The Sirens of Titan
$7,500 · Offered by Biblio
First edition · Signed · In dust jacket
London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1962. First British Edition. Near Fine/Near Fine. First British edition, first printing. Signed by Kurt Vonnegut on the front free endpaper. 319 pp. Bound in publisher's red paper-covered boards lettered in gilt on spine. Near Fine in a Near Fine unclipped dust jacket with light toning to spine panel and extremities. Housed in a custom clamshell case, black cloth lined in marbled paper, morocco title label to spine, with unobtrusive scuff to rear panel. A stunning signed copy of Vonnegut's second novel, a finalist for the 1960 Hugo Award (it lost to Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers). The "brilliant and bitter" novel, first published in the United States as paperback, received several rave reviews but languished under its status as a pulp novel. Vonnegut's satire eventually caught on and won the admiration of the British science fiction writer Douglas Adams, who said in a 1979 interview: "I've read The Sirens of Titan six times now, and it gets better every time. He is an influence, I must own up. Sirens of Titan is just one of those books - you read it through the first time and you think it's very loosely, casually written. You think the fact that everything suddenly makes such good sense at the end is almost accidental. And then you read it a few more times, simultaneously finding out more about writing yourself, and you realise what an absolute tour de force it was, making something as beautifully honed as that appear so casual.
- Publisher: Victor Gollancz Ltd
- Year: 1962
- Edition: First Edition
- Printing: first
- Binding: unknown
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