Broadcasts from the Void
LE QUEUX, William. The Voice from the Void: The Great Wireless Mystery. New York: The Macaulay Company. 1923.
8vo. Publisher’s illustrated green boards, illustrated dust-jacket with publisher’s advertisements to rear cover; pp. 318, [2 (blank)]; a little chipping to edges and usual soiling to whites of jacket but otherwise very well preserved example of a 1920s crime jacket, a little pushing to cloth at head and foot of spine, slight rippling to cloth at spine, very minor offsetting to endpapers, toning to edges of textblock; near fine.
First US edition of this work by radio broadcasting pioneer William Le Queux (1864–1927) incorporating his personal experience with the ‘wireless’, this copy in a particularly fine example of the original dust-jacket.
The Voice from the Void, a blend of thriller and science fiction, features a mysterious, all-knowing, disembodied voice which is revealed to be the work not of supernatural forces, but of experimental wireless technology. Le Queux was a member of the Institute of Radio Engineers and broadcast music from his own station long before radio became widely available. ‘In the first novel cast in the atmosphere of the radio, he whirls the reader from one exciting adventure to another’ (jacket).
First published in England by Cassell and Co. in 1922, this US edition was issued the following year.
Hubin, p. 246.
SKU: 2124179