Donation helps fuel further sci-fi studies

Thursday, 11 October 2007

When Chester Cuthbert was a boy, science fiction and fantasy weren’t considered true literary genres. But eight decades later, the contents of the Winnipeg man’s private collection are no longer being.

The long-time science fiction fan, who turns 95 this week, has donated a collection estimated to contain 60 000 books, periodicals, and a very significant personal archive to the University of Alberta.

“One of the beauties of Chester’s collection is we’re anticipating it’s going to strengthen our holdings in the earlier period,” said Merrill Distad, associate director of libraries for the U of A. He explained that, to date, the University’s science fiction collection had been much stronger for the period after 1955.

Also included in the collection are hundreds of pulp fiction magazines from the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, as well as a lot of amateur publications known as “fanzines.”

“[Fanzines] are very scarce because few were produced, and those are going to have very high value,” Distad said.

The entire collection has been estimated to be worth between $500 000 and $1 million, and Distad said it will take months, if not years, to process and properly catalogue all of the material.

This was the largest collection the U of A has received from a private individual, and it will come to the University in small shipments.

“The books aren’t here yet because, quite simply, there’s no warehouse space available in Edmonton, and we don’t have the floor space at the [Book and Record Depository] to take more than a dozen or a dozen and a half pallets at a time,” Distad explained.

Doug Barbour, professor emeritus in the Department of English and Film Studies, predicted that the collection would offer a wealth of research material.

“Science fiction especially has become an academic subject of some importance,” he said.

When Barbour was a professor at the University, he taught 400-level courses in popular culture on science fiction and postmodernism, 20th-century fantasy, and even 20th-century vampires. Today, he pointed out, PhD dissertations are written and academic conferences are held on science fiction.

“It’s become quite an important field,” he said.

The fanzines included in Cuthbert’s collection will, according to Barbour, be a “gold mine” for students of the cultures of fandom and science fiction. Barbour also stressed that social studies research will reveal the impact of this genre on people as a whole.

“You will find that, [when] a huge number of the people who went into science and then ended up at places like NASA or working in scientific careers started, their interest was first formed by reading science fiction,” Barbour explained. “A number of the people who ended up in the 60s as young men working in the aerospace industry were people who all said, ‘Well, it all started with reading science fiction.’ They were all the ones who said, ‘We knew we’d get to the moon.’”

In the 1970s, science fiction fans in Winnipeg would gather at Cuthbert’s house every weekend to share their common interests. One of these members, Randy Reichardt, is now a librarian at the University of Alberta, and travelled along with Distad nine years ago to first express interest in acquiring the collection.

“I gasped a little because I thought I knew how to pack a place with books,” Distad recalled of his first visit.

Reichardt noted that there have been some questions being raised about why the collection isn’t staying in Winnipeg, but he said he felt that had been answered by the fact that neither the University of Winnipeg nor University of Manitoba have the facilities to manage a donation of this size.

However, Reichardt pointed out that there’s a “fairly robust science fiction community” in Edmonton, adding that most people “are really happy that it’s going to be kept in one place.”