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Product Description
Hardcover, published by Secker & Warburg UK, 1947. first edition, a slim hardcover in red and black boards. The dustjacket shows heavy wear, closed tears and small area of paper loss to lower front edge. closed and repaired taers to back cover.
The book itself is solid in binding, but has two Institutional library stamps ( from the INTO Teacher's Club, Dublin) , one to the title page, and one to the first page of text. No pockets, or labels or other damage noted. A fair reading copy of a work by one of the UK's most influential SF authors.
The story takes the form of a long letter written by one old university friend to another. The recipient of the letter, known only as "Thos" (a college nickname, short for Doubting Thomas) introduces the strange document, from a friend known only as "Cass" (another nickname; short for Cassandra, an allusion to the friend's apparently prophetic abilities). Cass is regarded as a harmless eccentric by his friends, but Thos notes that his prophecies and preoccupations, wild as they may seem, have a habit of coming true. Thos also notes, ominously, that Cass's letter "bears the address of a well-known mental home".
Cass's letter, which forms the bulk of the novel, describes his contact with a bizarre form of alien species. Whilst holidaying in the Lake District, Cass is inexplicably drawn to a lump of rock, which he pockets and takes back with him to his room. There, he is driven to place the rock on the fire, and this action releases a bizarre form of alien life - a living flame, which has been trapped in the rock for millennia.
The flame reveals itself to be one of an ancient alien race who originated in the photosphere of the sun. Solar catastrophe has distributed the ancient race throughout the planets of the solar system, and the flame-beings can only be woken by intense heat.
