"Lot" and "Lot's Daughter" by Ward Moore



			Lot and Lot's Daughter by Ward Moore

Available as a trade paperback for $10.00.
The leather-bound, limited-edition is sold out.
72 pages, with an introduction by Michael Swanwick.
Find out how to get a copy on our order information page.

Jacket design and illustration by William Reid

Ward Moore's considerable reputation rests on just a handful of novels and a few scattered stories. And yet he has long been considered one of the giants of the science fiction field.

Starting with Greener Than You Think (1947), a comic disaster novel in which a commercially mutated form of grass proliferates until it takes over the entire world, Moore established himself as a remarkable and thoughtful writer.

But it was with his next book, Bring the Jubilee (1953), that Moore would make his biggest impact. In this book, a young historian from a future in which the South has won the American Civil War ventures back in time to the crucial battle and inadvertently causes the North to win the war. When his time machine is not invented in the new time line, he finds himself trapped in our past. Bring the Jubilee was hailed as a classic immediately upon its initial publication in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It became the definitive alternate worlds story and was a primary influence on Philip K. Dick's seminal 1962 novel, The Man in the High Castle.

Moore's next novel, Caduceus Wild, set in a medical dystopia, was first published in Science Fiction Stories in 1959, but did not meet with the same acclaim and was not published in book form for many years. His last book, Joyleg (1962), was a collaboration with Avram Davidson, in which a veteran of the American Revolution is discovered living in the hills of Tennessee where he has been kept alive for almost 200 years by the medicinal properties of moonshine liquor; it met with a much more favorable response, but nevertheless faded quickly into obscurity.

However, Moore continued to write and publish short stories, many of which were outstanding. The two stories collected here, "Lot" and "Lot's Daughter," were written during Moore's heyday, following the publication of Bring the Jubilee. These are savage, unromantic tales that could not have been published even a few years earlier than they appeared, before new magazines like Anthony Boucher's The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction or H.L. Gold's Galaxy Science Fiction revolutionized science fiction in the early 1950's, placing less emphasis on technological prognostication and more emphasis, for the first time, on literary value, soft science, humor and satire. These stories helped to pave the way for generations of science fiction authors to follow.


	Although he contributed only infrequently to the field, each of [Ward Moore's] books became something of a classic . . . . {He} also wrote two of the most notable stories describing nuclear holocaust and its consequences "Lot" (1953) and "Lot's Daughter"(1954), featuring a great motorized exodus from a doomed Los Angeles, seen through biblical parallelism as the city of Sodom. - John Clute & Peter Nichols The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Ward Moore (1903-1978) was never as big as Leiber or Sturgeon, nor nearly as prolific. This should have earmarked him for complete oblivion. Yet a tiny California press and a huge New York publisher have both found work to reissue. Quality occasionally triumphs. Lot and Lot's Daughter is a 72-page booklet nicely done in a $10 paperback by Tachyon. "Lot," first published in 1953 . . . [had a] brutal enough twist for 1953, but the sequel, published the following year, seems shockingly ahead of its time. *- The Washington Post Book World* Ward Moore was an underrated SF writer of immense subtlety. You owe it to yourself to sample his work, and now publisher Jacob Weisman has made it easy for you. Lot & Lot's Daughter reprints two of Moore's most famous stories in a handsome edition with a new intro by Michael Swanwick. These two stories form part of the foundation for postapocalyptic works as diverse as recent William Barton, Terry Bisson, and John Barnes, and remain a model of elegance. *- Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine* "Lot" and "Lot's Daughter" depict nuclear holocaust not simply as a worldwide catastrophe, but perhaps even more terrifyingly, as the unleashing of our own inner demons. *- SFRA Review*


	Books by Ward Moore Breathe the Air (1942) mainstream novel Greener than You Think (1947) Bring the Jubilee (1955) (we highly recommend this - see NEWS below!) Joyleg: A Folley(1962) with Avram Davidson Caduceus Wild (1978) with Robert Bradford Lot & Lot's Daughter (1996) recommended News Ward Moore's best book, Bring the Jubilee, is available for the first time in several years, having been brought out in a new trade paperback edition by Del Rey. The book is billed as "alternate history" rather than science fiction and has an introduction by Jeff Shaara, bestselling author of Gods and Generals. Don't be fooled, though, by the packaging. Bring the Jubilee is more than just a reinterpretation of the civil war, it is one of the best time travel stories ever written and should not be missed by anyone as yet unfamilarly with it. Once you've read the book come back and check out the Tachyon edition of Lot and Lot's Daughter. We're betting that you'll clamor back for more.

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Last updated February 8, 1998.
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