I picked up a keystone science fiction first, replacing a lesser copy, at a bargain price at auction. Which is a good thing, as just about every part of the of the post-auction process was unusually and deeply irritating.
Clarke, Arthur C. Childhood’s End. Ballantine Books, 1953. First edition hardback, a Very Good+ copy with a spine crease and a bit of lean, trace of wear at head, heel and points, touch of dust soiling to outer edge of bottom page block, and a trace of foxing to inside covers, in a Very Good, Mylar-protected dust jacket with moderate spine fading, abrasion to the bottom 1/4″ of front panel (probably from an old style dust jacket protector) plus a few edgewear touches elsewhere, faint creasing along front spine join, two 1/4″ closed tears (and associated crease) at top near spine join, a couple of smaller closed tears, slight wear at points, and slight dust soiling to white rear panel; all in all, a nice copy of a book frequently found in much worse condition. Replaces an Ex-Library first I’ll be listing in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog (currently in progress), from which I have extracted an aftermarket bundle of a signed Clarke bookplate, Clarke’s business card, and a picture of Clarke to lay into this copy. Clarke’s most important novel, and one of the keystone science fiction novels of the 20th century. Currey (State A), page 113. Locke, Science Fiction First Editions, page 23 and pages 84-85, where he argues that the hardcover (Currey A) state was probably printed before the simultaneous paperback edition. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy page 52. Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels 9. Barron, Anatomy of Wonder 4 3-44. Magill, Survey of Science Fiction Literature, pages 337-341. Hartwell, Age of Wonders, pages 82-83. Pringle, The Utlimate Guide to Science Fiction page 58 (“****…Clarke’s best novel.”) Bought for a hammer price of $300 (the opening bid), which, after buyer premium and shipping, was just under $450.
This was a lowball bid I unexpectedly won, possibly because there were few other SF titles in this auction. It’s a good thing I won it so cheap, since I experienced considerable difficulty paying for it. After a delay for auction platform Invaluable to accept my resale certificate to drop taxes from the invoice, the credit card payment was unexpectedly declined. Checking with my credit union, it seems Invaluable’s system was trying to run my card with the old expiration date despite having the new one on file. There then followed several frustrating days dealing with technical support of them continuing to try to run the card with the wrong expiration date, despite having thought the problem was fixed. Finally, they had me completely delete and re-add my card information (which I should have thought to try earlier), only for the system to throw an error when trying to save the updated information! It continued to do this even after trying both Firefox and Chrome (including trying incognito/private mode), and discovering that on Chrome, it keeps you logged into the system even after having logged out! (Obviously their system isn’t properly managing its caching.) I was finally able to get it to take the credit card information after using Safari, after which I was able to pay for my purchase.
One final frustration was the auction house I bought from having no in-house shipping. A UPS store they specified picked up the book (for a stiff price) and shipped it to me. Upon its arrival, I discovered they used no padding for the book! But I am happy to finally have a better copy of this classic, arguably one of the ten most important science fiction novels of the 20th century.
