The Torch

The Torch by Jack Bechdolt was originally serialized in Argosy in 1920 and first published in book form by Prime Press in 1948. Set in the year 3010, amid the ruins of a New York devastated by a cosmic catastrophe a thousand years earlier, the novel depicts a rigidly stratified society ruled by the Towermen, an authoritarian elite inhabiting the surviving skyscrapers while subjugating the population of the Old Town below. The protagonist Fortune is a military captain of the regime whose loyalty erodes when he discovers a suppressed resistance movement centered on the ruined Statue of Liberty and a prophecy that freedom will return when its torch burns again. Reprinted in 2019 as part of Steeger Books’ Argosy Library series.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth boards. Philadelphia: Prime Press, 1948. #10434.
Near fine in near fine dust jacket.