MOCKINGBIRD

New York: Bantam Books, 1981. Very good plus.. First printing of the first US paperback edition, a bleak future fiction from the author of cult classics QUEEN'S GAMBIT and THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. Nebula Award-nominated science fiction novel of a melancholy android who remembers how to read when the human masses have forgotten everything but their credo of "Inwardness, Privacy, Self-Fulfillment, Pleasure." Far from the worst set of values to hold: but a world of "Pleasure" that excludes novel-reading is an inherent dystopia, if one is an depressive android, or a novel-reader. Called an "unofficial sequel to FAHRENHEIT 451" by a contemporary reviewer for its thematic concerns, which include an old-style post-'60s moral panic over too much birth control and too many readily available good drugs, along with a genuinely moving romantic spirit. Tevis, whose novels had an astonishingly high rate of brilliant film and television adaptations - THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, THE HUSTLER, THE COLOR OF MONEY, and most recently QUEEN'S GAMBIT, long-beloved as a novel and newly beloved as a series - had a rare near miss with MOCKINGBIRD, which was once under consideration for adaptation as a TV movie, and still offers great rewards to the discerning reader. As James Sallis wrote in his review of a new edition, Tevis "collapses the whole of mankind's perverse, self-destructive, indomitable history, cruelty and kindness alike," into his remarkable narrative. First published by Doubleday in 1980. 6.75'' x 4.25''. Original color pictorial wrappers designed by Lou Feck, 14144-9, priced at $2.95. Yellow edges. Printed advertisements at rear. [8], 277, [3] pages. Very shallow wear to extremities, else clean and fresh with no spine crease.