Unicorn Variations
New York, New York: Timescape Books, 1983. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover. Item #5224
ISBN: 067149449x
Book and dust jacket are both in Near Fine condition, with just a touch of outer shelf wear. Signed by the author to title page, inscribed to collector "Joe Collins." First Edition, First Print. The story delves into humanity’s fate as the protagonist and a booze-loving unicorn engage in a tense chess match within an abandoned barroom, with Sasquatch offering cryptic guidance. As each evolutionary species fades into oblivion, it is replaced by a mythical counterpart and humanity stands on the brink of its own extinction.
Roger Zelazny mused about the origins of this unique story in his 1983 introduction of the text: "This story came into being in a somewhat a typical fashion. The first movement in its direction occurred when Gardner Dozois phone me one evening and asked whether I'd ever done a short story involving a unicorn. I said that I had not. He explained then that he and Jack Dann were putting together a reprint anthology of unicorn stories, and he suggested that I write one and sell it somewhere and then sell them reprint rights to it. Later, I was asked by another anthologist whether I'd ever done a story set in a barroom -- and if so, he'd like it for a reprint collection he was doing. I allowed that I hadn't. A week or so after that, I attended a wine tasting with the redoubtable George R. R. Martin, and during the course of the evening I decided to mention the prospective collections in case he had ever done a unicorn story or a barroom story. He hadn't either, but he reminded me that Fred Saberhagen was putting together a reprint of a collection of stories involving chess games (Pawn to Infinity). "Why don't you," he said, "write a story involving a unicorn and a chess game, set in a barroom and sell it to everybody?" We chuckled and we sipped.
A few months later, I went up to Vancouver, B. C., to be the guest of V-Con, a very pleasant regional science fiction convention. I had decided to take my family on the Inland Passage Alaskan cruise after that. Now right before I left New Mexico I had read Italo Calvino's 'Invisible Cities," and when I read the section titled "Hidden Cities. 4." something seemed to stir. It told of a city where the inhabitants exterminated all of the vermin, completely sanitizing the place, only to be haunted then by visions of creatures that did not exist. Later, during the convention, things began to flow together; and on my way down to the waterfront to board the Prinsendam, I stopped at a number of bookstores, speed reading all of the chess sections until I found what I wanted, two hours before sailing time. I bought the book. I sailed. I wrote "Unicorn Variation" in odd moments during what proved to be the final cruise. My protagonist is named Martin -- any similarity to George (who is a chess expert) is not exactly unintentional. Later that year the Prinsendam burned and sank. The story didn't. I sold it a sufficient number of times to pay for the cruise. Thanks, George."
Price: $145.00 other currencies