AMONG THE DEAD AND OTHER EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE APOCALYPSE. New York: The Macmillan Company, [1973]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. "Bryant’s science fiction stories frequently take the form of nightmarish, near-future dystopias ... Horror stories in his collection AMONG THE DEAD AND OTHER EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE APOCALYPSE include the title story, about three survivors of a biological war who survive by eating cryogenically preserved human bodies; 'Shark,' featuring a woman who willingly participates in a hushed-up experiment that transforms her into a shark; 'The Human Side of the Village Monster,' where an inventor trying to survive in an overpopulated, underfed New York breeds giant cockroaches to serve as meat; and 'Tactics,' describing a future election where cold-blooded murder has become a commonplace political strategy. Also in AMONG THE DEAD are horror stories with present-day or unspecified locales: 'The Hanged Man,' an explicit tribute to Edgar Allan Poe’s 'The Cask of Amontillado,' featuring a man who hangs another man by his feet to torture him; 'Adrift on the Freeway,' in which a man theorizes that a mysterious increase in abandoned cars is due to attacks by invisible carnivorous birds; and the surrealistic 'Dune’s Edge,' where five people are trapped in a strange realm where they feel compelled to climb an immense dune, always unsuccessfully." - Gary Westfahl, Pringle (ed), The St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers, p. 101. "Seventeen blackly poetic tales in the American New Wave vein of the late 1960s. Standouts include 'Their Thousandth Season' and 'Among the Dead.'" - Pringle, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, second edition (1995), pp. 11-12. The author's first book. Anatomy of Wonder (1981) 3-146. King list, p. 389. A fine copy in fine dust jacket. (#161715).
Price: $100.00
First printing so stated on copyright page.