Clay’s Ark.

BUTLER, Octavia E.

Item Number: 126714

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984.

First edition of the author’s classic work in her Patternist Series. Octavo, original cloth. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To David Good Reading! Octavia E. Butler.” The recipient, David G. Hartwell, was the editorial and publishing force behind two key science fiction anthologies: Year’s Best SF and Year’s Best Fantasy. Butler was a contributor to his 1992 Foundations of Fear anthology, and would contribute her story Amnesty to Year’s Best SF 9, and The Book of Martha to Year’s Best Fantasy 4. Fine in a fine dust jacket without wear. Jacket design by Lee Wade. Rare and desirable signed.

In a violent near-future, Asa Elias Doyle and her companions encounter an alien life form so heinous and destructive, they exile themselves in the desert so as not to contaminate other humans. To resist the compulsion to infect others is mental agony, but to succumb is to relinquish humanity and free will. Desperate, they kidnap a doctor and his two daughters as they cross the wasteland—and endanger the world.