The Science Fiction archive is a vast collection of Science Fiction material gathered by a single collector over the years.  It was great that the owner of such an astounding collection would offer it to Professor Ellis of City Tech. Now City Tech is the home of one of the most sophisticated collection of Science Fiction works with most of it located within the library.

The trip to the archive was a really interesting experience nonetheless.  What really caught my attention was the fact that there were actual editions of magazines from WWII.  I wondered at that instance of time, “how did the owner preserve such old literature made with fragile material?”  In addition, I noticed that the owner of this collection also added manga into the mix.   Professor Ellis mentioned that the owner also had social interests.  Therefore, he also collected works of different varieties.

When we got to look at magazines from the archive, they had some very interesting content.  Aside from the novellas and some brief previews of novels to be released, the first thing I noticed was the advertisement from the back of the magazine.  The first line of the first question from the ad read, “What if God is a computer? – see other side”  I was honestly baffled by the question, but it’s understandable that Science Fiction magazines would have this type of content.  When I browsed through the comments written to the editors, it was filled with complements and the fans desires for more novels.  Overall, the magazines gave us a sense of how communication between readers and Science Fiction editors used to be in the past without all of the modern technology we have today.

Ultimately, the amount of books within the archive was overwhelming, since there were books still kept within boxes.  Surprisingly enough, there were also old machines that editors used back in the day that were scavenged and restored.  I hope that this archive will prove to be very beneficial in terms of research in the near future for students that are interested in Science Fiction.