First binding state (Currey A) of brown boards with buff coloured endpapers and brown and white dustjacket priced £1.50/30s. Second novel in the Jerry Cornelius series, following THE FINAL PROGRAMME (1968).

''his next significant move was the creation of a figure parodic of the pretentious Weltschmerz of the antiheroic Elric: Jerry Cornelius, a portmanteau antihero painted initially in the Pop colours of 1960s ''Swinging London'', was Elric turned inside out, an anarchic streetwise urban ragamuffin with James Bond gear, and amorally deft at manipulating everything from women to the multiverse itself. In his early adventures -- during which the planet suffers various catastrophes -- Jerry ranges from the present through the far future, ever melancholy, randy and evanescent. This early version of Jerry dominates the first two novels of the Jerry Cornelius sequence: The Final Programme (1968), later filmed as The Final Programme (1973; cut vt The Last Days of Man on Earth 1975 US), and A CURE FOR CANCER (1971). In the third and fourth volumes of the sequence -- The English Assassin (1972) and The Condition of Muzak (1977), which won the 1977 Guardian Fiction Prize -- the portrait of Pierrot-like Jerry and his enduring family and associates deepens, as the various Londons they inhabit become less and less open to their sf/fantasy manipulations'' (John Clute/Encyclopedia of SF).