Invaders from the Infinite

Story & Significance Collectors hit a real puzzle with this title, and it is worth getting straight before you buy. The book appears under two imprints, Gnome Press and Fantasy Press, and the Fantasy Press copies are the ones that look like a first: signed, limited to 112, with a printed limitation notice on the page. The instinct is to call that signed limited issue the first edition. It is not. Currey lists the two issues in priority order and puts the Gnome Press imprint first, with the Fantasy Press imprint second, bound up from the same 1961 sheets under a limitation notice Currey flags as erroneous. The Gnome Press trade copy is the true first edition, and this is one of them. Within that Gnome trade issue Currey ranks two bindings, blue boards lettered in yellow ahead of gray cloth lettered in red. This copy is the blue boards, so it is the earliest binding of the true first. It also has its jacket, which most copies do not. Currey's note that the book was issued without a dust jacket sits with the Fantasy Press limited issue, not the Gnome trade printing, and it gets misread as covering the whole title. The Gnome first came in an unclipped wraparound with cover art by W.I. Van der Poel, Jr., the same artist behind Gnome's jacket on "The Vortex Blaster" from the same production stretch. This copy carries it, with the original $3.00 price still on the flap. The story itself needs little setup. It is one of Campbell's Arcot, Wade and Morey adventures, a pulp serial that reached hardcovers only decades later through Gnome. The collecting interest is in the edition and its jacket, not the plot. Physical Description The book is bound in blue boards with the spine lettered in yellow, matching Currey's priority binding for the Gnome trade issue. First Edition is stated on the copyright page under the Hicksville, New York imprint, dated 1961, and with the book in hand that statement is the primary evidence for the edition; no secondary source is needed for it. The binding is tight and square, with light bumping to the corners. The text block runs slightly tanned, which fits the low-grade, high-acid paper Gnome was running in this period, the same toning that turns up across copies of The Vortex Blaster off the same stock. The pages are otherwise clean and unmarked. The unclipped jacket, priced $3.00, shows a few small closed tears and some chipping but presents well, with the Van der Poel artwork still bright. The shop grades the book Very Good in a Good jacket. Collector's Note Two things carry this copy for a Gnome collector. First, it is the true first, the Gnome Press priority issue, in the blue-boards binding Currey ranks ahead of the gray cloth, so it sits at the front of the first edition rather than off to the side the way the signed Fantasy Press issue does. Second, it has the Van der Poel jacket, unclipped with the price intact, which is the part most surviving copies are missing and the part that does the most for value. The faults are honest and out in the open, the corner bumping and the chipping and closed tears to the jacket, and the price reflects a reading-grade copy with real bibliographic standing, not a high-grade investment example.…