Exhibit Notes: Theodore Sturgeon

Lilly call number: PS3545.A38

Items in the exhibit:

• The Dreaming Jewels
• Without Sorcery
• More Than Human
• More Than Human - proof copy
• "Amok Time"

Theodore Sturgeon is probably one of the lesser known writers in the exhibit.  His work has not been continuously reprinted like Bradbury or Asimov.  His stories have not been consistently turned into movies like Dick.  He is not even heavily connected with the episodes of Star Trek that he wrote, like Ellison is with "The City on the Edge of Forever."  When Becky read through my labels for the exhibit, when I would comment about an author (such as Sturgeon) being unknown outside sci-fi fandom, she would be surprised, saying she's always known who they are, but then she knows sci-fi.

"We sell bottles with things in them."

Well, for those of you who have never heard of Theodore Sturgeon, I will say one thing to you: I feel sorry for you.  I had never read anything by him before working on this exhibit, though I was extremely familiar with one of the episodes he wrote for Star Trek.  I read a few of his stories in the books I'd picked for the exhibit and I was hooked.  One of the nice things about science fiction is that most sci-fi writers do short stories and lots of them.  And short stories are, well, short.  So if you want an introduction to a new sci-fi writer, just reading a few of his stories doesn't take very long.  I began with a few stories in Without Sorcery and was so pleased that I was inspired to buy the book, which required a trip to a used book website because Sturgeon's collections haven't been reprinted.  I began with "Shottle Bop," which I chose because the picture at the beginning of the story amused me.  His stories can be surprisingly light-hearted, which is not necessarily usual for science fiction, at least not what I've read.

"It is the pon farr..."

One of the things I knew before choosing the focus of my exhibit was that I wanted to be able to include Star Trek scripts.  I'm a born and bred Trekkie and to not take advantage of the large complement of scripts the Lilly had would have been painful.  Luckily for me, good sci-fi writers wrote for original Trek.  Sturgeon wrote two, and the one in the exhibit is the more famous.  It deals with pon farr, the Vulcan mating drive and rituals.  While I hope that this exhibit might inspire people who have not read science fiction before to give it a try, I have absolutely no expectation that people who see the exhibit will want to watch Star Trek after seeing it.  But it means a lot to me, and it will mean a lot to the sci-fi fans that come through the door.  It has truly been a treat to put together an exhibit that has had so much personal meaning for me, because science fiction was such a large part of my childhood and upbringing.

Weeks 14-15: The Rest Is Silence...

I'm sitting in the reading room at the Lilly right now.  I've finished my projects, but I won't have completed my hours until noon.  I put the final flags in the John Ford exhibit and handed the paperwork over to conservation.  I put copies of the paperwork for my sci-fi exhibit with the materials and replaced a few missing flags.  It's been a long semester and I've done a lot of work, and it's a little bittersweet to see it go.  I spent the last two weeks immersed in John Ford, both here with writing the labels for the movies, and at home with watching the movies.  I answered a few reference questions early in the week and brought in a little money because all of the patrons wanted copies of the materials.  So to now sit here with nothing to do feels odd, and makes me think about what I have done all semester.

Reference:
I learned how to use the various reference materials that the Lilly has to offer: finding aids, collection guides, the physical card catalog.  Each of them was useful, though not perfect.  I spent a lot of time going through boxes, pulling materials.  One of my first solo reference questions was for pictures of John Ford with his family and Katherine Hepburn.  At the time, I was excited to be working with photographs and couldn't imagine that by the end of the semester, Becky would have turned the curation of an exhibit on Ford entirely over to me.  My favorite thing I learned from my reference work was that James Whitcomb Riley went by Jamesy.

Outreach:
One of my favorite activities at the beginning of the semester was working with Becky when she presented to classes.  I just got to sit off to the side and watch until the end, when I helped her pack the things away.  Once and awhile I'd grab supports or weights for her.  It was fun watching the students interact with the collections, particularly when they were impressed.  When I finally got the opportunity to talk about library materials with students, they were fifth graders, not undergrads, and it was almost the most fun I had all semester.  Special collections are absolutely wonderful, and I enjoyed being a part of helping other people learn this.

Science Fiction:
A large part of the semester was taken up with my personal project, curating an exhibition on science fiction authors, a topic the Lilly is uniquely suited to support.  Looking through the papers of Anthony Boucher (aka William Anthony Parker White) and reading letters by some of the sci-fi writers I grew up hearing about was just phenomenal. The work even inspired me to get back to reading science fiction, and I have worked my way through works by these authors since.  The other gratifying part of this project has been the reaction when I tell people about it.  Science fiction has always been a fringe genre, beloved of nerds and geeks.  So, naturally, I was surprised when the reaction to my topic (from people outside my immediate family) was favorable.  Many people seemed to even think it was cool :)  I know that today is being dedicated by geeks the country over to a girl named Katie who was bullied for carrying a Star Wars water bottle to school.  Well, Katie, there are plenty of us out there (and tons of us are girls), and when you grow up I know you'll find your people (I apparently did).

John Ford:
The semester ended with a return to John Ford.  When I went into my sci-fi exhibit, I may not have read most of the books I was including, but I knew what I was doing because I was familiar with the authors and the genre.  As for John Ford, not only had I never seen a single one of his films (with the exception of the clips in "Movie Tonight"), I had never seen a Western (well, a real Western.  Blazing Saddles, "A Fistful of Datas" and "Living in Harmony" don't count).  Four of the movies chosen to be featured in the exhibit were Westerns.  Well, I learned something new.  I learned I like Westerns.  I would even call The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance one of the best movies I've ever seen.  And if it weren't for this work, it might have been a long time, if ever, before I was finally introduced to Ford's films and Westerns.

After I eat lunch, I will be coming back to the Lilly...to train for working the reading room desk next semester.  It's nice that this internship got me a job.  But it's fantastic that I got much more out of it than that.

Exhibit Notes: Philip K. Dick

Lilly call number: PS3554.I3

Items in the exhibit:
A Scanner Darkly
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Preserving Machine
The Variable Man
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Deus Irae
The Man in the High Castle

It is becoming a somewhat familiar refrain in these posts that Philp K. Dick isn't the most well known author.  But, as I said in his label for the exhibit, "...anyone familiar with the movies Blade Runner, Minority Report, or Total Recall (all based on his writings) is at least somewhat familiar with his work."  This gives him a bit of a leg up on Sturgeon and Ellison.  Also, I did not have to turn to the ALF (Auxiliary Library Facility) to get any of his books.  The Lilly had a ready supply up in the stacks.  He's the only author in the exhibit who only has books.  Everyone else has a script or some kind of manuscript materials (or both).  But he does have a paperback, which I don't have for any other author.  My dad has a huge collection of old sci-fi paperbacks, and I always get a kick out of seeing how much (or little) books cost back then.  And there's something more fun about handling an old sci-fi paper back, with its green edges, than an old hardcover. 

Four of the items I put in the exhibit I chose because they had stories (or were novels) off of which movies have been based.  But the other one I picked because they had interesting covers, or because they were listed among some of their best or well-known work.  Since I had not read any Dick before working on the exhibit, and I wanted to have read something in the exhibit by each author before it goes up next spring, I decided to read one of the Dick books that I hadn't heard of: The Man in the High Castle.  The edition that I got from the library and then borrowed from my dad was published by the Library of America who list as part of their mission preserving American literature.  When I told my parents that Dick was the first sci-fi writer to be published by Library of America, my mom wondered why they didn't chose someone well-known.  Well, of all the authors in this exhibit, Dick is the only one not available in modern editions.  Sturgeon's collections aren't reprinted, but at least his collected stories (all thirteen volumes) have been published.  Well, after reading The Man in the High Castle, I knew why Dick was being preserved by Library of America and why it is considered one of his classic works.  It was fantastic,  It's more alternate history than science fiction, which I should think would make it more accessible to non-science fiction readers.  Reading it made me glad that this exhibit had inspired me to get back into reading this genre, because it reminded me why I like it so much, which has been a stress-relieving gift as the semester has wound down.