The Last Castle

Underwood Miller, 1980. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 12x9x0. Alicia Austin. Signed. ISBN 0934438358, 1980. 115 pages. "This first cloth edition is published in November, 1980, limited to 1200 copies, of which 200 specially bound copies were signed and numbered by author and illustrator and 20 specially bound copies were signed and lettered A-T by the author." This is #130 of 200, signed and numbered by Jack Vance and artist Alicia Austin on the limitation page, and again by the artist on an additional laid in signature card. In As New condition. Fine large format hardcover full bound in dark blue cloth with silver lettering to front and spine. Clean inside and out, with no markings of any kind. Binding is solid and square. Unclipped dust jacket is in Fine condition. Four full page color illustrations, ten full page B&W illustrations, and several smaller in text illustrations. "Toward the end of a stormy summer afternoon, with the sun finally breaking out under ragged black rain-clouds, Castle Janeil was overwhelmed and its population destroyed. Until almost the last moment factions among the castle clans contended as to how Destiny properly should be met. The gentlemen of most prestige and account elected to ignore the entire undignified circumstance and went about their normal pursuits, with neither more nor less punctilio than usual. A few cadets, desperate to the point of hysteria, took up weapons and prepared to resist the final assault. Still others, perhaps a quarter of the total population, waited passively, ready — almost happy — to expiate the sins of the human race. In the end, death came uniformly to all, and all extracted as much satisfaction from their dying as this essentially graceless process could afford. The proud sat turning the pages of their beautiful books, discussing the qualities of a century-old essence, or fondling a favorite Phane, and died without deigning to heed the fact. The hotheads raced up the muddy slope which, outraging all normal rationality, loomed above the parapets of Janeil. Most were buried under sliding rubble, but a few gained the ridge to gun, hack and stab, until they themselves were shot, crushed by the half-alive power-wagons, hacked or stabbed. The contrite waited in the classic posture of expiation — on their knees, heads bowed — and perished, so they believed, by a process in which the Meks were symbols and human sin the reality. In the end all were dead: gentlemen, ladies, Phanes in the pavilions; Peasants in the stables. Of all those who had inhabited Janeil, only the Birds survived, creatures awkward, gauche and raucous, oblivious to pride and faith, more concerned with the wholeness of their hides than the dignity of their castle. As the Meks swarmed down over the parapets, the Birds departed their cotes and, screaming strident insults, flapped east toward Hagedorn, now the last castle of Earth.