Dying of the Light

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Tom Kidd

Subterranean Press is proud to announce the Deluxe Limited Edition of Best-Selling fantasist George R. R. Martin’s first novel, illustrated with full-color end sheets, three full-color plates, and fifteen pen-and-ink illustrations by Tom Kidd.

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For countless millennia, the planet Worlorn has been “creation’s castaway,” a cold, barren world drifting aimlessly through the darkness between the stars. When it wanders near the constellation called The Wheel of Fire, Worlorn experiences a brief, bright period of light and life and becomes the setting for an extravagant, multi-cultural celebration: the Festival of the Fringe. A few short years later, when the planet has moved on and the festival has ended, the light begins to die once again.

Into this realm of eternal twilight comes Dirk t’Larien, a rootless interstellar traveler. Dirk has come to Worlorn in response to a summons from Gwen Delvano, the woman who deserted him years before, the woman he has never stopped loving. Desperate to reconnect with Gwen, his “mistress of abandoned dreams,” he finds himself enmeshed in the unforeseen complexities of a world marked by alien sexual and domestic arrangements, unbridgeable cultural barriers, and rigid codes of conduct that can have lethal consequences. It is a world in which words carry extraordinary weight and names have the power to shape—and destroy—a life.

First published in 1977, Dying of the Light was George R.R. Martin’s first novel, and it immediately announced the presence of an extraordinary storyteller. More than thirty years later, it continues to stand as a singular accomplishment: an intimate epic in which the pleasures of grand-scale world building and the subtleties of human relationships stand seamlessly side-by-side.

Limited to 500 signed numbered copies, bound in cloth and sold out at the publisher

Lettered: 26 signed copies, bound in leather, housed in a custom tray case

Lettered "PC" copy which is identical in every way to a limited or lettered copy but has the letters "PC" in the limitation line, the "PC" denotes "Publisher's Copy" and is one of a very few copies produced for use by the Publisher, usually for contributors.