Tiger! Tiger! [The Stars My Destination]

N.p. Associated British Picture Corporation, 1956. Original ribbon copy typescript three-page reader's summary and report for the 1956 novel by Alfred Bester, here under its original British publication title "Tiger! Tiger." Made for the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) by ABPC reader Jack Common, dated "September, 1956" with a blue rubber stamp stating "RECEIVED / 20 Sep 1956." Unique.

One of the most powerful media conglomerates in British cinema history, the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) was founded in 1927 when John Maxwell acquired British National Pictures Studios and its Elstree Studios complex, first named British International Pictures (BIP).

The company was renamed ABPC in 1933 after acquiring British Pathé, enabling the company to become a fully vertically integrated studio capable of producing, distributing, and exhibiting its own pictures. Following Maxwell's death in 1940, Warner Bros. purchased a large stake in the company, allowing ABPC to distribute its films into the lucrative US market, as well as taking an active stake in television by launching the Associated British Corporation (ABC). Amid the downturn in the British film industry by the late 1960s, EMI staged an aggressive takeover of ABPC in 1969, and by 1970 the name was officially retired.

At the height of ABPC's success in the 1950s and 1960s, its readers reviewed nearly everything being published, from established authors to those with recent screen success, to emerging new authors, in search of material for film adaptation. The resulting reader's summary and reports are an extraordinary record of mid-twentieth century literature never intended for public consumption and unseen since their composition.

The three-page reader's summary and report, written in the ABPC house style, includes a breakdown of the source material and publication information at the top of the first page, followed by a summary and a list of characters names and descriptions, then a detailed synopsis on the second and third pages, and finally the reader's comments on the material's quality and filmic possibilities. ABPC reader Common finds "some good things in this but the fantasy becomes over-elaborated and fatiguing to follow" and "hardly worth taking as far as the script stage."

A high spot of science fiction literature, based very subtly on Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo," hugely influential on the later genre of cyberpunk, and a favorite of many authors, including William Gibson, Michael Moorcock, and Neil Gaiman. First published in the UK in June 1956 as "Tiger! Tiger," the novel was renamed "The Stars My Destination" when subsequently serialized in "Galaxy Science Fiction" magazine in four parts beginning in October 1956.

8 x 13 inches, perforation binding. Near Fine.

[Book #172912]