Description

“THE DEDICATION IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT?”: DEDICATION COPY OF THE MARTIAN WAY, INSCRIBED BY ASIMOV TO THE DEDICATEE, FELLOW
SCIENCE FICTION GRAND MASTER L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP

ASIMOV, Isaac. The Martian Way. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1955.  Octavo, original blue cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition of Asimov’s important second story collection, dedication copy inscribed in the year of publication to the author’s fellow Grand Master L. Sprague de Camp, “For Sprague de Camp. The dedication is an understatement, as far as personal regard is concerned. Isaac Asimov, 5/23/55.”

This volume collects four early Asimov novelettes: “Youth,” “The Deep,” “Sucker Bait” and the famous title story, “The Martian Way,” an attack on McCarthyism, written at the height of the Senator’s power, that science fiction author and scholar James Gunn praised as “quintessential Asimov.”  First edition, with “Azimov” on spine of book. Currey, 14. “For five decades [Asimov’s] was the voice to which science fiction came down in the end. His was the default voice of science fiction” (Clute & Nicholls, 58). Appropriately, then, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named Asimov a “Grand Master” in 1987. L. Sprague de Camp, to whom—along with de Camp’s longtime collaborator, author Fletcher Pratt—this book is dedicated, received that honor in 1979. De Camp and Asimov worked together in the Philadelphia Naval Yard during World War II.  Although he began his career in and made several significant contributions to the science fiction genre, De Camp is perhaps better remembered as a prolific author of “sword-and-sorcery” fantasy, including numerous additions to Robert E. Howard’s “Conan” tales.

Book fine, dust jacket extremely good with light rubbing and colors bright. Exceptionally desirable inscribed by one Grand Master to another.