There used to be a 2nd hand book shop in my home town that still makes me feel physically ill just to think about it.
It was in an old building with very tall and narrow rooms that were filled, floor to ceiling, with sci-fi and fantasy books. There must have been easily a million volumes in there. They weren’t sorted in to any kind of system that I could determine, beyond “sci-fi on the ground floor, fantasy on the second floor, and fancy books by the checkout so the staff could keep an eye on them”; and most shelves were three books deep.
The simple volume of words, and the musty smell of decaying paper, left me feeling tired and deflated. So many stories. So little time.
sigh cheap wood-pulp paper made those books economically possible in the first place, but put a limit on their lifespan. They are now disintigrating, like tears in the rain.
“Worth reading” is still in the opinion of the gatekeepers. Unless the book became a runaway best-seller despite a near-complete lack of marketing support from the publisher (“Valley of the Dolls” being the textbook example) it’s pretty easy for a really good book to sink into obscurity.
You really should sift through them; there’s really no telling what wonderful, unjustly-lost treasure might fall into your awareness.
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Yes, lots of books get published, few are successful.
I’ve found used books that I bought because movies were made out of the, and the movies are better known than the books, and often the.movie id better. “Why did they choose this book?” . Simeine likes the premise, and just takes the bits they like, and even if the book sold decently, it sinks to obscurity.
Books also just fade. Alistair McLean wrote lots of adventure books, and sold well, even made into movies that mostlt weren’t as memorable. “Ice Station Zebra” is an exception, and likely the most popular movie. But whike the books linger on as used books, I think most or all are now out of print.
On the other hand, every so often I find a used book that I’d never seen or heard if befire, and maybe bever will see another copy, and was really pleasedto find it and read it.
I’ve recently discovered, (while trying to locate certain technical books published before the revolution) that Russians seem to be massive book pirates. Sometimes it helps to read Russian, but other times… jackpot!
The Tom Corbett books held up (at least the first couple)–you can get a collection for kindle. I read them to my son when he was younger. I believe Willy Ley was the scientific consultant for the books.
I had at least five of them, easy since the series was short. And I stupidly got rid of them in 71 or 72, becoming interested in other things and getting rid of them and my comic books.
The next time I daw any was 1994, and I paid five dollars each for the first two books. Si reading them was almost like I’d never read them.
The first volume is very much like Heinlein 's “Space Cadet”. Three cadets go through training, each with a specialty, and then off for a training mission that morphs into a rescue mission, One rocket goes directly back to earth, anither has limited fuel so it gies to the nearest planet, where there is a crash and the cadets have to get out of the situation.
I had forgotten the similarities. I’m surprised they got away with it, but maybe Heinlein had some contract.
I never heard the radio show or saw the tv series, but I suspect the books weren’t novelizations, so they could be decent. They were merchandise, and likely more saw or knew about the tv show than the books. When the series ended, the publisher thought the books were “obsolete” too.
I already do leaf through the piles of books at thrift shops/donation centers/“for sale” sections at libraries/yard sales/flea markets. There are a lot of “meh” books out there, and they get neglected.
are you sure? checking removes your ability to plausibly deny. as an inventor, my lawyer advises me never to read patents, does this translate? reading a story like this leads to my questioning of every source I’ve ever cited. should I have even bothered since the citation is possibly, summarily untrue? I’d rather omit than be called a liar. Is “I was under the impression that this was a public domain work” a good defense? Eh who cares, we don’t have thoughtcrime YET.
I don’t think that really translates to copyright.
The default is that Scientology will claim copyright over anything by L. Ron Hubbard, including fair use, even over made-up stuff in the style of Hubbard, putting the effort and expense of proving that it’s not copyright on their target.
