THE TIME OF THE WARLOCK

First edition, first printing. Limited edition. Signed by the author. Publisher's original green cloth, with skull and dagger illustration in gilt to the upper board and gilt titles to the spine, in the Dennis Wolf illustrated dustwrapper. With a black and white frontispiece and eight black and white line drawings by Dennis Wolf. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm, lightly bumped at the head of the spine, the cloth bright and fresh. The contents, with a gift inscription from the author on the title page, and with a little foxing to the endpapers, are otherwise clean throughout. The closed text block is spotted which occasionally reaches the extreme edge of the margins. Complete with the better than very good, rubbed and nicked original dustwrapper, lightly spotted to the rear panel, top edge of the flaps, and to the underside. Not price-clipped ($30.00 to the upper front flap).

Issued in an edition of 1000 copies, from which 200 copies were signed and numbered. This example, not numbered, is inscribed by Larry Niven in black ink on the title page "for Bairde [sic] Searles / A pleasure to meet you / at last! / Larry Niven". The recipient is William Baird Searles (1934-1993), an American science fiction author, editor, and critic, best known for his long-running review columns in the notable science fiction magazines Asimov's, Amazing Stories, and Fantasy & Science Fiction, and for co-editing the anthologies 'A Reader's Guide to Science Fiction' and 'A Reader's Guide to Fantasy' (1979 and 1982, respectively; with Michael Franklin, Martin Last and Beth Meacham). An illustrated collection of Niven's short works of science fiction. The first short story included here, 'Not Long Before the End' (1969), was nominated for the 1970 Hugo and Nebula Awards.