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Should We Intentionally Read Bad SF?

Recently, on the YouTube channel Pulpmortem, I viewed Jake’s video “9 So Bad, they’re Good Science Fiction Books you’ve probably never heard of.” Jake, evidently, is a connoisseur of bad science fiction, and the nine novels he reviewed indeed sound dreadful. Since Jake claims that bad books still can be fun to read, I gave The Red Planet by Russ Winterbotham a try. It was a quick, fun read that wasn’t badly written, but was essentially a minor, forgotten work.

I picked The Red Planet because it was free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers. It’s only $1.99 if you’re not a subscriber. This novel is also available for free on Project Gutenberg.

There are hundreds of better science fiction novels for $1.99 on Amazon, so why should anyone read it? Shouldn’t we always seek out the best possible novel to read? Why read a crappy book when you could be reading something great?

Well, readers don’t think that way. Even though we’re warned never to judge a book by its cover, how often have you bought one just because the cover was so cool looking? How many people have a secret fondness for watching old episodes of Perry Mason instead of streaming the trendiest show on Apple TV? People tend to develop a fondness for a particular type of story and storytelling. They don’t prejudge its quality.

But the question is: Should we seek out books (and movies and TV shows) that popular culture has forgotten? Regarding science fiction, I can think of a few reasons.

  1. We’re searching for forgotten gems.
  2. We like the author.
  3. We like the period.
  4. We like studying the evolution of the genre.
  5. We enjoy playing genre historian.

The Red Planet is about the first manned mission to Mars. The crew consists of five men and one woman. The driving conflict of the plot is that all five men want the woman sexually, and the woman, Gail Loring, wants to be left alone and treated as an equal, an astronaut, not a woman. This is quite progressive for 1962, since The Feminine Mystique wasn’t published until 1963.

Concurrent with the plot conflict is mutiny and murder. Dr. Sparten, the crew commander and rocket scientist, wants all the fame for being the first man on Mars. He also plans to be the man who ends up with Gail Loring. Sparten is Machiavellian and psychopathic. The other four men are dedicated astronauts, but they can’t stop thinking about Gail. After reading The Red Planet, I couldn’t help but wonder about the Artemis 2 mission and the sexual tensions on the International and Chinese space stations.

Even though The Red Planet was probably written in 1961 and published in August 1962, it’s not completely dated. Although it is dated regarding Mars, because the third conflict in the story regards Martians.

Russell Robert Winterbotham (August 1, 1904 – June 9, 1971) published books in several genres, comics, comic strips, and big little books, all the while working at a newspaper. Sixteen of his stories are reprinted at Project Gutenberg. Winterbotham was reasonably prolific and mostly forgotten.

Whenever I stumble upon an old science fiction story by a forgotten writer, I get curious about them. I snoop the internet for any clues about what they were like. I found this short biographical piece written by Russ in 1956, for the apazine Pooka #2. He ended the piece with:

I have no idea now much I’ve written. I expect I hold rights on about 50 to 100 short stories, but there were many many more that I sold outright and reserved nothing and I have no record of these. During my peak, I remember one year in thich I produced two million words. Usually I wrote about a million words a
year, counting my newspaper and comic strip work, Now I write less than a quarter of a million and very little of it, except comics, is fiction, I’m pecking away at a novel which should be finished before 1960. Then I hope to die with my boots on. Later, if I can help it, than 1960.


I authored some historical strips last fall, dealing with frontier characters, “Daniel Boone,” “Kit Carson,” and “Wild Bill Hickok,” These brought more fan mail, including letters from descendants of Boone and Carson, than anything I ever wrote.


My family never reads my stories because they share the opinion of a vast number of others, that they are not literature. But I like my work, I’m my greatest fan. And I’ll keep writing them, by God, as long as I live,

Fanencylopedia 3 quotes Winterbotham just before he died: “The science fiction market doesn’t seem to demand my talents, whatever they are, and I need the rest.”

The old cliche is that writers write for immortality. Sadly, most are quickly forgotten. One reason I like reading old forgotten novels is to wonder about why and how they were written. For a guy born in 1904, The Red Planet is an interesting read.

Winterbotham was around 58 when he was writing that novel. He’s obviously keeping up with science and science fiction. His story features NASA. His astronauts use a Saturn rocket to get to orbit, where the Mars rocket waits. Unfortunately, he has his astronauts get onto the Saturn with a cherry picker. A cherry picker was on hand for Alan Shepard in case of an emergency exit. The Saturn 1 rocket made its maiden flight in October 1961, and it was unmanned, so Winterbotham probably didn’t know the Saturn was too big for that method.

I have a thing for Pre-NASA science fiction, and have written about it several times. The Red Planet is on the cusp of this era. Winterbotham uses NASA in his story, but imagines Mars inhabited by intelligent beings. Even though we know this isn’t true, I’m still fond of stories that feature Martians.

Science fiction changed after the Space Race began. Robert A. Heinlein, who was the leading science fiction writer of the 1950s, made an abrupt change in direction in 1961 with Stranger in a Strange Land. Before that, Heinlein was a head cheerleader for space exploration. Once NASA got going, Heinlein began thinking about new territory for the genre. I don’t know why science fiction historians don’t consider Stranger in a Strange Land as early New Wave. Cause it’s certainly not Old Wave. Heinlein was Old Wave politically, but Stranger was definitely an experiment in fiction on many levels. There are many reasons why Stranger has lost popularity, and one of them is that fans quickly turned against New Wave SF.

Frank Herbert took science fiction on a new wave, too, with Dune, around the same time. Herbert anticipated the long SF novel, with many sequels that explored complex world development, characters, and plotlines. The kind that is popular today.

Winterbotham was trying to be new, too, with feminism. Gail Loring is an interesting character in 1962 science fiction. But then, so were Heinlein’s female characters. Just because Heinlein wasn’t enlightened by 21st-century attitudes didn’t mean he wasn’t changing, too.

Look at the other top novels from 1962. I’d certainly recommend reading these better SF novels before The Red Planet.

But I’m not sure if The Red Planet is a significantly lesser read than these other SF novels from 1962.

I haven’t read Jake’s other eight SF books that he reviews. They are much harder to find. I’d probably have to spend $5-20 to acquire copies used, and I’m not going to do that right now. It’s a shame all old science fiction isn’t available as cheap ebooks or put into the public domain.

James Wallace Harris, 5/22/26

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Why Do We Read Science Fiction?

by James Wallace Harris, 5/2/26

Why did so many Baby Boomers embrace science fiction back in the 1950s and 1960s? We were all playing Cowboys and Indians, wearing cowboy hats and shooting our cap pistols at each other, and watching westerns all the time on TV. Then we switched to space helmets and ray guns, and changed the channel to watch old 50s Sci-Fi flicks, The Jetsons, My Favorite Martian, and Lost in Space.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know about space and space travel. Nor can I remember my first exposure to rockets. My guess is it was from television. I remember my 4th-grade class listening to Alan Shepard’s 15-minute Mercury flight on Freedom 7 over the classroom’s PA system. That was May 5, 1961 (65 years ago). I assume I had seen movies or television shows with spaceships before that, but I have no memory. I watched The Twilight Zone before then, so it might have been on that show.

It seems like dinosaurs, spaceships, and robots have always been part of my conscious mind. Maybe Carl Jung was right about the collective unconscious. I knew about space travel before I learned about astronomy. And that doesn’t make sense, does it? How could I know about traveling in space before I knew what space was?

I do know that by 1962, I was reading Tom Swift, Jr. books. But I was also reading nonfiction books about NASA. We lived on base at Homestead Air Force Base, and I used the base library. The Moon and Mars were frequently mentioned in NASA’s goals, but this was before I started reading astronomy books. My young mind must have been told about the solar system in elementary school.

Concurrent with my discovery of science fiction in the mid-sixties were the flights of Project Mercury and Project Gemini. I slowly came to believe that science fiction was preparing me for the future. That was my rationale for reading science fiction. In reality, science fiction was my coping mechanism for a stressful childhood. By the time I learned what the term “science fiction” meant in 1964, I had attended at least seven different schools in four different states. The constant moving, as well as my parents’ marital problems and alcoholism, should have made my life miserable. But I loved those years because I loved science fiction.

During childhood and teen years, even into college, I really believed reading science fiction prepared readers for the future. Then, around 1975, I realized the futures I expected weren’t going to unfold, and reading science fiction was only entertainment. I gave up science fiction, got a real job, got married, and finished college. Then, in 1985, I returned to science fiction. I then treated it like an English major studying literary history. It was no longer about the future, but storytelling.

Any well-told story about any time or place, real or imaginary, can capture a reader’s attention. So the question becomes: Why do we read science fiction? It gets weird when you think about it. Why did we want to leave Earth? No sane person would want to live on the Moon or Mars, and you have to be tripping if you think Titan is a wonderful destination. Anything further is no more realistic than Oz or Narnia.

The question “Why am I reading science fiction?” struck me particularly hard recently, while reading stories by Christopher Anvil in The Trouble With Aliens. Christopher Anvil is a mostly forgotten science fiction writer who regularly sold short science fiction to John W. Campbell, Jr. for Astounding and Analog.

I’m enjoying the stories, but just barely. They just pass muster. I do enjoy them, but I’m enjoying them at the level of watching anything on television when you’re bored, and the show is just good enough not to change the channel. Anvil’s stories feel like I’m resonating with the archetypes of science fiction in my unconscious mind.

I keep asking myself: why don’t I read something better, something more rewarding, something that is cutting-edge? The stories are military science fiction, a sub-genre that I normally find boring. Reviewers don’t have much positive to say about Anvil, but they often praise him for his satire. Satire implies a target. Is the military Anvil’s target, or military science fiction? Anvil’s stories remind me a bit of Eric Frank Russell and Harry Harrison.

But are these stories really satire? Satire is usually driven by absurdity, and I don’t think Anvil believes his science fiction situations are absurd. I get the feeling Anvil is just trying to keep up with the other Astounding/Analog writers churning out what Campbell wants to buy and readers want to read.

Anvil’s stories epitomize how I once saw science fiction.

Anvil’s stories are entertaining enough that I look forward to returning to my audiobook. His stories aren’t great, but they are pleasant. I wonder if I’m using them to cope with getting old, like how I used science fiction to cope with adolescence?

I feel his stories touch what’s very basic about science fiction. If I could understand that, maybe I could understand why I started reading science fiction as a kid.

Anvil’s stories also remind me of Project Hail Mary, the bestselling novel by Andy Weir, which is also currently a hit movie. Weir’s appeal is that his stories are about solving problems, and that’s what Anvil focuses on too. However, Anvil’s prose is functional, but far from Weir’s level of entertaining.

I have to wonder if such escapist science fiction doesn’t function like dreaming at night. They might be a diversion for our consciousness when we want to turn off reality, and maybe symbolically play out some kind of existential purpose.

Baen Books has collected Anvil’s stories in several volumes, which they sometimes label the Complete Christopher Anvil. They are available in audiobook, which is my preferred format for consuming old science fiction.

John W. Campbell, Jr. frequently published Anvil stories, but he seldom made them the cover story. Anvil published two novels, according to ISFDB.org, although many of his short stories were republished as a few fix-up paperback novels. Overall, Anvil appears to have published over a hundred stories, and much of that work has been collected in eight volumes by Baen Books.

Back in the 1950s, science fiction imprinted on my mind, and I’ve been following it around like a little duckling ever since.

JWH

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Taking A Vacation From Reading Science Fiction

After gorging on science fiction short stories for several years, I’ve finally got my fill of science fiction. At 74, aging is catching up with me. I was reading 52 books a year, and regularly posting on two blogs: Auxiliary Memory and this one, Classics of Science Fiction. My reading has slowed to about a fourth of what it was, and so has my blogging.

I’ve decided to post all my essays to Auxiliary Memory and put Classics of Science Fiction on hold. If I happen to write about science fiction, I’ll post it there. I’d rather look somewhat productive on one blog, rather than unproductive on two.

Also, I hunger for different kinds of reading. We’re now living science fiction. Reading about what’s going on now seems further out than speculation about the future. With AI, robots, space travel, climate change, astronomy, renewable energy, and so many other fields, it feels like we’re approaching a perfect storm of change.

One video I recently watched suggested that the amount of change humanity experienced in the 250-year history of the United States is enough to kill a person from future shock. If George Washington time-traveled to 2026, they speculated he would die of future shock. The guy also speculated that to generate that much future shock by bringing someone from before 1776 to 1776 would require going back 13,000 years. I have no idea how they calculated that, but it sounds right from all my history book reading. I believe society is breaking down now because the amount of future shock one person experiences in a lifetime is approaching what Washington would have felt.

I’m switching from science fiction to nonfiction to comprehend that future shock. Here are the books I’ve bought and plan to review at Auxiliary Memory. It will take me some time. Like I said, I’m slowing down.

  • I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter
  • Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
  • Worldviews: An Introduction to the History of Philosophy of Science by Richard DeWitt
  • Why the World Doesn’t Make Sense by Steven Hagen
  • Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain by Antonio Damasio
  • A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness by Michael Pollan
  • Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution by Jonathan B. Losos
  • Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson
  • Being You: A New Science of Consciousness by Anil Seth
  • Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief by Jordan B. Peterson
  • The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity–And Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race by Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long
  • Sensation: The New Science of Physical Intelligence by Thalma Lobel
  • An Immense World by Ed Yong (reread)
  • Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman
  • Ways of Seeing by John Berger
  • Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant
  • The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture by Jerome H. Barlow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (reread)
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig (3rd reading)
  • The Gang of Three: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle by Neel Burton
  • The Idea Machine by Joel J. Miller
  • Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Donella H. Meadows
  • Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time by Dean Buonomano

This is far more ambitious than I’m capable of right now, but I’m going to try.

James Wallace Harris, 4/13/26

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Archiving Science Fiction With AI

I’ve always loved the cover drawing on the July 1941 issue of Cosmic Science Fiction. Mainly, because it seems like an early image of what weightlessness might be like. However, the scan of that magazine has a torn, marked-up cover that’s discolored with age. I wanted to see what a mint condition copy would look like. So, I asked an AI, Gemini, to fix it for me. The results are above.

I then swapped out the new cover for the old in the .cbr file I had of the magazine. When I open that magazine in YACReader, I see the new cover, and it feels like I have a mint copy of the magazine – until I turn the page and see:

That brings me back to reality. I could get Gemini to fix that page, too.

However, is that what I really want? With the original scan of the torn copy, I felt like I was reading a beat-up old magazine. One that looked 85 years old. That was a certain kind of experience. But if I reprocessed the magazine, the reading experience would be different. I would like to think it would feel like I was reading a new copy just off the newsstand. It wouldn’t be true, though.

A perfectly cleaned-up copy would be too clean. It makes reading nicer, but it doesn’t give the sense that I’m holding a copy of a real magazine. The beat-up copy is still a scan, artificial, but it gives the illusion of reading a real magazine.

Some magazine scanners produce something in between an AI copy and a straight scan. Using Photoshop, they process each scanned page, lifting the content off and placing it back on top of a pseudo-paper image that gives the illusion of clean, new paper. They also use Photoshop to fix tears, erase markings, and zest up the colors on the covers. Making these magazine scans very nice to read, the artificial paper gives the illusion of fresh pulp paper and makes reading easier on the eyes. It turns out that a pure white background or a muddy grayscale is hard to read. But I find color scans of old browned pages easy to read, too.

Here are samples of various scanning types:

Black and White scan – producing pure white paper.

Color scan:

Sample with artificial paper:

I wonder what people in the future would like? Do they want a photo image from an old magazine, or would they prefer something easier to read? Recently, I read a story by H. G. Wells in scans of old issues of Pall Mall Magazine from 1898. The reading experience wasn’t great. I wanted to see the real thing, and I bought those issues in a bound volume. (I did this because I got it cheap.) My copy was in pretty good shape, but it did look old. However, the reading experience was far superior to reading the scans. But if I’m honest, if the scan I read had been cleaned up and easy to read, I might never have felt the desire to see the original magazine.

People can buy a replica of the July 1941 issue of Cosmic Science Fiction on Amazon. I see it’s not a perfect copy in the reading sample. I’m tempted to buy one to see what the reading experience is like. I think holding a physical copy, even a replica, would give a much different reading experience.

That makes me think that readers in the future might want a cleaned-up copy suitable for printing. Wouldn’t it be neat to have a machine that printed and bound replicas of books and magazines?

Right now, scanners scan old magazines for the aging population who still love them and want to keep reading them. Most of the world has forgotten these titles. But the scanners are also archiving these magazines for future libraries and researchers. And that makes me wonder what they want.

I’ve also been playing around with AI, having it make me 4K wallpapers for my computer from old science fiction magazine covers. The problem is that the paintings on the magazine covers are not usually the same aspect ratio as a 16:9 computer screen. I asked Gemini to create a new 4K image and fill out the painting using the same intent and style as the original artist.

Here’s an example:

I think Gemini did a good job, and it makes an impressive wallpaper, but is this fair to Fred Kirberger, the artist? Playing around with AI brings up a lot of issues.

I also used Gemini to sharpen the resolution of this painting by Hannes Bok. It makes a fantastic 4K wallpaper. Maybe I could have done the same thing myself if I had Photoshop skills. Sure, I’d love to own the original painting, but that will never happen. AI is letting me enjoy it every time I see my desktop.

I’m torn about using AI. I’m not sure we should support artificial intelligence. Using AI might make us mentally weaker. I could have reprocessed that cover myself using Photoshop. It would have forced me to learn new skills. Using Gemini is a kind of cheat, don’t you think? Of course, some people think using Photoshop is a cheat.

James Wallace Harris, 4/3/26

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When Science Fiction Goes Too Far

The Facebook group, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction, was discussing “A Walk in the Sun” by Geoffrey A. Landis. The group had read the story before, and my previous comment was: “Good sole survivor story that reminded me of Kip’s journey across the Moon in Have Spacesuit-Will Travel. Unfortunately, it’s way too unrealistic. I did catch the magnificent desolation reference.”

This time, when I read “A Walk in the Sun,” I found it harder to get into the story. Landis asks us to believe that an astronaut stranded on the Moon, waiting 30 days for a rescue mission, could walk entirely around the Moon. It’s certainly a sense-of-wonder idea, but on this reading, I spent too much time thinking about the realistic problems Patricia Jay Mulligan faced. The story is moving because of Patricia’s will to live, and her imagined conversation with her sister, Karen. Patricia only has a spacesuit and enough extra equipment to keep it going for 30 days. Landis tries to address all our objections to realism, but this time the story was just too unbelievable.

“A Walk in the Sun” is well-liked. The story first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction (October, 1991). It won a Hugo and came in first in a Locus annual Readers’ poll. It’s often reprinted. I don’t mean to pick on it, but it does serve as a useful example of when science fiction goes too far.

Now, going too far is relative. Science fiction explores a limited number of themes, and new writers often take an old theme and push it a bit further. While reading “A Walk in the Sun,” I thought of Have Spacesuit-Will Travel, where Kip and Peewee make a dash across the Moon’s surface only in spacesuits. It’s quite dramatic and realistic. At least, it’s always been realistic to me. Heinlein worked with a team designing pressure suits during WWII, and he wrote two books in which spacesuits were a significant part of the story. The other being Starship Troopers.

Have Spacesuit-Will Travel was first serialized in the August 1958 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. By 1958, real spacesuits were being designed and tested. I feel the science fiction from the 1950s tried much harder to stick to realistic speculation because writers knew manned rocket travel was just a few years off, and travel to the Moon wasn’t much farther.

However, Heinlein took science fiction too far in Have Spacesuit-Will Travel. By the end of the story, Kip and Peewee traveled to the Lesser Magellanic Clouds. Even though I dearly love Have Spacesuit-Will Travel and have reread it more than any other book, I do know that Heinlein was satirizing science fiction in it.

In one of the comments on this discussion of “A Walk in the Sun,” Frank Policastro mentioned H. B. Fyfe’s “Moonwalk” as a more realistic story. (Space Science Fiction, November 1952.)

I loaded that issue on my iPad and read it. “Moonwalk” was indeed a much more realistic story about an astronaut walking across the lunar surface. I wondered if Heinlein had read it. Here was a case of science fiction not going too far. The story is about the first major scientific base on the Moon near the crater Archimedes. The base houses fifty people. It has two tractors that explore the surrounding area. They lose contact with Tractor Two, which was heading towards the crater Plato, and aren’t sure what to do. Radio is limited to line-of-sight. They figured something bad could have happened, or the tractor had gone behind the wall of a crater. They decide to wait.

However, Tractor Two has been destroyed in a landslide, but one astronaut, Hansen, has been thrown free. He has the air tanks of his suit, and one large oxygen tank from the tractor. Hansen decides to start walking back towards base, hundreds of miles away, figuring base will eventually assume something is wrong and send out Tractor One to rescue him.

It’s interesting to compare the descriptions of walking across the Moon by Fyfe, Heinlein, and Landis. Two writers were speculating, and one had the accounts of twelve American astronauts who walked on the Moon.

When I was younger, I enjoyed science fiction stories that went too far. In fact, the further out the better. Now that I’m older, I prefer science fiction that stays close to what might be real. This time around, I preferred “Moonwalk.” It was a basic adventure story, but I enjoyed how Fyfe imagined what it would be like working on the Moon. While researching “Moonwalk” on ISFDB.org, I came across an Ace Double.

“Moonwalk” was anthologized in Men on the Moon. I’m looking forward to reading it, but I started reading City on the Moon by Murray Leinster first. I haven’t been in the mood to read science fiction for months. I just got burned out. However, I’m enjoying all these 1950s stories about early explorers of the Moon. I’m enjoying them because they don’t go too far.

Except for odd alternative-history stories, we don’t get science fiction about early exploration of the Moon. We get a fair amount of science fiction about established lunar colonies, but for the most part, I think they gone too far. I believe establishing bases on the Moon will be extremely difficult, so there’s plenty of room for speculative fiction. Establishing self-sufficient lunar colonies will be next to impossible. Science fiction has seldom explored that territory. Most science fiction today about the Moon leaps too far ahead. I want to read the nitty-gritty of building the first bases and what it would take to make permanent colonies.

I think I’ll dig into the past and see how science fiction writers handled the subject who stayed close to reality. If you know of any, please let me know.

JWH

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How Much Science Fiction Should I Collect and Read Before I Die?

I accomplished a task last night that I’ve been hoping to finish for months. It made me exceedingly happy. My goal was to create a digital library of all my scanned pulp and digest science fiction magazines so they could be accessed from any of my computer devices. I have three computers (Windows, Mac, Linux), four tablets (two iOS, two Android), and an iPhone.

Last year, I bought a UGreen DXP2800 NAS. NAS stands for network-attached storage. Think of it as a big hard drive that all your computers can access. Over the years, I’ve collected scanned copies of nearly every science fiction magazine published in the 20th century. The Pulp Magazine Archive at the Internet Archive is a great place to search for them, but there are many others on the net. When I was young, I wanted to collect pulp magazines, but it’s not very practical unless you want to fill every room of your house with old magazines. I’ve known people who have. Even collecting digital copies is a pain because collecting them eventually overwhelms the latest big disk you’ve bought.

I have a librarian gene. I worked for six years in the periodicals department of a university library in my twenties. Pictured above is just the top portion of my magazine directory on the NAS. Here’s how I see the same directory with the YACReader Library:

Here’s what it looks like when I select a year.

YACReader is by far the best CBR/CBZ/PDF reader I’ve found. And combining it with the YACReader Library is by far the easiest way to get pulp magazines on my tablets.

I can sit at any of my computers and, within seconds, look up any magazine. My previous ease-of-use success was putting all my magazines on a microSD card and loading it onto my Android tablet.

This new method is great when I’m researching an essay for this blog. I often use ISFDB.org or Wikipedia to look up a detail about an old story, and it will mention a magazine. Or I can be in my La-Z-Boy using a tablet and find a story to read. I can even be on my phone and look up a detail. YACReader runs on all my devices. YACReader users can access files via several networking methods or from several major cloud providers. However, there is also the YACReader Library. On a single-user machine, it’s just a nice graphical interface for looking at magazine covers. However, it offers a port for remote clients.

I wanted to put the YACReaderLibrary Server on my UGreen NAS, but after weeks of agonizing over how to set it up with Docker, I gave up. (I don’t know Docker or Linux well enough.) YACReader and the YACReader Library were a breeze to install on a Mac. Since I leave my Mac on all the time, I decided it was just simpler to install YACReaderLibrary on my Mac. Everything worked perfectly. I quickly went through all my devices, making sure they could access my magazine library — and I could.

You know that old saying, “Be careful what you wish for?” I woke up this morning anxious to play with my new system, and a revelation came to me. I had created the perfect system for reading, researching, and writing about 20th-century science fiction, but at 74, do I still need all that science fiction?

I could just pig out on sci-fi. The best analogy I can think of is to picture yourself in a beautiful bakery, looking at all the cases of cookies, cakes, and pies. You’d want to eat everything. And you might be willing to spend every bill in your wallet. But how many sweets should you actually take home? How many should you eat each day? I know my younger self could have spent 24/7 inside my new library.

This morning, I feel like Henry Bemis, when he was organizing piles of books he planned to read for each month of the rest of his life. I have enough science fiction for every minute I have left to live.

However, if we labeled reading science fiction on a pyramid diagram of healthy reading, where would it sit? Would it be an essential life-affirming activity shown as a large solid base, ot would it be an occasional sweet, illustrated as a tiny tip at the top of the pyramid?

When I watch the news, it makes me feel like withdrawing from the world to read science fiction and watch the old TV shows I’ve collected on my Jellyfin server. I confess, I’ve spent most of my life escaping into fiction — either by reading or watching. That troubles me. In old age, I wish I had been more active in my youth, when I had the energy. I wish I had created things, rather than consuming them. It’s too late to change my spots now.

Science fiction was my artificial reality.

Science fiction, as a genre, began one hundred years ago when Hugo Gernsback published the April 1926 issue of Amazing Stories. There is an alternate reality in these magazines that I prefer over actual reality. I get a big kick out of having this reality at my fingertips. My computers are like a time machine; I can jump to any location in its space and time.

I’ve collected enough. Now that I’m old, and real reality presses in, I mostly read about here and now. My fiction addiction is wearing off. But I can’t give it up completely. It’s strange, but there are moments during the day when I just dip into an old science fiction magazine for a few minutes, and my science fiction craving is satiated.

James Wallace Harris, 1/11/26

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How Unique A Reader Are You?

This morning, I read an email from a discussion group that mentioned Fitz-James O’Brien (1826-1862). You can sample his fiction at Project Gutenberg.

One member posted a link to a review of a new three-volume collection of his stories at The New York Review of Books. The review implied that O’Brien is little known, but several folks in the group quickly claimed they knew who he was. But that’s logical, our group is devoted to fiction in old magazines. I’ve even read some of O’Brien’s stories because they show up in science fiction anthologies, and I collect those. (See my post on 19th Century Science Fiction Short Stories.)

But this got me to thinking. How many people would know who Fitz-James O’Brien and read any of his stories? Then I asked myself, how many people read short stories? And of those, how many read old short stories? It’s one thing to read the short story in the latest issue of The New Yorker, and it’s another thing to read short stories originally published in the 19th century. Yes, some people still read Edgar Allan Poe, but how many outside of school?

I’ve always been a fan of science fiction magazines. When I was young, some of the top titles had over 100,000 subscribers. Over my lifetime, I’ve watched their subscriber base dwindle to well below 10,000.

It appears the three-volume Collective Speculative Works by Fitz-James O’Brien will be limited to 300 copies. Does that mean the publisher thinks fewer than 300 people in the world are interested in reading O’Brien’s stories? Or that some kind of marketable ploy? I don’t know. 300 is 0.0000036% of the world’s population. That’s one tiny subculture!

But all of this does make me curious about statistics on reading. I found “US Book Reading Statistics (National Survey 2025)“. It summarized its key findings:

  • Almost half of the respondents haven’t read any books in over a year: 48.5%
  • Print books were the most read books: 35.4%
  • The 65+ age group recorded the highest population of print book readers: 45.1%
  • The 45-54 age group contains the highest population of non-readers: 60.9%
  • Males recorded a slightly higher population of non-readers compared to females: 51.4%

The article reported that the Pew Research Center found that 64% of Americans read at least one book in the previous year. That’s a lot more than I expected, and it disagrees with their own poll.

This suggests there are many kinds of readers, and that made me speculate about possible names to give different types of readers. I’m not very good at creating fun labels, but here’s my lame attempt.

  • Non-readers (0 books per year)
  • Casual readers (1-11 books per year)
  • Steady readers (read a book a month)
  • Bookworms (read a book a week)
  • Super Bookworms (read two or more books a week)

This doesn’t say anything about the kinds of books they read. Someone who reads over a hundred books a year might never encounter the name Fitz-James O’Brien. In one of my older essays, I speculated that the average reader could not list more than one hundred titles from novels from the 19th century. And I listed the hundred I thought would be the most common. I doubt most people would come even close to recalling one hundred titles from the 19th century.

Outside of people I know in my discussion groups that specialize in old fiction, I doubt I have ever met anyone in my life who has read a story by Fitz-James O’Brien.

What possible name could we give to people who do? Bookworm is the tag that most people give to obsessive readers. But for every 1,000 bookworms, is there even one who reads old short stories from the 19th century? I know a fair number of people like me who love science fiction short stories from the 20th century, and I also know a smaller group who love short stories published in pulp magazines (mainly from 1900 to 1950). But how many people are we talking about? I asked CoPilot, and it estimates that the number is below 20,000 for people who read and collect old pulp fiction. That’s .0059% of the current U.S. population.

Would the word aficionado apply here? Here are some other words that CoPilot helped me find. Maybe we could use each for a different type of reader.

  • Aficionado
  • Enthusiast
  • Devotee
  • Connoisseur
  • Curator
  • Archivist
  • Bibliophile
  • Esotericist
  • Antiquarian
  • Obscurist
  • Archaeologist

We could use all these words to describe someone who would buy Collective Speculative Works by Fitz-James O’Brien.

At one time, I would have ordered this set. However, I’ve now reached an age where I’m trying to get rid of books rather than collect. But that set does call to me. Actually, what I would really like is digital scans of the periodicals where his stories were first published. I’ve collected scans of most science fiction magazines from the 20th century, but have next to nothing from the 19th century on my hard drive.

How many people are like me who love reading old magazines?

I’m sure it’s less than .006% of the population. What nickname would you give to such people? My wife would probably say, “A nut.”

James Wallace Harris, 12/31/25

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Is the Hugo Award a Good Predictor of Long Term Success for a Science Fiction Novel?

Whitney, over at the YouTube channel Secret Sauce of Storycraft, conducted a poll of her viewers. She asked them to post a list of their Top Ten Hugo award-winning novels. She tallied the totals for all the titles, giving ten points for a #1 placement, nine points for #2, and so on down to one point for tenth place. She announced the results in this video. (The totals were given in a spreadsheet – see below.) This video lists the Top 20 vote getters, and Whitney lists her own Top 20.

Here is the top portion of her pdf results to give you an idea of the most popular Hugo novels with her voters. She had 194 people vote. 45 ranked Dune #1 (45 x 10). Follow the link above to see the entire .pdf.

Throughout 2025, Whitney has been reviewing the novels that won the Hugo. She had a video for each decade. They are worth viewing for a longer review of each book.

As I watched each video, I thought about my memories of these books. Some I first read over sixty years ago. Some I’ve reread since. Some titles burn bright in my memory, but for other books, I only have murky impressions.

Jonathan at Words in Time also did a video retrospective review of all the Hugo award-winning novels. I guess this is an obvious theme for a YouTube video. Jonathan presented his results in a ranking video.

And there are other YouTubers who have also reviewed the novels that won the Hugo awards. Watching all these videos has made me think about how I remember these books. Looking at Wikipedia’s list of winners of the Hugo Award for novel, I got CoPilot to create this list:

01 – (1953) – THE DEMOLISHED MAN by Alfred Bester
02 – (1955) – THEY’D RATHER BE RIGHT by Mark Clifton & Frank Riley*
03 – (1956) – DOUBLE STAR by Robert A. Heinlein
04 – (1958) – THE BIG TIME by Fritz Leiber
05 – (1959) – A CASE OF CONSCIENCE by James Blish
06 – (1960) – STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert A. Heinlein
07 – (1961) – A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
08 – (1962) – STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert A. Heinlein
09 – (1963) – THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE by Philip K. Dick
10 – (1964) – HERE GATHER THE STARS (WAY STATION) by Clifford D. Simak
11 – (1965) – THE WANDERER by Fritz Leiber
12 – (1966) – DUNE by Frank Herbert
13 – (1966) – …AND CALL ME CONRAD (THIS IMMORTAL) by Roger Zelazny
14 – (1967) – THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert A. Heinlein
15 – (1968) – LORD OF LIGHT by Roger Zelazny
16 – (1969) – STAND ON ZANZIBAR by John Brunner
17 – (1970) – THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K. Le Guin
18 – (1971) – RINGWORLD by Larry Niven
19 – (1972) – TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO by Philip José Farmer
20 – (1973) – THE GODS THEMSELVES by Isaac Asimov*
21 – (1974) – RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA by Arthur C. Clarke
22 – (1975) – THE DISPOSSESSED by Ursula K. Le Guin
23 – (1976) – THE FOREVER WAR by Joe Haldeman
24 – (1977) – WHERE LATE THE SWEET BIRDS SANG by Kate Wilhelm
25 – (1978) – GATEWAY by Frederik Pohl
26 – (1979) – DREAMSNAKE by Vonda N. McIntyre*
27 – (1980) – THE FOUNTAINS OF PARADISE by Arthur C. Clarke
28 – (1981) – THE SNOW QUEEN by Joan D. Vinge*
29 – (1982) – DOWNBELOW STATION by C. J. Cherryh*
30 – (1983) – FOUNDATION’S EDGE by Isaac Asimov*
31 – (1984) – STARTIDE RISING by David Brin
32 – (1985) – NEUROMANCER by William Gibson
33 – (1986) – ENDER’S GAME by Orson Scott Card
34 – (1987) – SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD by Orson Scott Card
35 – (1988) – THE UPLIFT WAR by David Brin
36 – (1989) – CYTEEN by C. J. Cherryh*
37 – (1990) – HYPERION by Dan Simmons
38 – (1991) – THE VOR GAME by Lois McMaster Bujold*
39 – (1992) – BARRAYAR by Lois McMaster Bujold*
40 – (1993) – A FIRE UPON THE DEEP by Vernor Vinge
41 – (1993) – DOOMSDAY BOOK by Connie Willis
42 – (1994) – GREEN MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson*
43 – (1995) – MIRROR DANCE by Lois McMaster Bujold*
44 – (1996) – THE DIAMOND AGE by Neal Stephenson*
45 – (1997) – BLUE MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson*
46 – (1998) – FOREVER PEACE by Joe Haldeman
47 – (1999) – TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG by Connie Willis
48 – (2000) – A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY by Vernor Vinge
49 – (2001) – HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE by J. K. Rowling
50 – (2002) – AMERICAN GODS by Neil Gaiman
51 – (2003) – HOMINIDS by Robert J. Sawyer*
52 – (2004) – PALADIN OF SOULS by Lois McMaster Bujold*
53 – (2005) – JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL by Susanna Clarke
54 – (2006) – SPIN by Robert Charles Wilson
55 – (2007) – RAINBOWS END by Vernor Vinge*
56 – (2008) – THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION by Michael Chabon
57 – (2009) – THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman*
58 – (2010) – THE WINDUP GIRL by Paolo Bacigalupi
59 – (2010) – THE CITY & THE CITY by China Miéville
60 – (2011) – BLACKOUT/ALL CLEAR by Connie Willis*
61 – (2012) – AMONG OTHERS by Jo Walton
62 – (2013) – REDSHIRTS by John Scalzi
63 – (2014) – ANCILLARY JUSTICE by Ann Leckie
64 – (2015) – THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM by Cixin Liu
65 – (2016) – THE FIFTH SEASON by N. K. Jemisin*
66 – (2017) – THE OBELISK GATE by N. K. Jemisin*
67 – (2018) – THE STONE SKY by N. K. Jemisin*
68 – (2019) – THE CALCULATING STARS by Mary Robinette Kowal
69 – (2020) – A MEMORY CALLED EMPIRE by Arkady Martine*
70 – (2021) – NETWORK EFFECT by Martha Wells*
71 – (2022) – A DESOLATION CALLED PEACE by Arkady Martine*
72 – (2023) – NETTLE & BONE by T. Kingfisher*
73 – (2024) – SOME DESPERATE GLORY by Emily Tesh*
74 – (2025) – THE TAINTED CUP by Robert Jackson Bennett*

I’ve starred (*) the 28 novels I haven’t read. I own many of them, but for some reason, I have never gotten around to reading them.

Now that I’m 74, my feelings about science fiction are different from when I was 13, or 33, or even 63.

Two novels that are at the top of most people’s lists are Dune and Hyperion. I’ve read Dune twice and Hyperion three times. They were dazzling novels each time I read them. However, old me, at 74, does not find them very appealing. I would have been hard-pressed to send Whitney my Top 10 list.

But is it fair to judge a novel by how you feel in old age? It occurs to me I could make a Top 10 list based on the memories of my first reading of each book.

Jim’s Top Ten Hugo Award Winning Books Based On Initial Impact

  1. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
  2. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
  3. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
  4. Hyperion by Dan Simmons
  5. Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
  6. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
  7. Among Others by Jo Walton
  8. The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
  9. The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
  10. Way Station by Clifford D. Simak

Looking at that list, I think about all the reasons why I wouldn’t recommend some of those novels now. I have a love-hate relationship with Stranger in a Strange Land. At age 13, that novel blew me away in 1964. I’ve reread it several times over my lifetime, but with each rereading, I’m horrified by some scenes in it. Heinlein reminds me of Donald Trump in that his protagonists are often unforgiving of people who offend them.

But on the other hand, Stranger is an incredibly ambitious work of science fiction from 1961. In fact, few books on the complete Hugo list even try to be as ambitious. Dune is one. That’s why it continues to stand out. Stand on Zanzibar was probably too ambitious for most readers.

I see a common quality in the books in my first impression list. They were different from anything else at the time. And that’s true for most novels that win a Hugo. Although that quality might not be true in recent decades. People seem to like series, which I find disappointing. Connie Willis has three Hugos for essentially the same idea, although each is told in a different style.

But what books would I put on my Top Ten list today, at age 74? Thinking about that troubles me. My gut instinct would be to pick novels I felt meant something to my whole life, not just the first time I read them. In that regard, science fiction doesn’t hold up.

To complicate this instinct is the feeling that I would need to reread these books to decide if they merit a lifetime award or recognition. It took me a lifetime to read them, so that won’t happen.

I would pick Among Others by Jo Walton because it’s about being a science fiction fan. It’s certainly something that relates to my entire life. I need to reread Way Station, but I have a vague memory that it said something philosophical I would agree with in old age. Finally, I would consider The Man in the High Castle because it could resonate with my current philosophical outlook, but I’d need to give it another reading.

I’m not sure if any of the other 71 titles have true lasting literary value, at least to me. Not in the sense that Nineteen Eighty-Four or Earth Abides does. Or even The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds.

Science fiction dazzles when it’s new, and its readers are young. To be fair, though, it’s true of all forms of fiction.

The sad reality is that most science fiction books can’t go the distance.

If you reread the list above of those 74 novels, consider how many you have read. How many are unknown titles to you? Many of these novels are often discussed by YouTubers. That keeps them alive. YouTube is great for old science fiction books. But if you pay attention, those same YouTubers are shooting down many famous titles.

The act of reviewing Hugo winners promotes some books and causes others to be forgotten. I feel like I’m watching younger generations dismiss books beloved by older generations. It’s not just old guys like me giving up on them.

James Wallace Harris, 12/29/25

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A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT and A PRAYER FOR THE CROWN-SHY by Becky Chambers

Can science fiction writers imagine a pleasant future for us? Becky Chambers creates a kindly society in her Monk and Robot duology that is very appealing. Unfortunately, at least for me, the story is set on an imaginary moon called Panga. I would have preferred to contemplate whether such a future is possible for us, here on Earth.

I discovered A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers while searching Google for the best science fiction books of the last decade. I had just finished the literary science fiction novel Anniebot by Sierra Greer and wanted a recent genre science fiction novel to follow up. I’ve been wanting to catch up on what’s been happening in science fiction over the last decade. My science fiction reading tends to focus on 20th-century SF, and I wanted to read 21st-century SF instead.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built was a fortunate choice because it tuned me onto an emerging wavelength of science fiction I hadn’t explored. It is both a hopepunk and a solarpunk novel. Essentially, these movements are about positive futures, especially ones based on sustainable ecological economics.

I decided to buy the audiobook of A Psalm for the Wild-Built when I read that it was about a time long after robots had become sentient and chose to leave civilization and live in the wilds of nature. That was an intriguing premise. I had tried to read Becky Chambers’ most famous novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, but had given up because it was too bland for me. All the characters were too nice. Reading it made me wonder if fiction needed some asshole characters to be exciting. That made me hesitant to try A Psalm for the Wild-Built.

It turns out everyone is also nice in the Monk and Robot books, too. However, this time I didn’t miss a good antagonist. The story is very gentle, almost childlike. Modern YA novels are full of dark edginess, so these books don’t even feel YA. However, there is language that’s not suitable for young children

The book’s dedication is to “For anybody who could use a break.” Even though Chambers describes a gentle, pleasant, kind, liberal utopia, Sibling Dex is a dissatisfied young man. This novel is really about asking: “What do I want to do?” My guess is that Chambers is appealing to young people who are uncertain about our future.

The book opens with a quote from Brother Gil’s From the Brink: A Spiritual Retrospect on the Factory Age and Earth Transition Era.

I liked this opening a lot. Not only has Chambers imagined a sustainable society, but made it polytheistic. Panga feels Buddhist and tribal.

The story tells us about a restless young man, Dex, who chooses to become a Tea Monk. This is a person who travels from town to town serving tea and listening to people share their worries. This allows the readers to learn about Panga and its different human societies. Eventually, Dex goes into the wild territories of the robots and meets Mosscap. Mosscap is on its own mission to explore, deciding it needs to learn about humans.

Robots have become nature lovers. Humans and robots have spent two hundred years apart, and now they are a mystery to each other. Chambers uses the conversations between Dex and Mosscap as philosophical jumping-off points. These two novellas, which are really one story, are gently philosophical in intent. It never gets too deep or academic.

Dex struggles to find his purpose, and Mosscap becomes his guru. And Dex becomes Mosscap’s tour guide, teaching him about humans and our society. It’s a nice setup. These two books are a pleasant read. The vibe of this story reminded me of the film The Wild Robot. In other ways, the story reminded me of the Oz books by L. Frank Baum.

However, I think I need to give a trigger warning to Republican readers. Dex is a non-binary person Chambers refers to with they/them pronouns. If you have hangups about DEI issues, this book might not be for you.

Yesterday, I discovered a video featuring Becky Chambers and Annalee Newitz entitled Resisting Dystopia. I understand their intent, but I dislike it when all unpleasant societies in fiction are called dystopian. To me, dystopias are failed utopias.

The Handmaid’s Tale is an excellent example of a dystopian novel. The leaders of the Republic of Gilead work to build their vision of perfection, but to many living in Gilead, it is a dystopia. America in the 21st century and its future could be seen as a dystopia by the broad definition that Chambers and Newitz use. Any fictional description of Earth, under a collapsing ecosystem, could be considered a dystopia by the broad definition of the term. However, I prefer to define the term more narrowly. If the Christian Right made America into a theocracy, it would become a dystopia. It’s only when one group of people intentionally shapes a society to fit an ideal that we get a dystopia. That’s how I see resisting utopia.

Panga is not a utopia. I don’t see science fiction about positive futures as anti-dystopian. Nor do I see stories about dark futures as dystopian. The world pictured in Blade Runner is not dystopian. It’s just complex and Darwinian, like life on Earth in the 21st century.

I think it’s great that young science fiction writers like Chambers and Newitz want to imagine positive futures. However, any robust society capable of long-term survival will have countless conflicts and stresses. If you’ve read Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, you should be familiar with the concept of antifragility. Evolution needs grist for its mill.

The Robot and Monk books are nice, pleasant reads. Subgenres of science fiction, such as hopepunk and solarpunk, are appealing, but ultimately not realistic. Science fiction has always tended to be escapistic. I hope resisting dystopia isn’t just hiding out.

The science fiction novels I loved reading sixty years ago promised a positive future exploring space, but that’s not the future I find myself living in now. It was novels like Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner that better prepared me for these times.

If you want to resist dystopia, whether just a bleak future or a failed utopia, getting comfortable will undermine your goal.

James Wallace Harris, 11/18/25

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A Science Fiction Research Library on a microSD Card

In the 1960s, we often thought about what life would be like in the 21st century. We’d speculated about fantastic inventions. One that frequently came up was having the Library of Congress in a device we could hold in our hands. In a way, a smartphone is that device. However, we didn’t anticipate networking. We just imagined all the works in the Library of Congress copied onto a small device.

We’re close to having that invention now. It’s not like how we imagined. We don’t think about the future as much today as we did back in the 1960s. Change is happening so fast that every day seems like the future. However, can we speculate what a fantastic invention we might have in another sixty years?

I did something fun the other day, something even science fictional. I put all my scanned science fiction magazines and books on a teeny-tiny 1 TB microSD card and loaded it into my old Amazon Fire 10 HD tablet. That tiny library contains 7,266 magazines and fanzines, as well as 3,570 fiction and nonfiction books. I’ve assembled this collection from the internet. Many items can be found on the Internet Archive or the Luminist Archives. Although some come from DVD-R disc collections I bought on eBay.

The Internet is a gigantically large library itself, but not one that’s always easy to use. When I was young, I worked in libraries. I always loved special collections. Special collections can contain material of any type, but they often house personal libraries donated by famous people. These donated libraries frequently focus on a single subject or type of work that’s been collected over a lifetime. I have a lifetime love for science fiction and science fiction magazines.

My microSD card is a special collection on a tiny chip that, back in the 1960s, we would have considered a marvel of the future. They are not so special today. I keep several in an old orange plastic pill bottle.

For fifteen years, I’ve collected digital copies of books and magazines on Dropbox. I had almost filled my two terabytes of cloud storage when I decided to buy a NAS. NAS stands for network-attached storage. I purchased a Ugreen DXP2800 and two Seagate 12 TB drives, which I mirrored. Now my digital library can expand to six times its previous size.

There is a major problem with leaving the cloud. If something bad happened to my DXP2800, such as the house burning down, my library and years of work would disappear. I have copies on external drives, but I need to find a way to keep regular copies off-site. My first thought was to take an external drive to a friend’s house, but then I remembered the microSD card.

Years ago, I bought a 128 GB card (pictured above) to test with my Amazon Fire 10 HD. That didn’t work out well because the card was too small, and larger capacity cards were too expensive.

Up till now, I have read my digital library with an iPad Mini, accessing my files from Dropbox. It didn’t matter that my old iPad only had 64 GB of storage. Each time I downloaded a magazine, it took about 30 seconds.

When I first considered backing up to a microSD, I checked current prices, and a 1 TB card was $67. That’s when I got the idea to see if I could copy my science fiction library onto a single 1 TB microSD. Copying just science fiction-related magazines, fanzines, and books, I used up just 650 GB.

I loaded that microSD into my Amazon Fire HD 10 and ran CDisplayEX. It saw the files. It even displayed them beautifully. And it was fast. Pulp magazines loaded instantly. Here’s the directory page for Astounding Science-Fiction 1942.

I realized I held in my hands what I had dreamed about sixty years ago. I had the ultimate pulp magazine reading machine. The tablet also allowed me access to thousands of Kindle books and Audible audiobooks. It wasn’t The Library of Congress in my hands, but it was amazing. I could kick back in my La-Z-Boy and browse through decades of magazines. That’s quite cool.

This got me thinking. How can I best use this resource? How can I integrate it into my work routines? Normally, as I create posts for this blog, I read and think in my La-Z-Boy, but I get up and write at my computer.

Being the lazy person that I am, I’ve long wanted to write anywhere and at any time. I spend a lot of time with my eyes closed, thinking. I compose essays in my head, but they are vaguely formed. After a point, the pressure of keeping all those ideas in my head gets too great, and I have to jump up and start writing.

I’ve always wanted to read, think, and write simultaneously. I’m now wondering if I can combine my new reading machine with a note-taking app and a word processor? Combining CDisplayEX with Obsidian and Jetpack goes a long way towards that idea. It occurs to me there’s more needed.

A large library isn’t useful without a card catalog. Before computers, this was called a card catalog because it was contained in drawers of index cards. However, special collections usually had their own index. Most people use Google and the Internet as their card catalog, but it is becoming more problematic every day.

I depend on two indexes to explore science fiction: Wikipedia and ISFDB.org. For example, here is the ISFDB.org page that indexes the history of the magazine Astounding/Analog. Here is the Wikipedia entry that describes the history of that magazine. And although ISFDB.org will eventually link you to the Internet Archive to read a particular issue, it would be cool if it linked to my copy of the magazine. It is possible to download copies of Wikipedia and ISFDB.org, but it’s not practical to integrate them into my tablet library of science fiction.

Certain things should stay in the cloud. Realistically, that should include the magazines and books. What we didn’t imagine back in the 1960s was a better version of The Library of Congress. Why should everyone own a NAS and build their own special collection?

The only advantage I have for messing with this tablet is speed. If my access to everything on the Internet were instant, would I need any storage at all? No, I wouldn’t. Currently, Internet speeds are fast, but not quite speedy enough. The real speed bump is how everything is organized. It’s finding what you want that’s really slow.

Here’s where AI comes in. I’ve discovered it’s quicker to ask CoPilot to find something than to ask Google. Unfortunately, when CoPilot can’t find what I want, it makes shit up.

You might be wondering by now where this essay is going. At first, I only wanted to describe the delight I found in my science fiction library on a tablet. But along the way, I began to imagine other science-fictional possibilities of taking the idea further.

Writing this essay has made me realize that what I really want to build is an annotated science fiction library. My blog is a disjointed attempt to write an annotated history of science fiction.

Here is my speculation for an awe-inspiring future device. Instead of having a Library of Congress we can hold in our hands, I’d like a handheld device that saves a copy of every artwork that inspires me, with a lifetime of my annotated thoughts about them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Shakespeare had such a gadget? I wish my parents had left me such memory cubes.

James Wallace Harris, 10/25/25