Medea Harlan's world signed something

Need some advise.
I usually won't touch anything paper but this picked my curiosity.
So I figured for couple bucks it's worth checking.
Anyway it appears some kind of promo material or lecture
Signed by bunch of people but all appears to be related to Harlan Ellison.
Anyone have any idea if signatures legit and who they belong to. They are definitely live ink.

 

https://www.batsoverbooks.com/product/1974/MEDEA-HARLANS-WORLD-PRECIS-SIGNED-BY-4-ANNOUNCEMENT

https://historical.ha.com/itm/books...tch-8vo-85-x-11-stapled-signed/a/9675-61547.s

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/medea-harlans-world-harlan-ellison-463900977

 

Frank Herbert (the only one I can read) was the author of "Dune". Don't know if the siggys are legit.

 

Top to Bottom …

Theodore Sturgeon
Frank Herbert
Larry Niven
Robert Silverberg
Thomas M. Disch (?, very likely)
Harlan Ellison

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea:_Harlan's_World

 

A very nice find!

 

Very nice indeed! (Now that @Roaring20s has done all the work - I should have been able to read some of the others.)

I wonder if it was from someone who collected the signatures over time (maybe at the event), or if there was a group signing?

Wish I'd been there.

 

Thanks much for the info. I quess it safe to assume $2 well spent.
Anyone able to figure out what was it sold for?
Thanks in advance.

 

Harlan Ellison was a major SF writer a generation back. It was a collaborative book of short stories in a shared universe. This might be some sort of proof copy or maybe even a manuscript. I'd bet each of the authors involved had a copy and maybe some went fanboy and signed them for each other. An SF fan would go NUTS. I can think of four writers off hand who'd jump on this if it showed up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea:_Harlan's_World

 

From the 1st link in my post ...

"Approximately 100 copies of the booklet, MEDEA HARLAN'S WORLD: Precis of Specifications for an Imaginary Planet (for the students who'd signed up for all ten weeks, paid in advance) was handed out."

... and having six autographs ... a SF fan would go NUTS!

The second link had a weak sale at $89 (2007)
Ellison was still living. I don't know about the others on your book.

We'll need to ask @Kronos for this price ...
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/medea-harlans-world-harlan-ellison-463900977

 

They're all major Sci Fi writers. Sturgeon is a favorite of mine - very quirky stories (he even wrote one of the Ellery Queen books).

 

I've read works by most or all of those authors, a long time ago. Ellison was one of my favorites. (Although at that time I didn't know about his very abrasive personality, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway.) I saw him speak in person once at a college. It's been too long for me to remember what he was discussing, but I enjoyed it.

 

Frank Herbert passed away in the mid 1980s, Ellison fairly recently. Given the continuing popularity of "Dune," I would think this would be worth far more than $89.00. These are all big science fiction names from the 1960s-80s.

 

Robert Silverberg was one of my favorites. Get that book into an SF-related auction and I still think it might go bananas. All of the authors are gone now (Thomas Disch btw) and prices may have changed a bit.

 

Roaring20s has the names correctly. Harlan, Silverberg, & Larry's signatures match those I have - no reason to doubt the others; none of these guys, as far as I've heard, were fan-shy and did go to cons. Harlan was a crank, it's true, but perfectly polite if you weren't assuming he owed you something he didn't. I don't think it would have been too hard for an active fan, willing to travel, to have got all these signatures over a few years in the '80s & early '90s - or he might, like McVicker, have attended the UCLA events and got the signatures there, assuming they spoke after the Medea event (though Niven wasn't on the official list, he's a California native and still, I believe, lives there, so he might well have dropped by - it was a small, collegial community).

The Frank Herbert might be the most valuable, since he died in 1986 (in my home town!) and Dune has gone nuts, but the combo, on a document related to a work they all contributed to, gives it a nice synergy. The listing from McVicker includes the limited edition book signed by most of them, which is available elsewhere for $450 - the item you have is most the desirable part of his offering, and has some signatures his lacks - but not, it seems, all authors whose work is in the thing they signed. If there really were only 100 printed, that's QUITE scarce. Nice find, I should be so lucky!

 

Thanks everyone. At this point I will probably dump it in one of the book auctions. Got to stick with no paper or glass rule

 

The end buyer is gonna flip. I can see Neil Gaiman going all fanboy over it, or J Michael Straczynski. IIRC Ellison did some work on Babylon 5.

 

One more question. Would you think the independent auction house is better for this type of items versus eBay? I sell most of things I don't keep on eBay but never actually sold anything like this before.

 

the higher the value....the better the auction house will be to get the right eyes on it.... imo

 

... Also, the auction should be thematically science fiction for the correct viewership.

 

An SF/Fantasy theme auction would be better than general sale. If there's one at a Comicon, bonus!