Collected.

This week I was introduced to a serious science fiction and fantasy collector by a well-meaning mutual acquaintance.  Like me, he was initially introduced to the genre by his mother, but in his case he inherited a substantial library of classic material from the 30's and 40's in magazine and book form.  And like me, he has several thousand in his collection, but he peaks out at about twice the size of my library.

And how does he store his beloved collection, you ask?  Big plastic tubs.  He fills them up, "squirts in a little bug spray", and there they are.

Sigh...

In many ways, I love my little library.  It's been a source of entertainment and even education over the decades and it's expanded both my imagination and my horizons.  As books have worn out I've done my best to replace them with the same vintage, but in some cases I've ended up with reprints or different editions.

And that's never bothered me.  Books last pretty well, but they're still ephemera in a lot of ways.  Pages tear and yellow, covers fray at the edges, bindings fail, and I accept that as an unfortunate fact of life.  But at least my little collection has been read and enjoyed, rather than hidden away in some sort of miserly fashion.  It's the content which has always been important to me - the fantastic ideas, the startling concepts, the amazing fantasies - rather than the bits of paper that held the ink.

If through some fluke of fate I somehow ended up with the same collection as the one owned by the gentleman I met on Thursday, I think that my first impulse would be to start opening bins and reading - carefully, yes, but still turning pages and touching covers.  Why would anyone want a library that looked like this?

- Sid