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Kuttner, Henry
THE WELL OF THE WORLDS
book-date: 1953
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GRADING:
Ace (F-344)
1965
1st
Paperback
Alex Schomburg
.40
VG-
ex-ChUSFA: stamp on first inside page, page 85. MORE INFO

Ace 1965 paperback (F-344.) Cover by Alex Schomburg, 142 pages, 40 cent cover price. Condition is VG- (on the average): tight and almost square with flat spine, age-tanning is mild and uniform (less than typical for its age; insides of covers are darker.) Most of the book is VG+ to near-Fine, but in the top right quadrant of the front cover, there is heavy wear: a 4" diagonal fold-trace (or set), with several more (shorter) creases or lines in the enclosed area. SF club stamp on first page and page 85, extra stamp on top page block; no other stamps, marks or writing.

Henry Kuttner's: The Well of the Worlds, in its first mass-market paperback appearance. The first "book" appearance was in 1953 as GALAXY NOVEL #17. The magazine version appeared in Startling Stories March 1952 as by "Lewis Padgett." Since his marriage in 1940 to C. L. Moore, almost anything they wrote after that had some element of collaboration, particularly when using pseudonyms. Since I haven't read this - I'll have to quote from the back cover and first page:

[back cover blurb]: When the curiously exotic millionairess Klai Ford started telling him about ghosts in a uranium mine, Sawyer knew he'd better be ready for anything in his investigations. But he didn't count on being drawn into a passage between dimensions and tossed adrift in a world of islands floating in the sky, where strange brutelike creatures were attacking the cities in a vast struggle for power. Lost in this new world, Sawyer realized that the key to everything lay in the mysterious Well of the Worlds - and that the future of the universe lay in its secret.

[from the first page]: BETWEEN THE DIMENSIONS
Sawyer saw three of the godlike Isler wading head and shoulders above the milling, battling figures, swinging great whips of flame that crackled and snapped like leashed lightning. A flung Sselli knife flashed toward one of the Isler - he smiled scornfully as it rang against his ice-robed chest and fell harmlessly away. And then, in a burst of shimmering heat, the strange figure of the Isler vanished. And Sawyer remembered: when the Isler uses up more energy than he possesses, he seems to vaporize. The Isler drew their life-force from the Well of the Worlds, and in this final battle its energy was dwindling...