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RED BLADES OF BLACK CATHAY.
West Kingston, Rhode Island: Donald M. Grant Publisher, 1971. Small octavo, cloth. First edition. Collects three short stories, plus a 3-page introduction, "How the Stories Came to Be," by Tevis Clyde Smith. "Red Blades of Black Cathay" was first published in ORIENTAL STORIES, February-March 1931. The two other pieces collected here, "Diogenes of Today" and "Eighttoes Makes a Play," are first published here.
THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE SEVEN KINGS ...
London, New York and Melbourne, Ward, Lock & Co., Limited, 1903. Octavo, pp. [i-vi] 7-128, 2 inserted plates with illustrations by Sidney Paget, pictorial wrappers. This publication omits one of the ten stories from the hardcover edition. Series of linked sensational crime stories first published in THE STRAND MAGAZINE, January-October 1898 featuring Madame Koluchy, a Moriarty-like master criminal who is incredibly beautiful, intelligent and charming, and who commits extortion, blackmail and murder employing "an arsenal of scientific techniques and devices that are occasionally over the border into science-fiction." - Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 1469. A "historic volume [which] contains the first series of stories about a female criminal." - Steinbrunner and Penzler (eds), Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, p. 284. "On the very heels of Raffles, the gentleman crook, came Madame Koluchy, the lady crook. Her grand entrance in THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE SEVEN KINGS (1899) marks the earliest appearance of a female felon in a series of short stories. In ten connected tales Madame Koluchy, as the guiding genius of a sinister secret society, as 'the brain that had conceived and the body that had executed some of the most malignant designs against mankind that the history of the world has ever known,' proves herself 'the compleat criminal': kidnapper, blackmailer, bank robber, and murderer -- although it should be noted that Madame Koluchy's attempts at murder were consistently foiled by a young scientist-detective named Norman Head." - QQ 27. Suvin, Victorian Science Fiction in the UK, p. 114. Bleiler (1978), p. 137. Glover and Greene, Victorian Detective Fiction, p. 88. Queen, The Detective Short Story, p. 74. Hubin (1994), p. 566. Not in Reginald (1979; 1992).
A MASTER OF MYSTERIES ...
London, New York and Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co Limited, n.d., [1898]. Octavo, pp. [1-6] 7-279 [280: blank] + 8-page undated publisher's catalogue inserted at rear, six inserted plates with illustrations by J. Ambrose Walton, original pictorial bevel-edged blue cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold, top edge untrimmed, other edges rough trimmed. First edition. Six cases of John Bell, a private investigator of unusual and strange mysteries "now well known to all my friends as a professional exposer of ghosts, and one who can clear away the mysteries of most haunted houses." Queen, The Detective Short Story, p. 74. Hubin (1994), p. 566.
THE CHALLENGE FROM BEYOND.
[West Warwick, Rhode Island]: Necronomicon Press, [1990]. Octavo, pictorial wrappers. New edition. In 1935 Fantasy Magazine asked 5 weird fiction writers and 5 science fiction writers to write two collaborative stories around the title The Challenge From Beyond. Presented here is both versions. (Necronomincon Press previously published this in an illustrated edition in 1978).
RIDERS TO THE STARS ...
New York: Ballantine Books, [1953]. Small octavo, cover painting by Richard Powers, pictorial wrappers. First edition. Ballantine Books 58. Novelization of Siodmak's screenplay by Robert Smith, published before the release of the 1954 film. The rear cover of the book has stills from the film.The Science Fiction Encyclopedia online offers some interesting commentary on this film which predates the coming space race: "...this is one of the few films, and perhaps the only film, that accurately predicted the course of the American space programme. Space Flight would be achieved by a government programme – not brilliant individuals or patriotic businessmen; space pilots would be carefully selected and rigorously trained before flight, in contrast to films in which people build a Rocket and then look around to see what random individuals might be available to join its crew on short notice; the first steps into space would involve suborbital flights, not a pioneering flight to the Moon or Mars; and astronauts in space would be carefully monitored by, and in constant communication with, technicians on the ground who would continually advise them as they carried out their missions, unlike cinematic astronauts who, once in space, are all on their own. All of these characteristics of actual space flight were meticulously predicted in this film; as a result, while other early space films can now be dismissed as irrelevant to current concerns, Riders to the Stars is a film that remains in dialogue with the ongoing conquest of space, addressing any number of still-significant issues: do the rewards of space flight justify the risks to human lives? What sorts of individuals are best qualified to travel into space? Should space missions be controlled by knowledgeable observers on the ground, or by the astronauts who are actually in the midst of events?" In retrospect this has to be considered an important contribution to 1950s science fiction film making.