The Machinery of Night

Posted 9:56 PM by Angie Schultz

BLASPHEMER!

(I wish I had a cool medieval font for that.)

Bigwig is committing MURDER!

Tonight I told friends of 25 years goodbye. Tonight I killed Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser, and Conan, and Logan and Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. They lie among piles of kin, hundreds of characters from the last 5 decades of fantasy and science fiction.

Thank you, my friends. Thank you for all the years.

I have --- literally --- thousands of books, not all of them science fiction by any means. I lived for five years in the Bay Area, where there are library book sales every month. Palo Alto has one every month, and many of the other municipal libraries have two a year---Sunnyvale and Mountain View and Menlo Park and Los Altos. I never got up to the big San Francisco sale. Some of them, like Sunnyvale, had a few books always on sale up front; Menlo Park had its own little bookstore in the library, and I think Los Gatos had a separate bookstore away from the library.

That used to be the highlight of my month, to drive up to Palo Alto and battle the book dealers for goodies. Ah, the boring tales I could tell, about the ones I caught, and the ones that got away!

Anyway, I acquired about a thousand books like that. Many of them aren't very good; many are just non-fiction books I found interesting. It goes without saying that I haven't read all of them.

Anyhow, Bigwig is now tossing out his old books. I wouldn't have a thing to say to Robert Asprin books (though the Starblaze editions had pretty covers), nor Gardener (have a couple of his Zork novels---much duller than the game). But Poul and Laumer and Bova and Ellison? And Clarke and Asimov? No way, man.

When I read that, it felt as if I'd been punched in the gut. I've boxed those books, and labelled and taped them and hauled them from Missouri to Texas to California and back to Texas and on to Sydney and back again. They're damned heavy, and get heavier by the year. I want them to light somewhere, permanently.

Seems he's doing this because he's getting a baby. I wouldn't have any use for one of those. I'd rather have the books.