Fantastic Metropolis

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Shelley Jackson

All my memories are connected to books.

Harvey Jacobs

When I was in public school, around age 7, I took a book out of the school library named Skippy based on a then-popular comic strip. Unlike the strip, the book was rather dark, a depression novel that told of the destruction of life in what was an idyllic town mostly because of economic collapse. I found myself sad to the point of weeping and it came to me that there I was, crying because of some words on a page. It both puzzled and amazed me that language—the printed word—could have such an effect, that the connection I felt with a stranger called Skippy could produce such profound emotion. I sat down and made a cover for the book out of brown wrapping paper and drew a picture of Skippy on that protective wrap. A few hundred years later I found a copy of Skippy in a used book store and now it sits next to my own books. And I’m still amazed by the connection a book can achieve despite obstacles of race, creed, background, experience when it pushes the essential buttons that evoke that very sense of connection. I’m talking mostly about fiction. But the same is true, give or take, of books that convey valid information between two distant parties interested in whatever. I mean, the whole process is a splendid mystery, creation to consumption.

Stephen Jones

I still get excited if I come across something I’ve been looking for at a price I can afford. My “Holy Grail” of books for twenty years was always The Outsider and Others by H.P. Lovecraft (Arkham House). I could never afford a copy. Then a few years ago, at a World Fantasy Convention, a dealer was selling a copy at a very reasonable price. It had the Gerry de la Ree reissue dust jacket from the early 1970s (collectible itself now), but what really convinced me was that the original Virgil Finlay jacket had been pasted into the front and back endpapers at the time. Which meant, because it had never been exposed to the light of day, that it was absolutely pristine—as it must have looked when the book was published in 1939. So although I guess it’s a flawed copy, it’s an interesting copy, a talking point—which is what collecting books should be about. Oh, and it’s still a great collection!

Henry Kaiser

I remember reading some SF book in the elementary school library in 4th grade (maybe 1962 or 1963?). It had plates that seemed to be photos, illustrating the story I guess they were composite photos of people and space ship models… I guessed that now… They seemed real at the time and really impressed me.

James Patrick Kelly

I still have one of the first books I bought with savings from my allowance, most of which was spent on comics, but don’t get me started. It’s a hardcover of The Wizard of Oz, printed in 1944. I bought it used when I was about eight or nine. It is possibly the ugliest book that I own—the dust jacket was missing when I bought it, and the faded gray boards are frayed and water-stained and streaked with some nasty white gunk. But the words still dance and the Denslow illustrations still breathe magic and there’s my name crudely written in pencil on the inside cover that reminds this middle-aged guy where he came from and why he writes this stuff. It’s my own personal Rosebud.

John Klima

I’ve always loved to read. If you believe my mother, I taught myself to read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish when I was two. I still try to read a book a month (a book a week if I can really get going), which I know is much more than the norm. My favorite memory of reading is how close together it brought my brother and me. I remember the day that my brother received his shipment of books from The Science Fiction Book Club. I stared at the spines forever: Asimov, Varley, Vance, Donaldson, Zelazny, Tolkien, and so on. Even though my brother is six years older than me, I read faster than him. He hated that I read the books before he did (for all sorts of reasons, but I think number one was that I was a slob and the pages would stick together when I was done with them), but I also know that he liked that he could talk about these things with his little brother.