Used Book Archaeology

 

So I am finally getting to Asimov’s classic 1951 Foundation paperback that I picked up a few weeks ago. Throughout my early childhood I read at least seven of his works.* He was easily my main introduction to science fiction. Didn’t get to Foundation until sometime in the late 80s, and got about a quarter of the way through it before more pressing concerns took my attention (my band, night school, girlfriend, alcohol, etc.). I tried it again during the Wu Flu but only made it a few chapters. Not sure why; but again, more pressing concerns were on my mind at that time.

 

Anyway, I opened the book and this fell out:

 

A receipt from November 15, 1975! Half a century old!

 

It appears to have originated from a place called the Sierra Book Shop in South Lake Tahoe, California. I googled for a few minutes and the place (or a place with the exact same name) could still be in business. I also found that someone who possibly owned it retired in 1980 (maybe sold the business?) so perhaps it since exists under new management. My purpose of the all this was to find a picture of the place to post here, but couldn’t find anything definitive online.

 

The forever mysterious customer bought four books – one for $7.00 and three for $1.25. The Foundation novel has a price on the front cover of $1.25 – which converts to $7.55 in 2025 dollars. Sounds about right. I also see that the tax on the $10.75 purchase was $0.65, or six percent. Now google tells me the sales tax in Lake Tahoe is 8.75 percent, a 46 percent increase over 50 years. Honestly, I thought it’d be more.

 

I truly wonder what the other three books bought were, especially that $7.00 one. That bad boy would sell for $42 today.

 

* Those seven Asimov paperbacks were: The Bicentennial Man, Nine Tomorrows, The Gods Themselves, Pebble in the Sky, The Caves of Steel, I Robot, and the novelization of the movie Fantastic Voyage. I read them all several times between 10 and 12 and loved every minute of it.

Book Review: Pirates of Venus

 

© 1934 by Edgar Rice Burroughs

 

This was a completely random find perusing a new semi-local bookstore two weeks back. More importantly, this book has a little history with me. I vividly remember reading this in paperback form in the late 70s. My father was a high school football defensive coordinator, and young nerd me was devouring this olden-time story one fall in the late 70s on the practice field, on the sidelines, in the school weight room, under the bleachers. Fond memories from long ago.

 

Now, I did not remember the plot at all. Being an Edgar Rice Burroughs story (1875-1950, author of numerous series of novels starring Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, hollow-earth Pellucidar, among others), the story is a basic rags-to-riches jungle adventure that could take place anywhere in the Solar System of Burrough’s mind (and time). This one featured an Earthling hero named Carson Napier and unfolds on Venus, with warring tribes, naval battles, piracy, giant monsters, princesses, and swashbuckling swordplay taking center stage.

 

But this is not why I remembered Pirates of Venus. This must have been the first story – having read it way before Tolkien – where a new language is a prominent feature. Well, not exactly prominent per se as one finds it in The Lord of the Rings, but Napier drops some Venusian vocabulary and grammar rules here and there, and it’s these that stuck with me over 45 years:

 

As we battled futilely to disengage ourselves, the klangan settled to the ground, each pair upon opposite sides of the victim they had snared. Thus they held us so that we were helpless, as two cowboys hold a roped steer, while the fifth angan approached us with drawn sword and disarmed us. (Perhaps I should explain that angan is singular, klangan plural, plurals of Amtorian words being formed by prefixing kloo to words commencing with a consonant and kl to those commencing with a vowel.)

   (page 92 of my Ace science fiction paperback

 

There is so much in a name. I had liked the name of the Sofal from the first. Perhaps it was the psychology of that name that suggested the career upon which I was now launched. It means killer. The verb meaning kill is fal. The prefix so has the same value of the suffix er in English; so sofal means killer. Vong is the Amtorian word for defend; therefore, Sovong, the name of our first prize, means defender; but the Sovong had not lived up to her name.

   (page 135 of my Ace science fiction paperback)

 

And tidbits such as these are what called out to me over half a century; this tree trunk appendage of neurons and neurolinguistic programming remained in place all that time for me to recall it and overwhelm me with a cascade of sublime nostalgia.

 

Overall, I ‘grade’ Pirates of Venus a B-minus. Probably thought it was an A back when I was a young’n, but time is too short to spend on such tales as an adult. A smorgasbord of ERB should definitely be fed to tween boys in perpetuity; and a whole rash of newly-hatched science fiction authors will emerge …

 

Notes:

1) “Amtor” is the name the Venusian give to Venus. Napier fights for the nation of “Vepajan” in the novel.

2) I found a different Amtor novel about 13 or 14 years ago and started to read it, but the damn thing disappeared on me, vanished without a trace, and thus permanently remained unread. To this day, I still think a toddler living in the house with me named Patch had something to do with the theft.