Reading up on SF History
/
While I'm working on plotting out the rest of the year for this column, I figured it would be interesting to look at a small portion of the books that I use to support this column. There's a lot out there, and if you look at back entries, you'll see that I do a more comprehensive bibliography for each post here.
My habits for supporting this column involve a small research library at my home, one that's continually growing. It started with a couple of books before I started - biographies and a couple of others - and I've since quickly run out of space on one shelf (I need a new one soon) to house it. I also utilize my local university library's own collection (which is pretty extensive), and their connections to the Interlibrary Loan network.
But, I do like to have my own copies of the ones that I use the most. Inevitably, the ILL system takes a couple of days or weeks to get books in, and I'm somewhat impatient when I'm researching, especially when I'm stuck waiting for a volume.
This coming year, I have a feeling that I'll be doing more interviews - I've got one out right now - as I move into eras where there's more people who are still alive. Predominantly, I've been researching the pulps and early golden age. It'll be an exciting new thing to do.