New Arrival: High-Rise by J. G. Ballard (1977 Panther Paperback)

Been wanting to get this one for a while. I was toying with getting a 1975 Jonathan Cape first edition hardback, but they're a little pricey. So instead, I snatched this 1977 Panther paperback up on eBay, the first UK paperback edition I believe, with a cover by SF artist Chris Foss (who recently provided a foreword to a book I worked on – Sci-Fi Art Now, out in the autumn, folks):














And actually, while there are plenty of copies of the Cape first edition online, I can't see a single copy of this paperback on AbeBooks or Amazon. It's in nice nick too, certainly better condition than the 1976 Panther paperback of Ballard's previous novel, Concrete Island, which I picked up in Arundel:














Bit grubby that one, but even so, the binding's tight, and it's perfectly serviceable. Amusing, too, how the cover illos on both books feature, to a greater or lesser degree, well, a lass with her tits out. Ah, God bless the '70s... Anyway, those are the two Ballard novels I really wanted to read, so now I can. Splendid.