TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE Robert A. Heinlein Putnam 1st HC!

This science fiction novel Time Enough For Love by Robert A. Heinlein is a Putnam first edition, fourth impression hard cover with original dust jacket in protective vinyl. It was published in 1983. From the dust jacket flaps:

Time Enough For Love is Robert Heinlein's longest novel. It is just as certainly his most ambitious, ranging as it does over twenty-three centuries of history and countless light-years of space. It is a novel set in a time when not only the human population of the galaxy, but the very number of inhabited planets in it can be viewed only in approximations. It is the story--one must avoid the temptation to say life story, for that would be an overstatement--of the man who was born Woodrow Wilson Smith on the planet Earth in the year 1912 and is, as the novel opens, known as the Senior, the oldest man alive and to one degree or another the ancestor of most, if not all, of the inhabitants of the planet he inhabits in the galactic year 2053, which in earth terms would be 4272. That the planet itself is one not even suspected to exist when the Senior was born is but one comment on the range of the story.

As the reader follows the Senior's career in many identities--as Lazarus Long, who led the first great exodus from Earth; as Aaron Sheffield, captain of an interstellar trade ship visiting the planet Blessed with its slave society; as Ernest Gibbons homesteading on the newly settled planet of New Beginnings; as Ted Bronson, searching for the Senior's own origins in pre-World War I America--he will encounter a host of exciting adventures and be exposed to a vast range of informed speculation as to that which the future may hold for the human race in the centuries ahead.

For just as there are many facets to the Senior, at once a barbarian and rogue and a highly intelligent, highly civilized man, so is the author of Time Enough for Love a gifted story teller and a scientist and philosopher who forces his reader to recognize both the ultimate folly of human behavior and the fact that we are all undeniably human.

Robert A. Heinlein graduated from Annapolis, where he was a champion swordsman, and served in the Navy for five years. He began writing fiction in 1939 and soon won recognition as one of the towering figures of science fiction, winning the coveted Hugo Award for the best science fiction novel of the year on four separate occasions, an unequaled record. He now lives in California.

Unknown Worlds British Anthology HELL HATH FURY, HC DJ!

Unknown Worlds British Anthology HELL HATH FURY, HC DJ! - eBay (item 310109403059 end time Dec-20-08 18:13:21 PST)

This vintage 1963 first edition hard cover copy of Hell Hath Fury is a British anthology containing seven fantasy fiction stories edited by George Hay. The stories were first published in Street & Smith's short-lived forties magazine Unknown Worlds. The book was published by Neville Spearman, Ltd. and comes with the original dust jacket.

Contents:

• Preface by George Hay
• Hell Hath Fury novel by Cleve Cartmill
• The Bleak Shore story by Fritz Leiber, Jnr.
• The Frog story by P. Schuyler Miller
• The Refugee story by Jane Rice
• The Devil's Rescue story by L. Ron Hubbard
• The Cloak story by Robert Bloch
• The Extra Bricklayer story by A. M. Phillips

The book is in excellent condition with Wehman Bros. stamped on the title page, a price-clipped dust jacket and some minor foxing and age-darkening as seen in photos.

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TALES FROM UNDERWOOD David H. Keller Arkham House First

TALES FROM UNDERWOOD David H. Keller Arkham House First - eBay (item 310106091166 end time Dec-08-08 17:59:49 PST)

This vintage first edition hard cover book with dust jacket is Tales From Underwood A Collection of the Best Fantastic Stories by David H. Keller, published in 1952 for Arkham House by Pellegrini & Cudahy. This isn't one of those little black volumes bound in Holliston Black Novelex as we're used to seeing from Arkham House.

Contents include 23 stories:

• The Worm
• The Revolt of the Pedestrians
• The Yeast Men
• The Ivy War
• The Doorbell


• The Flying Fool
• The Psychophonic Nurse
• A Biological Experiment
• Free as the Air
• The Bridle


• Tiger Cat
• The God Wheel
• The Golden Bough
• The Jelly Fish
• The Opium Eater


• The Thing in the Cellar
• The Moon Artist
• Creation Unforgivable
• The Dead Woman
• The Door


• The Perfumed Garden
• The Literary Corkscrew
• A Piece of Linoleum

From the dust jacket:

Here are twenty-three of the best fantastic short stories of Dr. David H. Keller. The novel ideas of the writer of science fiction contain a strong note of criticism as well as of prophecy; the stories of the psychiatrist indicate a deep and penetrating knowledge of the secret recesses of the human mind.

Tales From Underwood is a cornerstone collection, representing both the best of Dr. Keller's shorter work, and an adequate cross-section of that work. Dr. Keller spent many years in the U.S. Army as a psychiatrist.

The interior pages are in wonderful condition. The cloth cover is in very nice condition except that a small piece was scraped off the top corner. The jacket is very good with a couple weak areas reinforced inside with the same kind of cover stock, and the same scraped corner replaced. There is age discoloration on the end papers.

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Avalon First Ed WALL OF SERPENTS de Camp, Pratt HC, DJ!

Avalon First Ed WALL OF SERPENTS de Camp, Pratt HC, DJ! - eBay (item 310104129152 end time Dec-01-08 21:29:01 PST)

This vintage 1960 first edition hard cover book Wall of Serpents by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt is a fantasy classic published by Avalon Books. It's pristine, never read, in original dust jacket. Art by Ed Emshwiller.

From the jacket flaps:

It all started when Dr. Chalmers proposed the theory that the worlds of legend and fantasy really existed in other space-time continua, and that these could be reached through the use of symbolic logic. Harold Shea experimented--and found himself smack in the midst of Norse mythology at the time when Ragnarok approached. When he returned, Chalmers and Walter Bayard wanted to play too, and the three of them went for a jaunt into the midst of Spencer's Faerie Queen, where Shea met, wooed and won Belphebe.

For in these other-worlds, magic worked--and Shea and his friends found that spells and magic formulae could be worked out mathematically. One could not take any devices into these worlds which were not already there; people from our continuum were in real danger from all the dangers of legend-universes. Shea's only advantage lay in his swordsmanship--fencing was unknown in these continua, and a good épée man could operate with any pointed sword better than the hacking, slashing, and chopping swordsmen of legend. And knowing that magic, though an art, was at least as scientific in its basis as medicine, Shea could be a sorcerer or enchanter in any of these worlds.

But he couldn't avoid the consequences of sudden appearances and disappearances in his own world, and now Shea and Belphebe were in trouble with the law. They'd banished one inquisitive policeman, Pete Brodsky, to Coleridge's Xanadu, where Walter Bayard now was, and they had to get him back to avoid arrest for kidnaping a policeman. And this was beyond Shea's talents.

There was just one thing to do--to find a powerful sorcerer in one of these other-worlds who could help restore Walter Bayard and Pete Brodsky to Ohio before the machinery of the law built up momentum against the Sheas. But which? They couldn't go back to the worlds they had already visited--Harold Shea had worn out his welcome in those.

Where then? The Iliad or the Odyssey? No, only Circe was adept enough for Shea's needs, and he didn't want to fool with Circe. But there was still the Kalevala, the Finnish epic, which had such mighty and friendly enchanters in it as Vainamoinen.

The trouble with magic was that everything worked out literally, and the slightest lack of precision would result in something quite different from what you expected. But at least they landed in the world of the Kalevala. Only it wasn't Vainamoinen they encountered, but Lemminkainen, the reckless wizard and arrant rake. Lemminkainen, who would good-naturedly steal Belphebe or kill off Shea without a second thought--and likely as not both.

Here is a rollicking novel of mathematics and magic as only two great masters of the fantastic and science fiction can bring it to you.

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CHILDREN OF THE LENS Doc Smith HC w/ Facs. DJ First Ed

CHILDREN OF THE LENS Doc Smith HC w/ Facs. DJ First Ed. - eBay (item 310070720186 end time Aug-01-08 19:20:41 PDT)

This vintage book is Children of the Lens by Edward E. "Doc" Smith, Ph. D. It's the 1954 Fantasy Press, Inc. First Edition hardcover in a facsimile dust jacket. This edition had a low printing run of just a few thousand. The jacket design and illustrations are by Ric Binkley.

Miles didn't come up with this item. It's Joe's and the reason it has a facsimile dust jacket is because he won't give up the original one. Greedy man. He made a copy for you and has it protected in clear vinyl. He bought this book in the 1960s and he read it once. It's been living in a plastic bag in his collection of books ever since.

From the dust jacket flap:

To every reader of science fiction who enjoys so-called "space operas," the name Edward E. Smith is synonymous with the best in the field. He has been called--and with justification--the master of the space adventure novel. Of all of his work, his "Lensman" series has gained the greatest acclaim--and of the six "Lensman" novels, "Children of the Lens," the last in the series, is his crowning achievement.

Twenty years have passed since the events portrayed in "Second Stage Lensmen." To Kimball Kinnison and his wife Clarrissa have been born five children--Kit, the eldest, and two sets of twin sisters. These are the "Children of the Lens"--the offspring of uncounted generations of selected matings--the most capable, the most brilliant minds in the universe. Their job is the conclusion of the Boskonian war, and how they accomplish this end and gain ultimate victory makes up the greater part of the book.

Again we meet old friends introduced in earlier volumes in the series--Worsel the Valentian, Nadreck of Palain VII, Tregonsee the Rigellian, Mentor of Arisia and other equally interesting and alien personalities. Again we participate in voyages into space and hyper-space, in battles between superdreadnoughts of the void. Again we enjoy all of the varied facets of science fiction writing which make a Smith book so popular with so very many readers.

If you have not read the earlier "Lensman" stories, you may still enjoy the present volume, since in his "Message of Transmittal" which begins "Children of the Lens," Dr. Smith has written a detailed summary of the preceding books.
If you have read earlier Smith books, none of the foregoing comments are necessary. If this is your first contact with his work, you have a unique and thrilling experience before you.

Contents

• Message of Transmittal
• 1. Kim and Kit; Gray Lensmen
• 2. Worsel and the Overlords
• 3. Kinnison Writes a Space Opera
• 4. Nadreck of Palain VII at Work
• 5. The Abduction of a President
• 6. Tregonsee, Camilla, and "X"
• 7. Kathryn on Guard
• 8. Black Lensmen
• 9. An Arisian Education
• 10. Constance Out-Worsels Worsel
• 11. Nadreck Traps a Trapper
• 12. Kalonia Becomes of Interest
• 13. Clarrissa Takes Her L-2 Work
• 14. Kinnison-Thyron, Drug Runner
• 15. Thyron Follows a Lead
• 16. Red Lensman in Gray
• 17. Nadreck vs. Kandron
• 18. Camilla Kinnison, Detector
• 19. The Hell-Hole in Space
• 20. Kinnison and the Black Lensman
• 21. The Red Lensman on Lyrane
• 22. Kit Invades Eddore; and--
• 23. --Escapes with His Life
• 24. The Conference Solves a Problem
• 25. The Defense of Arisia
• 26. The Battle of Ploor
• 27. Kinnison Trapped
• 28. The Battle of Eddore
• 29. The Power of Love
• Epilogue

In this gray cloth hard cover, not only is there a spaceman frontispiece, but each chapter beginning has a different illustration. Nice!

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E.R. Burroughs TARZAN JEWELS OF OPAR McClurg, Facs DJ!

E.R. Burroughs TARZAN JEWELS OF OPAR McClurg, Facs DJ! - eBay (item 310061360778 end time Jun-27-08 18:28:11 PDT)

This A.C. McClurg first edition, first state 1918 hard cover copy of Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs comes with a facsimile DJ. All eight J. Allen St. John illustrations are in this edition.

Editor Robert H. Davis gives this summary: "The ape man goes back after more of the forgotten ingots in the treasure vaults of the ancient city of Opar and discovers a room full of jewels after being injured during an earthquake and losing his memory. A Belgian murderer and an Arab raider join forces to abduct Lady Greystoke and ruin Tarzan. Basuli is there, and Mugambi, with other old friends of the family. Cadj, the high priest of Opar, probably the coarsest hidden city diplomat that ever reigned, because of his jealously of Tarzan, spills all the beans that one man can spill in one volume. Tarzan triumphs."

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