Thinking Machine by Futrelle Jaques (4 results)

Condition: A fine copy. (22566). First printing of this edition. Octavo, stiff pictorial wrappers. A collection of detective stories featuring one of the great scientific detectives, professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, who solves his cases with applied logic. Collects seven stories including the famous "The Problem of Cell 13," Van Dusen's first case. The stories "are properly deductions, though Van Dusen's methods verge on SF." - Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), p. 456. [Reference: Clareson, Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s 319 (noting that these stories "should not be regarded as science fiction or fantasy"). Hubin (1994), pp. 309-10].

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Illus. by The Kenneys, 7.5 x 5", pict black cloth, 342pp, covers quite worn, extremities bumped and fraying, pp used, wrinkled (from dampness?), textblock cracking at front and with scattered soiling, but FIRST EDITION ("Published March, 1907"). SWAF.

Octavo, pp. [i-iv] v [vi] [1] 2-337 [338: blank] [339-344: ads] [345-346: blank], inserted frontispiece with illustration by The Kinneys, original orange cloth, front panel stamped in white and black, spine panel stamped in white. First edition, first printing with code "(1)" on page 337. "Nearly all THE THINKING MACHINE stories . will stand rereading today . Had Jacques Futrelle lived beyond his thirty-seventh year, he might well have become one of the two or three leading names in the development of the American detective story. As it was, he brought to the genre a lightness of touch in advance of his time, and even by present-day standards his plots are still artful and his narratives readable." - Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure, pp. 86-7. The second, last and scarcest collection of "Thinking Machine" stories. See Queen's Quorum 38. Queen, The Detective Short Story, p. 45. Barzun and Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime (1989) 1391. Smith, American Fiction, 1901-1925 F-486. Hubin (1994), p. 310. Slight spine lean, cloth rubbing at spine ends and corner tips, some general dust soiling to cloth, mostly spine panel, fragile white spine lettering mostly gone, a good copy. (#159745).

First edition. pp. [1-6] 1-342, four inserted plates with illustrations by the Kinneys, original black cloth, front panel stamped in red, white and gray, spine panel stamped in red. Futrelle's best and most popular collection of detective stories featuring one of the great scientific detectives, professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, who solves his cases with applied logic. Collects seven stories including the famous "The Problem of Cell 13," Van Dusen's first case. The stories "are properly deductions, though Van Dusen's methods verge on SF." - Clute and Nicholls (eds), The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993), p. 456. [Reference: Clareson, Science Fiction in America, 1870s-1930s 319 (noting that these stories "should not be regarded as science fiction or fantasy"). A Haycraft-Queen cornerstone. Queen's Quorum 38. Barzun and Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime 2529. Queen, The Detective Short Story, p. 45. Hubin, p. 310]. Some mild edge rubs, a nearly fine to fine copy. (25253).