The bug eyed monster of youthful stupidity: This morning I read in my newspaper that the University of Calgary has acquired a huge collection of science fiction pulps. And I become uncommonly sad.
For you see, as a youth of around twelve (back at the turn of the last century, I believe) I acquired a collection of somewhere around 150 of these magazines from a friend of my mother's who had collected them in her early youth. Thrilling Wonder Stories, Startling Stories and the like.
Unlike friends of mine who had all their comic books in little plastic bags and wouldn't let you read them, I was too stupid to realize that I shouldn't actually be devouring the entertainment contained therein. So, unsophisticated Prairie goof that I was, I swallowed the stories whole and went on, later, to read the current science fiction of the day.
Then, when I was 18, I had some money saved, but I needed more to go to Europe. I sold the lot of the pulps for almost nothing, along with my comic collection.
Now, okay, would I trade that year in Europe (well England and France, to be truthful about it) to have those pulps back? Probably not. Because of that time I am what I am.
I wonder now if any of my magazines are in the hands of the University of Calgary. And will anyone ever truly read them again with any kind of sense of wonder?
They felt great in the hands and they had that unmatched pulpy smell -- something no one will ever get a whiff of once they're sealed up for eternity, or the next 100 years, whichever comes first.
8:14:10 AM 
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