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price:
author:
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$25.00
Weber, David
ON BASILISK STATION [hh1]
book-date: 1993
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GRADING:
Baen
1999
1st
Hardcover
Larry Schwinger
$18.00
near-Fine

This cover is a modification of the original Larry Schwinger cover for the 1993 paperback - isolating Honor & Nimitz.

Baen Books "First hardcover printing March 1999" (paperback was 1993.) Cover by Larry Schwinger, 342 pages, $18.00 cover price (on back cover.) Condition is near-Fine: tight and almost square (square at bottom / slight tilt at top); age-tanning is mild and uniform (this HC reprint is smaller/book-club size, and has decent quality paper - unlike some of the later ones.) Slight overall wear/rubbing; very faint 1" scratch near upper right corner of front cover. No stamps, marks, or writing.

On Basilisk Station - first in Weber's "Honor Harrington" series. Banished! The Basilisk System picket was a place to sweep incompetents, fools, and failures under the rug... or to punish officers with enemies in high places. Commander Honor Harrington has enemies - and she's about to make more of them. She's been exiled to Basilisk Station in disgrace and set up for ruin by a superior who hates her. Her demoralized crew blames her for their ship's humiliation. The aborigines of the system's only habitable planet are smoking homicide-inducing hallucinogens. Parliament isn't sure it wants to keep the place; the major local industry is smuggling; the merchant cartels want her head; the star-conquering Republic of Haven is Up To Something; and Harrington has a single, over-age light cruiser with an armament that doesn't work to police the entire star system. But Commander Harrinton's enemies have made one mistake - they've made her mad...

I find Weber's books to be compulsively readable, and he has been a consistent exception to the rule that "sequels are bad" - coming up with new directions to go that are worth exploring. Weber is firmly in the military-SF camp, but I like the thinking that he brings to matters of organization - while writing action or "Space Opera." The first 5 books in this series were paperback originals (1993-95.) Starting with #6 in 1996, all subsequent books came out in hardcover first, and apparently there was enough clamor or demand for hardcovers of the first 5 that Baen did hardcover reprints, with #1 and #4 in 1999, #2 in 2000, #5 in 2001, and finally #3 in 2002. While I might have preferred a more lavish production with cloth boards and a dustjacket, these "printed-cover" hardcovers will certainly stand up much better to multiple readings than your average paperbacks - and Weber is definitely worth re-reading. I bought my copies new as soon as they came out, and didn't see copies linger very long on the bookstore shelves - I don't think the print run was big enough for the eventual demand. I consider the titles reprinted in hardcover to be Weber at his finest - and I'll be happy to sell as many nice copies as I can find.














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