If you want to see Galen A. Tripp's list as it stands now, click HERE!
Imagine if you will . . . You're twelve years old and you live in a semi-rural suburb on the outskirts of Ogden Utah. You are different from most of your friends, relatives, and acquaintances in that you like to read imaginative stories of wondrous people and amazing goings on, stories of solving impossible problems, stories of thrilling adventure and mystery on far off worlds or in your own back yard.
Your small local library has been a wonderful source, but now you've read all the imaginative fiction on its shelves . . . all thirty-five books of it. The librarian is willing to help but she just doesn't know anything about this kind of book. She tells you that through the interlibrary loan system she can get for you any of thousands of books of the kind you desire. All you have to do is give her the name of the book you want and the name of its author. But the only titles you know are of the books you have already read.
Luckily, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society has supplied something to this library that will help.
Imagine this next scenario . . . You are the new school librarian in the new library of the new junior high school of a growing suburb of New Rochelle, New York. You are building your stock, purchasing the books to fill the shelves. About all you know on the subject of science fiction is that it is called "sci fi" for short. Still, you want to have a science fiction and fantasy section. A reasonable start would be if you had the names of some good books in that genre.
Luckily, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society has given you a list with that very information.
Try this scenario: You are a teacher of 6th grade English in Helena Montana. Some of your students, reluctant to read the books you've been assigning, show an imaginative bent that you feel may be turned to an interest in reading if you can expose them to a book that sparks their imagination. You think that if you give them a list of several likely titles they can pick for themselves a book that does the job.
As it turns out, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society has given your school a list that is very much like the list that you had imagined.
Let us try one last scenario.
Your daughter's eleventh birthday is coming soon and you've been thinking about what to get her. You have noticed that she reads a lot and she reads quickly. Some time ago, you pointed her toward your collection of the Nancy Drew Mysteries and Bobsey Twin books you had collected when you were her age. She had read them all but she did not seem excited by them. What does seem to get her excited are stories about dragons and space ships and time travel and the most preposterous things that girls would never have considered reading when you were a kid.
The times have changed and you know it. You think a good birthday gift would be a huge stack of used paperbacks that would take her a fair part of a year to get through. There are many good used-book stores in Portland Oregon, where you and your daughter live. You are willing to use the "shotgun" technique of getting a bunch of random books hoping some good titles are in the pile. If, however, you had a list of the "good stuff", then your aim could be markedly improved.
Luckily, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society has provided the Portland main library with just such a list as your are locking for.
I hate to break the bubble, but the truth is that I have no evidence of any kind that any of the previous scenarios are true on the whole, in part, or in any variation. They are dreams.
What we know is this: Over 2,000 requests for the LASFS Recommended Reading List for mature children and young adults have been responded to over the last two years.
Upon request, we have sent copies of the list to every state in the Union and various foreign countries. Most of the lists going to foreign countries have gone to Canada, but they have also to countries like Japan, Spain, England, Gabon and Brazil.
We find that science fiction fans have very little use for our list. Fans know what they like and don't need us to tell them. That's not to say we don't get any interest from the fan community. Recently, for example, we had a request for the list from Gay and Joe Haldeman.
The vast majority of requests, however, come from librarians, both for public libraries and for schools. A smaller percentage of requests come from teachers. A still smaller percentage of requests come from people who give no clue whether they are affiliated with schools or libraries or not.
Nonetheless, all the requests for the list that we have ever gotten have one very important thing in common with every other. No recipient-by-mail of the list has ever given any kind of direct feedback as to the usefulness or desirability of the list once they have actually seen a copy of the thing. Several people, in writing their request, have stated that they think they may find the list useful. But after they have a copy, there is only silence from them all.
There are, however, indirect clues that people find the list useful.
I have divided the requests into three levels. The first level of request is from people who have received or seen the official LASFS press release about the list. The second level, which constitutes the vast majority of requests, is from people who have read about our list in some publication. The third level is from people who have been told about the list, i.e. "word of mouth".
It is hard to be sure that a request is due to word of mouth, but there have been a few that I feel sure fit that category. That there are any at all is the only real evidence I have that anyone finds our list useful.
It could very well be that everyone who sends for our list
finds it useful. The recipients gain nothing by telling us they
use our list. The truth is that I don't really need to know if
the list is used. As long as people keep asking for the list,
we will keep sending it out. They do keep asking for the
list, at a rate of about twenty a week. Still, knowing would be
nice.
THE ABOVE IS A SPEECH THAT WAS WRITTEN ON 7/30/93 BUT NEVER DELIVERED. --GAT
If you want a copy of the LASFS list as it
stands now, send a self-addressed, stamped long envelope
to:
Recommended Reading List
c/o LASFS Inc.
11513 Burbank Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601-2309
