seems a bit like he had to start over, like someone asked for his signature and then said "oh, actually, could you dedicate this to Catherine?"

That's the crux of it for me, who Catherine was. If she was a fan of the book, and kept it for eight years, it shows almost no signs of being read by someone other than me. If she had multiple copies like a comic collector, or read one copy to death and procured another to get this signature, then why did it wind up in a second-hand bookstore on the U.S. mainland?

My best guess at this point is that Catherine was the daughter of the person who had the book signed, who was possibly a friend or acquaintance on good terms with Finney. "May you tour the regions of space" does seem like a message to a younger generation (though he was about 60 at the time he signed, so even a twenty- or thirtysomething might count...).

I wish I could read the word above the date, if only to confirm that it isn't hiding key information. My eyes keep trying to complete it as Barcelona, but it looks more like Boucelance to me.

[styxxsyringe]

while going through my ibis gallery, i found this mockup ult ex logo from around may this year... i still think it's cute, so i'll post it here!

the star shaped thing is the excalibur shard's old design (that may or may not be changed when i finish the first part and start drawing up final designs)