Science Fiction Book Club

Had a very interesting day yesterday. I went running a few vital errands around town — mailing job applications (Yeahhh, like anyone in Austin is actually going to hire a Lubbockite for anything?), returning a defective video card back to the manufacturer, and desperately searching for Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper. I was heading over for a quick visit to Awesome Books when, well, the car went kaput on me. Luckily, I was near my favorite garage, so I was able to limp the car over to them in time. Sometimes, it does seem like the universe is saying, “Hey, look, a jobless guy. Let’s make all his money go away!” Yeah, well, watch it, universe, or I’ll cut ya.

Anyway, the day was salvaged by my brother, who came and picked me up from the garage and took me around town for a few of his errands. We grabbed some sodas, had a right giggle at the “bargains” at Circuit City, and ended up standing in Barnes and Noble for at least half-an-hour jawboning about great science fiction, fantasy, and horror books with a guy we just ran into there. Now usually, this is a prescription for pain — someone you don’t know just starts talking to you in the bookstore about sci-fi, and it’s usually “Heh heh, I love this book ’cause it’s got a vampire lady, and she has big boobs, and there’s some heh heh heh.”

Didn’t happen this time — the guy had read almost everything, knew what the good stuff was, knew how to articulate what he liked about it. We talked about Terry Pratchett, Alice Sheldon, Neil Gaiman, Robert E. Howard, Harlan Ellison, Owl Goingback, Richard Matheson, Hammer Films, Charlaine Harris, Andrew Vachss, Joe R. Lansdale, George R.R. Martin, Christopher Moore, ’70s exploitation horror flicks, and many, many more. As most of y’all are doubtless very well aware, there is nothing that science fiction fans love more than getting to hang out with other science fiction fans — especially smart science fiction fans — and let your geek flag fly. My bro and I had so much fun, we’da put the guy on our Christmas card list if we’d thought to ask him what his name was.

Aaaaanyway, enough about my day. How was yours?