Carl And Jerry Volume 4 Is Out!
I was out in Chicago most of the summer and didn't get a lot done beyond what I absolutely have to do, and one of the projects that got pushed into the deep freeze was the fourth volume of Carl and Jerry. I had promised it originally in August, then in September, and I didn't even start scanning until October 8. Then I went crazy with it, and if you haven't seen much from me in the last two weeks, that's why.
I did the whole 196-page book in fifteen days, including scanning and OCRing the magazines, cleaning up the OCR files, scanning the illos, processing the illos, laying the whole thing out, and proofing it. Whew.
It was great practice, particularly in image processing. In that I was helped by Photoshop expert Pete Albrecht, whose astroimages should not be missed. (See his recent backyard photograph of galaxy M33, an object so pale and low-contrast that I couldn't find it with my 8" scope, even though M33 is the angular size of the full Moon.) It also helped that the magazines I bought for 1961 and 1962 were in much better shape than the crinkly, moldy messes I had for Volume 3's 1959.
There's a lot of great stuff in this volume, including several of my all-time favorites, like "A Low Blow" and "Therry and the Pirates." I've pinched off "A Low Blow" as a free PDF, which you can download here. All of the other free stories can be had at my Carl and Jerry Web site. Look for story titles in bold in the story index.
I'm not going to do Volume 5 in fifteen days, trust me. I intend to start sooner and take it slower, and I expect to get that last book in the series done on or about New Year's Day. I will continue to lay out more free stories as time allows, as time has not for the past couple of months.
I realize that I've been working on the Carl and Jerry project now for an entire year, and pretty soon it will be done. Egad. What am I gonna do with all my free time after Volume 5 goes live?