Featured Items
LEST DARKNESS FALL.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, [1941]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. The author's first science fiction book. An early classic of modern SF in which the protagonist is thrown back in time to the end of the Roman Empire and makes an unsuccessful attempt to use his modern scientific knowledge to prevent the Dark Ages. "Neat anthropological interpretation of history." - Anatomy of Wonder (1987) 3- 135. "...by all odds de Camp's finest book." - Anatomy of Wonder (1995) 3-58.
THE WHEELS OF IF: AND OTHER SCIENCE FICTION.
Chicago: Shasta Publishers, 1948. Octavo, cloth. First edition. Signed by De Camp on the half title page. Collects seven stories.
GREENMANTLE.
New York: Ace Books, [1988]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. Paperback original. Fantasy set in modern Ontario. Barron (ed), Fantasy and Horror 7-92. Pringle (ed.), St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers, pp. 153-155.
TRAVELLERS BY NIGHT.
Sauk City, WI: Arkham House: Publishers, 1967. Octavo, cloth. First edition. Anthology of horror stories, includes work by Robert Aickman, J. Ramsey Campbell, William Hope Hodgson, Margery Lawrence, H.P. Lovecraft (and August Derleth, uncredited) and nine others, all previously unpublished.
DETECTIVE TALES [CANADIAN ISSUE].
Toronto, Canada: Popular Publications, Inc., 1945. Octavo, single issue, pictorial wrappers. Pulp magazine. Canadian issue, contents correspond to the July 1945 U. S. publication, though drops one story. Detective Tales ran for eighteen years and was second only to Popular's Dime Detective in their detective magazine line-up. "It was a colorful, urgent, vigorous periodical, foaming with cheerful excesses; it was one of the classic pulp magazines." - Cook, Mystery, Detective and Espionage Magazines pp. 153-157.
IN MILTON LUMKY TERRITORY.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1985. Octavo, boards. First British edition. A posthumously published novel. A mainstream novel originally written in 1958.
DIME DETECTIVE MAGAZINE.
Chicago: Popular Publications, Inc., 1935. Octavo, single issue, cover by Walter Baumhofer, pictorial wrappers. Pulp magazine. Fiction by Frederick C. Davis, Hugh Cave, Fred MacIsaac, and others. Cook, Mystery, Detective and Espionage Magazine, pp. 168-170.
ECHO ROUND HIS BONES.
London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1969. Octavo, boards. First British (and first hardcover) edition. Signed by Disch on the title page. "A Mars-bound matter transmitter creates doppelgangers of everyone who passes through it -- though at first its users don't realize this. An amusing SF 'ghost' story, with some lovely moments. Lightweight, early Disch, but impeccably written." - Pringle, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, second edition (1995), p. 115.
BEST SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF THE YEAR, SEVENTH ANNUAL COLLECTION.
New York: E. P. Dutton, [1978]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. Collects seven stories by John Varley, Edward Bryant, Michael Bishop, George R. R. Martin, and others.
FANTASTIC ADVENTURES.
Chicago: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1949. Octavo, single issue, cover by Arnold Kohn, pictorial wrappers. Pulp magazine. Tymm and Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 60-103.
FANTASTIC STORY MAGAZINE.
Kokomo, IN: Best Books, Inc., 1952. Octavo, single issue, cover by Alex Schomburg, pictorial wrappers. Pulp magazine. Largely a reprint magazine which started life as Fantastic Story Quarterly. This issues includes "Slan" by Van Vogt. New short stories by Mari Wolf, Larry Clinton and Daniel Keyes. Tymm and Ashley, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, pp. 249-250.
FANTASY MAGAZINE.
Jamaica, New York: Conrad H. Ruppert, June, 1935. Octavo, single issue, printed self wrappers, stapled. First edition. Includes an autobiographical sketch by Stanley G. Weinbaum. In addition to original fiction, SCIENCE FICTION DIGEST featured biographical and autobiographical information on leading writers, artists, and editors. "For all-around quality SCIENCE FICTION DIGEST has never been surpassed in the history of fandom ... [In addition to special features it] printed solid, interesting, factual articles in every number. Up until the end of its life it remained the undisputed leader in the field, and its influence on the varied currents of fan history was profound indeed." - Moskowitz, The Immortal Storm (1974), p. 16. Pavlat and Evans, Fanzine Index (1965), p. 98 and p. 39. Tymn and Ashley (eds), Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, p. 838.
THE THIRD LEVEL.
New York: Rinehart, 1957. Octavo, Hardcover. First edition. Anatomy of Wonder (1987) 3-164.
WHO IN HELL IS WANDA FUCA?
New York: Walker, 1995. Octavo, boards. First edition. The first Leo Waterman mystery.
RALPH 124C 41+: A ROMANCE OF THE YEAR 2660.
Boston: The Stratford Company, Publishers, 1925. Octavo, pp. [1-2] [1-8] 9-293 [294: blank], eleven inserted plates with illustrations by Frank R. Paul, original blue cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold. First edition. Widely acclaimed upon its initial appearance in 1911 as a serial in Gernsback's magazine, MODERN ELECTRICS, this interplanetary novel by "the father of modern science fiction" is virtually unreadable today. However, historically, its impact and the prominence of its author in the SF field, elevates it to cornerstone status in the SF genre. "The literary treatment is on a very low level, but Ralph 124C41+ is renowned for its many highly imaginative technological projections. These include clear descriptions of radar, book and newspaper microfilms and microfiches, television, plant hormones, wireless transmission of power....etc." - Bleiler: Science Fiction: The Early Years, p. 282.
DON'T MENTION MY NAME.
New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, [1942]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. Author's first mystery novel.
NIGHT SQUAD.
Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, Inc., [1961]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. Gold Medal #s1083. Paperback original.
"E" IS FOR EVIDENCE.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, [1988]. Octavo, cloth backed boards. First edition. A Kinsey Millhone novel mystery.
THE GHOST MAKERS.
New York, Toronto, London: Bantam Books, [1970]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. Bantam H5329. A Shadow novel, original pulp publication was October 15, 1932.
JOURNEY TO INFINITY.
New York: Gnome Press Incorporated Publishers, [1951]. Octavo, cloth backed boards. First edition. Inscribed and signed by publisher and editor Martin Greenberg on the front free end paper. Collects twelve stories, most first published in ASTOUNDING, by Jack Williamson, John D. MacDonald, Edward E. Smith, Fredric Brown, Isaac Asimov, Fritz Leiber, C. L. Moore, Eric Frank Russell, Theodore Sturgeon, and others, arranged as a future history of mankind. Several depict dystopias: "Breakdown" by Jack Williamson and "Overthrow" by Cleve Cartmill. Includes "There Shall be Darkness" by C. L. Moore, abandoned colonies on Venus revert to a culture equivalent to that of Earth's Dark Ages, and "Metamorphosite" by Eric Frank Russell, a story set in the far future, "with its much-borrowed finale of apotheosis or transcendence" (ESF), in which pacifistic telepathic super humans from Earth make first contact with their less evolved human counterparts who migrated to other worlds in the distant past and built a Galactic Empire comprised of 4000 planets (an authoritarian dystopia with "planet wreckers" to keep its subjects under control) to avert a war between the two branches of mankind.
NIGHTMARE ALLEY.
New York, Toronto: Rinehart and Company, Inc., [1946]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. The author's first book. "Grotesque thriller in which a carnival huckster tries to exploit the tricks of his trade in carving out a career as a high society occultist. Its deployment of carnival bizarrerie links it to THE CIRCUS OF DR. LAO (1935) and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES (1962)." - Barron (ed), Fantasy and Horror 4-58. Basis for the 1947 film noir (the film was directed by Edmund Goulding and starred Coleen Gray and Joan Blondell). Recently remade. Hubin, p. 352. Johnson, The Dark Page, p. 122.
FOREVER PEACE.
New York: Ace Books, [1997]. Octavo, boards. First edition. Novel of war in which the soldiers are linked by virtual presence to soldier robots. "Like Haldeman's earlier novel, THE FOREVER WAR, this well-written book serves as a powerful indictment of both humanity's greed and its proclivity for fouling its own nest. - Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-479. Hugo Award for best novel, 1998. Nebula Award for best novel, 1999.
THE MEN FROM P.I.G. AND R.O.B.O.T.
New York: Atheneum, 1978. Octavo, cloth. First U. S. edition. Two humorous stories of two divisions of the Patrol, a protective organization for Earth colonies. The involve the Porcine Interstellar Guard and the Robot Obstrusion Battalion-Omega Three.
A WHISPER OF BLACK.
New York: Putnam's, 1997. Octavo, Hardcover. First edition. Author's second mystery.
TIME FOR THE STARS
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, [1956]. Octavo, Illustrated by Clifford Geary, cloth. First edition. "Although written and marketed as a young adult novel, this book is a mature treatment of the relativistic time-dilation effect in interstellar travel."- Anatomy of Wonder (1995) 3-92.