Stand on Zanzibar (1968) Signed First Edition Reference

Stand on Zanzibar won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and is one of the most structurally ambitious science fiction novels ever written. Published by Doubleday in 1968, the novel is set in 2010 and depicts a world of seven billion people (accurate — the real population reached seven billion in 2011), eugenics legislation, corporate superpowers, terrorist violence, and information overload. Brunner adopted the “newsreel” technique of John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy, interleaving narrative chapters with news clips, advertisements, excerpts from a fictional sociologist’s work, and fragments of everyday life.

First Edition Identification

Publisher: Doubleday, New York Publication date: 1968 Format: Hardcover in dust jacket

Signed Copy Market Values

• Signed first edition, fine/fine: $300–$800
• Unsigned first edition: $75–$200

Stand on Zanzibar is one of the great undervalued novels in science fiction collecting. Its predictions have proven more accurate than those of almost any contemporary, its structural innovations are genuinely daring, and its signed first editions trade for a fraction of comparable Hugo winners. The correction is likely a matter of time rather than probability.