HOT & COLD RUNNING CITIES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF SCIENCE FICTION. New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, [1974]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. Eight stories by A. E. van Vogt, Keith Roberts, Robert A. Heinlein and others, and "Metropolitan Nightmare," a poem by Stephen Vincent Benet about metal-eating bugs. Most of the extrapolated future cities on Earth are unpleasant, if not dystopian. Kornbluth's "The Luckiest Man in Denv," depicting an authoritarian dystopia, is listed in Sargent. The longest story, "Natural State" a novella by Damon Knight expanded into a novel, MASTERS OF EVOLUTION (1959), depicts isolated post-nuclear war cities at war with the prosperous surrounding countryside using chemical and bioengineered weapons. Also present are "The City That Loves You" by Raymond Banks, a city run by a benevolent computer, "The Place Where Chicago Was" by James Harmon, a post-nuclear war world government uses mind control to keep the population peaceful, and "Plenitude" by Will Worthington, a creepy SF-horror story, reminiscent of Forester's cautionary tale "The Machine Stops." Despite the bad title and marketing to a YA audience (McHargue is a well-regarded writer of children's books), a useful anthology of cites you mostly wouldn't want to live in. Brians, Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895-1984, p. 212; pp. 234-5. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, p. 243. A fine copy in nearly fine dust jacket with some fade to spine panel. (#160261).
Price: $45.00
First edition so stated on copyright page.