Memories on my birthday

 

You have no idea how hard it was to get a picture of this book!

I'm traveling down memory lane today. I turned 70.

I've reached the three score and ten mentioned in the Bible as the life expectancy of man.

Way back in 1976, as a fresh graduate of college and living in student housing at seminary in Fort Worth, just after first wife and my one-year anniversary (there wouldn't be a second), I joined the Science Fiction Book Club. I got a few books for free and was only required to buy four over the next year. This was one of those free books.

It was June, classes wouldn't start until September. I was working at a bank as a file clerk for four hours a day and in the evenings walking around a drug store keeping the shoplifting down. I'd get home, have a bite to eat. Spend time with wife before she went to bed, and I'd read for an hour or so before joining her. 

I got this book in the mail and started reading. I finished it at 8 in the morning. It was a Saturday so no need to go to the bank and I went to bed. Wife was not happy, and I could hear her talking to the neighbors in the apartment next door asking where I was, and she told them I spent all night reading a book. The wife next door told her (this was seminary housing) "Get used to it, when classes start this will be the norm."

The book is about a man ejecting from an escape pod right before his ship is destroyed by enemy fire. His pod lands on an alien planet that is not space flight capable. He's taken into custody and taken to the chief of the village. The area he's in is at war and he's treated with suspicion, but the war lord of the area sees his importance and give him a female to teach him their language. He then lends a hand in helping the war lord win the war, but the woman he fell in love with dies in battle.

This is 1976, the plot was new to me, it was well written and captivating hence reading it through the night. I've read many books in one sitting, but never through the night, it's usually an all-day kind of thing.

I started getting a lot of books from the SF book club, I focused on Asimov, Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clark, Anne McCaffrey and others. 

Marriage broke up, seminary was over, and I returned home to Albuquerque and civilization. Texas is a good place to be FROM.

Took a bit to get divorced, and meanwhile while doing odd and ends kind of jobs I had a lot of time in the basement of my parent's house to read and read and read. I read everything I could get my hands on by Harlan Ellison, Harold Robbins, Isaac Asimov, barely made a dent in his works, all the dragon books and Crystaline Singers of Anne McCaffrey and hit a stone wall trying to read everything by James A. Michener.

I got remarried (coming up to 44th anniversary). In the summer of 1980, a mini-series was advertised to be coming out in a few months called Shogun.

I was working at diesel repair shop as shop clerk and handling warranty. I finally bought the book by James Clavell. I'd been reluctant to buy another book that thick after banging my head against the wall by Michener. I decided to read it before the mini-series which wouldn't come out until October.

I start reading it and all of a sudden, the plot is familiar. Granted it is much more involved, has tons of history and huge culture clash. It does read fast while Michener plods and is dull and dry at times. 

It hit me. Brothers of the Earth, in a much simpler form and set in outer space.

Shogun came out before Brothers. I could see where CJ borrowed the plot and extrapolated it as science fiction. 

Recently I looked Ms. Cherryh up on Amazon. She's now 80 and has over 80 published books and other writings.

For some reason her used books are much cheaper than e-books and they're not on unlimited.

So, I went across town to a used bookstore. It's actually an exchange, you bring in a sack full of paperbacks or hardbacks, they give you credit for them and then pay the difference for the sack full of books you're buying.

I used to raid my parents' library in the basement I used to reside in and could get lots and lots of books for around a buck and change. This was in the 80's, and I lived not far from the store. The daughter now runs the place and it's still there, one of the few stores left on that stretch of a main street. Almost all the others have been bulldozed down and there's nothing, but dirt left for a few blocks.

Anyhoo, I stopped by and found six books by CJ in hardback. No longer had an account with credit and didn't think to clean out my paperback library so they cost twenty bucks. About what one e-book of hers would cost.

I don't like reading hard copy anymore. I just bought a Super Jumbo Print NASV Bible from Amazon to use at church.

I've finished her book Rimrunners and have five to go. She reminds me a lot of Andre Norton, and her style of SF is in that mode. If you're into early Asimov, Norton, and the great writers of the 40's 50's, 60's she's right up your alley, even though she didn't start publishing until the 70's she's carried on that tradition.