THE PLATTNER STORY and Others by Wells, H.G - 1897

1897. London: Methuen & Co., 1897. 40 pp ads dated March 1897. Original red cloth.

First Edition of this collection of seventeen strange stories, mostly along a science fiction vein. The title story involves a schoolteacher who disappears in an explosion in the school's chemistry lab, has a nine-day out-of-body experience among the "Watchers of the Living," and suddenly reappears, a mirror image of his former self (with his heart on the right, etc.). Other tales in the book include "The Argonauts of the Air," "In the Abyss," "The Sea Raiders," "The Red Room" and "A Slip Under the Microscope." This is a near-fine copy: the spine is slightly darkened (these red Methuen bindings are always either darkened or faded), there is a tiny nick at the foot of the spine, and there is just a little bubbling of the cloth at the bottom of the front cover. In our 40-year experience THE PLATTNER STORY is Wells's scarcest science fiction title -- a bit scarcer than THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU or THE STOLEN BACILLUS, and certainly much scarcer than THE TIME MACHINE, THE INVISIBLE MAN or THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. Hammond C2; Wells Soc. 10.