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> Summary of Changes Made
> Dec 14 | Covers, illustrations, news
> Nov 21 | News item
> Oct 19 | Covers and illustrations added
> Aug 27 | Brief news item
> July 29 | Interview with John C. Wright
> June 14 | Brief news item
> June 1 | Reviews and cover scans of Null-A Continuum
> May 9 | News item
> Apr 23 | More covers and illustrations
> Apr 16 | John C. Wright related news item
> Apr 10 | One brief news item
> Apr 9 | Storysource version 5
> Apr 1 | Covers, illustrations, news item added
> Mar 14 | Brief news update
> Mar 6 | Site redesigned, new covers and illustrations added
> Jan 18 | New covers, 1 illustration

> December 14th, 2008
> I've added covers from four magazines: Avon Fantasy Reader #4, If September 1986, F&SF January 1971, and Weird Tales Fall 1984. Also appearing is a unique item, the cover and an excerpt from a fictitious van Vogt novel, created by the Dutch SF author and artist Tais Teng, which has been added to the "Miscellany" section of the covers page. I've also added the illustrations from two rare stories, "The Pandora Principle" and "Prologue to Freedom." Three short items have been added to the News page. And lastly, a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you reading this!

> November 21st, 2008
> Added a brief item to the News page.

> October 19th, 2008
> After a delay of several months, I finally added some new covers and illustrations. Something new that I'm doing with images is including a ColorSync (aka "ICC") Profile in each picture — specifically, the "sRGB IEC61966-2.1" profile, which is perhaps the most widely used setting as well as being the most difficult to type. From what little I understand of such things, it seems to help colors appear as intended in your web browser, regardless of your own monitor's setting. But if for some reason these newer pictures look too dark or bright or the colors are faded, please let me know. And if any of you out there have the knowledge and time to explain the ColorSync system to me in terms simple enough for a damp mushroom to understand, I would very much enjoy hearing from you as I'm pretty much groping blindly in the dark with this kind of stuff...

> August 27th, 2008
> Added a brief item to the News page.

> July 29th, 2008
> Although appearing about a month later than I had originally intended, my interview with author John C. Wright is finally finished and online. This interview was a lot of fun to do, and I'm very grateful to Mr. Wright both for his enthusiastic participation and for the patience he showed with the repeated delays at my end.

> June 14th, 2008
> A brief News item has been added, regarding the upcoming John C. Wright interview.

> June 1st, 2008
> Both myself and Daniele Bitossi have written reviews of John C. Wright's new novel Null-A Continuum. Daniele is a resident of Italy, and has helped a great deal with the Storysource bibliography in particular. He's a great guy, and one of the most dedicated van Vogt fans I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. I love having other people contribute to the site in whatever way they can, and it's a real delight to let him shine on his own like this rather than just working behind the scenes! I've also added a variety of scans from the book. Thankfully, I didn't have any trouble getting my scanner to work fine on the new computer, although it was extremely difficult to get the color scheme of the front cover to look even remotely accurate — so many unusual shades of yellow and green, none of which wanted to cooperate. I decided to make these scans larger than usual, and I intend to do all future book covers at this new scale.

> May 9th, 2008
> A link to the Sci-Fi.com review of Null-A Continuum has been added on the News page. I've been having computer problems the last couple of weeks, resulting in having to buy a new iMac and transfer all my files from the backup. I've lost a bit of data, but nowhere near as much as I would have were it not for my paranoid backup routines. This only goes to show that no matter how paranoid you are about data loss, when the big one hits there's always a gap there... But nothing terribly important was lost, thank God. In light of this, this new Time Machine feature that backs up your data every hour and retains copies of all changes, looks very appealing indeed. However, since I'm now working on an Intel Mac running Leopard, I have permanently lost the ability to create PDFs — the program I used for this ran in the Classic environment that requires PowerPC processors and the earlier Tiger operating system. This makes it impossible to update the Storysource bibliography in its current form. The good news is that I have been learning a great deal these last couple of months about XHTML and CSS, and have recently started learning about PHP and MySQL. Using these techniques I hope to eventually create a more web-friendly version of the bibliography that can be searched and re-arranged on demand. It'll be at least a year, however, before this is ready. Needless to say, I'm very glad I updated the Storysource so recently and so thoroughly! Also, due to complications too tedious to get into, it's very likely that I also won't be able to add any new scans for a while. Again, I'm glad that I've been adding so many lately... I plan to later write a full account of all these computer problems for the possible benefit of anyone experiencing something similar. But in the meantime, I've got more than enough to contend with trying to put everything back together again... as well as enjoying the impressive capabilities of this much-faster brand-new uber-iMac by playing lots of Lego Star Wars to relax. :-)

> April 23rd, 2008
> More magazine covers and illustrations, mostly from the Space Beagle stories.

> April 16th, 2008
> A rather exciting News item has been added relating to John C. Wright. Be sure to read this one!

> April 10th, 2008
> A bit of News has been added.

> April 9th, 2008
> Version 5 of the Storysource bibliography is finally finished. It contains a great deal of new information, mostly relating to magazines, illustrators, and various comic book adaptations, as well as featuring improved document interface and formatting. As always, for full details download the PDF and read the Version History section at the end.

> April 1st, 2008
> I've added several scans to the Covers section, including some foreign editions of books that were never published in English (such as The People of the Wide Sands). I'd like to thank Alexander Martin Pfleger for a recent (and highly enjoyable) trans-Atlantic book-swap, by which I obtained the two German books which now appear here, along with all sorts of other nifty goodies (some of which can be seen here). And speaking of Alexander, his summary of The People of the Wide Sands has been updated to include some new information about Renato Pestriniero (in the "About the Authors" section). Way back in 2002 I posted Grant Thiessen's interview with van Vogt from issue #8 of his semiprozine The Science Fiction Collector. At that time I had plans to post only my favorite book covers with commentary, and in the meantime I had cleverly mislaid Thiessen's magazine. After rummaging around in the filing cabinet in the corner a few days ago, I finally found it, and now scans for the cover, contents page, and editorial are now available. The editorial is especially pertinent, as Thiessen talks about the history of his magazine and the early days of his book business. There are also a few new Illustrations. I'm particularly pleased to present a detailed section about the original Hoffman Electronics ads featuring stories by various high-profile SF writers (including van Vogt's "Itself!"). Since these ads are of particular historical interest, being a unique hybrid concept between advertising and fiction, I've also included scans of two other ads in this rare six-part series, and hope to add the other three as I obtain them. One small News item has been added. Version 5 of the Storysource bibliography should be ready at some point in early April.

> March 14th, 2008
> The News page has been updated with a short item of interest.

> March 6th, 2008
> As you've hopefully noticed by now, the site has been substantially redesigned to make it more attractive and easier to navigate. New menus and navigation buttons have been added on every page to facilitate jumping from one place to another quickly and easily. Tables have been added in numerous places to make for a tidier appearance. In short, Icshi now looks and feels more like a "real" website! In addition, the Covers and Illustrations pages have been dramatically improved by the addition of frames and thumbnails. I've also added several new scans to both of those sections — as well as being just a routine addition of material, this gives an opportunity to show off the new menu frames, which make locating new items as simple as clicking your mouse. I never expected either of those two sections to become anywhere near as large or as popular as they have. The old system, which was all right for displaying a handful of items, had become bloated and clumsy. Both pages were difficult to use and ugly to look at. But since the Covers page receives almost three times as much traffic as any other part of the site I decided a complete overhaul was called for. And, as long as I was at it, I could give the Illustrations page a similar treatment, an area of the site which has the potential to become as popular as the Covers. There are eleven new Links and some News updates that have been inexcusably delayed by my grueling redesigning efforts over the past month and a half. I'm also honored to announce that on February 1st, 2008 the Icshi website was listed on the academic directory Intute. This is the second major recognition the site has been given, and I'm pleased that my site has been included alongside so many other far more deserving websites. I've placed their banner under the Encyclopedia Britannica one on the mainpage, and I've added them to the Links page, which also explains more on who they are. The new changes can best be experienced by going directly to those pages. But just for illustrative purposes, here are some before-and-after pictures: Contents Page OLD NEW Covers Page OLD NEW Illustrations Page OLD NEW Menu & Navigation Buttons OLD NEW Technical Details I've done my best to ensure the changes look more or less the same whether you use Safari, Netscape, Internet Explorer, or Firefox. I've only been able to test these pages on a Macintosh, so have no idea what horrors Windows will do to my painstakingly crafted improvements. (Note to Safari users: Safari seems to have trouble with frames and anchors. When you click on an item in the menu frame it doesn't always take you to the exact spot it should in the main display area. I've discovered that Netscape Navigator doesn't have this problem, nor does Firefox.) Larger files, mainly PDFs such as the Storysource, are now stored on my BingoDisk space (discontinued Aug 2010). This was done to free up 2 MB for the new thumbnail images. (The Earthlink webspace accounts which I use for the site can hold only 10 MB each.) If you ever use a utility to download the site periodically, which I often do to my favorite sites, be sure to allow it to download files from other domains. BingoDisk can be a bit goofy at times, though — sometimes it will give you the file but ask for a password. I don't know why it does this, and it shouldn't since these files are in the "public" folder, so just try to ignore it. If, however, it won't give you the file at all, please email me and let me know. A few pages have also been renamed during the redesigning process. Just to be thorough, a placeholder page has been left under each old name that will automatically forward the browser to the new location (viz the old Illustrations.html, which now takes you to Illus.html. However nice all these improvements may be, especially the thumbnails, they did come at a price — the redesigned site will be a crawling nightmare for dial-up users, and for that I sincerely apologize. Mere months ago I was amongst your number and I know exactly how frustrating it can be trying to load a page with a bazillion embedded images. I did take note, however, based on the traffic reports provided by Google Analytics that less than 10% of you are still using dial-up, so although I regret inconveniencing anybody I won't lie awake at night dreading the inevitable day when the mobs of enraged peasants will come with their torches and pitchforks to burn down my castle. Instead, that mob will be nothing more than a handful of frowning rural veterinarians whom I will placate by inviting in for a nice cup of tea. I find that Constant Comment is best in these situations. I had intended to include Version 5 of the Storysource bibliography with the site redesign, but for an assortment of reasons too tedious to recount I didn't quite manage it. It's nearly done, though, and Version 5 features some needed interface improvements along with a fair amount of new information. I hope to have it ready fairly soon. In the meantime, while you're waiting, you can amuse yourselves by jumping from one page to another and back again, clicking on all the cutesey new interactive navigation buttons. The changes and technical improvements to this site are so dramatic that those of you who know me are probably thinking at this point that I've been killed off and replaced by an impostor. The rest of you may well ask why it took me so many years to finally get around to doing something so mind-bogglingly basic as using frames, thumbnails, and tables. It all boils down to the very simple fact that even after six years of doing this I'm only now beginning to get a faint idea of what I'm doing. Computer programming, math, and other such highly technical things are totally alien to my way of thinking, and it is always a struggle for me to learn new things in these areas. (And to top it all off I've only just recently started using an HTML manual... and it was printed ten years ago at that. In the computer world that practically makes me Amish!) Even so, once I buckled down to learn frames and tables and did some experimenting I was surprised that they were much easier — and a lot more fun — than I expected. I guess doing so much raw HTML stuff for the last six years has helped that scrawny part of my brain grow. However, I learned how to do frames a few weeks before I learned tables so the Covers page was finished before I started redesigning the Illustrations page. I intend to later add tables to the Covers page as well as making further refinements throughout the site. But right now after a solid month-and-a-half of redesigning and testing that's the last thing I want to even think about... I find messing around with HTML code about as much fun as messing around with raw spectrox. Indeed, the two have many things in common — both bestow great advantages, but they're both a real pain in the beguba to deal with. Again, you may well ask if this HTML stuff is so horrific, why don't I use some kind of program that does all that in the background? Well, I did for a while, but found it to be even worse. I did however finally find a nice free program for Macintosh with the deceptively silly name of Taco HTML Edit that makes wrestling with HTML code a more bearable task by automatically color-coding the tags and all sorts of other immensely useful things. After using it for mere hours I couldn't believe I've been limping along without it for all these dark years. However, I'm still doing numerous things that will make HTML connoisseurs swoon with horror, such as using BLOCKQUOTE to create page margins and using BR instead of P in most instances to create paragraphs. I don't even use headers or lists, and use the atrocious &nbsp; command to indent sections of text. (To my eyes any language designed to display text that can't even indent a single simple smegging paragraph the same way across all browsers has got something fundamentally wrong with it.) Overall my code exhibits more of the brute-force approach of an impatient Necromonger than the elegance and poise of a Bolshoi ballerina at the height of her career performing Swan Lake for the Tsar. All this redesigning was extremely tedious. I listen to a lot of music, especially while I'm working, and the right kind of music playing in the background can turn an ordeal into something endurable and even downright enjoyable at times. The incredible music of Tangerine Dream has made things a lot easier to deal with. Two of their albums in particular, Rubycon and Exit, helped soothe my ragged brain as it labored over the ceaseless trial and error of trying out all these new HTML techniques and learning how to implement them in an attractive fashion. And lastly, to give credit where credit is due, the nifty new navigation buttons that change when your mouse rolls over and clicks on them were made possible by an amazing free JavaScript by Mark Wilton-Jones. It thankfully requires absolutely no knowledge of JavaScript whatsoever, all it needs is some special commands in the IMG tags and a reference to the script at the bottom of the page. (If I have trouble with HTML you can well imagine my considered opinion of JavaScript!) I'm immensely thankful to Mr. Wilton-Jones for creating this script so poor schmucks like me can use the wonderful "interactive" buttons that JavaScript allows but without having to descend through the Nine Circles of Hell, without Virgil, to achieve it. (And, as is in perfect form for me, I still use the delightfully obsolete AppleWorks to make all the button graphics!) Some of the new icons that appear on the home page were taken from the wonderful selection available at InterfaceLIFT and The Icon Factory. As far as I was able to determine, the creators of these specific icons either put no conditions on their use or stipulated non-commercial use only. However, if you're the creator of these icons and object to me using them in this fashion, please let me know and I'll take them down. From World of Aqua 2 by Dave Brasgalla: "Stack of Books"(used for Summaries page) From Various Aqua Shapes by Joe Kohlmann: "Alert Badge Embossed" (used for News page) "Orange Arrow" (used for Links page) (I've taken the liberty of tilting this graphic on its side) "Speech Bubble" (used for Interviews page) From KOOL NI 2005 by Akio Orii: "Absynth" (used for Updates page) Well, that's it for now. But surely that's enough to keep you busy for a while? It certainly was for me...

> January 18th, 2008
> 14 scans for 6 new items have been added to the Covers page. This includes the 1973 edition of The Three Eyes of Evil (front cover, dust jacket, and spine); the 1963 edition of The Voyage of the Space Beagle (front, back, and spine); the September 1961 issue of Fantastic Stories of Imagination which contains a reprint of "Ship of Darkness" (front and story introduction); the 3rd issue of Fantasy Book, from 1948, which contains the first appearance of "The Great Judge" (front and back); and the June 1954 and February 1955 issues of Spaceway magazine, containing "Hypnotism Man" and "Van Vogt on Dianetics," respectively. 1 new picture has been added to the Illustrations page, from "Ship of Darkness" as it appeared in the magazine mentioned above in 1961. I'm busy working on a new version of the Storysource which should be ready sometime in the next few weeks.