QUICKSAND.
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#10782)
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Introduction by Boyd White
Although Sir Thomas More coined the word utopia in the 16th century from Greek that translates literally as “no-place,” in common usage the term refers to an imagined ideal community constructed upon egalitarian principles of economics, government, and justice. While its homophone eutopia, derived from Greek that means “good place,” is the correct term for a positive utopia, utopia and eutopia have been used interchangeably for decades.
More’s Utopia (1516), a fictional account of the religious, social, and political customs of an island society located in the South Atlantic, is not the earliest example of a proposal for an ideal community. That distinction rests with Plato’s Republic (380 BC), a rigid class-structured society ruled by philosopher-kings whose wisdom has eliminated poverty and want through the equal distribution of all resources. For every utopian ideal a political philosopher or satirist has imagined, however, a counter proposal has never been far behind. The deification of logic and reason in Plato’s Republic reaches its horrific extreme in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) when the narrator finds himself among the Houyhnhnms, a race of hyper-intelligent talking horses without emotion, who have degraded and enslaved human beings because humanity, from the Houyhnhnm point of view, lacks reason and cannot overcome its base nature.
Lloyd Currey’s Utopian and Anti-Utopian Literature explores the innumerable ways that authors throughout the centuries have imagined rebuilding and perfecting civilization, as well as their inevitable anxieties about how such attempts to save humanity may ultimately only end up destroying it. As Lloyd’s catalog illustrates, from the rustic matriarchal households of W. H. Hudson’s A Crystal Age (1887) to the interstellar mixture of socialism and anarchy in Ian M. Banks’ Matter (2008), utopias and dystopias have taken many forms.
While the classics of the literature are certainly well represented—Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 2000-1887 (1888), Thea von Harbou’s Metropolis (1926), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), and Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange (1962)—the most fascinating books Lloyd has gathered include some of the earliest and least known examples of the genre, unclassifiable works that combine elements of lost race fiction, interplanetary romance, occult fiction, and high fantasy. Simon Berington’s The Memoirs of Sigr. Gaudentio di Lucca: Taken from His Confession and Examination before the Fathers of the Inquisition at Bologna in Italy (1737), recounts di Lucca’s life as a successful artist in the kingdom of Mezzoraim in Northern Africa among isolated descendents of the ancient Egyptians whose culture is defined by a natural religion that channels all ambition for material gain into a desire to benefit the nation as a whole. James Reynolds’ Equality; A History of Lithconia (1837), one of the earliest American utopian novels, describes an island society that “denounces private property and requires no assistance from the divine, placing its faith in bureaucracy to impose order, technology to reduce drudgery, and omnipresent gardens to instill virtue.” Neither of these titles, however, compares with the screwball eccentricity of Austyn W. Granville’s The Fallen Race (1892) in which the lone survivors of the doomed Frisbee Expedition into the Great Australian Desert find themselves in the land of the Anonos, the descendants of female aborigines and a particularly randy troop of kangaroos, or John O. Greene’s The Ke Whonkus People (1893) in which an arctic utopia executes its religious heretics by sacrificing them to vampire dragons who drain their blood in underground caverns.
Perhaps the most remarkable work in Utopian and Anti-Utopian Literature is Shirby T. Hodge’s The White Man’s Burden: A Satirical Forecast (1915). Written by Roger Sherman Tracy, a noted graduate of Yale University and an associate of the New York Board of Health, this remarkable book is narrated by an unnamed white man from 20th-century New Hampshire who is mysteriously transported to West Africa in 5027 AD. The narrator encounters a remarkable utopia inhabited by African-Americans who relocated after achieving economic superiority in North America and eventually defeating the white race in a devastating war. Characterized by technological marvels such as air cars, interplanetary travel, and disintegration rays, the society the narrator explores is essentially anarchist with no laws, private property, money, or prisons, each person working at whatever he or she chooses to do. A ground-breaking work decades ahead of its time socially and politically, The White Man’s Burden: A Satirical Forecast is a work ripe for rediscovery by scholars and enthusiasts.
Of course, not every author has embraced the progressive economic and social reforms that have characterized such ideal societies. For many early writers, the concept of an idealized socialist utopia is inextricably linked to the enslavement of the individual and the erasure of all creativity or desire. Frank Cowan’s Revi-Lona: A Romance of Love in a Marvelous Land (1879) satirizes numerous tropes of 19th-century utopian fiction in its depiction of a super-scientific matriarchy destroyed, as the author says, by a “big and brawny man, with many of the vices of his sex and years.” Likewise, Walter Besant’s The Inner House (1888) imagines the eradication of aging through medicine and the institution of a socialist state not as unleashing humanity’s unlimited potential but instead as breeding out all individuality, desire, and creativity. While The Inner House is often read as a literary precursor to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), Besant’s novella, unlike Orwell’s masterpiece, is steeped in anxieties about the progressive social movements of its time and is best understood as the kind of anti-utopian work that gets taken to its logical extreme in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957) and its rejection of governmental controls for unrestrained capitalism and individual achievement.
Lloyd rounds out Utopian and Anti-Utopian Literature with an excellent selection of key contributions by modern and contemporary speculative fiction writers, including Zenna Henderson’s Pilgrimage: The Book of the People (1961), Keith Roberts’ Pavane (1968), Suzy McKee Charnas’ Motherlines (1978), Alasdair Gray’s Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1985), Elizabeth Hand’s Glimmering (1997), and Charles Stross’ Glasshouse (2007).
Economic. Ecological. Feminist. Religious. Single-gender. Single-sex. Scientific. Technological.
Looking for the perfect world? Here’s a good place to begin.
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#10782)
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Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#10783)
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Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#107386)
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New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row, Publishers, [1972]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#148526)
More Details about THE SHEEP LOOK UP
Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, [1987]. Octavo, illustrations by Vincent DiFate, full decorated leather. Later edition. (#151058)
More Details about STAND ON ZANZIBAR
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1973. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#10787)
More Details about THE STONE THAT NEVER CAME DOWN
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1973. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#112243)
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Toronto, New York, London: Bantam Books, [1974]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#87767)
More Details about WEB OF EVERYWHERE
New York: Walker & Company, [1969]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. hardcover edition. (#972)
More Details about THE WHOLE MAN
New York: Ballantine Books, [1964]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#87768)
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New York: Walker & Company, [1969]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. hardcover edition. (#107391)
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New York: Walker & Company, [1969]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. hardcover edition. (#112247)
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New York: Walker & Company, [1969]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. hardcover edition. (#138852)
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Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#974)
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Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#112248)
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Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#112249)
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London: Printed by J. Watson in Black-Fryers, and sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster, 1727. Octavo, pp. [1-2] [1] 2-167 [168: blank], engraved frontispiece, engraved tailpiece on page 121, later three-quarter green pebbled morocco and marbled boards, titled on spine in gold. First edition. (#157206)
More Details about A VOYAGE TO CACKLOGALLINIA: WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE RELIGION, POLICY, CUSTOMS AND MANNERS OF...
London: Chatto & Windus, 1939. Octavo, pp. [i-vi] vii [viii] [1-2] 3-150 [151: printer's imprint] [152: blank], illustrations by the author, original patterned boards with black cloth shelf back, spine panel stamped in gold, top edge stained red, bottom edge untrimmed. First edition. (#12182)
More Details about JOHN INNOCENT AT OXFORD: A FANTASY
New York: Ace Books, [2003]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#154782)
More Details about HYPERTHOUGHT
New York: Ace Books, [2004]. Small octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#154784)
More Details about NEUROLINK
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1968. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#107401)
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London: Panther Books are Printed in Great Britain and Published by Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), Ltd., [1953]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#146473)
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London: Panther Books are Printed in Great Britain and Published by Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), Ltd., [1953]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#148546)
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Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, MDCCCLXXI [1871]. Octavo, pp. [1-6] [1] 2-292 [note: dedication leaf is an inset], original decorated orange red cloth, spine and front panels stamped in black and gold, rear panel stamped in blind, brown coated endpapers, top edge untrimmed, other edges rough trimmed. First edition. (#80714)
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New York: Tor, [2001]. Octavo. boards. First U. S. edition. (#102972)
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London: Panther Books are printed in Great Britain and published by Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), Ltd., [1955]. Octavo, pictorial wrappers. First edition. (#146946)
More Details about DEEP FREEZE by Jonathan Burke [pseudonym
Bremen, Leipzig, Wein: Henry Burmester Verlag, n.d., [1938]. Octavo, pp. [1-4] 5-288, four maps in the text, original cream boards with straw cloth shelf back. First edition. (#151272)
More Details about DIE ERDE REIßT: TECHNISCHER ZUKUNFTSROMAN
Bremen, Berlin, Leipzig, Wein: Henry Burmester Verlag, n.d., [1937]. Octavo, pp. [1-4] 5-222 [223: ads] [224: blank], original gray cloth, front and spine panels stamped in brown, top edge stained brown, jacket illustration reproduced on the front paste-down. First edition. (#151273)
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Tarzana, California: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Publishers, [1939]. Octavo, pp. [1-2] [1-4] 5 [6-8] 9-312 [313: ads] [314-318: blank] [last two leaves are blanks], six inserted plates with illustrations by John Coleman Burroughs, original blue cloth, front and spine panel stamped in orange, top edge stained red, other edges rough trimmed. First edition. (#151449)
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New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, [1989]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#1197)
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New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, [1989]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#91480)
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New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, [1989]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#104129)
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London: Grant Richards, 1901. Octavo, pp. [1-2] [i-iv] v [vi] vii-xviii 1-323 [324] [325: publisher ads] [326-328: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], original red cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold, t.e.g. Second edition, revised and enlarged. (#139863)
More Details about EREWHON OR OVER THE RANGE ... New and Revised Edition
Paris: Hippolyte Souverain, Éditeur, 1840 [i.e. 1839]. Octavo, two volumes: pp. [1-4] [1] 2-400 [401] [402, mis-paged "378"; [1-4] [1] 2-508 [509] 510, contemporary nineteenth-century quarter brown calf and marbled boards, spine panels stamped in gold and blind, marbled endpapers, edges speckled blue. First edition. (#157072)
More Details about VOYAGE ET AVENTURES DE LORD VILLIAM CARISDALL EN ICARIE, Traduits de l'Anglais de Francis Adams...
New York: Tor, [2001]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. edition. (#109639)
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New York: Tor, [2001]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. edition. (#145875)
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London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1988. Octavo, boards. First British (and first hardcover) edition. (#1210)
More Details about MINDPLAYERS
New York: Tor, [1998]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#140339)
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New York: Tor, [1998]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#140640)
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New York: Tor, [1998]. Octavo, red wrappers printed in black. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition. (#158618)
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New York: St. Martin's Press, [1996]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. (and first hardcover) edition. (#91491)
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New York: St. Martin's Press, [1995]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. edition. (#68022)
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[Hammersmith, London]: HarperCollinsPublishers, [1992]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#78732)
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New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., [1952]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#156959)
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Berkeley, California: Banyan Tree Books, [1975]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#156970)
More Details about ECOTOPIA. THE NOTEBOOKS AND REPORTS OF WILLIAM WESTON
London: Victor Gollancz, [1995]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#91493)
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London & West Nyack: The Journeyman Press, [1981]. Octavo, printed wrappers. First printing of this translation. (#24019)
More Details about THE CITY OF THE SUN ... Newly Translated by A. M. Elliott and R. Millner. Introduction by A. L....
London: Panther Books are Printed in Great Britain and Published by Hamilton & Co. (Stafford), Ltd., [1953]. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#146472)
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London: Martin Secker, 1915. Octavo, pp. [1-14] 15-200 [201] [202-204: ads], original orange wrappers printed in black, all edges trimmed. First edition, paperbound issue. (#97185)
More Details about WINDMILLS: A BOOK OF FABLES
Garden City: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1923. Octavo, pp. [i-iv] v-x [xi] xii 1-187 [188-190: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], four plates reproducing scenes from the 1922 Theatre Guild Production, title page printed in orange and black, original orange cloth, front and spine panels stamped in black. First edition in English. First printing with "First Edition" on the copyright page. (#146478)
More Details about R.U.R. (ROSSUM'S UNIVERSAL ROBOTS): A FANTASTIC MELODRAMA ... Translated by Paul Selver
[Brno: Polygrafie v Brn , 1922.]. Octavo, pp. [1-6] 7-219 [220-222] [223: colophon] [224: blank], illustrations by Josef Capek, original pictorial wrappers printed in orange and blue, all edges untrimmed. First edition. (#155658)
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Praha: Nakladatel Fr. Borovy, 1936. Octavo, pp. [1-8] 9-348 [349-352] [353: ad] [354: blank], preliminaries printed in orange and black, original gray cloth, front panel stamped in brown and back, spine panel stamped in black. First edition. (#149801)
More Details about VALKA S MLOKY [WAR WITH THE NEWTS
New York: Tor, [1993]. Octavo, leather. First edition. (#22261)
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New York: Tor, [1993]. Octavo, leather. First edition. (#72057)
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New York: Tor, [1993]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#72571)
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New York: Tor, [1993]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#93663)
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New York: Tor, [1993]. Octavo, printed salmon wrappers. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition. (#106110)
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New York: Tor, [1993]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#145282)
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New York: Tor, [1995]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#68046)
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New York: Tor, [1995]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#93668)
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New York: Tor, [1995]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#145284)
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New York: Tor, [1995]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#93669)
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New York: Tor, [1995]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#145285)
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West Bloomfield, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1989. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#22268)
More Details about THE FOLK OF THE FRINGE
West Bloomfield, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1989. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#22269)
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West Bloomfield, Michigan: Phantasia Press, 1989. Octavo, cloth. First edition. (#145276)
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New York: Tor, [1992]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First trade edition. (#22278)
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New York: Tor, [1992]. Octavo, full leather. First edition. (#94141)
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New York: Tor, [1992]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First trade edition. (#94142)
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New York: Tor, [1992]. Octavo, full leather. First edition. (#105795)
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New York: Tor, [1992]. Octavo, printed yellow wrappers. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition. (#108168)
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New York: Tor, [1992]. Octavo, printed yellow wrappers. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition. (#145293)
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New York: St. Martin's Press, [1979]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#145456)
More Details about A PLANET CALLED TREASON
New York: Tor, [1994]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First trade edition. (#68045)
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New York: Tor, [1994]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First trade edition. (#94147)
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New York: Tor, [1994]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First trade edition. (#138886)
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New York: Tor, [1994]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First trade edition. (#141704)
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New York: Tor, [1994]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First trade edition. (#148599)
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New York: The Dial Press, [1981]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#22120)
More Details about UNACCOMPANIED SONATA & OTHER STORIES
New York: The Dial Press, [1981]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#72068)
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New York: The Dial Press, [1981]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#89195)
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New York: The Dial Press, [1981]. Octavo, printed blue wrappers. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition. (#104284)
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New York: The Dial Press, [1981]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#145278)
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London, Boston: Faber and Faber, [1980]. Octavo, boards. First British edition. (#139498)
More Details about THE FAT MAN IN HISTORY
New York: Tor, [1999]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. edition. (#140317)
More Details about OBERNEWTYN: BOOK ONE OF THE OBERNEWTYN CHRONICLES
New York: Tor, [1999]. Octavo, boards. First U.S. edition. (#141224)
More Details about OBERNEWTYN: BOOK ONE OF THE OBERNEWTYN CHRONICLES
London: Dennis Dobson, [1968]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#115174)
More Details about NEW WRITINGS IN S-F 13
London: Dennis Dobson, [1970]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#115178)
More Details about NEW WRITINGS IN S-F 17
London: Dennis Dobson, [1971]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#115180)
More Details about NEW WRITINGS IN S-F 19
[London]: Little, Brown and Company, [2000]. Octavo, boards. First British edition. (#93877)
More Details about KILLING TIME: A NOVEL OF THE FUTURE
New York: Random House, [2000]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#104113)
More Details about KILLING TIME: A NOVEL OF THE FUTURE
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1979. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#108546)
More Details about LEVIATHAN'S DEEP
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1983. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#108547)
More Details about NAVIGATOR'S SINDROME
New York: Random House, [1973]. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. First edition. (#62220)
More Details about UNIVERSE 3
London: T. Werner Laurie, n.d. [1914]. Octavo, pp. [1-4] 1-249 [250-252: ads], original green cloth, front panel stamped stamped in black, spine panel stamped in gold, publisher's monogram stamped in black on rear panel. First edition. (#157149)
More Details about 2010. By the Author of "The Adventures of John Jones."
New York: Tor, [1996]. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#145258)
More Details about THE FORTUNATE FALL
Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1986. Octavo, boards. First edition. (#106795)
More Details about THE STAR COUNTRY
New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1913. Octavo, pp. [1-16] 1-299 [300: blank] [301-302: ads] [303-304: blank] [note: last leaf is a blank], four inserted plates with illustrations by Edmund Frederick, original red cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold and blind, pictorial paper inlay on front panel with illustration by John Rae. First edition. First printing with code "(1)" on page 299. (#154935)
More Details about THE GAY REBELLION
New York: Roadtown Press, [1910]. Octavo, pp. [1-14] 1-172 [173-178: blank] [note: first four and last three leaves are blanks, first and last used as front and rear paste-downs], original maroon cloth, front and spine panel stamped in white, hand-colored pictorial paper label affixed to front cover. First edition. (#152994)
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