Summer and Science Fiction

So I just came back in from cutting half the back yard, where the grass (thin as it grows) is very tall. I let it go weekend after weekend because I have been putting in time doing freelance editing, reviewing stories to include in Close Thrones and Arcane Arts (which is nearly done), and before that, reading through the page proofs of Robert E. Howard: A Literary Biography, which will be rereleased soon in an updated paperback edition as well as a hardcover edition for libraries. (I was able to make a few corrections of fact as well of typos, as well as add to or add a couple of notes.)

The morning is muggy. I got started a little before 10. Now it’s 10:30 and the battery of my Ego lawn mower is out of juice. Got to give it a half hour to recharge.

Anyhow, it is damp, I’m catching the overripe aroma of wet grass, trees, all of that, and it takes me back to summers in my parents’ back yard when I was an adolescent and the whole point of summer for me was to take it easy and read sf and anything else that caught my fancy—maybe something about ancient Egypt or the Roman Empire, but usually paperback adventures and sf. Lots of Ace books (I still have many)—Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leigh Bracket, and the usual suspects. We’re talking the mid-1960s, when I would have been 12 (in 1964) and thereafter. I was already following our space program and, soon, Star Trek. For some strange reason I was not drawn to the digest magazines; I don’t know why and realize that there is no excuse for that! It was books for me, I guess. But also Famous Monsters and Creepy and Eerie (I still have all the early issues. And a bunch of FMs, too.)

But one strong memory is that I was a member for a while of the Science Fiction Book Club, so I remember reading Heinlein (Farnham’s Freehold is one, and Starship Troopers) and other authors. What I miss most is those monthly bulletins they put out on that glossy paper. I saved none. They were almost square and they had those exquisite Virgil Finlay illustrations. I thought at that time that I might become a comic book artist or illustrator; I practiced every day with pen and ink, usually a crow quill pen tip and a  bottle of India ink in a rubber base. I practiced a lot but never got past being fairly meh. Still, I loved the feel of drawing with that pen tip in real ink.

To be continued.