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Sheckley, Robert
CROMPTON DIVIDED
book-date: 1978
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GRADING:
Holt Rinehart Winston
1978
1st
Hardcover, Ex-Library
Carl Lundgren
$8.95
Book= VG+ to near-Fine
Dustjacket= VG+ to near-Fine

Ex-library traces are minimal: book is tight and square with no stamps or writing; trace where pocket was on back endpaper; light trace where DJ protector was glued to book. DJ protector took most of the wear and has been discarded. (Some light wear made it through, although it may not show in scans.)

A novel by Robert Sheckley: Crompton Divided. [Since I haven't read this, I'm quoting the flap copy for plot summary...]
As Chief Tester for Psychosmell, Inc. a world monopoly controlling the production and sale of exotic psychedelic fragrances, Alistair Crompton would seem to be in an enviable position within a society that has become dependent upon olfactory stimulation. He is, however, a tortured soul - in effect one-third of himself, having been separated at an early age from 2 other conflicting personalities inside his mind. Installed in different host bodies and dispatched to 2 distant planets, these other Alistairs have developed separate lives. Now in middle age, the original Alistair has located them and has hatched an improbable scheme to reintegrate himself. He risks the notorious wrath of his employer to defraud Psychosmell of the funds needed to send him on a quest to those two worlds where live the other disparate parts of his psyche - Loomis, as grossly self-indulgent and amoral as Alistair is abstemious and prim; and Stack, as vicious and impulsive as Alistair is meek and cautious. The societies of the 2 planets of these Crompton alter egos are themselves at odds with all of Alitair's experience and values, and the frustrations, and surprises as he reengages himself first with Loomis, then with Stack, make up an odyssey that is, for both Alistair and the reader, mind-blowing.

The seed for this book is a novella from Galaxy: "Join Now" (December 1958 as by "Finn O'Donnevan, later titled "The Humours" in a Sheckley collection.) The British title for this novel was The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair Crompton. That version is also copyright 1978, and may have come out earlier in the year, making this technically the "first American edition" (?)






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