A Bookman's Fantasy cover

NESFA Press

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ISBN: 0-915368-65-X
LC: 94-73980
Page count: iv+97
Book Size: 5-1/2" x 8-1/2"
Published: February 1995

Trade paperback

Edited by Anthony R. Lewis
Cover art by Merle Insinga

NESFA Press
PO Box 809
Framingham, MA 01701
fax: 617-776-3243
email: sales@nesfa.org

Fred Lerner was Special Guest at Boskone 32.

Table of Contents

Science Fiction, Respectable and Otherwise

A Librarian Born and Bred

An Imperfect Vermonter

A Bookman's Fantasy

Samples:

"Life is short, and shelving is finite....so I purged my shelves of every paperback whose title or cover showed any sign of elf or dwarf, wizard or swordsman, dragon or unicorn. I found it a tremendously liberating experience."

from "Farewell to Alexandria"

"Any attempt to classify science fiction on the basis of story themes pits the classifier's ingenuity against the collective imagination of SF writers; and it would be only a matter of time before a story was published which would not fit into the classification system."

from "The Science Fiction Library"

"Eagles may be indispensable in emergencies, but they can hardly be depended upon to serve as a rapid-transit system. A little steam-powered railroad--no massive, articulated behemoths (though I'd not be surprised to see a few rusting away amid the slag-heaps of Mordor), but rather friendly little pufferbellies--would be just the thing to link Hobbiton with Bree, or to start folk on their journey down the Greenway to Gondor."

from "All Aboard!..."

"Adultery has always outranked technology in its appeal to the American reader, whether his favorite reading-matter be the National Enquirer or the New York Review of Books. The world's work, and the men and women who do it, have never been of much interest to many of our illustrious writers and to most of our so-called "literary intellectuals." "

from "How Science Fiction Became Respectable"