Ionospherics 107

It’s like OCD. I have a swag of books to read already, and I ought not be stopping in the second-hand bookshop because I have other things to do in town. It’s the weekend for goodness sake, and we’re staying on a beautiful private bush-acreage with river frontage — Maria River — where there is no power, no phone, and no good light to read by. The river is all pushbike-riding, wood-chopping, campfires, and river-swimming. Wither reading? Whither SF?

Yet, in town for the necessities, I aim for the bookshop first. Before anything else. The urge is stronger than my desire to do the other things I must do in town: buy food, kerosene lanterns, funnels, petrol, lawnmower blades.

Of course, there are books hiding in the musty piles therein that I really must have: a textbook "Trillion Year Spree" by Brian W. Aldiss; a fantasy by my favourite wordsmith Gene Wolfe "The Knight Wizard"; "The Locus Awards" edited by Charles N. Brown and the indefatigable Jonathan Strahan; and something by Greg Egan that I’ve not read before called "Teranesia".

I could hang my head with shame, but I do not. I could answer my phone with untruths when my partner Karen calls and asks, "Are you on your way back yet?"

"Er. Actually. I’m in the bookshop."

"Might have guessed."

But the obsession doesn’t end there. While the books remain on the back seat of the car at my return to our campsite, I must beat off an urge to deploy the LED flashlight at dusk.

No. No. No. No reading.

Nevertheless, the advent of the evening campfire delivers me to my disease. It’s like this: lie back and consider the stars, the flaring satellites, the streaking meteors. Spaceships all.

And in the background, powered by 12V battery and ratted car stereo, I’m comforted by the opening strains of an old-time-radio program, "Dimension X":

"And now," says the NBC announcer, "a story from one of our most brilliant young science fiction writers, Ray Bradbury..."

How’s that?

Isn’t it some sweet disease?

Ooroo for now

Nuke (Editor)