Vintage Science Fiction Books

For book collectors, vintage science-fiction titles hold a special appeal. Sci-fi books (often abbreviated as “SF”) aren’t only portals to different worlds—all books can do that—but also time-traveling excursions into the past, allowing us to see how the greatest visionaries of the day imagined the future. Sometimes that view was thrilling, as with the young-adult novel Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, which follows a young boy through military training for a future alien attack. Other times, the future was frightening, as in George Orwell’s dystopian sci-fi novel 1984, which imagines a dark world of total government surveillance and corruption. Yet science fiction could also be funny and lighthearted, as with Douglas Adams’ 1979 book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (an adaption of Adams’ radio series of the same name), which takes the form of an encyclopedic guide to hitchhiking in space. The sci-fi canon, as it were, also includes a leather-bound copy of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea from 1870, a well-thumbed paperback of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 dystopian nightmare Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and a beautifully preserved copy of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novel from 1951. The fact that authors like Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451), Frank Herbert (Dune), and Robert Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land) were also superb writers is simply icing on the cosmic cake. Typically, the most collectible science-fiction books are original manuscripts or first editions, and those bearing the author’s autograph are always more valuable.