The Red Peri

Story and Significance The reason to care about this book is what it preserves and when. Stanley G. Weinbaum left behind only about a year and a half of published work, and "The Red Peri" is one of the two Fantasy Press collections that first gathered that work in hardcover, both issued after his death. Together with "A Martian Odyssey" and "Others" from 1949, it holds most of what he wrote. This copy is the trade issue of the 1952 first edition, the form in which his fiction was first preserved between boards rather than in the pulps, and it carries a binding history unusual enough that the specialist will want to read the note below before anything else. Weinbaum's standing in the field is out of all proportion to how little he produced. His debut, "A Martian Odyssey," is generally credited with showing the pulps that an alien could be genuinely alien rather than a monster or a man in a costume, and writers from Asimov onward pointed back to it as a turning point. For a collector building a Fantasy Press run or a Golden Age science fiction shelf, the posthumous Weinbaum collections are a natural anchor. "The Red Peri" leads with the title novella, an interplanetary adventure built around one of Weinbaum's characteristically capable female leads, and collects further stories from his short career alongside it. Physical Description This is the 1952 Fantasy Press first edition, trade issue, in black cloth covered boards stamped in gold on the spine, with "First Edition" stated on the copyright page and no limitation leaf present. The book is in Near Fine condition. The boards are clean and square with no bumping to the corners, and the text block is bright and free of foxing, soiling, or ownership marks. There is faint pencil notation to the front free endpaper, consistent in character with a name and a price, though neither is now legible, and the pages are otherwise clean throughout. The binding is tight and square, and the copy has the feel of a book read once, if at all. The dust jacket is Near Fine and price-clipped. There is a single small rub to the spine panel, and the jacket is otherwise clean, bright, and unrestored across all panels, with no chips, tears, or soiling. Collector's Note A note on the binding, since this is where "The Red Peri" gets genuinely complicated. L.W. Currey's "Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors" records six bindings for the title in priority order. The first, Binding A, is black cloth stamped in gold with RED PERI set on the spine in 24-point type. Currey also lists a Binding F that is identical in cloth and stamping but sets RED PERI in 18-point type, which he identifies as a Donald M. Grant binding produced around 1980 in imitation of the original. This copy is black cloth stamped in gold, with "First Edition" on the 1952 copyright page and no limitation leaf, placing it in the trade issue. Caliper measurement of the spine lettering reads closer to Currey's 18-point figure than to the 24-point. On Currey's account, that would point toward the later Grant binding. Chalker and Owings' "The Science-Fantasy Publishers," 3rd edition, frames the production differently. Their entry assigns the Grant bindings to brown cloth and the Greenberg bindings to blue cloth, and the only black cloth, gold-stamped binding they record is the first binding. They describe no black-cloth Grant imitation at all. Measured against Chalker and Owings, there is no later state for a black cloth, gold-stamped copy to fall into, and the type-size reading does not move it out of the original binding. So the two references disagree on one narrow point, the spine type size and what it signifies, and not on anything else about this copy. We are listing it as a Fantasy Press first edition, trade issue, with that disagreement set out in full rather than resolved by assertion. We are not claiming a confirmed Currey Binding A, and we are not treating the copy as a Grant imitation.…