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$8.00
Gilman, R.C. (=Coppel)
NAVIGATOR OF RHADA [r2]
book-date: 1969
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GRADING:
Harcourt Brace &World
1969
1st
Hardcover
Richard Loehle
$4.25
Book= near-Fine
Dustjacket= VG+ or better

Harcourt, Brace & World: 1969 hardcover (stated "first edition" on credits page.) Cover by Richard Loehle, 192 pages, $4.25 cover price. Condition is near-Fine in a VG+ or better dustjacket: tight and square, the usual light bump traces to ends of spine (corners are still sharp), age tanning is mild and uniform. On the first right endpaper there is a single glyph or initial - no other marks, stamps or writing - a very clean copy. Unclipped DJ has a closed 1" tear at upper right of front cover; a 1/4" chip from bottom of spine and a 2" fold-trace leading to this; light rubbing wear to (blank) back cover and edge of back flap (see scans.) When I got this 2 decades ago, I placed it in a new Demco DJ protector, which has kept it from any further shelfwear.

A rare hardcover first edition of The Navigator of Rhada - 2nd in a juvenile SF trilogy by Alfred Coppel, writing as"Robert Cham Gilman." While the first book had a paperback the same year, the 2 sequels did not appear in paperback for a decade or more.

Since I haven't read this, I'm quoting from a short review in Analog October 1969 for a plot set-up/summary:

"This is the second in a series of books by the Pseudonymous Mr. Gilman, nominally juveniles but every bit as good as the average yarn written for adults. There are touches of Asimov's "Foundation" books in the series, of Poul Anderson, of Gordon Dickson, but Mr. "Gilman" is his own man. He has also withstood the temptation to write his series by merely stringing together adventures in the "Tarzan" or "John Carter" manner. The events of this second book take place two generations after those of The Rebel of Rhada, and almost the only direct continuity is the character of the almost immortal Vulk, symbiote of the star emperors and their kind. In the first book we saw signs that the Second Stellar Empire was decaying; in this, there is open hostility between the politicians of the Emprie and the Navigators, the semireligious order who have preserved enough empirical knowledge of the First Empire so that they can run the starships by rote and practice. Young Kynan, newly taken into the order, finds himself the puzzled center of much of the plotting and counterplotting. The story is good, the setting excellent. If "Robert Gilman" is writing adult SF, I have to find it." [-P. Schuyler Miller]






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