Against the Fall of Night by Arthur C. Clarke - 1953

Against the Fall of Night, A Science Fiction Novel by Arthur C. Clarke, Published by Gnome Press, 1953 First Edition, Hardcover with Original Dust Jacket in Protective Mylar Sleeve ---- Very Good Vintage Condition. The book and dust jacket are clean, covers attached, secure binding, crisp inner pages, unmarked, no writing, no highlighting, no stains, no ripped pages, no edge chipping, no corner folds, no creased pages, no remainder marks, not ex-library. Some light dust jacket and general wear from age, use, storage and handling. Light scuffing to the dust jacket front inner flap. ---- Free USA Shipping ---- Against the Fall of Night is a science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. Originally appearing as a novella in the November 1948 issue of the magazine Startling Stories, it was revised and expanded in 1951 and published in book form in 1953 by Gnome Press. It was later expanded and revised again and published in 1956 as The City and the Stars. A later edition includes another of Clarke's early works and is titled The Lion of Comarre and Against the Fall of Night. In 1990, with Clarke's approval, Gregory Benford wrote a sequel titled Beyond the Fall of Night, which continues the story arc of the 1953 novel. It is generally printed with the original novel as a single volume. The title is from the poem "Smooth Between Sea And Land" by A. E. Housman, published in More Poems. Clarke explains: "I was also to discover the lines of A. E. Housman that not only described the locale perfectly, but also gave me the title of my first novel: 'Here on the level sand, between the sea and land, what shall I build or write against the fall of night?'". Groff Conklin described the original edition of the novel as "a light, simple, fast-moving and often richly imaginative fantasy." Boucher and McComas praised "this brief but intense book" as "beautiful", describing it as "poetry and awe and wonder" and characterizing Clarke as "the visionary poet of a future so far distant that its most prosaic science passes our technical understanding." P. Schuyler Miller reported that because the narrative "is so well told, the story becomes convincing, and its magic spreads over the reader as well as the people of the plot." In 1969, Alexei Panshin wrote that "the story is largely undeveloped -- too much is asserted, too little is examined."