THE WEAPON SHOPS OF ISHER.
New York: Greenberg: Publisher, 1951. Octavo, cloth. First edition, first printing. Inscribed and signed by Van Vogt of long time fan Dick Wald. In the far future the empire of Isher, a decadent dictatorship rules the universe. The sequel is THE WEAPON MAKERS. It is "in the two Weapon Shops time operas ... that van Vogt's mixture of hard-SF dreams, enormities of complication, and transcendent superheroes was most hypnotically presented. The main protagonist of the two books, the immortal Robert Hedrock has not only in the dim past created the Weapon Shops as a Libertarian force to counterbalance the imperial world government long dominant on Earth, but also turns out eventually to have literally begotten the race of emperors and empresses who rule that government in traditional opposition to the mysterious Shops, which are invulnerable and sell weapons to anyone (van Vogt himself never seemed closer to sounding American than in this presentation of the inalienable right to own guns). En passant, as revealed at the very end of the second book, Hedrock unwittingly passes a galactic initiation test designed by forerunners to select the next rulers of the 'sevagram.' The word 'sevagram' appears only, as the very last word of THE WEAPON MAKERS; this resonantly mysterious slingshot ending, which seems to open universes to the reader's gaze, may well stand as the best working demonstration in the whole of genre SF of how to impart a sense of wonder." - SFE (online). [Reference: Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-1157. Gerber, Utopian Fantasy (1973), p. 159. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, Additions. Survey of Science Fiction Literature V, pp. 2442-46]. Several light stains to lower cloth edges with small strip of stain to lower end papers from a old style jacket protecter, a nearly fine copy in a very good price clipped dust jacket with edge wear a some shallow loss at lower front edge and spine ends. (36169). Item #36169
Price: $500.00