The Lion of Comarre and Against the Fall of Night

Here, together between covers for the first time, are the two earliest extended works of fiction by a man long recognized as a master in his field. The Lion of Comarre, a novella written in 1946, appeared in a magazine in 1949, but has not previously been available in book form. Against the Fall of Night, a novel completed in 1946, was published in a magazine in 1948 and as a book in 1953.The novella is set no later than the close of the 26th century, the novel in an almost unimaginably remote future, but the two works have much in common, as the author points out in his introduction. Both involve a search for unknown and mysterious goals. In each case the real objectives are wonder and magic rather than any material gain, and in each case the hero is a young man dissatisfied with his environment. Must human society evolve, in the end, to a state of near perfection that is also stagnant? Both narratives provide to this question a stirring and dramatic answer.