L. W. Currey, Inc.

Budrys, Algis. FALSE NIGHT / SOME WILL NOT DIE [novel]. Typewritten manuscript, signed (TMsS). Typescript, 291 leaves, a mixture of ribbon and carbon copies, of SOME WILL NOT DIE, incorporating most or all of the pages of a typescript of FALSE NIGHT and several subsequent stories that appeared in magazines. Signed inscription by Budrys dated 3 September 1962 on the first leaf: "... This is the only manuscript -- no carbons, no notes, no hope of my ever rewriting it ..." The typescript is extensively revised by hand throughout, with many deletions, including whole sentences and paragraphs crossed out but legible. Accompanied by a set of long galleys for the 1961 Regency Books edition, near fine, edges somewhat browned, with a signed presentation inscription by Budrys on the first leaf, and fine copies of the paperback originals: the first version, FALSE NIGHT (New York: Lion, 1954), and the second version, SOME WILL NOT DIE (Evanston, Ill.: Regency Books,1961), both with signed inscriptions by Budrys. The typescript and proof is enclosed in the original mailing envelope addressed by the printers to Harlan Ellison, the editor at Regency, whose edition carried this explanatory note: "In 1954, Algis Budrys wrote FALSE NIGHT, a book never fully published, since production difficulties required the publisher to cut more than one quarter of the manuscript. SOME WILL NOT DIE, is the new and never-before-published version of Budrys' story of Man after a worldwide cataclysm: it embodies not only the material omitted from the original FALSE NIGHT, but subsequent writing that appeared in magazines. And, more and most important, SOME WILL NOT DIE is a new book, for it has been rewritten and re-edited by Budrys seven years later; more mature and looking at his subject with new views and more sophistication." This story about the survivors of a world wide plague, carries forward one of the major themes of twentieth-century science-fiction, from M. P. Shiel's THE PURPLE CLOUD and Jack London's THE SCARLET PLAGUE through George R. Stewart's EARTH ABIDES to the 1950s and 60s, when the sub-genre proliferated. A year after SOME WILL NOT DIE, the whole tradition was transformed by the baroque disaster novels of J. G. Ballard, THE DROUGHT and THE WIND FROM NOWHERE. But the earlier realist tradition still persisted into the 1980s in such novels as Kim Stanley Robinson's THE WILD SHORE. Though Budrys wrote only nine novels in his long career, he is generally considered one of the finest realistic stylists of modern science fiction. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, p. 250. The archive is in very good condition overall, typed partially on good bond, but much is on pulpy stock, now tanned with some leaves brittle or slightly torn or chipped at edges but still supple. (#129412).

Price: $3,750.00