£120
FIRST EDITION, 8vo, pp. vi, [ii], 466. Original grey cloth, spine lettered in green, dustjacket printed in black, purple and pale blue. Front hinge splitting exposing webbing, joint holding. Dustjacket rubbed and worn, sometime repaired and recoloured, several areas patched with paper to reverse, folds reinforced with tape
A very early anthology of science fiction and fantasy tales, edited by journalist and author Phil Stong. Stong's novels were a world away from the pulp magazines from which these tales are, in the main, collected, and he acknowledges in the foreword the assistance of August Derleth in compiling the material, which contains two of Derleth's own stories, as well as Lovecraft's 'In The Vaults' alongside work from Theodore Sturgeon, Murray Leinster and others. Stong seems to be particularly unsuited to the editorial task, and his disdain for the material was picked up by a contemporary review in Astonishing Stories magazine (by Donald A. Wolheim, who would edit a similar anthology for Pocket Books two years later) which complains 'He claims to be America's leading authority on science-fiction. He thinks most of it is trash. He demonstrates what he thinks in this book.' Bleiler similarly dubs it 'an incongruous selection, but with occasional good material'. However, antecedents are remarkably scarce, and it was reprinted the following year in a cheaper edition, so this selection almost certainly introduced the stories to a much wider audience than they had in the pulps.
This copy retains its scarce dustjacket, albeit substantially repaired and retouched.
