Okay folks. Here's the deal. It's okay to like science fiction. You probably do without even realizing you do. People seem to have this idea that you have to wear a black trenchcoat, carry around Magic cards and drink your weight in Mountain Dew in order to fully appreciate the genre, but this is false. There are as many different kinds of Science Fiction as there are colors and styles of trench coat. And please - Magic Cards? So 1997.
Even in the old days when we hadn't been to the moon yet and the Russians had yet to send Laika the dog into space, Science Fiction had it's different branches. There was Alfred Bester (The Demolished Man and Stars My Destination), a TV writer who specialized in space travel and character development. Bester's Gully Foyle is still one of the most powerful anti-heroes in science fiction history.
There was Olaf Stapledon, (Star Maker, Sirius) who many modern sci-fi giants point to as their primary influence when it comes to pure imaginative capability. He wrote Star Maker in the 1920s, which essentially describes what it's like to move away from our planet into the solar system, and describes what life might be like on other planets. Sirius, is about a dog born with a human's brain. So cool.
Andre Norton, one of the first ladies of Science Fiction, was also one of the most prolific. Because her audience was mostly male, or because of prejudices of the time, she was unable to sell many copies of her early SF, so she wrote as Andrew North. Her stories pressed the boundaries of imagination and were some of the first to have really strong female characters. Of course, now we know why. Her efforts in the mid to late 50's paved the way for the likes of Ursula K. Leguin and C.J. Cherryh.
Cherryh was first an anthropologist before moving into the realm of SF, and pretty much launched the Fantasy shelf with her imaginary animals - Weird species that don't really exist but could. Once we get into animals, we are still in science mode, but there needs to be a break here from SF into Fantasy.
Anytime you see elves and wizards and made-up creatures, or anytime animals are talking, you are dealing with Fantasy. Vampires and monsters are fantasy/mythology, but Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) is Total Science Fiction!
Anytime there are spaceships and different versions of the Future, you are reading SF.
Another category needs to be established, however, for Speculative Fiction.
This encompasses writing that has to do with right now, but different versions of right now.
Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle, for example, has to do with what would have happened if the Japanese and Germans had won WWII. Put that into the Shoulda coulda woulda pile.
Neal Stephenson is in this part of the genre, as well, as exemplified in the eco-thriller Zodiac, where a toxic substance appears in Boston Harbor, and in Cryptonomicon, about code-breaking.
This is also partly considered "cyberpunk". Anytime there are computers involved, it's cyberpunk.
Now you know.
If you like robots, and you know you do, Isaac Asimov is your man. I, Robot is still the standard for robot fiction, and his rules for robots are like scripture for modern robot scientists. But about the same time as Asimov was Stanislaw Lem, a Polish genius with a thing for developing imaginary worlds. In Cyberiad we meet Trurl and Klapaucius, two robot designers who are constantly trying to one-up each other. They are also robots, it should be noted.
Contemporary Fiction gets pretty Science Fiction-y sometimes, and I want to reshelve some of these great novels based on their magical imagery or straight up alien/futuristic sequences. I hereby officially reclaim the following titles to live with their brethren in the Sci-Fi shelves:
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1984 by George Orwell
The Sparrow and Children of God by Maria Doria Russell
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
American Gods and Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
any others??
hope you are enjoying the summer - stay cool, and we'll see you at the bookstore!
al bentley
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Back in the bookstore after a trip to Sucia Island on my Tuesday/Wednesday weekend. My freshly bandaged hand reminds me of the barnacles I fell on as I explored the ridiculous stonesculptures the ocean has created out of this plunging syncline of an island.
The island's shape lends itself to stories of treasure and piracy, and it's hard to believe no one has written that book yet. It may be up to me...
Certain points that should be mentioned in any story about Sucia:
Honeycomb weathering - Sandstone plus seawater plus time equals this bizarre matrix of semi-eroded holes in rocks. Some are small enough to put just a single whelk shell in, and others are large enough to hold bodies, or as Park Ranger Steve Sabine told me, many many bodies.
Long ago, people smuggling Chinese immigrants into the U.S. used a section of these holes to stash them until the coast was clear. The China Caves, as they are called today, are a natural playground for rockclimbers.
Fossil Bay - Sucia used to lay flat on the bottom of the ocean, but was pushed up (and continues to be pushed up) as the Pacific plate was slowly subducted under the incessant push of Vancouver Island. Now that its Oceanic Sandstone lay exposed above the surface, it is a wonderland for geologists studying what used to be living here in the San Juans. When I was there two rockhounds flew in by floatplane and started merrily hammering away at the rocks on the west side of Fossil bay. The rocks on the east side are from a different formation entirely, the Chuckanut formation, so it's the west side for the geologists.
Opium - Ed the maintenance guy for the Park Service claims that someone buried a large amount of opium under a rock in one of the many coves of H-shaped Sucia. He noted, wink-wink, that the tide would be extra low in the coming days, so maybe I should have a look. He also tried to convince me that Sucia used to be part of Canada and still ran on Canadian Time, so I needed to set my watch an hour back, so take this with a grain of salt. Ed cleans and maintains the composting toilets on Sucia, and they are absolutely the nicest bathrooms I have ever spent any time in. I couldn't believe it!
Geocache!! - My friend Emily found a geocache site on Sucia, started by local farmgirl Nicole Gelb and some other folks when they were at Huxley (the environmental college of Western Washington University). It is a box full of treasures that you can add to and take away from, but I'm not telling you where...
Sucia means dirty in Espanol, but to me, Sucia was the cleanest, most lushly forested place I've been in a long time. It is what Orcas would look like if 98% of people moved away. As I walked around the island I saw so many strange wildflowers and Large Trees. I plucked red honeysuckle and salmonberries for snacks on the trail, and admired the large crowns of healthy ferns, noted the vibrant light greens of new growth on salal and scratched my head at the unlikely prominence of stonecrop which decorated every open sandstone surface with ridiculous plumes of yellow flowers and mint/red succulent leaves.
Sucia is a treasure you don't need a map to find. Just go to North beach and look across the channel.
Books you want to bring to Sucia Island:
Plants of the Northwest: Pojar/Mackinnon's bible to understanding any living thing (except humans) in the northwest
Restless Northwest: the geology of the Pacific Northwest
Edible and Medicinal Plants of the northwest
Whelks to Whales: a tidepool necessity
Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem.
This last one may seem weird, but Science Fiction
The island's shape lends itself to stories of treasure and piracy, and it's hard to believe no one has written that book yet. It may be up to me...
Certain points that should be mentioned in any story about Sucia:
Honeycomb weathering - Sandstone plus seawater plus time equals this bizarre matrix of semi-eroded holes in rocks. Some are small enough to put just a single whelk shell in, and others are large enough to hold bodies, or as Park Ranger Steve Sabine told me, many many bodies.
Long ago, people smuggling Chinese immigrants into the U.S. used a section of these holes to stash them until the coast was clear. The China Caves, as they are called today, are a natural playground for rockclimbers.
Fossil Bay - Sucia used to lay flat on the bottom of the ocean, but was pushed up (and continues to be pushed up) as the Pacific plate was slowly subducted under the incessant push of Vancouver Island. Now that its Oceanic Sandstone lay exposed above the surface, it is a wonderland for geologists studying what used to be living here in the San Juans. When I was there two rockhounds flew in by floatplane and started merrily hammering away at the rocks on the west side of Fossil bay. The rocks on the east side are from a different formation entirely, the Chuckanut formation, so it's the west side for the geologists.
Opium - Ed the maintenance guy for the Park Service claims that someone buried a large amount of opium under a rock in one of the many coves of H-shaped Sucia. He noted, wink-wink, that the tide would be extra low in the coming days, so maybe I should have a look. He also tried to convince me that Sucia used to be part of Canada and still ran on Canadian Time, so I needed to set my watch an hour back, so take this with a grain of salt. Ed cleans and maintains the composting toilets on Sucia, and they are absolutely the nicest bathrooms I have ever spent any time in. I couldn't believe it!
Geocache!! - My friend Emily found a geocache site on Sucia, started by local farmgirl Nicole Gelb and some other folks when they were at Huxley (the environmental college of Western Washington University). It is a box full of treasures that you can add to and take away from, but I'm not telling you where...
Sucia means dirty in Espanol, but to me, Sucia was the cleanest, most lushly forested place I've been in a long time. It is what Orcas would look like if 98% of people moved away. As I walked around the island I saw so many strange wildflowers and Large Trees. I plucked red honeysuckle and salmonberries for snacks on the trail, and admired the large crowns of healthy ferns, noted the vibrant light greens of new growth on salal and scratched my head at the unlikely prominence of stonecrop which decorated every open sandstone surface with ridiculous plumes of yellow flowers and mint/red succulent leaves.
Sucia is a treasure you don't need a map to find. Just go to North beach and look across the channel.
Books you want to bring to Sucia Island:
Plants of the Northwest: Pojar/Mackinnon's bible to understanding any living thing (except humans) in the northwest
Restless Northwest: the geology of the Pacific Northwest
Edible and Medicinal Plants of the northwest
Whelks to Whales: a tidepool necessity
Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem.
This last one may seem weird, but Science Fiction
sounds pretty good when read from hammock to hammock, Enjoy!
Alfred
Monday, May 11, 2009
real books rule!
Real books rule!
I enjoy the smell of books: New ones that arrive in brown boxes with crisp covers; books I've had since I was small, when I used a purple magic marker to write a number on the side according to their rank on my shelf; I even like the old mildewy ones from long ago libraries where thousands of hands touched them, took them to their bathtubs and teatimes. I just got a book that smells exactly like Moorestown, New Jersey, 1987.
Nothing can really replace the feeling of finishing a great book, closing it and holding it in your hands while you remember all the characters and put them to bed on your shelf next to the others.
Of course, I have rid myself of everything several times now. Not much survived the great Purge of '97, when I had to liquidate everything to make rent. But that makes another point in favor of real books. In the lean times, can you take your used e-books to the store and sell them back? For that matter, how do you pass on a great book you've just finished to a friend, when it is just information on a screen?
The books I keep now are precious to me, like old friends I can go back to for support. It's reassuring just to see them there in a row. The shape of the shelf, that I built it myself, adds to the life of my room.
Still, Kindle and other e-books are probably here to stay. The i-Pod isn't going anywhere, and people will invent newer things, too, under the banner of Saving Space or consolidating informations. But even when they figure out how to make the e-book smell like the real thing, they won't be able to replace them.
I was reading about the Kindle, thinking about how much it reminds me of the Hitchhikers Guide. Not the book per se, but the actual guide in the book, the handheld encyclopedia of everything that Arthur Dent carries around and uses to acquaint himself with the universe. Douglas Adams called it, I guess: Who could have guessed in 1979 that we would actually have entire catologs of information available in a tiny portable container? All we need to do is slap the comforting label "Don't Panic" on the front and Adams' vision will be completely realized.
Several people have come into the bookstore now wondering if we sell E-books. Sorry, no.
Also, they have questions.
"Do you have this book," they hold up their Kindle and I see they are reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer prizewinning book 'Team of Rivals,' the story of Abraham Lincoln's slavery-abolishing cabinet.
"I just want to know where I am in this book, I can't tell on this thing," they say. When I fetch the 757-page tome, they do a double-take. "Whoa! I've got a ways to go."
So does the Kindle if it's going to make a run at my bookshelves.
Alfred
I enjoy the smell of books: New ones that arrive in brown boxes with crisp covers; books I've had since I was small, when I used a purple magic marker to write a number on the side according to their rank on my shelf; I even like the old mildewy ones from long ago libraries where thousands of hands touched them, took them to their bathtubs and teatimes. I just got a book that smells exactly like Moorestown, New Jersey, 1987.
Nothing can really replace the feeling of finishing a great book, closing it and holding it in your hands while you remember all the characters and put them to bed on your shelf next to the others.
Of course, I have rid myself of everything several times now. Not much survived the great Purge of '97, when I had to liquidate everything to make rent. But that makes another point in favor of real books. In the lean times, can you take your used e-books to the store and sell them back? For that matter, how do you pass on a great book you've just finished to a friend, when it is just information on a screen?
The books I keep now are precious to me, like old friends I can go back to for support. It's reassuring just to see them there in a row. The shape of the shelf, that I built it myself, adds to the life of my room.
Still, Kindle and other e-books are probably here to stay. The i-Pod isn't going anywhere, and people will invent newer things, too, under the banner of Saving Space or consolidating informations. But even when they figure out how to make the e-book smell like the real thing, they won't be able to replace them.
I was reading about the Kindle, thinking about how much it reminds me of the Hitchhikers Guide. Not the book per se, but the actual guide in the book, the handheld encyclopedia of everything that Arthur Dent carries around and uses to acquaint himself with the universe. Douglas Adams called it, I guess: Who could have guessed in 1979 that we would actually have entire catologs of information available in a tiny portable container? All we need to do is slap the comforting label "Don't Panic" on the front and Adams' vision will be completely realized.
Several people have come into the bookstore now wondering if we sell E-books. Sorry, no.
Also, they have questions.
"Do you have this book," they hold up their Kindle and I see they are reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer prizewinning book 'Team of Rivals,' the story of Abraham Lincoln's slavery-abolishing cabinet.
"I just want to know where I am in this book, I can't tell on this thing," they say. When I fetch the 757-page tome, they do a double-take. "Whoa! I've got a ways to go."
So does the Kindle if it's going to make a run at my bookshelves.
Alfred
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Phew! After weeks of lost log-ins and passwords, I have cajoled, finessed, and begged my way back onto the blogosphere.
Our poetry display is tucked neatly away as we make way for Mother's Day.
It is gorgeous today with no sign of gray, so go out and play or come drink a latte.
I have just returned from a trip to the mainland where, with the help of my chain-smoking friend Ivan, I perused virtually every small bookstore in the I-5 corridor from Bellingham to Olympia.
I am still pretty new at this, but I am starting to sense that there is a real art to the whole
Trade-for-Bookstore-Credit thing. I brought two crates of books with me, one full of interesting titles and first editions, and one full of whodunnit's, DOS for Dummies and Seattle's Best Places to Kiss-kind of books.
At the Tacoma Book Center I took in the second-tier box of books and they gave me 12 dollars store credit for what they could sell. I was surprised to see the Window's for Dummies on the pile of stuff they wanted, while Harry Potter's sixth book, The Half-Blood Prince, lay in the discard pile. You never know who will be interested in what, I suppose.
I used my 12 dollar book credit to ask for the Trade paperback copies of In Watermelon Sugar and Rommel Drives On Deep Into Egypt, by Richard Brautigan, that they had behind the counter.
Ivan was searching for missing Patrick O'Briens from his collection, as well as obscure children's books and Edward Gorey. But I was on the lookout for Brautigan and Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick. Trying to find the originals of these authors is challenging, but these are names that tend to make bookstore folks' eyes light up, and I enjoyed hearing stories from the knowledgeable and, at times, eccentric bookstaff. The Tacoma Book Center, which is just off the Tacoma Dome exit off of I-5, has a large selection of books. The kind of place that gives Sci-Fi authors whole shelves. Del Rey, Dick, Dickson. Although, mostly you can only find the old Philip K. Dicks on special walls behind the shopkeeper, or wrapped in plastic inside glass cases.
Many of Philip K. Dick's books have been turned into movies (Blade Runner, Paycheck, Minority Report) but many of them are so psychedelic and inter-dimensional, or deal with time in such a challenging way that they can only be experienced in the book form... so far. The Philip K. Dick book I would most like to see turned into a movie is the Man in the High Castle, about what would happen if the Japanese and Germans won WWII... it is creepily real. He has a way of showing his characters that makes you think its really happening.
The best place to find these old paperbacks is probably at B. Brown's vintage books on Stone Way in Seattle. He has a large selection of these old P.K. Dick novels, as well as many first runs of Brautigan, Gorey, and good ol' Tom Robbins.
Well, I did pretty well cruising through different stores. I became very stream-lined in my searches, and was able to trade my way through the days, accumulating copies of Brautigan to make way for the upcoming Orcas Island Brautigan Library I am planning on hosting, either at Darvill's or at One-Way Exit Studio.
My favorite find might have been at Easton's, in Mt. Vernon, where I found the yellow hardback copy of June Burn's 'Living High' that has been out of print for a while. There is another, even older edition, in beautiful green cloth, that I almost bought as well, but it doesn't have the neat illustrations of the San Juan Islands or the pictures of her and her eccentric-looking housecar.
Now that I have spent a third of my paycheck on collectibles, though, I am glad to be back on the island, where I am looking forward to cozying up with some classics.
see you soon!
Alfred
Our poetry display is tucked neatly away as we make way for Mother's Day.
It is gorgeous today with no sign of gray, so go out and play or come drink a latte.
I have just returned from a trip to the mainland where, with the help of my chain-smoking friend Ivan, I perused virtually every small bookstore in the I-5 corridor from Bellingham to Olympia.
I am still pretty new at this, but I am starting to sense that there is a real art to the whole
Trade-for-Bookstore-Credit thing. I brought two crates of books with me, one full of interesting titles and first editions, and one full of whodunnit's, DOS for Dummies and Seattle's Best Places to Kiss-kind of books.
At the Tacoma Book Center I took in the second-tier box of books and they gave me 12 dollars store credit for what they could sell. I was surprised to see the Window's for Dummies on the pile of stuff they wanted, while Harry Potter's sixth book, The Half-Blood Prince, lay in the discard pile. You never know who will be interested in what, I suppose.
I used my 12 dollar book credit to ask for the Trade paperback copies of In Watermelon Sugar and Rommel Drives On Deep Into Egypt, by Richard Brautigan, that they had behind the counter.
Ivan was searching for missing Patrick O'Briens from his collection, as well as obscure children's books and Edward Gorey. But I was on the lookout for Brautigan and Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick. Trying to find the originals of these authors is challenging, but these are names that tend to make bookstore folks' eyes light up, and I enjoyed hearing stories from the knowledgeable and, at times, eccentric bookstaff. The Tacoma Book Center, which is just off the Tacoma Dome exit off of I-5, has a large selection of books. The kind of place that gives Sci-Fi authors whole shelves. Del Rey, Dick, Dickson. Although, mostly you can only find the old Philip K. Dicks on special walls behind the shopkeeper, or wrapped in plastic inside glass cases.
Many of Philip K. Dick's books have been turned into movies (Blade Runner, Paycheck, Minority Report) but many of them are so psychedelic and inter-dimensional, or deal with time in such a challenging way that they can only be experienced in the book form... so far. The Philip K. Dick book I would most like to see turned into a movie is the Man in the High Castle, about what would happen if the Japanese and Germans won WWII... it is creepily real. He has a way of showing his characters that makes you think its really happening.
The best place to find these old paperbacks is probably at B. Brown's vintage books on Stone Way in Seattle. He has a large selection of these old P.K. Dick novels, as well as many first runs of Brautigan, Gorey, and good ol' Tom Robbins.
Well, I did pretty well cruising through different stores. I became very stream-lined in my searches, and was able to trade my way through the days, accumulating copies of Brautigan to make way for the upcoming Orcas Island Brautigan Library I am planning on hosting, either at Darvill's or at One-Way Exit Studio.
My favorite find might have been at Easton's, in Mt. Vernon, where I found the yellow hardback copy of June Burn's 'Living High' that has been out of print for a while. There is another, even older edition, in beautiful green cloth, that I almost bought as well, but it doesn't have the neat illustrations of the San Juan Islands or the pictures of her and her eccentric-looking housecar.
Now that I have spent a third of my paycheck on collectibles, though, I am glad to be back on the island, where I am looking forward to cozying up with some classics.
see you soon!
Alfred
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Well it is April, which means poetry month at Darvill's bookstore. Tomorrow, Friday the third, local poet River Malcolm will be reading from her new collection 'Magic Carpet'. We are also trying to get some local musicians in here on Saturday afternoons for some evening inspiration, 5-6 p.m. Until then, at that same time, we will hold up fake trumpets and make musical noises while Scott loads us up with coffee and wears different-colored berets.
See you then!
See you then!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Welcome!
It is quiet today in Darvill's. Randy, the Fed/Ex guy has just delivered a new box of books, so once again it is Christmas in the bookstore, and Jean and Jenny give out a hoot to herald the new books arrival. This means it must really be slow in here today. It's not like we are short on books. Pretty much every day is Christmas, because books are always arriving in neatly wrapped brown packages from Randy or other guys like him. We unpack them and admire the new cover designs and Jean sets them in their rightful places throughout the bookstore.
Scott (of Straight Shots Espresso, located at the rear of the store, adjacent the comfy chair and the plastic iguana), steams some milk and the smell of yummy chocolate fills the air while we wait for the People to arrive and peruse the books. Scott hands the hot chocolate to a small red-haired boy named Quinn who was feeling pouty, but not anymore.
Scott (of Straight Shots Espresso, located at the rear of the store, adjacent the comfy chair and the plastic iguana), steams some milk and the smell of yummy chocolate fills the air while we wait for the People to arrive and peruse the books. Scott hands the hot chocolate to a small red-haired boy named Quinn who was feeling pouty, but not anymore.
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