Signed
Air-Gods' Parade
Inscribed first edition, 1935
Air-Gods' Parade (1935) by Frank Dubrez Fawcett (1891–1968), published under the pseudonym Simpson Stokes, is a darkly satirical novel of future aerial and chemical warfare that resists easy genre classification. George Locke described it as an "odd sort of science-fiction opus," and the label fits: the book moves between speculative fiction, anti-war polemic, and something close to reportage, shifting registers in a way that anticipates Vonnegut more than it resembles the straightforward future-war fiction of its era.
Chemical warfare is the novel's central preoccupation. Fawcett lingers on the grotesque effects of gas attacks on civilian populations, including women, children, and infants, with a deliberate unflinching quality that reads as moral argument rather than sensation. One early section jumps two centuries forward, to a post-apocalyptic tribal world that has built sacred covenants around the memory of war, only to slide back into violence anyway. Interspersed throughout are faux-official documents, ARP manuals, and cynical newspaper headlines proclaiming "Arm, Britannia... Peace can only exist through Power," a formulation that edges close to the ironies Orwell would crystallize more than a decade later. Fawcett states his position plainly in the opening chapter: "I would willingly subscribe to any Gallows Fund that would be directed to the hanging of all war-mongers as high as Haman."
Inscribed copy. Warmly inscribed by Fawcett on the half-title page, where he has added "Simpson Stokes" in parentheses beneath his real name.
Hardcover. First Edition. Octavo, orange cloth stamped in black on spine. London: Arthur Barron, 1935. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p.207. #11398.
Very good in very good dust jacket with light stains, edgewear, and slight darkening of spine.
Chemical warfare is the novel's central preoccupation. Fawcett lingers on the grotesque effects of gas attacks on civilian populations, including women, children, and infants, with a deliberate unflinching quality that reads as moral argument rather than sensation. One early section jumps two centuries forward, to a post-apocalyptic tribal world that has built sacred covenants around the memory of war, only to slide back into violence anyway. Interspersed throughout are faux-official documents, ARP manuals, and cynical newspaper headlines proclaiming "Arm, Britannia... Peace can only exist through Power," a formulation that edges close to the ironies Orwell would crystallize more than a decade later. Fawcett states his position plainly in the opening chapter: "I would willingly subscribe to any Gallows Fund that would be directed to the hanging of all war-mongers as high as Haman."
Inscribed copy. Warmly inscribed by Fawcett on the half-title page, where he has added "Simpson Stokes" in parentheses beneath his real name.
Hardcover. First Edition. Octavo, orange cloth stamped in black on spine. London: Arthur Barron, 1935. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p.207. #11398.
Very good in very good dust jacket with light stains, edgewear, and slight darkening of spine.
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