FACIAL JUSTICE. London: Hamish Hamilton, [1960]. Octavo, unprinted orange wrappers. Pre-bind of first edition sheets intended as a review copy. "A religious morality tale in which the survivors of the atomic war are led back to the upper world where an invisible dictator, a kind of God, rules." - Gerber, Utopian Fantasy (1973), p. 160. "This is no Orwellian future. It is a world incapable of the dynamic of tyranny. Even the weather is always cool and grey, with no room for either fire or ice. The state motto is 'Every valley shall be exalted.' This is a brilliant projection of tendencies already apparent in the postwar British welfare state but, because the book lacks the expected horrors of cacotopian fiction, it has met less appreciation than NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR." - Burgess, Ninety-nine Novels: The Best in English since 1939, p. 75. "... an excellent example of what Chad Walsh has called 'the Law of Reverse Effect' ... one of the keystones of anti-utopian science fiction." - Berger, Science Fiction and the New Dark Age, p. 209. "Powerful story ..." - Clarke, Tale of the Future (1978), p. 95. "FACIAL JUSTICE and PLAYER PIANO [are] easily the most important anti-utopia written since NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR ..." - Hillegas, The Future as Nightmare, p. 163. An important and now neglected novel that should be better known. Anatomy of Wonder (1987) 3-194. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, pp. 274-75. A fine copy. (#32549).
Price: $150.00
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