Science Fiction
ENSIGN FLANDRY.
Philadelphia and New York: Chilton Books, [1966]. Octavo, cloth. First edition.
FLANDRY OF TERRA.
Philadelphia and New York: Chilton Books, [1965]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. Collects three Dominic Flandry stories, "The Game of Glory" and "A Message in Secret," published in 1961 as part of an Ace double as MAYDAY ORBIT, and "The Plague of Masters," published in 1961 as part of an Ace double as EARTHMAN, GO HOME!
HARVEST OF STARS.
New York: Tor, 1993. Octavo, boards. First edition. Anderson speculates on the possibility of a future dominated by exponentially powerful artificial minds. "Anderson's last major enterprise was the Guthrie Family sequence –- comprising HARVEST OF STARS (1993), THE STARS ARE ALSO FIRE (1994), HARVEST THE FIRE (1995) and THE FLEET OF STARS (1997) –- which puts on display both his continued grasp of current dreams of technology fixes, and as well the oddly resentful sense of disenchantment not untypical of writers at the end of the last century. These drives govern a tale in which Earth after centuries of savage environmental exploitation (though Anderson explicitly blames environmentalists for this) –- is no longer capable of sustaining humanity's quest for new adventures, and for a new home. The escape from the dying planet is sustained and exhilarating. Through the four volumes, the scale and complexity expands inexorably; there is no quick way to represent the final effect, except perhaps to suggest that Anderson had decided here to tell every kind of story he was capable of – fantasy, hard SF and entertainment routines intermix constantly -– as a summary and summa of his long career. On the evidence of this sequence, it is clear that for half a century he knew what he was doing." - John Clute, SFE (online).
THE HIGH CRUSADE.
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1960. Octavo, cloth. First edition. "An alien starship lands in medieval England, and carries a group of knights off into space. These rough-and-ready chaps eventually succeed in conquering the interstellar empire. A fondly remembered romp which celebrates the violent human spirit, it has not worn particularly well." - Pringle, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, second edition (1995), p. 173. 1961 Hugo nominee. 1961 Hugo nominee. Anatomy of Wonder (1987) 3-11. Survey of Science Fiction Literature II, pp. 977-80.
THE NIGHT FACE AND OTHER STORIES.
Boston: Gregg Press, 1978. Octavo, cloth. First edition. Collects four stories. The title story "The Night Face" was first published LET THE SPACEMEN BEWARE! (1963).
ORION SHALL RISE.
Huntington Woods: Phantasia Press, 1983. First edition. One of 600 numbered copies signed by Anderson. "A long, complex novel set in the world of Anderson's Maurai stories, centuries after the devastating war known variously as 'The Doom War,' 'The Downfall,' and the 'Death Time.' Among other matters this work details a plot by the Northwest Union (the northwestern portion of the former United States) to develop spacecraft powered by nuclear explosives to challenge the domination of their benevolent rulers who have restricted the development of technology ... A superior political thriller ..." - Brians, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895-1984, p. 117. Anatomy of Wonder (1987) 4-16. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, p. 416.
ORION SHALL RISE.
Huntington Woods: Phantasia Press, 1983. Octavo, cloth backed boards. First trade edition. 2000 copies printed. "A long, complex novel set in the world of Anderson's Maurai stories, centuries after the devastating war known variously as 'The Doom War,' 'The Downfall,' and the 'Death Time.' Among other matters this work details a plot by the Northwest Union (the northwestern portion of the former United States) to develop spacecraft powered by nuclear explosives to challenge the domination of their benevolent rulers who have restricted the development of technology ... A superior political thriller ..." - Brians, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895-1984, p. 117. Anatomy of Wonder (1987) 4-16. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, p. 416.
THE QUEEN OF AIR AND DARKNESS.
Boston: Gregg Press, 1978. Octavo, cloth. First hardcover edition. Collects six stories including the title fiction, winner of the 1971 Nebula and 1972 Hugo awards.
THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS.
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., [1961]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. Signed photograph of Poul Anderson laid in. Barron (ed): Fantasy Literature 3-3 and 4A-6. Bleiler: The Guide to Supernatural Fiction #18. Cawthorn and Moorcock: Fantasy: The 100 Best Books #73. Pringle: Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels #25.
THE TROUBLE TWISTERS.
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1967. Octavo, boards. First British edition. Collects "The Three-Cornered Wheel," "A Sun Invisible" and "The Trouble Twisters," three novelettes featuring David Falkayn. Part of the Technic history series, a far future era in which Earth is the center of a vast system of interplanetary commerce.
THE VAULT OF AGES.
Philadelphia, Toronto: John C. Winston Company, [1958]. Octavo, jacket illustration by Paul Orban, cloth. Later, second printing. "Five hundred years after 'the Doom,' barbarian tribes mine the cities for metal. Two boys use the technology from a time vault to defeat invaders and cause the lifting of the taboo on the old knowledge. Philosophical wisdom also stored in the vault will prevent its misuse this time." - Brians, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895-1984, p. 119. "Brisk adventure, well written ..." - Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-28. Anderson's first book. Part of the classic Winston science fiction series for young readers published between 1952 and 1961. Anatomy of Wonder (1976) 5-3; (1981) 4-3; (1987) 5-4; (1995) 5-4.
THE END OF A WORLD. Translated from the French by Jeffery E. Jeffery.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927. Octavo, pp. [1-4] [1-2] 3-268 [269: colophon] [270: blank] [note: title leaf mounted on a stub], illustrations, title page printed in brown and black, original decorated yellow cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black and green, publisher's monogram stamped in blind on rear panel, top edge stained green, decorated endpapers. First edition in English. Prehistoric romance recording the last cycle in the history of a community of the Cro-Magnon period. Anatomy of Wonder (1976) 2-4. Angenot and Khouri, "An International Bibliography of Prehistoric Fiction," SFS, VIII (March 1981), 41. Clareson, Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s 015. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 21 (recording a copy of the British issue). The Stuart Teitler Collection of Lost Race Fiction, p. 5. Bleiler (1978), p. 5. Reginald 00340.
THRILLERS: STARTLING TALES BY WELLS, DOYLE, ROHMER, ROBERTS AND OTHERS.
New York: Edward J. Clode, Inc., 1929. Octavo, pp. [i-iv] v-vi [vii-viii] 9-313 [314-316: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], original green cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold. First edition. Collects seventeen stories by Charles G. D. Roberts, Guy Boothby, H. G. Wells, Sax Rohmer, Arthur Conan Doyle, C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne, Louis Becke, and others.
BEYOND.
[New York]: A Berkley Medallion Book published by Berkley Publishing Corporation, [1963]. Small octavo, cover painting by Richard Powers, pictorial wrappers. First edition. Berkley Medallion F712. Paperback original. Collection of nine stories from Beyond magazine. Authors include Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Theodore Sturgeon, Algis Budrys and others.
A CRYSTAL AGE.
London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1887. Octavo, [1-4] [1] 2-287 [288: blank], + 32-page publisher's catalogue dated "1886-7" inserted at rear, original black cloth, front panel stamped in red, spine stamped in gold and red, rear panel stamped in red. First edition. The binding is the preferred state with the publisher's monogram in red on the rear cover. The book is found with and without publisher's catalogues inserted at rear; this copy has the earliest form of the catalogue, dated 1886-7 on page [1]. The author's anonymously published second book and first novel. A Utopian novel of a matriarchal pastoral society. "A pioneering and affectively powerful work of ecological mysticism..." - Barron (ed.): Fantasy Literature 2-87. Hudson's "fine quasi-utopian novel of the far future... depicts small, self- sufficient, matriarchally organized households living in harmony with Nature. The protagonist, tragically, cannot adapt to their pastoral way of life...Both stories [A CRYSTAL AGE and GREEN MANSIONS (1904)] are remarkable anticipations of modern ecological mysticism." - Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, p. 593. Anatomy of Wonder (1995) 1-51, Negley: Utopian Literature: A Bibliography #596, Sargent: British and American Utopian Literature pp. 38.
SOMETIME, NEVER: THREE TALES OF IMAGINATION by William Golding, John Wyndham [and] Mervyn Peake.
New York: Ballantine Books, [1957]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First U.S. edition. Ballantine Books 215. Original anthology collecting three novellas: "Envoy Extraordinary" by William Golding (science fiction set in the ancient world), "Consider Her Ways" by John Wyndham (feminist science fiction set in a dystopian future), and "Boy in Darkness" by Mervyn Peake (a fantastic tale set in the world of Titus Groan). Golding's story was adapted later as a play and published as THE BRASS BUTTERFLY (1958). According the Berger (Science Fiction and the New Dark Age, pp. 196-8), Wyndham's "haunting" novella in which "the preventable is not prevented," is "the quintessence of dystopian fiction." Anatomy of Wonder (1995) 3-78. Reginald 13447.
SPACE ODYSSEY.
[London];: Octopus Books Limited, [1983]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. 349-page "instant remainder" anthology reprinting twenty-five stories, some of them classics, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Roger Zelazny, John W. Campbell, Fritz Leiber, H. G. Wells, J. G. Ballard and many others. Reginald 16614.
BROTHER TERMITE.
New York, San Diego, London: Harcourt Brace & Company, [1993]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. BROTHER TERMITE (1993) "uses alien visitors as complex mirrors that reflect behaviors -- genetic exigencies have forced them into a ruthlessly manipulative treatment of humans as expendable 'partners', rather like women -- to suggest a variety of surmises about the nature of human actions. The story itself -- which involves some glancing satire on contemporary life and politics, and on human obsession with UFOs and other True-Believer diseases of the psyche -- is both complex and neat" (John Clute). Hartwell, 200 Significant SF Books by Women, 1984-2001.
ANTHONOLOGY.
[New York]: Tor, [1985]. Octavo, boards. First edition. Collects twenty-one stories including the unpleasant meat-is-murder story "In the Barn," first published in AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS edited by Harlan Ellison (1972).
MACROSCOPE.
Boston: Gregg Press, [1985]. Octavo, cloth. First hardcover edition. "Four people set out on a voyage through both inner and outer space, the cosmos and the psyche to discover the source of a signal which destroys the minds of those who attempt to use the macroscope, a machine that sees through space and time" (Survey). The four use the macroscope, an alien artifact in Earth orbit to leave the Solar System and travel to the destroyer station (an artificial planet) which is actually one of the "guardian stations placed in space by an infinitely superior alien race to prevent any species from ruining themselves or others with advanced technology before they are mature enough morally to resist the temptations of galactic conquest ... Although not an allegory in the strictest sense of the term, MACROSCOPE is a novel constructed upon varied interpretations of the concept of unity ... [It] is a novel with a vast sweep that combines ideas and epic action in a way that typifies the most ambitious and exhilarating science fiction ... [It] is a complex, exciting book to read ..." (Survey). 1970 Hugo nominee. Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-32. Pringle, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, second edition (1995), p. 221. Survey of Science Fiction Literature III, pp. 1308-11.
TOTAL RECALL.
New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., [1989]. Octavo, cloth backed boards. First edition. Novel based on the story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick and screen treatment by Ronald Shusett and others. A recreational memory implant of a vacation on Mars places the hapless protagonist in grave danger as his dreams turn into frightening reality.
A VOYAGE TO THE MOON, STRONGLY RECOMMENDED TO ALL LOVERS OF REAL FREEDOM ...
London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by James Ridgway, York-Street, St. James-Square, and H. D. Symonds, Paternoster-Row, 1793. Octavo, pp. [1-4] [1] 2-39 [40: blank], disbound. First edition. A voyage by Balloon to the Moon. "Dystopia on the Moon -- allegory about contemporary England." - Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985 (1988), p. 31. Howgego, Encyclopedia of Exploration: Invented and Apocryphal Narratives of Travel A19. Locke, Voyages in Space (2011) V91. Negley, Utopian Literature 1153. Bleiler (1978), p. 9. Reginald 00468. Not in Locke, Spectrum I-III.
FULL SPECTRUM 2.
New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland: Doubleday, [1989]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. Original anthology collecting twenty-seven stories by Edward Bryant, Vonda N. McIntyre, David Brin, Mike McQuay, Patricia A. McKillip, Greg Bear, Michael Swanwick, Kim Stanley Robinson, and others.
CATCH THE LIGHTNING.
New York: Tor, A Tom Doherty Associates Book, [1996]. Octavo, illustration by Peter Bollinger, boards. First edition. Second novel in the Skolian Empire series.
PRIMARY INVERSION.
New York: Tor, [1995]. Octavo, boards. First edition. Signed by Asaro on the title page. The author's first novel. Space opera romance, the first novel of the Skolian Empire series. Hartwell, 200 Significant SF Books by Women, 1984-2001.