in original dust sheet. First edition of 3000 copies.  300 signed and numbered of which this is No. 96.

The novel is a science horror story that involves silicon crystalline lifeforms threatening to overwhelm carbon life on Earth

 The Crystal Horde is a science fiction novel by American writer John Taine (pseudonym of Eric Temple Bell). It was first published in book form in 1952 by Fantasy Press in an edition of 2,328 copies. The novel is substantially rewritten from a version that originally appeared in the magazine Amazing Stories Quarterly in 1930 under the title White Lily.

Groff Conklin, reviewing the 1952 edition, gave a mixed opinion; praising “one of the most magnificent science-horror ideas ever created,” but ridiculing the plot as “probably the worst yellow-menace-plus-Bolsheviks-plus-religious-prejudice melange ever to hit science fiction.” Boucher and McComas similarly found the novel an unsuccessful fusion of disparate elements, “a dull and involved story of Chinese warfare” and “some amusing satire and a dazzling series of descriptions.”. P. Schuyler Miller, however, praised the story as among Taine’s best, saying “the wildest of fancy, liberally laid on a solid scientific core.”

Everett F. Bleiler reported that the opening sections regarding the outbreak of crystal life “have a certain fascination, despite the horrible writing,” but the rest of the novel “is a jumble that never achieves conviction.”

During the early 1920s, Bell wrote several long poems. He also wrote several science fiction novels, which independently invented some of the earliest devices and ideas of science fiction. Only the novel The Purple Sapphire was published at the time, using the pseudonym John Taine; this was before Hugo Gernsback and the genre publication of science fiction. His novels were published later, both in book form and serialised in magazines. Basil Davenport, writing in The New York Times, described Taine as “one of the first real scientists to write science-fiction [who] did much to bring it out of the interplanetary cops-and-robbers stage.” But he concluded that “[Taine] is sadly lacking as a novelist, in style and especially in characterization.”

Eric Temple Bell (7 February 1883 – 21 December 1960) was a Scottish-born mathematician and science fiction writer who lived in the United States for most of his life. He published non-fiction using his given name and fiction as John Taine.