Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: ecstatic
  • Music: Little Shop of Horrors, 'Feed Me (Git It).'

I have a copy of 'Emergence' and you (probably) don't.

I am enormously lucky in that there is a fabulous genre-oriented bookstore, The Other Change of Hobbit, within a reasonable distance of my home. (I'm also enormously unlucky in this regard, because I enjoy being able to pay my mortgage, but that's another story.) As it's basically a straight shot from OCoH to Kate's place, I tend to stop in once or twice a week to pet the cats and chat with the staff. Last time I was in the store, I noticed that they had a copy of Threshold, by David Palmer, on the used shelf.

Now, I've never read Threshold, and I've never particularly wanted to -- no judgment intended or implied, the concept just doesn't grab me and I have too much to read already -- but my housemate was looking for a new copy. So I asked him if he wanted me to snag it for him the next time I was in the store. He answered in the affirmative, and I stopped in on my way to Kate's.

Dave was at the desk. Dave tends to have an encyclopedic knowledge of what's in the store at any given time. Dave is scary like that. So I stopped, on a whim, to ask whether he thought there was a chance in hell of them having a copy of Emergence in the store. Emergence was David Palmer's first book. It's been out of print since it was first published in 1984, and used copies start on Amazon at almost fifty dollars (before shipping). Why?

Because it's damn good, that's why. I went to look at the book's Amazon page just now, and almost all the reviews are five stars. Not unusual, except that all the reviewers have so clearly read and loved the book. I think that the reviewer who says the science doesn't stand up is right...but this book was never about the science for me. This book was about being made of awesome. And it does a very, very good job of that.

Dave laughed at the foolishness of my question, but -- in a rare gesture of quantum helpfulness -- called down to the basement to see if they might have a copy.

They had a copy. Just one copy. Just one copy of that original 1984 printing.

I'd never even seen a copy of the original 1984 printing before.

I paid twenty-five dollars for a twenty-year-old paperback today, and I feel neither regret nor remorse at this action. Because now I have a copy of one of the most overlooked and under appreciated gems of speculative fiction, a book that makes me happy in every possible way, and I am consumed with joy. If you have the chance to read Emergence, you totally should.

What book fills this role in your personal ecosystem of the fabulous?
Tags: good things, reading things
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  • 65 comments
...go 1 level up... Expand

mariadkins

August 28 2008, 01:32:15 UTC 8 years ago

If you didn't know, you can now play Wordscraper. It's made by the same people who made Scrabulous. It's no Scrabulous, but it'll do. It beats the Scrabble game Hasbro put up by a mile. Imho.

seanan_mcguire

August 28 2008, 14:00:09 UTC 8 years ago

Everyone in my office plays online Scrabble. I back slowly away, hands in the air, and pray they won't hurt me.

mariadkins

August 28 2008, 19:41:12 UTC 8 years ago

I've run hard and fast from the Hasbro Facebook version. It gives me a headache and slows down my computer. :(