Books were hard to get when I was a kid. They were expensive and, on top of that, in short supply. Many people owned no books at all; some copied them by hand. But there were always plenty of books in our family, and it was shocking to me to see a room with no books in it.
Not all the books in our family collection were good. Most were cheap detective novels and other silly novels by little-known authors. The one thing they were good for was helping me build a warm relationship with the book species. But there were plenty of hidden treasures in that mess.
One day, I noticed that my father had left the book he was reading on the table. For some reason, I thought I wasn’t allowed to read or even touch books for adults because I was just a little kid. No one was around, so I dared to pick it up and read it in secret. It was Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg.
To my surprise, it wasn’t so different from the books I’d read before. It was just much better than the children’s books I knew, and I fell in love with it from the first few pages. It took me a long time to read it in secret: I was rarely alone, and I didn’t always know where the book was.
I think my father eventually noticed my secret love affair with the book. He said nothing about it, so I’m not sure whether that prompted what happened next. But sometime later, he offered me another book from his science fiction collection: Deathworld by Harry Harrison.
That was when I started a reading ritual. Every evening, I’d take a piece of fruit or two, get into bed with a book, and read for an hour or two. That was also when I first met Heinlein, Simak, Asimov, Zelazny, Sheckley, and other cool guys. I owe them so much of who I am, how I think, and how I see the world.
