Reading Week: "See you, Space Cowboy."

Today's plan is to do a day trip to Joshua Tree National Park, located just north of Palm Springs.  As always when I travel, I've done a search for used bookstores, and to my happy surprise there are not one but two science-fiction intensive shops located close to the northern entrance to the park: Raven's Book Shop and Space Cowboy. 

Raven's Book Shop, located on Highway 62 near the small community of 29 Palms, is a collector's dream, and a bit of a cautionary tale in terms of curating a used bookstore.

Inventory management is a key element of operating any kind of store.  However, unlike most retail outlets, used book stores depend on the kindness of strangers to replenish their stock, picking and choosing from the books that cross their threshold rather than picking things out of a catalogue.*

The key part of that sentence was "picking and choosing".  There are two traditional traps that await the owners of used book stores:  the wrong kind of inventory, or too much.  I can look at the science fiction shelf in a used bookstore and tell you instantly whether or not they know anything about science fiction - basically, the more Dragonlance and Star Wars novels, the lower their knowledge level.

 

The other problem is overstocking, and as the owner of a substantial library, I'm sympathetic with the people who fall prey to this particular sin.  After all, there are so many books of interest, and it must be very hard to say no to someone who walks through the door with a particularly noteworthy volume for sale.  The trick is to make sure that you sell as many of these books as you buy, or else you run out of room and your store begins to look a bit like the bookshelves in my spare bedroom.

The second we walk into Raven's, it's obvious that they've lost the battle in terms of saying no, but they've lost another kind of battle as well. A lot of the shelves are double stacked, and there's a pile of books at least three feet tall behind the front desk. (You can see the edge of the mound in the photo above.)  But not all the shelves are full, and it looks a bit like new acquisitions have been dropped anywhere convenient rather than appropriately sorted and shelved.

Working my way through the stacks, I'm a bit puzzled by the pricing structure.  Prices seem to be all over the map, with some books priced quite affordably, but other similar books a bit at the high end of current used book pricing.  Regardless of pricing, the selection is impressive - there are a lot of books here, but they've certainly been well chosen.  Karli has generously told me that she's prepared to wait for as long as I want to stay there, but it's obvious that I could spend the entire day if not a full week going through the shelves, and we still have another store - and a national park - to visit today.

As such, I'm not too choosy in my selections, and fairly quickly put together an acceptable handful of books: Adam Link - Robot, a collection of Golden Age SF Eando Binder stories published by the Paperback Library in 1965; one of the excellent New Writings in SF collections, edited by John Carnell; a first edition 1966 paperback copy of Starswarm, a short story collection by Brian Aldiss; and a trio of Ace Doubles for my collection.

As I'm preparing to make my way to the front and settle up, Karli glances up and notes a large fuzzy ball on the shelf over our heads. "Probably a tribble," I comment, which turns out to be prescient.  As I look up at the shelf, I see that there's also a tall stack of the Bantam Books paperback editions of the Star Trek original series script adaptations written by award-winning science fiction author James Blish.

 

They're a bit of a collector's item, and although they're not in mint condition, I'd expect them to cost somewhat more than their $3.50 cover price, even if it is in US dollars. Numbers 2 and 12 are missing**, and might even be buried somewhere in the stacks, but we're on the clock, so I just pick up the visible copies and head to the cash register.

Significantly, when the owner is adding up my purchases, she comments that the Star Trek books have probably not been looked at or repriced for 20 years, which pretty much says everything that I need to hear regarding the uneven pricing, but leaves me wondering what the story is behind the store. Inherited, perhaps, and kept open as a labour of love?  Regardless, it's a bit of a "start the car" moment for me - Karli is more than a little amused by the happy noise with which I celebrated my purchases once we were safely back in our vehicle.

Comparatively, Space Cowboy, located in the town of Joshua Tree, is the epitome of a well-curated used bookstore. The shop has a modest footprint, but it's well laid out, and has an impressive selection of classic novels, which have been conveniently pulled off the shelves, bagged and hung on the walls, much like particularly collectable issues in a comic book store.

 

I leave Space Cowboy with a smaller stack of books - not due to lack of attractive options, but purely out of restraint:  having already spent over a hundred dollars on used books at our last stop, it seemed practical to keep the rest of my purchases under control - not to mention the looming threat of overweight baggage charges.

For sale at Space Cowboy: a triptych of Beverly the Madonna and the Blessèd Wesley, worshipped by the twin angels
of Emotion and Science. Originally I thought Data was wearing a yarmulke, which would have been a bit odd
for a devotional painting of this type, but then I realized it was a glimpse of his positronic brain.

Several of them are replacement volumes - their copy of The Wizard of Senchuria/Cradle of the Sun, another Ace Double, is in much better shape than mine, as are paperback copies of The Metal Monster and The Ship of Ishtar, two classic novels by American fantasy author A. Merritt.  Originally written in the 1920s, they were reprinted by Avon in the 1960s and early 70s as part of the Tolkien-influenced fantasy boom that saw the revival of a wide variety of vintage material at around that time.  I also pick up a pair of classic Robert A. Heinlein books: Assignment in Eternity and Waldo: Genius in Orbit, an odd variant edition of Waldo and Magic Inc. from 1958.

Overall, it's been an excellent day for book purchasing, if not for my already crowded shelves at home.  Next, Joshua Tree National Park...and Them!

- Sid

* Well, presumably not ordering from a catalogue.  I've always been a bit curious as to how a used bookstore gets started - it seems to me that buying enough used books to stock a new store would be a net loss approach to the process, although ultimately, as with any store, logic would suggest that the idea is to mark up your stock.  I certainly have enough books in my spare bedroom to start a small shop, compared to, say, the inventory at Space Cowboy, but that feels a bit like starting a clothing store by raiding your own closet.

** I've owned a slightly worn copy of Number 6 in the series since grade school, but to my intense happiness, when we got back to Vancouver I discovered that I'd picked up a copy of Number 2 at some point over time, nicely filling the gap in my new acquisitions. And Number 12s of any series are always easier to find than Number 2s.

Reading Week: "It was a pleasure to burn."

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, Karli and I are taking a break in Palm Springs this week - well, Palm Desert, to be accurate, at a rental condo in a gated community, with easy access to a shared pool and hot tub. Generally my vacations tend to be migratory, to the point that I've gone on trips where I didn't sleep in the same bed twice, but this trip is intended to be more about relaxation than exploration. As such, I'm looking forward to spending some time with the written word over the course of the week.

After picking up our rental car, we've stopped off at Target to do some casual shopping and pick up some supplies.  As we wander through the store, we stop at the book section, where Karli selects a Jodi Picoult book for poolside reading.  To my surprise,  there's a trade paperback copy of Ray Bradbury's 1953 classic Fahrenheit 451 on the Sale shelf, which I instantly add to our basket.*  There’s a kind of casual irony in purchasing this book here - one feels that in Bradbury’s future of outlawed books, Target would be the last place you would find any work of fiction, let alone this one.

Reading the book over the course of the day (it's a quick read at 158 pages, the bulk of this particular printing is made up of commentary) I'm impressed by the poetic brilliance of Bradbury's style, as always.  I'd also forgotten the tragic feel of the novel.  As per Thoreau, Fireman Guy Montag leads a life of quiet desperation, flat and colourless: isolated from his wife, apparently without friends, doubtful of the rightness of his vocation as a fireman who starts fires rather than stopping them, almost indifferent to the ongoing state of war that stands as a constant background.

Fahrenheit 451 is a conflict between two philosophies: thought and complacency.  To Bradbury, the elimination of books is the elimination of thinking, and with the loss of thought, the end of dissent and freedom.  All that is left is the shallow and trivial televised world that obsesses Montag's wife Mildred and her friends, and insulates them from anything that might make them question the status quo.

Regardless of whether or not this is a future that we might ever actually see, this book strikes very close to home for me.

Why?  Because I would undoubtedly be one of the criminals caught with a hoard of illegal books, one of the people who ends up in jail after their library is reduced to charred ashes, swirling in the wind around the skeletal remains of their home.  Or would I refuse to surrender, like the nameless woman who contemptuously stands her ground and dies with her books?

More likely, I might well be one of the quiet rebels who abandons society to live in the woods, becoming a sort of living edition of a memorized book.  Imagine being the last copy of The Lord of the Rings...

- Sid

* Considering that I own between five and six thousand books, you might be surprised that I don't already own a copy of Fahrenheit 451, but there are a few classic science fiction novels that I read early in my fandom and never added to my library.  For example, I don't own a copy of Brave New World, although it's probably time for a reread.  In this case, when we returned to Vancouver, I ruefully discovered that I actually did own a copy of Fahrenheit 451, the 50th anniversary paperback.  Now that I have that and the commemorative 60th edition, hopefully I can skip buying the 70th anniversary issue in 2023.

Reading Week: "All of time and space..."

 

SARAH: It wasn't Croydon. Where you dropped me off, that wasn't Croydon.
DOCTOR: Where was it?
SARAH: Aberdeen.
DOCTOR: Right. That's next to Croydon, isn't it?*

Doctor Who, School Reunion

CLARA: This isn't my home, by the way.
DOCTOR: Sorry. I'm sorry about that. I missed.
CLARA: Where are we?
DOCTOR: Glasgow, I think.

Doctor Who, Deep Breath

As someone who is generally a bit cautious about public displays of fandom, I have a certain admiration for the Palm Springs Uber driver in front of us, although I'm not sure that the Doctor is the best example to follow in that line of work.  True, he does frequently give people rides, but I think that most Uber clients have a sort of general expectation that they'll be dropped off at the right destination, not to mention the right century.

- Sid

* For those of you unfamiliar with Croydon - or Aberdeen - they're about 600 miles apart. By intergalactic standards, this is actually unbelievably accurate.

Reading Week: "Please put all electronic devices on airplane mode."

Saturday morning in Vancouver, and Karli and I are sitting on the tarmac at YVR, waiting to start a one-week getaway in sunny Palm Springs, a welcome break from the uncertain weather of British Columbia in the spring.

Although I do a lot of casual travel reading on my iPhone, I like to have a paper book for planes - flight attendants seem to be happier if you're not using your phone at takeoff, airplane mode or not, and it's also a good opportunity to catch up on some reading.

My seatmate on the aisle side is perusing The Untethered Soul, a New York Times best seller from 2007 -  not exactly current, but a far cry from my 1960 vintage Badger Books paperback copy of The Brain Stealers*, by Murray Leinster, which I pulled out of my tsundoku stack for the trip, along with a couple of other selections that caught my eye.  By some standards, this might be a valued antique, although it's hardly in mint condition, and only cost me a pound or thereabouts last year at a used book store in London's Portobello Market.

As is common with books from this era, the cover has absolutely no relationship to the story:** I have no idea who the glowing woman is supposed to be, and the villains are globular pink bloodsucking alien mind parasites (think Wilson with little fangs).  The hero of the story protects himself from their mind control powers with a cap made out of coiled iron wire while he builds a brain jamming machine to defeat them - tin foil has been available for hat creation since 1910, but you can't always depend on being in the kitchen when crunch time hits.

Looking casually around the plane, it occurs to me that you rarely see anyone reading a notably old book in public.  I can't be the only person with a nostalgic affection for classic novels, but even being a bit of a collector aside, I don't think I've recently seen anyone on a plane flipping through The Godfather, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Hotel New Hampshire, or any of a hundred different best sellers from the past.  It may just be that fame is fleeting, and that the general public will read a book once on vacation and then donate it to Goodwill or a book donation bin for hospital libraries, or maybe drop it off at a used bookstore, where someone like me brings it home to complete the circle twenty years later - or, in this case, 59.

- Sid

* Which, oddly, contains four pages of advertising, including a fascinating opportunity to purchase Joan the Wad, "Queen of the Lucky Cornish Pixies", and offers to both increase and reduce your bust using a "harmless vegetable cream" - well, two different creams, to be clear, it would be asking a lot for one product to provide both of those services.

**  There's actually a sound economic reason for this.  Pulp magazine and book publishers would often contact an artist and order generic paintings in bulk, then somewhat randomly assign them to covers.

"Gentlemen, we're history."

"I believe our adventure through time has taken a most serious turn."

Ted, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

There is nothing worse than an incomplete trilogy.  Imagine if The Matrix had been a stand-alone film, Tobey Maguire hadn't made Spider-man 3, they'd skipped the third Terminator installment, or The Hobbit had only been long enough to make two films rather than three.

Hmmm...

Okay, maybe not the best examples, but still, it's important to have closure, and as such it was both a pleasure and a relief to learn that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter are finally re-uniting to complete the Bill and Ted Trilogy, as per the world's least pretentious YouTube™ movie announcement a couple of weeks ago.  Production on Bill and Ted Face The Music is slated to begin production this summer, with a tentative release date of summer of 2020.

The events of the second film don't really leave any room for a follow-up, but as we all know, time isn't a strict progression of cause to effect, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.  As such, Bill and Ted's future is not set, and there is no fate but what they make for themselves*.   In other words, anything can happen, which is a pretty bodacious position to be in when writing a movie.  If reunited creators and writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon can match the unexpected depth and quality - dare I say excellence - of the first two movies, the results could be just as much fun.

However, "fun" may not be a given, and the story could easily take a most serious turn, as per the opening quote. There's a bittersweet aspect to the whole idea of revisiting the Wyld Stallyns:  in the real world, it's been 28 years since William S. Preston Esq. and Theodore Logan had their Bogus Journey, and in spite of the running Internet gag about Keanu Reeves not aging, both he and Winter are obviously not teenagers any more. Given that the plot precis says that they still haven't written the song that will unite the world in peaceful harmony, how depressed and frustrated must Bill and Ted be at this point in their lives?  Not to mention the fact that at the end of Bogus Journey, they both have children -  given their own parental experiences, have they remained true to themselves, or have they unknowingly become their own fathers?  (Hopefully not to the extent that Bill is now married to Missy - although, when you think about it, that's actually not a bad plot hook.**)

Similarly, there's been a lot of water over the dam since Winters and Reeves made their debut as Bill and Ted - will they be able to summon up the same light-hearted exuberance that they effortlessly brought to their characters in the first two films?   Alex Winters has spent more time behind the camera than in front of it since Bogus Journey, and Keanu Reeves hasn't exactly been noted for his fun-loving movie roles recently - it's a big jump from John Wick to Theodore Logan.

Really, though, it should be simple - all they need to do is remember to be excellent to each another and party on.  If they've forgotten that, well, that would be a pretty good place to start the script right there.

- Sid

* Terminator reference, but oddly enough I don't have a posting to link to.

** It's even more of a twist if Ted is married to Missy.  But really, they should still be with Joanna and Elizabeth, the princess babes.

Geek chic.

Ah, and what does the well-dressed geek wear for a late Saturday lunch at the Storm Crow?

NASA cap - check.

Forbidden Planet t-shirt - check.

Academie Duello longsword apprentice green cord - check.

Book Nerd pin - check.

Table for two, please...

- Sid

The Book of the Sword, Part Five: Green Cord.

Fortified by some homework with the Duello TV longsword channel, and a solid re-read of some classic Robert E. Howard Conan the Barbarian stories, I headed off to my final Academie Duello longsword class on Thursday night.

The reason behind my prep work?  Very simple: although there's no test to establish competency at the end of the course, we were scheduled to spend the final class proving our skills in a practical fashion by dueling with each other and the students from the companion Introduction to Rapier course which has been running at the same time as our class for the last four weeks.  When our instructor Miguel had mentioned at our previous class that we'd be doing this, I was a bit apprehensive: my impression of the relative strengths of the two weapons led me to expect that rapier users would butcher us with speed and reach.

To my surprise, this turned out not to be the case.  The leverage provided by the two-handed longsword grip repeatedly allowed me to push aside the rapier and go inside the reach of the blade for a cut or an oblique thrust.  It also turned out that I may in fact have some minor skill in the area of swordplay, to the point where one of my fellow longsword classmates actually said, "Wow, you're good at this!"  I found that I was repeatedly outscoring my opponents by two or three to one, whether it was against longsword or rapier.*

At the end of the evening, there was a brief graduation ceremony,where we were presented with our Green apprenticeship cord by our instructors.  The head of the school, Devon Boorman, was in attendance, and cheerfully informed us that we now knew more about swordplay than 99.9 percent of the rest of the world - although they're doing their best to change that percentage, one student at a time.

Although Academie Duello offers a comprehensive list of options for people wishing to move forward in their study of the sword and achieve further mastery, I don't plan to continue - I'm happy to have received my green cord and become part of that .1% of the global population.

That being said, if you have any interest in trying something a little bit different, or have some curiousity about swordplay after seven seasons of Game of Thrones, I would unhesitatingly recommend an Academie Duello class.  The instructors and staff are uniformly friendly, knowledgeable and helpful, I found both the historical and practical information to be interesting, and hey, you get to fight with swords.

Arte, Ardore, Onore!

- Sid

* To be honest, I can't attach too much significance to this.  It's a bit like being the best walker out of a group of one-year olds.  It's an achievement of sorts, but Usain Bolt certainly isn't going to view me as a threat.

The Book of the Sword, Part Four: Lost in Translation

 

To end our third week of longsword training at Academie Duello, we spent a class working with sidesword and buckler. The sidesword was a successor to the medieval arming sword, which was a relatively short one-handed weapon worn by knights when out of armour, and marked the introduction of a more elaborate knuckle guard than the simple crossbar of the arming sword, following the Germanic habit of hooking one finger over the crossguard for additional control.  The knuckle guard provides protection for the exposed finger, and presages the development of the more elaborate guards that characterize the rapier.

The sidesword was also more of an everyday weapon than longsword or poleaxe.  Its shorter length allowed it to be a literal side weapon that could be worn during everyday activities.  Similarly, the buckler is a shield that's small enough to be hooked onto your scabbard beside the sword, rather than the full sized shield that would be used in actual warfare. (The term "swashbuckler"comes from bravos rattling their bucklers against their swords in order to announce themselves as they swaggered through the streets.)  Held at arm's length, the buckler is both a defensive and offensive weapon, used to block attacks as well as deliver blows when corps-à-corps.

My expectation for sword and buckler was that the buckler would be held in front as a defensive lead, with the sword extended beside it to allow for the two to be used together or independently, much as shown in the illustration below - although from perhaps a bit further away than these two gentlemen.  To my astonishment, we are instructed to hold the sword straight up over our heads as our starting position.  It seems a ridiculous stance for fighting, especially with a weapon that can thrust as well as cut, but Miguel reassures us that this is the approved technique as taken from historical documents.

 

Regardless, I'm sceptical.  Miguel pointed out in one of the earlier sessions that one of the challenges in reviving the art of swordplay is that there's no continuity of practise - swordplay becomes less and less common over time, finally falling entirely out of use as gunpowder takes over the battlefield.  Because of this historical break, modern scholars are forced to rely on a relatively small library of instructional texts in order to rediscover the techniques.*

Most of what we've been taught for longsword is taken from the Flos Duellatorum (Flower of Battle) a 14th century text by Fiore die Liberi, an Italian fencing master.  Other salles d'armes follow equivalent German texts, and there's enough similarity - and variation - to indicate a continuum of technique, albeit with a slightly different vocabulary and bias.

To my mind, the things that we've learned for longsword make sense.  There are standard defensive stances that involve short and long guards (posta breve and posta longa) in which the sword is extended directly in front of the body with the point aimed at your opponent's face, as opposed to the posta di donna or di fenestra, which positions the sword behind either shoulder for cutting or thrusting attacks - these positions are not unlike the way you'd stand if you were at bat in baseball, which seems a logical starting position for a longsword cut.

The hand-over-head sidesword starting guard seems to be a long way - literally - from a good place to attack or defend, and I was a little tempted to take a completely different stance during practice, although that would seem to defeat the purpose of taking instruction. Based on my own experience with instructional material and training, a small part of me wonders if the person who wrote the description that we're following just didn't have had a lot of experience actually fighting people - the old "those who can, do" problem.

- Sid

* If you've seen The Princess Bride, you're familiar with some of the authorities of classic swordplay.  During the duel between Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts, they discuss the various techniques for fighting under those conditions as per Bonetti, Capo Ferro, Agrippa, and Thibault - actual fencing masters from the Renaissance.

The Book of the Sword, Part Three: Flos Duellatorum

Behold the well-dressed student of arms - longsword, gorget for neck
protection, and souvenir Trinity College t-shirt from Dublin.
Fencing masks are added for actual face-to-face practice.

In last night's longsword session, we began for the first time to link together the various attacks and defenses as they would be used in actual single combat through a series of exercises that progressed from simply attacking a static opponent, to having the opponent dodge, to having the opponent defend themselves. It's the also the first time we've been given complete freedom in choosing our attacks and defenses, and it was interesting to see how people approached the opportunity.

Aaron, our substitute trainer for the class, compared this sort of combat to chess, where victory is based on the ability to plan several moves ahead.  I've already starting thinking in those terms, based on the simple attack/defend exchanges that we've had as part of our practice. 

If I have one complaint about the training, it's that there hasn't really been enough repetition to embed the full range of moves into muscle memory.  Out of the various cuts, thrusts and guards that we've learned, I've retained between a half and a third of them, and some additional time spent just doing military-style repetitive drill for each move would have helped me quite a bit.

However, I also realize that eight hours of training sessions isn't a lot of time to cover a wide range of weapons and techniques, and as such, some personal practise may be in order.  To help with this, Academie Duello also has a video subscription service called Duello TV, which offers a wide range of instructional videos through a variety of subscription-based and course pack purchasing options.

 

Conveniently, the Longsword Fundamentals curriculum is available for free on DuelloTV after you register, but I would still recommend that any interested parties sign up for an actual in-person class.  The videos will certainly show you how it's done without any investment of money, but having a knowledgeable instructor correcting your stance or answering questions is invaluable - not to mention a good supply of longswords, appropriate protective gear, and someone else to poke your sword at.

- Sid