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Worlds Without End Blog

Reading the Pulps #5: Visual Memory and Nostalgia Posted at 8:30 AM by James Wallace Harris

jwharris28

Is an aspect of nostalgia an ache to see things we once owned or coveted? On Facebook, there are countless groups where members post images driven by nostalgia. At Space Opera Pulp over eleven thousand people enjoy pictures from old science fiction books and pulp magazines covers. Raypunk, which has a modern slant has over twenty-three thousand members. There are photo nostalgia groups of all kinds. I also belong to ones that remember old movies, westerns, cars, mid-century houses, graphic artists, Baby Boomer memorabilia, etc. I don’t know why, but some of the most nostalgically powerful images for me are old book and magazine covers.

I recently created a cover gallery, “The Hardback Legacy of Astounding Science Fiction” for my blog. It was an excuse to gather .jpg images of all the first edition books that reprinted content from Astounding Science Fiction magazine (1930-1960). I love looking at artwork that illustrated old science fiction stories. For that post, I narrowed it down to hardbacks. Some people have commented they remember the same books by their paperback covers. Then last night on Young Sheldon I saw Sheldon reading a copy of I, Robot with the cover I had for the Science Fiction Book Club edition I first read. Man, that released a flood of nostalgia-chemicals in my brain. I wonder how many older viewers had a deep twinge of longing for the past when they saw that scene?

Are the covers we remember most the ones we saw first?

Shown above, is how I remember I, Robot. When I look at all the other covers for I, Robot they don’t tweak my nostalgia like this SFBC edition cover. I even wonder if I’m nostalgic for the stories at all, but instead long to see the book I once held while enjoying the stories?

I use two ways to find cover images. The first one, which is the quickest method, is with a Google search then clicking the image tab. The results look like this:

Google tends to get the most popular images, and often throws in stuff that’s not related. The way below was created using ISFDB.org. It requires typing a query into its database, and sometimes it takes a little skill. Regular use will reveal it’s tricks. First, find the main entry for the book you want by typing in the title and then selecting “Fiction Titles.” Hit Go. Click the title link to the proper entry. Then scroll down to the bottom of that list and click on all “View all covers for …” Here are the early covers for I, Robot in publication order. Click on the link to see all.

This got me to thinking. Is a big aspect of nostalgia related to what we owned or wanted to own when we were teens? Even if its something popular before our teen years? I turned 13 the year the Ford Mustang and Plymouth Barracuda came out in 1964. So images of 1960s muscle cars light up my nostalgia neurons. Generally, pictures of anything that happened in the 1960s turn on my nostalgia. But so do images from 1930s movies and 1940s pulp magazines, things that came out way before I was born. What explains that? They are past pop culture I learned to love in my teens. Why do we imprint so strongly what we experienced from age 10-20? Why don’t I have nostalgia for stuff I discovered in my forties? Maybe I will in my eighties.

My friend Mike told me how he loved a paperback copy of Beyond Tomorrow, a paperback anthology edited by Damon Knight, which he said he read to pieces. That made me remember something else. I love covers from many science fiction books, but I’m always partial to the editions I first read.

For example, I hate seeing any cover for the twelve Heinlein juveniles except those from the original publisher Charles Scribners Sons. However, I do accept the covers from the pulp digest magazines where the stories first appeared. When I started collecting pulp magazines the first thing I did was collect the mags that contained stories by Heinlein.

Thus, these are the acceptable images I have for Have Space Suit-Will Travel. By the way, Worlds Without End causes me endless memory heartache because they often use covers I don’t associate with a title. If you click on the title link above you’ll see one I particularly dislike. In fact, I dislike all the covers for Have Space Suit-Will travel but these two:

 

 

They were both done by Emsh (Ed Emshwiller). Do you also have this hangup about book covers? If so, leave a comment. I’m curious how visual memories affect other people.

Someone commented on my blog that they remember the paperback covers instead because they didn’t buy hardbacks or get science fiction from the library. I remember having several sources of science fiction. First were library books I got at school, or the Homestead Air Force Base Library or the downtown main branch of the Miami Public Library. This is where I saw all those first edition hardbacks I show off on my blog. That’s why I remember hardbacks along with paperbacks.

When I began making my own money in the 9th grade mowing lawns and having a paper route, I started going to used bookstores on my bike or buying new paperbacks off of twirling racks in drugstores. Used bookstores are where I began seeing old paperbacks and digest pulp magazines covers that have been burned into my brain. In the tenth grade, I joined the Science Fiction Book Club and began collecting hardback editions. Their covers are also etched deep in my memories. My formative mind imprinted on those covers and I’m now haunted by them. I wonder how long this bout of nostalgia will last?

Joachim Boaz has been tweeting photos of his bookshelves. Not only does this trigger nostalgia, but envy. In my lifetime I’ve owned thousands of books and magazines, but I’ve given most away. When I read the titles on Joachim’s shelves I see so many I once owned. His old paperbacks trigger so many memories. I wonder if Joachim is less nostalgic than I am because he owns all those books that I can only remember when I see a photograph.

SFFaudio also tweets and retweets images that often sets off my nostalgia. They also show a lot of interior art, as well as table-of-contents pages and images of pages to read from the past. From all the photos they tweet I can tell they also have the nostalgia flu.

Yesterday I went to the public library and went up and down the ranges that held their science fiction collection. Most of their science fiction is newer and I don’t remember those books at all. And the older books I do remember have later editions that look unfamiliar to me. Except for a few rare finds, this experienced evoked no nostalgia. It was sad. I had hoped to find books I saw on the shelves back in the 1960s, but they are long gone. I did find a third printing of the first edition of A Canticle for Leibowitz. And I found a couple early Brian Aldiss story collections from the 1960s.

Maybe another reason my mind responds so well to photos is that I have a poor visual memory. Well, my memory for stories is also poor. Maybe what I call nostalgia is just the pleasure of recall itself. I don’t know. But for the fun of it, here’s how I remember Robert A. Heinlein. Astute observers will notice I have no nostalgia for Heinlein after 1966.

 

 

JWH

 

6 Comments

Chuck Litka   |   06 Mar 2018 @ 18:30

I’d suggest that nostalgia is, at least in part, a sense of loss. Like James, I can’t picture things in my head beyond a vague impression, (aphantasia) but I don’t find that seeing an image sparks any more emotional responses than any other stimuli. But then I’m not a nostalgic person. I have no interest in my perfectly mundane past and recall little more than the cold facts of it, so there’s no sense of loss about something I don’t remember ever having.

I do, however, still have the 300 – 400 paperback SF books that I bought in the ‘60’s & 70’s, many of which were reprinted pulps. They spark few memories and I have little desire to re-read them. I tried several times, but without the golden haze of nostalgia, most were simply not worth my time and effort. I’m glad I enjoyed them in my youth, but for me, the past is indeed, past.

The library of my youth apparently did not have dust covers on their Heinlein YA books, since they spark no memories. I owned the SF Book Club version of Farnham’s Freehold, and I think I still have that paperback version of Stranger in a Strange Land, as well as 6xH and Worlds of…

Jim Harris   |   08 Mar 2018 @ 06:58

Chuck, if you aren’t nostalgic for your old paperbacks, nor do you feel like rereading them, why do you keep them? Something must hold you to them?

Are you excited about new stuff? Maybe I’m excited about old stuff because I am a nostalgic person. But if you aren’t, are you still excited about new stuff?

Very interesting comment, thanks.

Chuck Litka   |   09 Mar 2018 @ 16:17

Well, Jim, I guess I am sentimental, if not nostalgic. Even though all those old paperbacks are “things,” they, and a lot of other junk about the house, have been with me for so long that they have earned the title of “faithful family retainers,” who are not discarded once their usefulness runs out. Plus, I find several walls of books makes for a very cozy room, so they are still serve a purpose in my life.

I must admit that the best current SF has mostly evolved beyond my far too narrow and old fashioned taste in books – as it should. Speculative fiction should always be evolving, so I don’t blame it for leaving me behind. And while there’s a ton of modern pulp SF available, much of it is no better written than the old stories, and often little more than SF movie/tv fan fiction, which doesn’t appeal to me either. And so, with so much of both the past and current SF unappealing, I’ve taken to day dreaming stories instead of reading them. It’s a lot more interactive, and they all appeal to me.

jwharris28   |   14 Mar 2018 @ 09:45

Chuck, if you are daydreaming stories, have you considered writing science fiction?

I’m not against reading modern science fiction, but I have a hard time finding new books I want to read. Their numbers are just overwhelming. I read the latest Kim Stanley Robinson when it comes out. I loved The Martian by Andy Weir but I hated Artemis. I loved Ready Player One but never read Cline’s second book. I read a fair amount of Robert Sawyer. I read some Neal Stephenson. I’ve read many books by Robert Charles Wilson. And I admire Paolo Bacigalupi. There are more, but my memory is poor.

B.L. Alley   |   19 Mar 2018 @ 22:23

I’m still such a fan of Heinlein. I find his work just as compelling and relevant as the obvious choices like Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury, yet adding a unique twist and seemingly with the hint of a twinkle in his eye. I really love his examinations of causality in By His Bootstraps and All You Zombies.

Two modern indie authors I recommend are David Kersten and Cody Leet. A forgotten semi-classic scifi writer is Robert Forward, particularly Dragon’s Egg and Starquake.

Lacey   |   28 Apr 2021 @ 20:32

It has long been my contention that you arrive at an age where you find what you like and that point fixes in your mental makeup. Music that you looked at when you were 25 or 26 is the music you will prefer for the rest of your life. What were your enjoyments in your teen and twenties becomes the standard by which you judge all else.

This is not to say you don’t develop new interests or cultivate new tastes, however, EVERY generation has a point where they feel the best books were written, the best movies were made, and the best music was played on the radio.

Part of that could be that the people making those forms of entertainment were of your generation and general life experience. The”greatest generation” had a solid social history and that is reflected in the art for the better part of the 20th Century. Even the rebellion against these “stuffy and outdated ideals” produced a culture that binds what we call “baby boomers.”

These book covers were the art of our growing and developing. They piqued our interest because they were designed to sell the product. The designers know the audience they were selling to. Simply take any title and look at each edition over the years. Note how the style changes for each generation (and how short that generational change is).

As I looked at your posts I noted how many of these book covers were the first I saw and how many were the “not quite as good” later incarnations. The idea that “they just don’t make ’em like that anymore.”

Thank you for the great article and the hard work you put into the excellent blog.

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