Asimov's Mysteries

New York: Doubleday, 1968. First US edition, first printing. Published by Doubleday in New York, 1968. This is a very good copy. The finely illustrated dust wrapper, designed by the hand of James McMullan, is with handling marks throughout. The corners are corn and the spine tips are bumped, with some notable creasing at the tail, with a closed tear. It has been price clipped. The boards, in publisher's black cloth and gilt titling, are free from notable wear. The text blocks are bright and free from foxing. The internals are mostly clean, but there is an area of discolouration to the front and rear hinges, dying the blue endpapers green here. This copy is free from previous owners ink and is a in very good condition. A collection of 14 short stories by American writer Isaac Asimov, almost all of them science fiction mysteries (although, as Asimov admits in the introduction, some are only borderline). Four stories in the collection feature the character of Wendell Urth, who is a leading extra-terrologist (an expert on alien worlds and life originating on them). Urth is eccentric in that he has a phobia of all mechanical forms of transport (an exaggeration of Asimov's own aversion to flying). Physically Urth resembles Norbert Wiener.