Back in the day..."when the rocks were young" as my children would often say, I became a fan of science fiction books and short stories. In my hometown, Manhattan Beach CA, bookstores were as rare as unicorns and the library was downtown. This required a one mile walk to get there and a much longer one to return as there was a steep hill to climb.
Then, one day I saw the construction of a store up near the Shell station on Sepulveda. It turned out to be a pharmacy; Stuart's Pharmacy. There were already two pharmacies in town but downtown and a little farther away than the library. Those two pharmacies had fine collections of pocket books and magazines plus a soda fountain so I was hoping that this new pharmacy would be similarly equipped.
I went to Stuart's on the day they opened and saw that they had a great selection of comic books, pocket books and science fiction books. There was no soda fountain but they had an impressive selection of candy. Stuart's was soon my default destination for reading material and candy. And no one stood nearby to monitor my reading selection. At the library there were two blue haired spinsters to prevent the 'Wrong kind of books' from being seen by a young mans eyes.
The only comic book that I really enjoyed was the adventures of Plastic Man. If you paid attention to the dialog you would see a lot of 'adult' satire. That may have been the reason for the early demise of my hero. With or without Plastic Man, I had a fantastic selection of science fiction to choose from. Heinlein, Asimov and other greats had short stories every month.
Slowly, over the years, my tastes changed or the quality of the fiction was lowered until one day I noticed that I hadn't read any sci-fi for a long time and it didn't matter; I had better things to read.
That was the way it was for many years and then I spotted a free sci-fi book on Book Bub with delivery by Amazon and it sounded interesting. Oh boy! was it ever! It was a series of books titled "The Expanse" and it went from a 5 book series to an 8 book series plus a TV adaptation of the first book. I was really hooked and I've read 5 of the books now and will soon order the 6th. Then I decided to try some others of that genre. I soon found some duds but I also found some promising authors.
Along the way I came across "The Spiral Wars" which was a 4 book adventure with good chance for a 5th and 6th book. The author, an Australian, has a great track record or CV and the books showcase his talent. I'm on the last or 4th book and reading it slowly to make it last. When it's gone I will order the next book from the Expanse series. After that is gone I don't have any great choices...yet.
When it comes to sci-fi I demand actual science. Nothing is faster than the speed of light and when the author has his characters breaking that speed limit he better have a darn good explanation. In reality there are rumors that it can broken but it hasn't reached any mainstream science that I know of. Ah! there's the rub; "...that I know of" and that means that I have to do some homework as well. I love it!
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