Posts Tagged ‘Dying Earth’

Library Additions: Three Jack Vance Firsts

Monday, July 19th, 2021

Three more Jack Vance (or related) firsts:

  • Vance, Jack. Mazirian the Magician: Tales of the Dying Earth, Book 1. Spatterlight Press, 2021. First separate hardback edition and first thus, a Fine- copy in decorated boards with wear at head and slight bump at heel, otherwise new and unread, sans dust jacket, as issued. First separate edition under this title, a corrected reprint of The Dying Earth originally published as the first volume of the Vance Integral Edition, with a new introduction by Michael Moorcock. Bought for $57.36 from Amazon, the only venue for order fulfillment, which makes me think trying to obtain a perfect copy would be an exercise in futility. Supplements a VIE, the Underwood-Miller hardback first of The Dying Earth, and a paperback reprint of The Dying Earth Vance signed for me at the 1985 NASFIC in Austin. (Still need the Hillman PBO.)

  • Vance, Jack. Vandals of the Void. The John C. Winston Company, 1953. First edition hardback, a Very Good copy with some soiling/grubbiness to the boards, a touch of dust staining to page block edges, in a Very Good dust jacket with one 1/4″ chip at top rear corner, a 1/32″ chip along bottom rear edge, a closed 1/4″ triangular tear at top front, fading to red portion of spine, plus edgewear at points and slight rubbing, but overall a very attractive copy of the dust jacket. I bought this off eBay for $41.00 to marry the dust jacket to my signed but jacketless copy. Hewett, A3. Cunningham, 81a.

  • (Vance, Jack) Robert Offutt Jr., editor. The Many Worlds of Jack Vance & The Horns of Elfland. Robert Offutt Jr., 1978. First edition illustrated fanzine, a Near Fine copy with a crease near the top at the spine. Features the Vance’s “The Secret” the first chapter of an illustrated adaptation of The Eyes of the Overworld, etc. Second (and last) volume of an illustrated, semiprozine quality publication dedicated to Vance’s work (though the cover illustration, “Boromir’s Fall,” is obviously from The Lord of the Rings). Chock-full of illustrations from Rod Whigham, who later did a great deal of comic book work. Hewett, M31b, who notes there were 1,000 copies of this printed. Bought off eBay for $25.

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    Library Additions: Two Jack Vance Books

    Thursday, March 3rd, 2016

    I bought a lot of Jack Vance books from an Australian book auction. I’ll be selling the rest of the books from the lot in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog, but here are the two books from the lot that are going in my own library:

  • Vance, Jack. Cugal’s Saga. Timescape, 1983. First edition, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. Third book in the Dying Earth series (or fourth, if you count Michael Shea’s A Quest for Simbilis). Hewett, A71. Preceded the Underwood/Miller limited edition by six months.
  • Vance, Jack. The Houses of Iszm. Underwood/Miller, 1983. First hardback edition, one of 482 trade copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. Hewett, A12h.

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    Book Acquisitions: Jack Vance’s The Seventeen Virgins & The Bagful of Dreams

    Wednesday, August 22nd, 2012

    A science fiction bookdealer I know had some sudden veterinarian bills he had to take care of, so he let me pick up a fairly rare Jack Vance item as part of a cash-and-trade deal:

    Vance, Jack. The Seventeen Virgins & The Bagful of Dreams. Underwood/Miller, 1979. One of only 111 signed hardback copies, a Fine- copy with a tiny bump to bottom front boards in a Fine dust jacket. Hewett A58b and A59b. Two Cugel the Cleaver stories. Originally published as two separate chapbooks in editions of 600 each, this hardback was done from those sets of sheets, and is probably the smallest hardback print run for any Vance book.

    Discounting the Vance Integral Edition (for which there are actually more sets available) and some odd variant states (like presentation and lettered copies) this is probably the single hardest Vance hardback to find.

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