It's the End of the World as We Know It: The Cataclysm (The Hopkins Manuscript) by R. C. Sherriff (Pan Books, 1958)

For nigh on two thousand years, post-apocalyptic fiction has exerted a strange but powerful and profound pull on the popular imagination. From Noah's Ark in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation in the New to Mary Shelley's The Last Man and, latterly, Lars von Trier's Melancholia, tales of the destruction of mankind, the Earth, or both, have terrified, tantalised and astounded in equal measure. Some of these stories deal with the apocalypse itself, some with the aftermath – and some with both – but all tap into a deep-rooted, near-primal fear of, and fascination with, the End of Everything.

I'm as partial as anyone to spot of post-apocalyptic fiction; perhaps my favourite novel of all time is a classic of the genre, while the name I chose for this very blog could be seen as evidence of my preoccupation with existential doom and gloom (er... possibly). So, over the next few weeks here on Existential Ennui, it's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine), as we embark on a series of posts on post-apocalyptic prose. There'll be death and destruction – both paranormal and horrifyingly mundane – on an awe-inspiring, industrial scale, as the human race is brought to the brink of extinction over and over again by, variously, disease, drugs, suicide, infertility, vampirism and good old fashioned nuclear annihilation. Some of the books I'll be featuring will be familiar, others rather less so, while others still might surprise at their inclusion; but a good many boast fantastic cover art, and all are intriguing in their own way. And if all this nihilism gets a bit too much, I'll be throwing the odd Donald E. Westlake/Violent World of Parker cross-post into the mix to lighten the mood.

So, let's sally forth and get set to meet our maker, with a triple-whammy opening salvo in the form of, consecutively, celestial collision, Biblical-scale flooding and geopolitical resource conflict!

The Cataclysm by R. C. Sherriff was first published in paperback in the UK by Pan Books in 1958 – at least, under that title. In fact it's a revised version of Sherriff's 1939 novel The Hopkins Manuscript:

which was republished in 2005 under its original title by Persephone Books, with a new preface by Michael Moorcock, and which Fay Weldon called "spectacular, skilled and moving and supremely and alarmingly relevant to our life today". That irresistible Pan cover showing a flooded London – artist unknown, I'm afraid – is a trifle misleading, too, because although the novel begins and ends with its narrator, retired schoolmaster Hopkins, eking out a degraded existence in the devastated capital, much of the story takes place in the (fictional, I believe) backwater village of Beadle.

The "cataclysm" of the title refers to the Moon crashing – or, more accurately, splashing – into the Atlantic, causing mass flooding and leading to the disintegration of society, as recounted in the surprising final stages of the novel. Sherriff didn't pen many books – he's best known as a playwright – but The Hopkins Manuscript/The Cataclysm is an effectively chilling tale – a little hokey in places, sure, but well written and with a bleak and unexpectedly sweeping climax.

While the Persephone edition of The Hopkins Manuscript is readily available, the Pan paperback of The Cataclysm isn't quite so common; I picked up my copy at the Ardingly Antiques Fair over the summer, but AbeBooks currently has just ten copies listed worldwide. And having only (partially) read the Pan edition, I'm unsure as to how heavily Sherriff revised The Hopkins Manuscript for the retitled version... but the next book I'll be blogging about is also a retitled edition, and with that one I do know how it differs not only from the original, but from subsequent editions as well. It's not the most obvious of post-apocalyptic tales – or rather, collection of tales – but it definitely depicts the end of the world, although in this instance as more of a backdrop to its chronicling of the colonisation of a certain red planet...

The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter: Signed First Edition (Harper Collins, 1995), Plus a Bit of Doctor Who Business

As I mentioned in this post (er, and this post), I've been saving the best books in my series on signed editions till last; each of the final four books I'll be showcasing this week really is quite special, either in terms of scarcity, value, personal value, or a combination of all three. And let's begin with this:

This is the UK hardback first edition/first impression of The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, published by Harper Collins in 1995, with a dustjacket illustration – and a number of interior illos – by Les Edwards. The Time Ships is Baxter's authorized sequel to H. G. Wells's The Time Machine – published to coincide with the centenary of Wells's visionary original – and as such is a novel I've always wanted to read. So I was thrilled when I chanced upon this first edition – on sale for just a quid – in the Haynes Lane indoor market in Crystal Palace, on a brief visit back to my old "manor". And I was even more excited when I opened the book up and discovered this inside it:

A signed dedication by the author. Now, I don't have a smart phone, so for me secondhand book collecting is still largely a case of guesswork and the occasional piece of good fortune. But when I found this copy of The Time Ships, I had an inkling that first editions/first printings were valuable, and that therefore a signed first/first would be even more so. What I didn't know was quite how valuable: AbeBooks currently lists eight signed UK firsts (plus one signed proof) ranging in price from £120 up to nearly £300. Which makes it not a bad purchase at all for a pound, and a piece of good fortune indeed.

Incidentally, after being rumoured for a while, it was officially announced in July that Baxter will be writing an original Doctor Who novel, Wheel of Ice, starring the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), to be published next year. This is part of a concerted effort by BBC Books to attract big-name SF authors to the Doctor Who fiction lines, an initiative which began with Michael Moorcock's The Coming of the Terraphiles in 2010 (Alastair Reynolds is also slated to to pen one). I'm uncertain whether Baxter's book will be published in the same 8vo/Octavo cloth-boards-plus-dustjacket format as Moorcock's novel, as opposed to the smaller self-cover hardbacks that the majority of the Beeb's Doctor Who line is published in these days, but I certainly hope so. And while we're on the subject of Doctor Who, Baxter also provided a foreword to the recently reissued classic Target novelisation Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, which features... the Second Doctor. No prizes for guessing which Doctor is Baxter's Doctor, then.

Moving on, and while by some estimates the next signed first edition perhaps isn't as valuable as The Time Ships – although signed copies of it are much scarcer – it's one that I particularly treasure, because it's a novel that's among the best I've read in the past few years, written by an American crime/spy fiction author who's become a firm favourite here on Existential Ennui...

Michael Kane: A Warrior of Mars Trilogy by Michael Moorcock (New English Library Paperbacks, 1971, Richard Clifton-Dey Cover Art): Lewes Book Bargains

For this final post in this series on a load of Michael Moorcock paperbacks I bought in the Lewes branch of Oxfam a few months back, we have these:

Left to right are City of the Beast, Lord of the Spiders and Masters of the Pit, all published in paperback by New English Library in 1971 (all three are first printings). Together they comprise the Martian or Warrior of Mars trilogy, and all feature twentieth-century scientist Michael Kane, who finds himself transported to ancient Mars and has to battle all manner of vile beasties. The novels were initially published under the pseudonym Edward P. Bradbury by Compact in, I think, 1965 (I'm a little unsure about that date because the third volume, Masters of the Pit, has a copyright on 1969 inside the book); Masters of the Pit was also originally titled Barbarians of Mars. So they are among Moorcock's earliest novels.

And we can end this run of Moorcock posts on a high note, because unlike yesterday's Elric post – where I was struggling to identify the various cover artists – here, having scoured the internet, I believe I've positively identified the man who painted all three of the NEL covers: Richard Clifton-Dey, a British book cover artist who was a contemporary of the likes of Chris Foss and Jim Burns. Clifton-Dey's Wikipedia entry doesn't list the three NEL Mars paperbacks as being by him, but during my research I chanced upon this thread on the Vault of Evil messageboard, which shows other examples of Clifton-Dey's work and reprints a list of his covers from The Paperback Fanatic #9. And as it 'appens I own a copy of another paperback Clifton-Dey illustrated the cover for: the 1976 Panther edition of J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island – bought in Kim's Bookshop, Arundel, reviewed here, and seen just above on the right there. Definitely the work of the same man as illustrated Moorcock's Martian trilogy, I reckon.

Anyway, that's yer lot for Moorcock, but all being well I'll have another SF-themed post up tomorrow, to celebrate the return of a much-loved British science fiction show to our TV screens: Doctor Who...

Elric Novels by Michael Moorcock (New English Library, Arrow, Mayflower Paperbacks): Lewes Book Bargains

Next in this series of posts on the stack of Michael Moorcock books I got in the Lewes branch of charity shop Oxfam, we turn to arguably Moorcock's most famous creation: Elric, the albino warrior sorcerer. The Lewes Oxfam had three Elric novels, all paperbacks, each from a different publisher. Let's have a look at these two first:

On the left is The Sleeping Sorceress, published by New English Library in the UK in 1972 (a first printing, and indeed, as the copyright page notes, "An NEL Original"), and on the right is Elric of Melniboné, published by Arrow in the UK in 1973 (again, a first printing, although the novel was originally published by Hutchinson in 1972). As with most of Moorcock's characters, Elric's history is somewhat labyrinthine, but I believe Elric of Melniboné predates The Sleeping Sorceress chronologically, even though it was published after it (at least, I think it was). And rather than me witter on in an uninformed manner about the plots of the novels, I'd suggest you take a gander at the back covers if you're interested to know what they're all about.

Neither cover illustration is credited in the books, but there is a signature on the rather fine The Sleeping Sorceress picture. Unfortunately, it could be read as either Jan Parker or Ian Parker, and there's seemingly no agreement online as to which it is. I'm leaning towards Jan Parker myself, possibly this Jan Parker, who was an illustrator around this period, and who these days paints abstract pictures. Meanwhile there's not even a signature on the Elric of Melniboné cover to help me out, so I haven't the foggiest who illustrated it, although it is a nice piece of pop art-style collage. And I'm also unsure who was the cover artist on the other Elric paperback I picked up in Oxfam:

The Stealer of Souls, published in paperback by Mayflower in 1968 (this copy is the first reprint from 1969; the book was originally published in the UK by Neville Spearman in 1963). Clearly it's the same artist who created the covers for two of the Moorcock paperbacks I blogged about at the start of this series of posts, 1969's The Jewel in the Skull and The Runestaff:

But I still don't know whether that artist is either the best-known Moorcock cover painter from this period, Bob Haberfield, or some other, as-yet-unidentified artist. As to what the book's all about, The Stealer of Souls is in fact a collection of Elric short stories that originally appeared in Science Fantasy magazine from 1961-62; in the Acknowledgements at the front of the book Moorcock notes "the encouragement and help given me when writing them by John Carnell, the Editor".

And that leaves us with just one more post to come now in this series, which will feature three of Moorcock's earliest novels (in slightly later New English Library editions): the A Warrior of Mars trilogy...

The Books of Corum: The Swords Trilogy by Michael Moorcock (Mayflower Paperbacks, Bob Haberfield Cover Art): Lewes Book Bargains

Your cup runneth over, o gentle reader, because today you get not one but two posts in this series on the job lot of '60s and '70s Michael Moorcock paperbacks I picked up in the Lewes branch of charity shop Oxfam a couple of months back. And this second post of the day marks the (almost) final selection of Mayflower paperbacks, namely these:

Left to right we have The Knight of the Swords, published in paperback by Mayflower in the UK in 1971 (the copy seen above is the reprint from 1972); The Queen of the Swords, also published in paperback by Mayflower in 1971 (a first edition in this instance); and The King of the Swords, this time published by Mayflower in 1972 (again, mine is a first edition). And unlike the previous post, where I was missing one of the books in the Chronicles of Castle Brass trilogy, here I have all three books in this particular trilogy. Well, kind of. Because these three form The Swords Trilogy, which is only the first half of the six-volume Books of Corum series – which focus on Corum Jhaelen Irsei of the Vadhagh Folk, also known as the Prince in the Scarlet Robe – the second half being The Chronicles of Corum. Although Corum is also an aspect of Moorcock's larger Eternal Champion concept.

Still keeping up at the back? I've said it before, but by crikey Moorcock's bibliography is convoluted. And his output was prodigious, too: the novels I'm covering in these posts all hail from around the same late-1960s/early-1970s period, so he must've really been cranking the buggers out. According to Hari Kunzru's recent interview with the author in The Guardian, around this time Moorcock could produce 15,000 words in a single day, which is an astonishing work rate. Mind you, I've managed to bang out two posts in one day today, so I can sympathize...

The colourful covers of these three Corum novels were all painted by Bob Haberfield, displaying the Eastern influences he was known for in his Mayflower covers. But I've only got one more Mayflower paperback left to showcase in this series, because the next couple of posts will largely feature New English Library editions of Moorcock's novels, although the covers to those are at least as glorious as Haberfield's ones...

The Chronicles of Castle Brass Trilogy by Michael Moorcock (Mayflower Paperbacks, Bob Haberfield Cover Art): Lewes Book Bargains

Next in this series of posts on a bunch of Michael Moorcock '60s and '70s Mayflower and New English Library paperbacks I picked up in the Lewes branch of charity shop Oxfam fairly recently, we have these:

Count Brass and The Champion of Garathorm were both published in paperback in the UK by Mayflower in 1973 (the ones you can see here are both first printings). They are, respectively, volumes one and two of the series The Chronicles of Castle Brass... and once again, similarly to yesterday's post on The History of the Runestaff series – and as you've doubtless guessed from this post's title – I'm missing a volume. Because the series is actually a trilogy, and the Lewes Oxfam didn't have the third volume, 1975's The Quest for Tanelorn. Rats. Thanks to the miracle that is the internet, however, I can at least show you the front cover of the third volume, which is to the right there.

The Chronicles of Castle Brass trilogy stars Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion, Dorian Hawkmoon, and is a direct sequel to The History of the Runestaff. But as Moorcock points out in "A Note to the Reader" in the second book, The Champion of Garathorm, that volume is also a sequel to the second book in the 1970 Eternal Champion series, Phoenix in Obsidian. What was that I said yesterday about Moorcock's bibliography being complicated...?

One thing that isn't complicated, unlike in yesterday's post, is the question of who illustrated the covers of these Mayflower paperbacks, because these ones were definitely all done by Bob Haberfield. According to the short bio on his website, Haberfield's book cover paintings "were influenced by Eastern art, religion and culture", an influence you can clearly discern in these covers. But it's even more apparent in the covers I'll be showing in the next post...

The History of the Runestaff Quartet by Michael Moorcock (Mayflower Paperbacks): Lewes Book Bargains

Following on from yesterday's review of Donald E. Westlake's pseudonymous 1967 Ace science fiction paperback Anarchaos, for the rest of this week I'll be blogging about a bunch more '60s and '70s SF and fantasy paperbacks. These books, however, were all written by celebrated British author Michael Moorcock, and were all bought as a job lot in February (that's how behind on blogging about my book acquisitions I am) from the Lewes branch of charity shop Oxfam – hence the "Lewes Book Bargains" in the title – at the same time as I nabbed those James Blish Cities in Flight hardbacks. The nice lady behind the till at Oxfam informed me at the time that they'd only recently arrived as a single donated collection, so as well as the Blish books I grabbed all of the Moorcock ones, which I think comprised the lion's share of the collection. (I left some Robert Heinleins and Philip Jose Farmers behind; I think they're still on the shelf if you want 'em.)

I bought the Michael Moorcock paperbacks for a couple of reasons. For one thing, Moorcock had been on my mind as he'd recently written a brilliant foreword to a book about Alan Moore I'd been editing at work (Alan Moore: Storyteller, available soon, folks). I've never read any of Moorcock's novels, but had always meant to, and so here was the perfect opportunity. But around the same time The Guardian newspaper ran an excellent interview with Moorcock by Hari Kunzru, illustrated with some of Bob Haberfield's wonderfully trippy covers for the Mayflower paperback editions of Moorcock's novels, and quite by chance it was the Mayflower paperbacks that the Lewes Oxfam had for sale. So over the coming days, I'll be showcasing them in a series of posts, beginning with these:

From left to right we have The Jewel in the Skull, published in paperback by Mayflower in 1969 (this copy is the second printing from 1972); The Sword of the Dawn, again published in paperback by Mayflower in 1969 (my copy is the third printing from 1972); and The Runestaff, once again published by Mayflower in 1969 (and again, my copy's a reprint, the first reprint from 1969). Together, they form the series The History of the Runestaff. Or rather, they almost do. You might have noticed I identified these books in the post title as a quartet. That's because there are four books in the series... and as you can see, I only have three – volumes one, three and four, to be precise. Which is a bit of a bugger, but I'm sure if I keep my eyes open I'll stumble upon volume two, The Mad God's Amulet, the cover to which you can see on the right there.

The novels were all published straight to paperback in the UK by Mayflower, but the first three in fact debuted in the States earlier than the British editions, published by Lancer from 1967-68. A couple of them also went under different titles: The Mad God's Amulet was titled Sorcerer's Amulet, while The Runestaff was titled The Secret of the Runestaff. Which only serves to further complicate Moorcock's already legendarily complicated bibliography.

I mentioned cover artist Bob Haberfield up top, who illustrated many of the Mayflower paperback covers for Moorcock's novels around this period. But on reflection, I'm not entirely convinced the covers of my three copies were illustrated by Haberfield. Certainly The Sword of the Dawn is by him; there's an image of that one on his website. But the other two? I'm not so sure. Haberfield did provide the cover for a later printing of The Jewel in the Skull, and for the 1973 third printing of The Runestaff, but the earlier printings seen above are markedly different in style to the rest of his work. So who illustrated them? If you know the answer to that, the comments section awaits...

I shan't attempt to summarize the novels, as their back covers already do a creditable job of that. But I will mention that they focus on Dorian Hawkmoon – and Hawkmoon also features in the next set of Moorcock novels I'll be blogging about (although again, annoyingly I'm missing one of the set). And those definitely boast Bob Haberfield covers...

Lewes (British) Bookshops Bargains: Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles by Michael Moorcock, Darkside by Belinda Bauer, Worth Dying For by Lee Child

As I believe I've mentioned before (ahem), Lewes, the East Sussex town in which I live, is blessed with bookshops. An unhealthily obsessed book collector would be hard pressed to find a more suitable town in which to live, the major metropolitan areas and Hay-on-Wye aside. But most of the bookshops in Lewes, excellent though they are in their own ways, are of the second hand variety. When it comes to new books, we're slightly less spoilt for choice. There's Skylark in the Needlemakers, which offers quite a good selection of books but a very limited range – leaning towards the literary end of the scale – of new fiction; there's WHSmiths, which is fine for celebrity memoirs but not much else; and there's British Bookshops/Sussex Stationers.

British Bookshops/Sussex Stationers, for those who don't know, are a chain of bookshops/stationers based in South East England, selling, as the name suggests, new books, greetings cards, pens, paper, and so forth. As bookshops go, they don't have the depth of stock of, say, Waterstones, but they are quite good on new fiction, both hardback and paperback. And not only that, but their prices compare very favourably with Amazon. If you know when a novel's being published – which, dullard that I am, I usually don't – you can nip in and pick it up pretty cheaply. The one in Lewes is good for new hardback fiction, but being out in the sticks, it doesn't always get first printings of hardbacks. Or rather, if it does, I'm too slow to bag the buggers. But even so, when there's a new book I want to get my filthy mitts on, I head for the Lewes British Bookshops first.

Sadly, I may not be able to for much longer, because at the end of last week it was reported that the chain has gone into administration. A buyer is being sought apparently, but if one can't be found, it'll be game over, with the loss of up to 300 jobs across the region. That's bad enough, but it'll also mean that the best place to buy new books in Lewes will be gone. And by way of example, here are three books I bought there recently:

This is the UK first edition hardback of Michael Moorcock's Doctor Who novel, The Coming of the Terraphiles, published at the tail end of 2010 by BBC Books. I bought this in the Lewes British Bookshops just before Christmas for £8.99, which is about what you'd pay on Amazon. Moorcock is of course a huge name in fantasy and SF circles, a major influence on Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, and many more besides; it was big news when it was announced he'd be writing a Who novel. Coincidentally I'll have some news on Mr. Moorcock – in a tangential way – very soon, but in the meantime, if you're after a review of Terraphiles, there's a good one over at SFX. As for the dustjacket, that was designed by Lee Binding at teaLady.

Next:

A UK hardback first edition/printing of Darkside by Belinda Bauer, published just this month by Bantam and bought just this month by me in British Bookshops, Lewes. Again, I paid round about what Amazon are charging online. I read Bauer's debut, Blacklands, last year, and really liked it, as did many others: it ended up winning the CWA Gold Dagger. This follow-up is set in the same fictional Exmoor village; Keith at Books and Writers has a review up here, and WriterMel at High Heels and Book Deals has a review here and an interview with Bauer here (and you can read my review of Blacklands here). The dustjacket was designed by Claire Ward, creative director at Transworld (Bantam's parent publisher), who also designed the jacket for Blacklands and the rather lovely cover for Kate Atkinson's Started Early, Took My Dog, while the front cover photo is by Mark Owen (no, not that one) of Arcangel.

Lastly, we have this:

A UK hardback first edition of Worth Dying For by Lee Child, with a dustjacket designed by Transworld's assistant art director Stephen Mulcahey – who, oddly enough, was also responsible for the back cover photo of Darkside (I think). Child's most recent Jack Reacher novel (I'm currently reading the first one, Killing Floor), it was published by Bantam in September 2010, but I only bought this copy the other day in British Bookshops. Reason being, the hardback's already been through multiple printings, and I'd missed out on a first printing – if British Bookshops even had any in the first place. But I was in there last week and happened to find this copy, which is a first printing (i.e. it has the full strike-off line on the copyright page). And not only that, but it was even cheaper than the Amazon edition.

So there you go. Those are some books I bought recently in the Lewes branch of British Bookshops. To any Lewesians reading this, should British Bookshops make it out of administration, next time you need to buy a new book, spare a thought for a local book-obsessed nutter and perhaps buy it in the Lewes outlet. Because I'll be most upset if it closes for good.

UPDATE 1: I got terribly excited just now because I thought British Bookshops had been sold today. Sadly, it hasn't – the news piece I found was from 2009. But I can report that the shops will carry on trading for a few weeks while a buyer is sought. Fingers crossed...

UPDATE 2: Forty people have been laid off at British Bookshops' head office and in their warehouse. Obviously that isn't great for those who've lost their jobs, but there are no redundancies at the shop level yet, and there's a possibility of a management buyout, so the Lewes British Bookshops may yet survive.