Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Rapp & Whiting, 1970.First UK edition. Ex-Library. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced £1.40.The first UK edition of this novel set in a future 1992 where psychics are common and utilised in corporate espionage while intricate technologies allow recently deceased people to be maintained in a lengthy state of hibernation.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
A Romance of Marvel and Mystery
London, "Review of Reviews" Office, [1900].
The Masterpiece Library. 1. Edited by W. Stead. [bound in Hicklings' Almanack Handbook of Norfolk 1896] 8vo. Original printed red wrappers.
Stead's rare abridged edition of Haggard's gothic lost kingdom narrative set in the African interior, here intriguingly bound at the end of Hicklings' Norfolk Almanack for 1896. Stead was a pioneering investigative journalist and crusading newspaper editor, considered to be one of the most famous Englishmen to die in the sinking of the Titanic at the time. He launched the Masterpiece Library of Penny Popular Novels in 1893 and it eventually ran to about 100 novels. It was touted as 'the most efficient agency that has yet been devised for making our best literature familiar to the mass of the nation.' Punch dubbed the series "Penny Steadfuls". The novels were abridged into 30,000 to 40,000 words from novels which were originally six or eight times as long. They were, however, hugely popular with the much enlarged reading public of the time. She for example sold 500,000 copies in Stead's abridgement.
London, Newnes, 1938-39.
3 issues (complete). Large 8vo. Original pictorial stapled wrappers.
Published by George Newnes Ltd, which paid respectable rates and obtained good-quality material, these three issues comprise a complete run of the magazine Fantasy, edited by T Stanhope Sprigg. The short-lived periodical included stories by significant authors such as John Wyndham, Eric Frank Russell and John Russell Fearn. John Beynon was one of the pseudonyms used by John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (1903–1969), the British science fiction writer best known for The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes and The Midwich Cuckoos.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
A Grotesque Romance
London, C. Arthur Pearson, [c.1903/4].
'Cheap edition'. 8vo. Original yellow pictorial wrappers printed in red, priced 6'.
Originally published as a serial in Pearson's Weekly in 1897, then in book form the same year, this is a relatively rare edition of Wells' sci-fi classic, made more so by the presence of the fragile original wrappers.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Jonathan Cape, 1967.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original purple boards. Dust-jacket.
A pleasing first UK edition of Pynchon's second novel, simultaneously a satire of 1960s California counter-culture, a meditation on paranoia and information theory, and an unresolved mystery that deliberately withholds its own solution. Hard to find in such good order.
![[Tiphaigne de la Roche (Charles François)] Giphantia:](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/88236-300x300.jpg)
![Alternative view of [Tiphaigne de la Roche (Charles François)] Giphantia:](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/88236_2-300x300.jpg)
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
or a View of What Has Passed, What Is Now Passing, and, During the Present Century, What Will Pass, In the World
London, Robert Horsfield, 1761.
First edition in English. 2 vols. 8vo. Main title printed in red & black, part title with woodcut decoration. Uniformly bound by Glenn Malkin in modern speckled calf with geometric gilt design and blind-tooled roll & cogs decorations to covers, spines with raised bands and gilt rules with contrasting leather title labels. Housed in leather-backed marbled board compartmentalised slipcase.
A scarce imaginary voyage, considered to be one of the earliest works of utopian science fiction. This work is also considered a cornerstone book in any collection of photographic literature, and photography's first fictional work (see Roosens & Salu History of Photography, No. 10421).
Originally published in France in 1760 as Giphantie (an anagram of the author's name), this work is credited with one of the earliest mentions of photography, in Chapter 17: "That window, that vast horizon, those thick clouds, that raging sea, are all but a picture... Thou knowest that the ways of light, reflected from different bodies, make a picture and paint the bodies upon all polished surfaces, on the retina of the eye, for instance, on water, on glass. The elementary spirits have studied to fix these transient images; they have composed a most subtile matter, very viscous, and proper to harden and dry, by the help of which a picture is made in the twinkle of an eye... [the] impression of the images is made the first instant they are received on the canvas, which is immediately carried away into some dark place; an hour after, the subtile matter dries, and you have a picture so much the more valuable, as it cannot be imitated by art nor damaged by time" (pages 95-96).
Glenn Malkin began binding professionally in 2008 and has since won numerous awards for his design bindings in national and international competitions.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
A Space Odyssey
London, Hutchinson, 1968.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
One of the most culturally significant novels science fiction has produced. The novel was based on the screenplay written by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick, developed concurrently with Kubrick's landmark 1968 film. Both the American (New American Library) and this British first editions appeared in 1968; the first British printing is considered less common than its American counterpart.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
A novel
New York & Toronto, Farrar & Rinehart, 1937.
First edition, first printing. Cut signature of the author to title-page. 8vo. Original blue cloth decorated in silver. Dust-jacket, priced $2.50.
Two college friends visit their former university and find a professor burnt to death in his observatory.
![J.R.R. Tolkien, [The Lord of the Rings], 3 vols, fifth/seventh/fifth impressions respectively, 1956-59.](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/88134-300x300.jpg)
![Alternative view of Tolkien (J.R.R.) [The Lord of the Rings]](https://lycanthiabooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/88134_2-300x300.jpg)
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, George Allen & Unwin, 1956-59.
3 vol., first editions, fifth/seventh/fifth impression respectively. Large 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jackets.
A solid set of early impressions of Tolkien's fantasy masterpiece.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
A Tale of Alderley
London, Collins, 1960.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
Garner's debut novel, and one of the most important British children's fantasy novels of the 20th century. It marked a decisive move away from the pastoral, whimsical tradition of children's fantasy toward something darker, more rooted in specific landscape and local mythology.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
A Novel
London, Secker & Warburg, 1949.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Green dust-jacket, priced 10s.
A wonderful example of the first edition of Orwell's dystopian classic, benefiting from some skilful, minor restoration to remove a sticker mark from the jacket spine and improving the corners. Although many worthy experts suggest that the red jacket has historically proved to be the scarcer, it is our experience that the green one has proved equally difficult to acquire in recent years - worth noting that of ten jacketed first editions that appeared at auction in 2025, eight were in the red jacket.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Orbit, 1998.
First edition, first impression. Signed by the author on title-page. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
An "attempt to write a Culture novel that wasn't", from the author of Consider Phlebas and (as Iain Banks) The Wasp Factory.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Macmillan, 1987.
First edition, first impression. Signed by the author on title-page. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The first of Banks' Culture novels, Consider Phlebas launched the 'Culture' series of space operas for which he is best known today, in sci-fi circles at least, not least for the integration of sentient machines with humans and other organic lifeforms.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
An enquiry into the limits of the possible
London, Gollancz, 1962.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced 21/-.
Non-fiction essays where Clarke speculates on scientific and technological advances, from space flight and telecommunications to bioengineering, and coins the celebrated 'Clarke's Third Law' ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic").
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1961.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
A tightly plotted, optimistic near-future thriller.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1984.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Set 1,500 years after God Emperor, the Bene Gesserit and a new faction, the Honoured Matres, are in conflict as the effects of Leto II's "Golden Path" continue to unfold.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1978.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
On a sealed planet of extreme overcrowding, a human-Gowachin population has been subjected to a secret behavioural experiment by manipulative alien powers.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1985.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
The final novel Herbert completed, in which the Bene Gesserit attempt to survive a galactic purge. Herbert died before writing the planned sequel.
London, Gerald G. Swan, 1960.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 12/6.
A great first edition of this weird tale, an exploration into the power & peril of telepathy… The author was a prolific writer, with works ranging from children's fantasy to weird sci-fi and spy fiction.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
or, the Modern Prometheus London, John Dicks, 1884.In Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, vol.III. 4to. Contemporary half straight-grain morocco lettered and ruled in gilt to spine.An uncommon serialised edition of Shelley's classic of sci-fi horror; the volume also contains Percy Bysshe's Zastrozzi, both illustrated by the well-known illustrator Frederick Gilbert.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
[Selected Works]. Foreword by Emil Petrov
Sofia, , 1958.
First Bulgarian edition, limited to 8000 copies. Signed presentation copy from the author. 8vo. Printed in Bulgarian. Original terracotta cloth.
Signed and warmly inscribed by Svetoslav Minkov on the half-title in Bulgarian, the inscription translates as: "To good friends Brigitte and Peter, with much warmth and devotion - Sv. Minkov, London, 29.11.60." The recipients were the Bulgarian author & journalist Brigita Yosifova, and the British poet & translator Peter Tempest - an inscription that speaks to Minkov's literary friendships and his continuing engagement with intellectual circles beyond Bulgaria.This is a scarce collected selection by one of the most distinctive voices in 20th-century Bulgarian literature. A central figure in Bulgaria's interwar avant-garde, Minkov introduced the grotesque, the fantastic, and speculative futurism into a literary culture largely shaped by realism & social narrative. His coolly ironic prose, fascination with technology and sharp sense of the absurd place him in dialogue with the broader European modernist tradition; he is frequently regarded as the father of Bulgarian science fiction & horror. Themes of mechanisation, alienation and the fragility of identity run through his work, lending it a striking modernity that still resonates.The volume is arranged in four sections: first, twenty-five short stories — including his celebrated The Lady with the X-Ray Eyes, alongside The Hydrogen Gentleman and the Oxygen Girl, The Woman in the Golden Coffin, and others; secondly, a group of travelogues; thirdly, fairy tales; and finally, a series of feuilletons and satirical sketches, which display his characteristic wit and satirical edge.Svetoslav Minkov (1902-66) travelled extensively across Europe, Asia, and South America both before and after the Second World War. He worked as a journalist for several Communist newspapers and later served in an official capacity within the Bulgarian government's cultural office, navigating a complex cultural landscape while maintaining a voice that remained distinctly his own.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Alston Rivers, 1928.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Original upper and lower panel of the dust-jacket cut-down and loosely inserted.
Although better known as a writer of crime fiction, this sole venture into science fiction by Grierson does make it one of his more collectable titles. The book is cited in Gerber's Utopian Fantasy (1973), Negley's Utopian Literature: A Bibliography, Sargent's British and American Utopian Literature, and Bleiler (1978), and is considered scarce.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London & New York, Frederick Warne, 1890.
First UK edition. 8vo. Contemporary, presumed institutional, red cloth binding, gilt to spine.
The first edition of this significantly influential work of fin-de-siècle science fiction. The story follows a diverse group of idealistic explorers who travel to Mars in a steel sphere powered by an anti-gravity device. They discover a peaceful, co-operative utopia, promptly find it intolerably dull, and attempt to remake it along capitalist and imperial lines, with predictably disastrous results. The book later attracted controversy through a dubious claim of a foreword by Jules Verne and legal action by the author against H.G. Wells for alleged plagiarism. An important and unsettling anti-utopian work, ending in a fashion as extreme as anything in early science fiction.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Complete
London, Sampson Low, Marston, and Company, [1894/5].
'Author's Edition'. 8vo. Advertisements dated 1894. Original red cloth blocked in black & gilt.
Attractive edition of this adventure classic. Rare in such near-fine condition.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Dennis Dobson, 1965.
First UK edition, first impression. Signed by the author on title-page. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
A science-fiction novella set on a distant planet where genetically engineered dragons are bred and weaponised in an ongoing war as a proxy for their controllers.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Readers Library, September 1927.
First UK edition, fourth impression. Small 8vo. Original gilt tooled cloth. Dust-jacket, with the title mentioned on rear inside flap of the jacket.
The book of the famous silent film that is held by many to be one of the defining moments in cinematic history, not least as the first feature length science fiction feature. The film was directed by Fritz Lang, who developed the story with Thea von Harbou. Set in a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet who predicts the coming of a saviour to settle their differences. This fourth printing was issued within a few months of the first, indicating the demand.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1960.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
A near-future SF thriller involving suspended animation, space travel and the ethics of scientific experimentation.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952.Issue with 'A' on copyright page but no seal. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, clipped.Vonnegut’s first novel, set in a near-future America where automation has replaced human labour, leaving a technocratic elite and a disaffected majority. This is potentially a book club issue, as there is no publisher’s seal on the copyright page the jacket has been clipped, possibly where such a declaration would have been printed.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Gollancz, 1962.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 15/-.
Twelve stories exploring classic Clarke themes of technology, alien contact, space exploration and human destiny.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1910.
First edition. 8vo. Title printed in red & black. Original blue cloth lettered in gilt with inset colour illustration to upper cover.
"Helen of All Time (1910) rather remarkably compresses into one volume an advanced Airship and a Reincarnated Helen of Troy." (The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction)
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Faber & Faber, 1971.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket, priced £1.75.
A very good first UK edition of this classic sci-fi title, first published in Galaxy Magazine, October 1967.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Methuen, 1928.
Third UK edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/-.
Edgar Rice Burroughs's The Chessmen of Mars, originally published in the US in 1922, continues the adventures of John Carter on the dying planet of Barsoom.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1970.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original boards. Dust-jacket.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
direct in 97 hours 2 minutes: and a trip round it
London, Sampson, Low, Martson, Low, Searle, 1874.
Third UK edition. 8vo. Original pictorial pebbled cloth over bevelled boards, blocked in black & gilt.
This early science-fiction novel opens after the American Civil War when the Baltimore Gun Club, led by Impey Barbicane, proposes to fire a projectile to the moon.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
[London], The London Book Co. for Collins, n.d..
'The Novel Library' edition (#150). Small 8vo. Original gilt decorated cloth. Dust-jacket.
A dystopian science-fiction novel first serialised in 1899 (When the Sleeper Wakes) and revised in 1910.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, John Lane The Bodley Head, 1935.
First UK edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, price-clipped.
A science-fantasy adventure, the first in Burroughs' Venus series, following Carson Napier's arrival on Venus (Amtor) and his rescue of Princess Duare, leading to swashbuckling escapades, strange creatures and aerial piracy.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Translated by Mrs. Cashel Hoey.
London, Sampson Low, Marston & Company, 1898.
First UK edition. 8vo. Original pictorial green cloth over bevelled boards.
Verne's adventurous sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, recounting the schooner Halbrane's voyage from the Kerguelen Islands in search of the missing Pym and his captain brother, Len Guy.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
A Tale of the White Race of Mexico
London, Longmans, Green, 1899.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original orange pictorial cloth stamped in black and lettered in gilt.
A fictionalised account of a white civilization in ancient Mexico, blending elements of fantasy and speculative history.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
An Occult Novel
London, Rider & Co., [1946].
First edition. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 9/6.
Reginald-listed occult novel, by the author of The Ritual of Higher Magic (1947).
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Vol.3. No.1
Leeds, Futurian War Digest, October 1942.
Small 4to. Original pictorial stapled wrappers.
An interesting and uncommon war-time fanzine, featuring articles, stories and commentary on science fiction & fandom. This issue includes a response from Olaf Stapledon, indicating that he was too busy at the time to read the vast quantities of material sent to him, but thanking the Futurians nevertheless for thinking of him.
The editor J. Michael Rosenblum was a prominent figure in British science fiction fandom, known for his dedication to the genre despite challenging times. Accompanying the fanzine is a printed calling card from the editor, indicating this was a specimen copy, possibly for review.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
London, Michael Joseph, 1955.
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 10s6d.
Set in a post-apocalyptic future, the story follows David Strorm and his telepathic friends in a society that persecutes mutations. They seek a safe haven where they can live freely.
Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Beynon (John, pseud. John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, aka John Wyndham) The Secret People
London, Newnes, [1935].
First edition, first impression. 8vo. Original blue cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 2/6.
A science fiction adventure that imagines a hidden civilization beneath the Sahara Desert. The novel, set in the "future" year of 1964 (as projected from 1935), begins with British playboy Mark Sunnet and his companion Margaret Lawn taking a private rocket-powered pleasure craft on a tour over North Africa. Disaster strikes when their rocket plane malfunctions and crash-lands in a newly formed body of water – the "Sahara Sea." (In this speculative future, engineers have flooded a portion of the Sahara to create an inland sea.) Mark and Margaret survive the crash only to be sucked into a cavern through a whirlpool. Regaining consciousness, they find themselves in a vast underground world, captive to a mysterious race of pygmies who dwell in a network of cavern.
The Secret People was published under the name "John Beynon," an early pseudonym used by John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris – better known later simply as John Wyndham. This was Wyndham's first (or potentially second) novel, written in his twenties.