Mission Of Gravity 1st SFBC edition Hal Clement store First Thus VGC vintage 1954 hardcover in dust jacket old collectible science fiction SF

Science Fiction Book Club, Doubleday, Garden City, NY, June 1954. Hal Clement [Harry Stubbs] First BCE printing, first thus. No gutter code, no SFBC number. Yellow hardcover with blue lettering and decoration on the spine. About 21.5 cm tall, 224 numbered pages. (Per the Internet Speculative Fiction Database).

With the trade first edition becoming so expensive, what is a budget constrained collector to do? Please consider collecting the first book club edition as an alternative. For most early book club editions, the publishers used the same plates as the first trade edition. Indeed, in a few cases, the only difference was in the dust jacket stating “book club edition.” And they can still display very well.

"Every so often a science-fiction novel is published which is immediately recognized as a classic--a book which makes an instant and lasting appeal to readers, which is read and re-read with increasing enjoyment. A magic combination of character, story and imaginative science is, mainly, what makes such a unique book--and this combination is what has made MISSION OF GRAVITY one of the best-remembered science-fiction novels ever written."
Number 34 on the SFBC list of top fantasy and science fiction books. “Scrupulously thought out, this is one of the best-loved examples of hard SF." - Pringle, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, second edition (1995), p. 241. Runner-up for the 1955 International Fantasy Award. Anatomy of Wonder (2004) II-260. Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels 15. Survey of Science Fiction Literature III, pp. 1424-28.

Very good copy in a very good dust jacket. Pages clean though lightly store tanned, binding tight and square, corners sharp. Pages show no marks, no underlining, no highlighting, no folds, no creases, no rips, and no tears. Not ex-library. No remainder mark. Dust jacket has minor eighth inch erosion on the edge of the spine. Please see photographs.
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