The Pleasure of Someone Else's Book

Avid bibliophiles love first editions. They are willing to pay as much as their bank accounts will bear to acquire them.

I consider myself a bibliophile, too. As much as I enjoy the convenience of ebooks, especially when I’m traveling or waiting in the car while my driver runs an errand, I join with those who love the feel of having a book in hand.

But even if I had the money to spend tracking down and buying first editions of the books that have come to have special meaning to me, I honestly would rather own a copy that belonged to someone who read it. Someone who, perhaps, scribbled their name on the first page, and the date they acquired it. Who made notes in the margins or underlined passages that resonated with them. Or both.

When I was in college, I owned a mass market paperback copy of a book by Bernard Wolfe: Limbo. This was in the middle sixties, as the generation of love and protest emerged from the staid conformity of postwar society. I’d be willing to state that this book was the one that turned me from a reader of speculative fiction into a hardcore fan.

I even, based on having read it, bought a copy of William James’s On the Moral Equivalent of War, which I never actually managed to get through.

Decades--and many, many other books equally thought-provoking--passed, and all I could remember was the title of the book and that it was one of the first that made me look outside the narrow confines of high school and lower middle class existence and see the danger of not asking hard questions. So, in addition to cementing my addiction to speculative fiction, Limbo turned me from a conservative into a progressive.

In other words, it was that one book most avid readers stumble on that literally alters the course of their intellectual life--and sometimes their social one as well.

Several months ago, I was thinking again about the book and did what for some reason had never occurred to me before--I Googled it, and learned both the author’s name and that it is considered in some quarters one of the classics of the genre. (Others are less complimentary, but that, as Mark Twain pointed out, is what makes horse races; and this is one book that can only be appreciated when debated.)

However, the copies I saw advertised online were, as might be expected, somewhat expensive, and I wasn’t sure nostalgia was worth the price.

This past weekend (August 10-12), I went to ArmadilloCon, a literary SF convention here in Austin I’ve been to annually for the last eight years. My favorite bookseller, Adventures in Crime and Space, had suffered a setback prior to the convention, and the owner had cleaned out his closet of used books to bolster his offerings. There, in hardcover, was a copy of Limbo.

I tried to persuade myself I didn’t really need it, but when has that ever really worked? When the universe has gone to that much trouble to find something you're looking for, it's just arrogant to turn it down.

So, I now own a hardcover, which I’m re-reading with forty years’ experience I didn’t have when I first read it--and finding it just as compelling now as I did then.

But what, to me, is even more fun, is that I know at least one of the people who shared the experience, because he or she (Bootzie is one of those nicknames you can never be quite certain of) inscribed name and purchase date on the first flyleaf. And on the last one and the facing cover are some sketches and numbers that look like prices that make no sense whatever. It doesn’t matter.

This isn’t a book that went from the printing press to a collector’s shelf. This is a book that was read, and perhaps by more than one person, because it ultimately ended up in a used book store. This book has history, and that history gives it something a pristine first edition can never have--personality.

Someone read this book. They may have loved it...or hated it. Perhaps it had the same effect on them it did on me, or maybe they tossed it against the nearest wall in outrage. Either way, like all books that have been ingested, my copy of Limbo carries with it something of all those who turned the pages and absorbed the words and ideas it contains. Reading it, I almost feel as if I’m sharing it with those who preceded me, like a spiritual book club.

So, those who rush to acquire first editions while they’re still warm from the press are welcome to them. I would much rather have a book that’s been read and handled and enjoyed--and carries “memories’ of that on its pages.

Karlathia World Tours Now Boarding

My first two entries were prime examples of what happens when I vent. I can't promise it won't happen again, but that's not what this place is really meant to be about.

Five years ago I created a world called Karlathia. At that time, it was going to be the location for a fairly standard fantasy romance novel. My characters--Randrik alt Harbinnen in particular--had other ideas. By the time they were done, the single novel had turned into three, and the world that had been barely hinted at began to take on a depth and complexity I had to work hard to keep up with.

Then The Ugly Princess went from being a short story-cum-outline to a serial and then a published novel. Originally, it had no particular setting, but as it evolved it simply made sense to locate it on Karlathia, on the opposite side of that mysterious Great Forest that is almost a character in the Everdark tales.

Just as with Tolkien's Middle Earth and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover, the more you know about a world, the more you realize you have to learn. Not all of it can be explained in the fiction that occurs in that world, so I hope over time to offer a virtual tour or Karlathia that will enhance and enrich the experience of reading the books. I welcome discussion, comments and questions, but ask that those who disagree with one another keep their disagreement civil. Trust me, you don't want Randrik stepping in to settle things.

Shades of Dreyfus

For those who don't understand the reference in the title, Dreyfus was a soldier in the French army who was accused and convicted of treason solely, it turned out, because he was Jewish.

Today, the news wires reported that Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida who apparently hasn't enough work to do taking care of his state, has asked a prosecutor to investigate Michael Schiavo to determine if he waited 40-70 minutes to call for emergency assistance after his wife, the late Terry, collapsed. This comes after the medical examiner verified that Terry Schiavo had, indeed, been so severely brain damaged as to preclude any hope she would recover from her persistent vegetative state.

The ME also stated there was no evidence that Terry had been strangled. In other words, he didn't find anything to show that Michael Schiavo tried to kill his wife 15 years ago, failed then spent the next decade and a half trying to finish the job.

If you think I'm exaggerating, guess again. That is precisely what the Schindler family--Terry's folks--have apparently been suggesting, because no one has offered a concrete explanation of why Terry, a woman then in her early 20s and to all appearances perfectly healthy, had a collapse that left her the way she was.

The rumor is that brother Jeb wants to be the next member of the Bush dynasty to sit in the Oval Office. Why anyone in their right mind would vote for a man who would use his office to pursue this kind of vindictive agenda I have no idea. On the other hand, I still can't figure out why people still believe everything his big brother GW tells them about Iraq, to the point of insisting any evidence to the contrary, however strongly verified, is nothing but a left-wing plot.

What is wrong with us that we are so willing to believe the worst about people? When did "innocent until proven guilty" become "yeah, he probably did it?" And when will the media start acting like the watchdogs they're supposed to be instead of a lot of overfed lapdogs too lazy to look for the truth or point out when someone in a position of power abuses that position? People are dying, are being beaten and tortured and imprisoned for nothing more evil than seeking the freedom to speak their mind, and what is it that fills the pages of our newspapers and the news hours?

Some twit who went off her meds and ran away the day before her wedding, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to police agencies and who is now negotiating a major book deal to profit from her idiocy.

Excuse me if I'm not impressed.

All For the Want of a Horseshoe Nail

The last pristine wilderness in the United States is in danger--and for no good reason.

Last week, the US Senate voted 51-49 to allow oil-drilling in the Arctic National Wilderness. The oil companies pooh-pooh concerns that this last untouched corner of nature will be endangered by their presence--and, anyway, they only want to use a little piece of it.

Our President cheered the vote, as well he should. His budget needs the projected $5 billion dollars the oil companies will pay for the privilege of invasion. Of course, that's not the reason he gives. He says letting them go there will alleviate our dependence on foreign oil sources, hinting that those $2-plus prices at the pump will disappear once Exxon/Mobil and their ilk get their way.

Only problem: our crude oil reserves are higher right now than they've ever been. Those high prices aren't because of shortages but because (1)oil speculators have been driving the price per barrel higher and higher for no reason other than panic and (2)the oil companies like making all that money.

There is no way oil drillers admitted into the Arctic National Wilderness can leave it in the same condition they found it. These aren't Boy Scouts. Even if they actual do try to minimize the impact the delicate ecosystem will be altered.

One voice may not seem like much, but remember the nursery rhyme about the horseshoe nail:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the war was lost.
All for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Make no mistake--this is a war. It's a war against the mindset that has prevailed in the US and elsewhere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the mindset that the earth is here for us to exploit. The mindset that has poisoned our air, our water, our soil and our bodies, and now is trying to convince us it was for our own good.

Saving the Arctic National Wilderness isn't going to change that. What it will do is provide an opportunity for those who understand you can't keep withdrawing from nature's bank and never making a deposit to become horseshoe nails.

The question of oil-drilling in the Arctic National Wilderness now goes before the House of Representatives. Unless we put sufficient pressure on those folks, they'll turn over the keys to the vault without a murmur. It doesn't matter who you voted for last November--this issue transcends politics, at least for those of us who give a damn whether our children and grandchildren will be able to do more than just survive.

So, start petitions. Mail and phone your Congressmen and Congresswomen. Yell loudly and long. Make liars out of those who say the American people are no more than mindless consumers who'll approve anything they're told will keep them living in the style to which they've become accustomed.