Not unusually for a (dare I say?) precociously intelligent young, American boy, I devoured science fiction and fantasy novels, gathered up from a dozen used bookstores and often dating from the golden age of science fiction (roughly th 1940s through the 1960s).

Then, as Paul told the Corinthians, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Whether because I won’t grow up or for some other reason, part of what I call my personal archaeology, I have been filled with a great desire to revisit these novels.

Some time ago, I picked up Fredric Jameson’s magisterial study of utopian (and dystopian) literature, Archaeologies of the Future, and it has given me some ammunition in my quest to justify spending time reading pulp sci fi.

I followed it up with both volumes of A.E. Vogt’s Weapon Shop novels, The Weapon Shops of Isher and The Weapon Makers. Not great stuff, but reaussuringly familiar to a lover of the pulps.

Now, I am almost halfway through with Gene Wolf’s Book of the New Sun.

Damn does it feel good.