“NOW I’M GOING TO SHOW YOU THE MARTIANS”: SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, SIGNED BY RAY BRADBURY
BRADBURY, Ray. The Martian Chronicles. Garden City: Doubleday, 1950. Octavo, original light green cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
First edition of Bradbury’s acclaimed science fiction classic—“by any measure… a major landmark”—boldly signed on the title page: "Ray Bradbury 2/17/90."
Bradbury's second book and first novel—a collection of loosely interwoven stories originally published in magazines, now linked with new material—"made [his] reputation… He put far more emphasis on style and mood than he did on technical detail or scientific plausibility… His reward was a stunning popular and critical success" (Science Fiction 100 Best 3). Bradbury's vision of humanity's migration to the Red Planet is by turns lyrical and caustic, elegiac and inspirational. "All the Bradbury themes that were later to be repeated find their earliest shapes here" (Clute & Nicholls, 151). "By any measure, this work is a major landmark, both as science fiction and as literature" (Anatomy of Wonder II-154). First-state dust jacket, with $2.50 price. "First Edition" stated on copyright page. Currey, 45.
Book with interior fine and toning mainly to extremities of cloth. Dust jacket with slightest soiling and minor rubbing and toning to extremities. A near-fine signed copy.