fiction science

Hardcover. NY, Ace, BC Ed., 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 696 pages. In The Final Encyclopedia the human race is split into three Splinter the Friendlies, fanatic in their faith; the truth-seeking Exotics; and the warrior Dorsai. But now humanity is threatened by the power-hungry Others, whose triumph would end all human progress. Hal Mayne is an orphan who was raised by three an Exotic, a Friendly, and a Dorsai. He is the only human capable of uniting humanity against the Others. But only if he is willing to accept his terrifying destiny...as savior of mankind.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1st US, 1932, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth stamped in blue, 313 pages. A borderline science fiction novel by the Scottish author John Buchan, known for his classic mysteries. Part of the action is autobiographical, featuring the agonies of a contemporary up-and-coming politician. It explores the theory of serial time put forward by J W Dunne: Buchan had been reading An Experiment with Time. Mild soil to covers, no markings.

Hardcover. NY, Bantam Books, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 274 pages. In 2007, just five years before the centennial of the sinking of the "Titanic," two corporations--one English, one Japanese--each using futuristic technology, contend with each other over the ship's retrieval. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, HarperCollins, 1st illust thus, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The second volume of a glorious two-volume, four-color graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman's #1 New York Times bestselling and Newbery and Carnegie Medal-winning novel The Graveyard Book, adapted by P. Craig Russell and illustrated by an extraordinary team of renowned artists. Inventive, chilling, and filled with wonder, Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book reaches new heights in this stunning adaptation. Artists Kevin Nowlan, P. Craig Russell, Galen Showman, Scott Hampton, and David Lafuente lend their own signature styles to create an imaginatively diverse and yet cohesive interpretation of Neil Gaiman's luminous novel. Volume Two includes chapter six to the end of the book. The concluding volume of the graphic novel adaptation of the book about a boy, raised by the inhabitants of the local graveyard who rally to protect him from a league of villains named Jack that seeks to destroy him. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Avon Books, reprint, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 222 pages. A Mirror for Observers recounts the story of Angelo Pontevecchio, a child prodigy and "potential ethical innovator" caught between two contesting factions of Martians, Observers and Abdicators. The Martians, living secretly on Earth after evacuating their dying home world, have been trying to guide the development of human civilization for thousands of years. The novel is told from the point of view of Elmis, Angelo's designated Martian guardian, who must shield him from the malignant Abdicators. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Avon Books, reprint, 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 160 pages. A cheap faster-than-light drive has permitted populating the galaxy. Each planet has become home for different social groups. 400 years post-diaspora, a Earth spaceship visits three -- a 1st step to galactic unification. Things don't go as hoped, as the ship's incompetent military authoritarians encounter three very different societies.

Hardcover. Taschen, 2nd pr., 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Huge oversized hardcover, 16x11", 596 pages. The full, fascinating story of this fabled company, written and designed by EC-expert Grant Geissman. Even the most die-hard EC Fan-Addicts will find something new within these pages, with the Gaines family archives providing over 100 rarities that have never seen print. Cover images are reproduced from Gaines file copies. 1,000 illustrations include the rarest and most notorious covers, interior pages and panels, rare photos, vintage original artwork, and some of the most celebrated stories ever to be printed in four colors. Author Grant Geissman was a customer in Bud Plant's San Jose comic book store in 1968-69, long before he became a recording star and EC expert. Grant has written several books on EC and, in my mind, is the foremost authority on both Mad and EC. He generously did a special bookplate for us, which reproduces a "fantasy" cover for Incredible Science Fiction that he commissioned from Angelo Torres. It's in full color and signed by Grant.

Hardcover. NY, Nelson Doubleday, BC Ed., 1970, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 215 pages. A solid collection of seventeen short stories and one novelette tackling serious themes such as PSTD, drug culture, anti-war movements, the clash of ideologies, mechanization, etc. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean and tight.

Softcover. Middletown CT, Wesleyan University Press, 1st thus, 2003, Softcover, 157 pages. A new English translation by I.F. Clarke of this "demise of the human race" story. Originally published in French in 1805, The Last Man is a powerful story of the demise of the human race. Drawing on the traditional account in Revelations, The Last Man was the first end-of-the-world story in future fiction. As the first secular apocalypse story, The Last Man served as the departure point for many other speculative fictions of this type throughout the 19th century, including works by Shelley, Flammarion and Wells. Grainville's masterful imagination is evident in the vast scale of the action as Omegarus, the Last Adam, and Syderia, the Last Eve, are led toward the moment when "the light of the sun and the stars is extinguished." Essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of apocalyptic science fiction. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper Design, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 304 pages illustrated in color and b&w. Foreword by Fraser Heston. In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1968 science fiction cult classic film the Planet of the Apes, a handsomely designed commemorative volume full of rich, behind-the-scenes detail and exclusive, never-before-seen photographs and illustrations. Based on Pierre Boulle's novel La Planete de Singes, the original Planet of the Apes was one of the most iconic films of the 1960s. Starring Hollywood stalwarts Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowell, the movie captivated audiences and sparked a franchise that included eight sequels, two television series, and a comic strip. Now, five decades after its theatrical release, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Rinzler tells the thrilling story of this legendary Hollywood classic-a film the book's author thought would be impossible to make. Clean, bright copy. PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, HarperCollins , 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 402 pages. With dry wit and psychological acuity, this near-future novel explores the aftershocks of an economically devastating U.S. sovereign debt default on four generations of a once-prosperous American family. Down-to-earth and perfectly realistic in scale, this is not an over-the-top Blade Runner tale. It is not science fiction. In 2029, the United States is engaged in a bloodless world war that will wipe out the savings of millions of American families. Overnight, on the international currency exchange, the "almighty dollar" plummets in value, to be replaced by a new global currency, the "bancor." In retaliation, the president declares that America will default on its loans. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Hawthorne Books, BC Ed., 1975, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 182 pages. Three short novels by some of science fiction's greatest writers. The New Atlantis, by Ursula K. Le Guin: In a dark near-future, global warming and a ruined ecology is causing the continents to sink into the oceans just as the towers of Atlantis re-emerge above the sea. Locus award winner and Hugo finalist. Silhouette, by Gene Wolfe, and A Momentary Taste of Being, by James Tiptree, Jr., present two different masterpieces on a similar theme: A deep-space colony exploration ship approaches their target planet, where they must investigate whether or not it's hospitable enough to signal Earth to send more colonists. Things are not as they seem... Nebula / Locus award finalist stories. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Harmony Books, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 249 pages. The original, complete, and totally unedited scripts from the now famous BBC "Hitchhiker Radio Show." Clean, bright copy.

Softcover. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1st pbk, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 329 pages. Trapped in a London laboratory during a worker uprising, a physicist and war veteran awakens 150 years later--on the eve of a new Dark Age. Edward Shanks (1892-1953) was an English author, poet, critic, and journalist. He was the editor of Granta just before serving in World War I and is perhaps best remembered today as a war poet. The People of the Ruins is his only science fiction novel. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, reprint, 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 368 pages. Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933) was an important and fascinating figure in German philosophy in the early twentieth century, founding the well-known journal Kantstudien. Yet he was overshadowed by the burgeoning movements of phenomenology and analytical philosophy, as well as hostility towards his work because of his defense of Jewish scholars in a Germany controlled by Nazism. However, it is widely acknowledged today that The Philosophy of 'As If' is a philosophical masterwork. Vaihinger argues that in face of an overwhelmingly complex world, we produce a simpler set of ideas, or idealizations, that help us negotiate it. When cast as fictions, such ideas provide an easier and more useful way to think about certain subjects, from mathematics and physics to law and morality, than would the truth in all its complexity. Even in science, he wrote, we must proceed "as if" a material world exists independently of perceiving subjects; in behavior, we must act "as if" ethical certainty were possible; in religion, we must believe "as if" there were a God. He also explores the role of fictions in the history of philosophy, going back to the ancient Greeks and the work of Leibniz, Adam Smith and Bentham. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Hermes Press, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 192 pages. Music inspired, science fiction and fantasy combined in a way that revolutionized poster art of the Psychedelic 1960's-era. Famous for his rock posters, The Psychedelic Rock Art of Carl Lundgren, a Detroit, Michigan based artist, showcases his posters which were as important to the Detroit Music and Art history as were the music legends themselves; The Who, Jefferson Airplane and Pink Floyd to name a few. The book's forward is written by Mitch Ryder, who was lead vocalist of a Detroit 1960's rock group The Detroit Wheels. The introduction is by Russ Gibb, a former radio personality and rock promoter from Dearborn, Michigan, who played a major role in the late sixties/early seventiesMotor City music scene.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, BC Ed., 1965, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 254 pages. Published in England as "A Wrinkle in the Skin." A post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, the story of a natural catastrophe that wipes out 10,000 years of human history overnight...and what happens to a man who searches this shattered world for his lost daughter.

Hardcover. NY, Garden City Books, BC Ed., 1956, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. Book Club edition, 192 pages. Bright, clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Pantheon, 6th pr., 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 338 pages. Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges was madly in love when his life was shattered by painful heartbreak. But the breakdown that followed illuminated an incontrovertible truth-that love is necessarily imbued with loss, that the one doesn't exist without the other. German physicist Werner Heisenberg was fighting with the scientific establishment on the meaning of the quantum realm's absurdity when he had his own epiphany-that there is no such thing as a complete, perfect description of reality. Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant pushed the assumptions of human reason to their mind-bending conclusions, but emerged with an idea that crowned a towering philosophical system-that the human mind has fundamental limits, and those limits undergird both our greatest achievements as well as our missteps. Through fiction, science, and philosophy, the work of these three thinkers coalesced around the powerful, haunting fact that there is an irreconcilable difference between reality "out there" and reality as we experience it. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Sauk City WI, Arkham House, 1st, 1959, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly chipped dust jacket. 2527 copies published. Jacket art by Richard Taylor. Collection of Lovecraft stories & juvenilia, plus many articles, essays and appreciations by others for Lovecraft. Some b&w photos.

Hardcover. NY, Doubleday, BC Edition, 1991, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 358 pages. A race of turtle-like creatures conquers Earth, imposing a gentler set of values on humankind, outlawing destructive technology, and denying the validity of human scientific theories. When their home planet disappears into a black hole, however, the aliens' only hope for the future hinges on the possibility that humanity's flawed sciences might contain a glimmer of truth. Two veteran sf authors combine their strengths to produce a novel that both explains and explores the ''mysteries'' of modern science. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Ballantine/Del Rey, BC Ed., 1987, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 237 pages. A science fiction novel by Larry Niven. Like much of Niven's work, the story is heavily influenced by the setting: a gas torus, a ring of air around a neutron star. There is no "ground" in the Smoke Ring; it is a world consisting entirely of sky. Thus, most animals can fly, even the fish. It is a sequel to The Integral Trees. Blacked out price on front fly leaf, otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Ballantine Del Rey, 1st, 1986, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 256 pages. The Songs of Distant Earth is a 1986 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, based upon his 1958 short story of the same title. Of all of his novels, Clarke stated that this was his favorite. The story is set on a distant planet whose society is disturbed by the arrival of the last survivors from a destroyed earth. Some sunning to rear of dust jacket. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2025, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, cloth covers with color label on front, 218 pages illustrated in b&w. The ultimate collection of Wallace Wood's finest science fiction stories. Includes Wood's "My World," adaptations of three classics by Ray Bradbury, a "lost" 3-D story - and a story rejected by the Comics Code, restored and published here for the first time. This mouth-watering collection features the finest (and rarest!) science fiction stories Wallace Wood ever drew - more than two dozen! Wood's meticulously detailed, genre-defining brushwork introduces you to breathtaking planetary vistas, terrifying aliens, and sleek rocket ships surging with the power to conquer the stars. The title story is a rarity that never appeared in any EC comic. Written and drawn for a 3-D comic that was canceled before it could be printed, we present it here in easy-on-the-eyes 2-D. Then, Wood's most iconic story, "My World" is a stunning showcase of the preternatural talent and technique he brought to all his stories. Also included are his trilogy of Ray Bradbury adaptations - "Home to Stay," "There Will Come Soft Rains..." and "Mars Is Heaven!" - plus "He Walked Among Us," a "what if...?" variation on Bradbury's "The Man" from The Illustrated Man. Clean, like new.