By 1978 I was so hooked on science fiction books that three things happened:
First, I went on a tour of all the central public libraries in Bucuresti. I’d read every science fiction or fantasy book in one library and moved on to the next.
Second, I began looking for books in my relatives’ libraries. Some of them dreaded my visits, others opened their doors to me and allowed me to borrow their books.
And third, I bribed my way into several bookstores, wishing to be the first one to know when a new genre book hits the shelves.
You need to understand another aspect of the communist years. Everything was in high demand and short supply. Books and magazines, garments and shoes, food, holidays, everything. If you wanted holiday tickets to one of the seaside resorts, you’d have to bribe the vacation agents months in advance and then accept whatever they gave you. Most of the time you’d be happy if they gave you any hotel in the desired resort, anytime during summer.
For milk, eggs and bread, everybody would lineup for hours every single day of the week. These staples would arrive once a day and every member of the family would wait in line for them at one of the stores. I was usually up for bakery, my sister would wait at the diary store and my mother at the grocery. That’s why it was said that grandparents are worth ten times their weight in gold with their free time and disposition to stay in line the entire day for their grandchildren. Unfortunately, ours lived in the country-side.
Anyway, there were 2 categories of books—some would sell in just a few short hours after hitting the shelves, others would stay there for years. Usually, the genre ones were in the first category. I took all my ice cream and soda money and lubricated my way into the two bookstores in my neighborhood. The moment a new SF&F book hit the store, one copy would be saved for me under the counter.
Most of the time the deal worked and I guess it didn’t have that much to do with my ice cream money, as with the fact that I was one of the few nine years old who’d do such a thing. But exactly because of that, other times it didn’t work. I didn’t get my hands on valuable books because the adults who wanted them paid a lot more than just a few ice creams.
Still, I was young and satisfied with my ever growing book collection. My mother was happy because I spent only half the time I used to with kids outside and that meant I got beaten up only half the time I’d used to. My father wasn’t quite as pleased, because he believed in building character by confronting my bullies and participating in all the sport activities around the block. Although not that many of them were real sport activities. Yes, they all included a lot of running or riding bicycles, but mostly because I was running or riding away from stray dogs, angry garden owners, and my neighborhood bullies.
That year three books stuck with me and lead me on a certain path:
“Ferma oamenilor de piatra” (Stone Men’s Ranch, 1970 in the Triangle Collection) by Romulus Barbulescu and George Anania, is a story from the XXII century. Humanity has already colonized the entire solar system and is now looking to colonize other far away planets. The story explores space travel for great distances, AI and the possibility of intelligent space ships, and a Human Equation that would allow us to integrate human conscience into artificial intelligence and thus travel safely for centuries to other solar systems.
“Robinsonii Cosmosului” (“Les Robinsons du Cosmos” in original, 1955, or “The Robinsons of the Cosmos” in English) by Francois Bordes (also known as Francis Carsac), was translated in Romanian in 1964. A slice of Earth with its inhabitants is torn by a cataclysm and thrown onto an alien planet, where the survivors encounter alien fauna and flora as well as native intelligent life. They struggle to settle once they realize that Earth is just a memory.
“Odiseea navei Space Beagle” (“The Voyage of the Space Beagle”, original 1950) by A.E. Van Vogt, was translated in 1978 in Romania, in the Triangle Collection. This was one of the first books I bought by myself through my own bribes. So, imagine my pride and how anxious I was to read it with that kind of title and very exciting cover illustration. A.E. Van Vogt was also the first American SF writer I read and this book certainly gave me a different flavor from everything I’d read before. Only much, much later I discovered that my first American SF writer had actually been a Canadian one. But that’s a different story and for now, these three books more than others started a certain wheel turning inside me.
While my mother urged me to join my school’s arts club and stamps club, my father pressed ganged me into a volleyball club (after I almost drowned in a swimming class and had a sun stroke taking a tennis lesson). That little wheel began turning me away from these activities.
