Visiting the library archive is refreshing compared to staying in class during a lesson.  Not only was the change of scenery was nice, but so was looking through the books and magazines of the science fiction archive.  It was interesting to know that these books are so old, that I wonder if the contents of the books was recorded online on the internet so that it would not be lost despite its physical source.  Also, more people will be able to have access and read the contents of these old books without having restricted access to the Archives in City Tech.  Though, I understand why access to the Archives is so limited, since the books are old and that either there were probably no reproduction copies or that the original copies are held as historical artifacts.  Those original books really grabbed my attention when I saw them.

The pulp Science Fiction books has some very interesting and eye-catching covers.  This is probably intentional as, despite being printed out like a book, they were magazines meant to grab people’s attention so that people will buy them.  The magazines I looked at, Analog Science, has some amazing space artwork that depicted what I can imagine people decades ago imagining the amazing future and the advancements of technology.  I started out to read the first thing written in the book to get an idea of what it’s about, and the introduction, extending to 2 pages before having me to skip to the end of the magazine to continue reading, was very engaging.  It put forth to me interesting ideas and concepts I did not think of like, for example, how unlikely it is to convince people through reason, unless force is used, compared to using “magic”.  People are normally set in their beliefs in a way that using their beliefs, whether that be priests, magic, voodoo, etc, can easily help solve a problem compared to trying to logic against them.  Paraphrasing the book, it’s like trying to convince an Amish family to use computers, despite how easy and convenient they are, unless force is used in a way such as separating Amish children from their parents and making them go to school with such technologies, stamping out their old understanding.  These books are a lot less depressing and peaked my interest, though that could also be attributed to its age as it was written during an optimistic point of time, unlike not unfortunately.

The books were graciously donated to the college by a collector of Science Fiction literature.  Feeling the paper and looking at the color, the books definitely show their age.  Skimming through some of them, I observed that some tell interesting stories that makes me think, while some are just as depressing as 1984.  This makes me wish I could go back to the Archive to look at more of these books, and possible read some of them a bit to expand my limited view of science fiction to better understand it, or at least find more books in this genre fitting to my tastes.